Fantastic effects: A cantankerous old mouse swims desperately against literal "amber waves" of grain, the highlight of the occasionally confusing THE FIELD MOUSE (above); meanwhile, the Wallace Beery-inspired Papa Bear holds his own against a similar "tide" in A RAINY DAY ( below, right)

by Rachel Newstead

If ever there were an argument for the full restoration of the Harman-Ising MGM cartoons, it can be found not only in that favorite of  Kevin and mine, Circus Daze, but in the two cartoons we’ll be discussing this week: The Field Mouse (1941) and A Rainy Day (1940). The grainy images I’ve included here hardly  do them justice; I can’t begin to image how they must have appeared on movie-theater screens.

The cartoons are not without their problems; The Field Mouse, for instance,  forgets its story after the first two minutes. It opens by focusing on the one little field mouse, Herman, who’s not as diligent as the other mice. He’s spanked and scolded by his mama for sleeping while his brothers are out in the fields working. He resolves to run away, but is persuaded otherwise by his lovable but cantankerous old grandpa, who reminds him of the cookies he’d be missing out on. (Grandpa himself doesn’t seem to be a devotee of hard work, despite his song “Can’t get cheese from trees, you know/ so sow what you reap and reap what you sow….”)

If The Field Mouse is a cautionary tale on the virtues of hard work, that message isn’t clear, and gets cast aside rather quickly as we’re thrown into the cartoon’s second plotline: Herman and Grandpa’s valiant fight to escape the blades of a menacing thresher.

Herman does continue to disobey his mother by trying to catch a nap on a nearby flower,  but the thresher interrupts his efforts. It would have come anyway–and placed him in every bit as much danger–even if he had been working. So what’s the moral?

Problems with logic aside, it’s the thresher scenes that make this cartoon memorable.  Animated by Paul Sommer and former Disney animator Leonard Sebring (thanks to Mark Kausler for the information) this sequence is an eye-popping example of animation at its best.

A Rainy Day has a more coherent, and far simpler, storyline: grumpy, lethargic Papa Bear attempts to fix a tiny hole in his roof, which thanks to his bumbling and a sudden violent storm, becomes series of cavernous ones, then a virtual maelstrom of shingles; like Herman and his grandpa, poor Papa Bear has to struggle against an ever-rising tide which laps against the edge of the little house like waves on the shore. (And looks, at certain points, about twice as large as it logically should have been). It manages to be both funny and immensely frightening, not an easy trick with such a realistically-animated cartoon. (Kausler tells me the roofing-tile scenes were the work of Bill Littlejohn, a man as capable of stylized, UPA-like design and animation as of the traditional Disney style).

I liked these scenes long before I liked Harman and Ising in general; at the age of twelve, when the sight of a Harman-Ising cartoon would normally drive me from the room, I’d stay put when I heard the opening music for A Rainy Day. I would endure Mama Bear’s syrupy song (I’m guessing, but Mama Bear’s fluttery, scatterbrained mannerisms must have been inspired by the equally fluttery, scatterbrained Billie Burke) and what I then felt to be the dead-slow timing of the first few minutes to see Papa Bear swim against the tiles just one more time; my attention would perk up the moment the thresher in The Field Mouse approached (would that I had a VCR in 1974….)

Finding information on Leonard Sebring proved as challenging as Papa Bear’s struggle with the roof: his career in animation was surprisingly brief. Tiring of life in California, he would leave MGM shortly after the release of The Field Mouse to return to his native Gardner, Kansas. There he’d work on advertising projects for local companies and regale the locals with stories of his days at Disney. From all indications, he was every bit as much of a character in his later years as Grandpa Mouse had been; according to this article, one of his more eccentric accomplishments was the remodeling of his late mother’s house to resemble Snow White’s cottage. (The link is to a PDF file, so a reader like Adobe Acrobat is required in order to view it).

Paul Sommer’s career is far more extensive; on viewing his resumé, it’s obvious he had a long and varied career (ranging from the aforementioned The Field Mouse to Tom and Jerry Kids, if the IMDB is to be believed) but at times he seems better known for who he worked with than for what he’d done. He was at Columbia-Screen Gems during its “mini-renaissance” of the early forties (the period under Frank Tashlin and Dave Fleischer). The cartoons he co-directed with Tashlin, such as Professor Small and Mr. Tall (1942), resemble an embryonic form of  the UPA style. Though the cartoons themselves are uneven (Professor Small and Mr. Tall, however, is just strange enough for “cult classic” status) he and Tashlin deserve credit for trying to take the art of animation in a new direction.

I’ve included here a little surprise, generously provided by Mark Kausler: the original assignment sheets–or “drafts”–from The Field Mouse, indicating which animator was to handle a given scene (though I’m told this wasn’t  strictly followed). As luck would have it, I’m also able to supplement it with a scene-by-scene animator breakdown courtesy of YouTube.  Enjoy–I certainly did. (The scene shown at the top of this post–animated by Sebring–is mentioned on the third page).

If Bugs knew what he was in for, he'd be even more skeptical than he is in this scene from EASTER YEGGS (1947).

by Rachel Newstead

Easter Yeggs

Release Date: June 28, 1947

Director: Bob McKimson

Writer: Warren Foster

In Short: If you sub for the Easter Bunny, make sure you have a good hospital plan and a bullet-proof vest….

Every Easter, I have a tradition.

I do my hair, put on my makeup, select my best outfit and go to the local Radisson for brunch. Then I come home and watch today’s cartoon.

Like most traditions, the roots for this one are long and deep; decades ago, long before I knew enough about animation to dislike Bob McKimson, Easter Yeggs would make me hold my sides with laughter. For me, such a reaction happens rarely enough that I make note of  it when it does;  if a cartoon makes me laugh repeatedly, I mentally enshrine it among the Classics, to be viewed and viewed again. Easter Yeggs has never failed to raise a laugh from me, not even after thirty-five years of viewing.

EASTER YEGGS not only has funny dialogue, it LOOKS funny: exaggerated perspective--as in the scenes above and below--heighten the humor. It's also a rather clever and original way to vary the scaled-down, two-character shots that were becoming commonplace after the war.

Most Warner cartoons have at least one memorable line. Easter Yeggs has so many, it’s hard to keep track:

• “It’s the suspense that gets me!”
• “I’m waiting for the Easter wabbit. When he comes in looking so fwuffy and cute with his wittle basket of Easter eggs–BANG!! Easter wabbit stew!!  Hahahahaha!”
• ” I can’t miss with my Dick Twacy hat!”
• “But you can’t quit! You’ll give the Easter rabbit a bad name!”…”I already have a bad name for the Easter rabbit!”
• “I wanna Easter egg! I wanna Easter egg!”
• And of course, “And remember, keeeeep smiling!”

Thanks to Chuck Jones, we tend to think of Bugs as a calm, confident character who easily adapts to any situation, so it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t always a hallmark of his character. Warren Foster’s treatment of him was more in the Clampett vein, typically putting him in oddball “fish out of water” situations. Bugs’ eventual victory, though likely, was not absolutely assured–the attraction of a Foster-written Bugs cartoon is not in seeing how Bugs wins, but in discovering if he does in spite of everything Foster throws at him.

...."The happy Easter Rabbit, hooray!" Thought it was impossible to stomp and skip at the same time? Not in this cartoon....

Bugs does have more than his share of hurdles in this cartoon. Not only is he conned into subbing for a sad-sack Easter bunny (based on Mel Blanc’s “Happy Postman”, an equally forlorn Burns and Allen character), he has to contend with a pint-size Dead End Kid as well as the usual nuisance of Elmer Fudd. (Here a little more hot-headed than usual, almost to the level of Yosemite Sam).

(For the younger folks, the term “Dead End Kid” originally referred to the juvenile stars of the 1935 play Dead End–about New York street kids–as well as the subsequent 1937 movie. The play and movie spawned a film series known by various names, but which is generally known as The Bowery Boys.  The play, and the movie series, launched the show-business careers of Leo Gorcey and  Huntz Hall, among others).

So many interwoven plot threads in a mere seven-minute cartoon is a risky move, but Foster manages to accomplish it without causing the entire story to collapse. Mainly, of course, because he doesn’t let us forget about them–the depressive Easter Bunny appears throughout, often in the oddest places (like right in the middle of Bugs’ “magic act”) while the Dead End Kid makes a reappearance at the end, to torment Elmer this time. And of course, Bugs has one final score to settle with Mr. Easter Rabbit.

Easter Yeggs also scores points for recycling a little tune from the 1939 Hare-Um Scare-Um, but with new lyrics more cynical than demented:

“I must be gettin’ looney-tuney, touched in the head,

Dis whole t’ing is gooney, I shoulda stood in bed…“

Together, all these elements combine to make a cartoon even more manic than Hare-Um Scare-Um–without requiring Bugs to bounce all over the scenery.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Poses and expressions like this could still get laughs, but more and more, the dialogue started to carry the burden...

It’s interesting–when I think of Warner Bros. cartoons made prior to 1945, I think of the wonderful animation and sight gags. For anything after 1945, I think of the wonderful dialogue. Even professional animation historians will gush over the unconventional, proto-UPA animation style of Chuck Jones’ The Dover Boys (1942), but are more likely to talk about the memorable lines of the “Bugs-Daffy-Elmer” trilogy, such as “Pronoun trouble!” (Even though the trilogy is every bit as meticulously animated).

I suppose this can partly be explained by the budget cutbacks the various studios were forced to endure in the late forties: lower budgets mean sparser animation. But the period immediately after the war seems to be an era in which the writers of the Warner Bros. finally came into their own. New talent like Bill Scott and Lloyd Turner was coming in; those who had been there for years, like Foster and Maltese, were close to perfecting their craft. Consequently, the characters created in 1945 and beyond, like Foghorn Leghorn and Yosemite Sam, are tailor-made for talk. (In the case of  Foghorn, a great deal of talk).

Whatever the reasons, the age of what Chuck Jones would eventually call “illustrated radio” was dawning, and far sooner than most people might think. Long before, in fact, the upstart medium of television would make it a necessity.

However, when  great writing makes as much of an impact on a person’s life as this cartoon’s has made on mine, being remembered solely for the dialogue is no vice.  A well-animated short, such as Disney’s, may be admired for its beauty. But how many become an annual tradition?

(Added picture and caption, 4/4/10).

Agent Buddy examines his clever undercover disguise in BUDDY THE GEE MAN

by Rachel Newstead

Buddy The Gee Man

Release Date: Aug. 24, 1935

Director: Jack King

In Short: In his very last appearance, Buddy’s one of the Feds, and investigates a prison warden who hates music. An act, of course, unforgivable in a Buddy cartoon….

Say the name “Buddy” and “Looney Tunes” in the same sentence to an animation fan–try it. I dare you.

But before you do it, I highly recommend a good, solid industrial headset to drown the resulting eardrum-liquefying screech of outrage.

Let’s face it, of all the Looney Tunes characters, Buddy is not only the last one we’re likely to remember, but the one we most want to forget.

But how fair is that, really? It’s something I never really gave much thought, until this recent e-mail question from Kevin:

…do you really think that Buddy is a wholly uninteresting character? I guess I’m getting more out of the soundtracks than you are out of the visuals….

Such a simple question, yet so difficult to answer. Kevin has an annoying way of doing that with his questions, making me ask myself why I like what I like. I mean, there are Buddy cartoons I actually enjoy, but the character….

I suppose the best answer would be “yes”–with qualifications.  I do think Buddy is completely uninteresting, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I dislike the cartoons that feature him. They can be quite enjoyable, almost despite themselves. But they would be just as enjoyable, I think, if Buddy weren’t there.

Characters like Buddy, the products of an escapist era Kevin likes to call the “wide-eyed ’30s,” were only the nominal stars of the cartoons in which they appeared. The real star, the cartoons’ reason for being in the early sound era, was the music.

And what music! The Fleischers’ soundtracks alone, aided by the New York studio’s easy access to the top jazz artists of the day, hardly need mentioning. The Disney Silly Symphonies were created as experiments in combining music and images, and elevated both to new heights. The cartoons Harman and Ising released through Leon Schlesinger–particularly the Silly Symphony-knockoff “Merrie Melodies”– were meant to promote the vast Warner Bros. music catalogue. And they made good use of it.

The early Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies might never have reached the heights of Disney or Fleischer, but the scores could sweep the audience along on a wild musical roller coaster. Witness the drunken, hallucinatory joyride two characters take through town in You Don’t Know What You’re Doing (1932), in which both sight and sound seem to get knocked completely askew as we experience the whole thing from their inebriated point of view.

So it was only natural after the departure of Harman and Ising that the newest Looney Tunes star, Buddy, would be a song-and-dance man, as had Bosko before him. Buddy and his girlfriend Cookie sang and danced their way through such early efforts as Buddy’s Beer Garden, Buddy’s Day Out, and Buddy’s Circus–bouncy little musicals meant to capitalize more on the novelty of sound than on what the characters are actually doing.

But just as live-action films began to shift away from plotless musicals, so too did animated cartoons. Cartoon characters became less of an animated entertainer and more the participant in an actual story. Over at Disney, Mickey finds himself fighting (however humorously) pirate Peg Leg Pete in order to protect Minnie in Shanghaied (1934); at Fleischer, Popeye would begin a long series of battles with Bluto for the hand of Olive Oyl.

Meanwhile, at the Schlesinger studio, the Buddy cartoons–under the direction of former Disney animator Jack King–began to take on an air of adventure. He’d save a little Chinese girl from being sacrificed in Buddy The Gob, encounter a friendly dinosaur in Buddy’s Lost World, and rescue his girlfriend Cookie from the clutches of a Svengali-like mad musician in Buddy The Detective. Music still figures prominently, but it’s merely part of the plot, not the plot in itself.

Yet even though Buddy takes a more active role in King’s cartoons than in the cartoons of other directors, he’s still little more than a prop–it’s the supporting characters that steal the show, even in what is inarguably the best of the Buddys, Buddy The Gee Man.

It’s a strange little hybrid of a cartoon, combining the mini-musicals of a couple of years earlier with the mini-adventures King did so well. For that reason, it’s easily my favorite of the series. But as was the case with my favorite Bosko cartoon, Bosko In Person, the best unfortunately turned out to be the last.

Our hero, here perhaps the country’s shortest Federal agent, is assigned to sneak into “Sing Song” prison and investigate conditions there. Ah, but there’s no singing at Sing Song–warden Otto B. Kinder (yuk yuk!) has banned it from the premises, not even allowing four prisoners to indulge in a nice little close-harmony rendition of  Al Dubin and Harry Warren’s “Lulu’s Back In Town.” (The old meanie!)

Buddy and his pipe-smoking detective dog “Gee Man” sneak into the prison just as the police deliver “Machine Gun Mike”, a tough bulldog. (It’s odd how Buddy seems to be the lone human among humanized animals, isn’t it? Maybe he should have worn a dog suit instead of a false mustache.)

What they see is about as bad as they expected: the warden’s motto, printed on a poster on his office wall, is “ALL WORK AND NO PLAY!” (In a prison?

Our warden, a real barrel of laughs....

Imagine!)

While Buddy furiously scribbles notes, we look in on a few of the prisoners:

Machine Gun Mike gets a letter from what he thinks is his girl, but it turns out to be a chain letter (not too different here from a present-day pyramid scheme). Such schemes proved quite popular in the cash-strapped Depression, reaching the height of their popularity at about the time this cartoon was released. They were decidedly less popular with the overtaxed postal workers who had to deliver them….

When the prisoner in the next cell laughs at him, the warden overhears and bellows: “Quiet!! No laughing around here!”

The gravelly voice of the inmates sounded strangely familiar; on investigation, I found it belonged to a fellow named Danny Webb, who I’m quite certain did a similar voice in several Walter Lantz cartoons (the sergeant in Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy Of Company B, for one). The voice of the character in the Lantz cartoon sounds identical to the one heard here. The warden, of course, is perennial bad guy Billy Bletcher.

The guy on the left is definitely my role model...

Cut to a prisoner in the yard, catching a nap while lightly tapping the rocks he’s supposed to be breaking, with a ridiculously tiny hammer. The warden hands him a normal sledgehammer and bellows for him to “get to work!” The not-too-bright prisoner almost succeeds in cracking the warden over the head with it, and somehow manages to smash it on the rocks. The warden’s none too pleased, and forces the prisoner to chip away with the tiny hammer again.

In the meantime, Machine Gun Mike decides to find better accommodations, so he tries to send himself over the wall by shooting himself out of a cannon. The cannon simply backfires, causing the irritable warden to hand him a pick and growl “Get to work!” During all this, Buddy and “Gee-Man” happen to be watching.

Buddy types up his recommendations to the head of the department, and we next see a screaming headline:

BUDDY MADE WARDEN!

The next thing we see is Buddy yelling “Is everybody happy?” to a cheering crowd of prisoners. (I’m almost certain this crowd scene would be used in a later cartoon, but I couldn’t determine which one). New warden Buddy has transformed the prison into something resembling a resort, serving ice cream to the convicts; prisoners get their shoes shined while their nails are cared for by a pretty manicurist. The place is so much fun now, even tough Machine Gun Mike burns up his pardon papers to stay there.

The four gentleman silenced by the former warden sing Buddy’s praises to the tune of the earlier song, “Lulu’s Back In Town”; once word gets out that “Buddy’s warden now!”, criminals are actually clamoring to get in. The last we see of this cartoon–and of Buddy–is a scene of him holding up a “NO VACANCY” sign.

Oh, and the old warden? Well, instead of hammering rocks, the convicts hammer him.

I hate to be the pessimist here, but I have a feeling Buddy’s new career as warden lasted about as long as his career in cartoons….

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

When the year 1935 began, I doubt any animator on the tiny Leon Schlesinger studio staff had an inkling they would soon turn the world of animation inside-out: revolutions are often hard to recognize when one is part of them. But that’s precisely what they would do–by the end of that pivotal year, they would have a new star character (Porky Pig), a new animation director (Tex Avery) and the first glimmers of a newer, crazier approach to humor. The studio that began 1935 imitating Disney would, by the end of that year, be well on its way to its future position as the studio that others imitated.

Revolutions, however, are not without their casualties; Buddy would unfortunately be one of them, and the innocence of the “wide-eyed” era would not be long behind. Audiences would no longer be satisfied with characters bouncing to a cheery little song–they wanted to laugh, and they wanted characters that did more than give them something to look at on screen while the music played.

More’s the pity, because this is a terrific cartoon. One comes away wishing there had been more musical numbers in the cartoon, as the “Lulu” number was quite entertaining. There aren’t many gags to speak of, though I did like one near the beginning: Buddy spits on a horseshoe for luck, tosses it away, and shatters a mirror, a situation liable to give the superstitious brain cramps. If a lucky horsehoe breaks a mirror, do they cancel each other out? That’s almost like a Stephen Wright joke (he’s the comedian who once said, “I bought some powdered water, but I didn’t know what to add…”)

I can’t say I’m clamoring for the return of Buddy. But I do wish today’s cartoons had the vitality of the cartoons of the “wide-eyed” age.

by Rachel Newstead

With Oscar season just behind us (though I imagine some acceptance speeches are STILL going on) now is the perfect time to look back on the animated shorts lucky enough to earn that gold statuette in years past–or better still, one cartoon in particular:

WHEN MAGOO FLEW

Academy Award™ Winner, Best Animated Short Subject, 1954

Director: Pete Burness

Release Date:  Jan. 6, 1955

In Short: Magoo goes to the “movies”–and the experience seems strangely…uh,  REALISTIC to our nearsighted friend. Of course, being on an airplane wing thousands of feet up will give you that sensation….

My entire life, I’ve had a sort of roller-coaster relationship with the character of Mr. Magoo. As with Fred Flintstone and company, Magoo was a part of my earliest memories; my introduction to the cranky old nearsighted gent came in the form of the numerous G.E. ads featuring him in the ’60s. Then, to my young and easy-to-please mind, he seemed like just a silly old man doing crazy things, and that was enough–for awhile.

But what might have been amusing when I was four or five proved to be painful to watch when I was thirteen or fourteen, and saw my first actual Magoo cartoons (as opposed to commercials, or specials) courtesy of Los Angeles television. The plots were simple: Magoo, because of his nearsightedness and total obliviousness, would mistake X for Y, and mildly crazy things happened.

Problem was, all the plots were “Magoo mistakes X for Y, etc. etc.”, and Magoo seemed more of a menace than a source of humor, creating wanton destruction wherever he went. Then, as now, I failed to find destructiveness funny (whether deliberate or not), and after about the 10th or 15th such cartoon, I’d squirm and look to see what else was on.

As far as I was concerned, that was it between me and Magoo. Until, that is, I happened upon a segment of the wonderful Wonderama…

If you were fortunate enough to receive WNEW in New York–or KTTV in Los Angeles–in the seventies or before, you probably remember Wonderama. For those who weren’t so fortunate, it was a three-hour Sunday kids’ extravaganza (calling it a “kids’ show” seems too limiting) with a little bit of everything–music, games, cartoons, and most importantly of all, interviews, all presided over during the ’70s by the genial Bob McAllister. I happened one Sunday morning to tune in Wonderama just in time for an interview with the inimitable Jim Backus–voice of you-know-who.

Backus spoke about his early work in show business, and of course, his years as the voice of  Magoo. He put on the fake rubber nose he always claimed he needed in order to get just the right vocal quality, did a few brief lines, then McAllister cut to a clip of a Magoo cartoon: the very one I’ll be discussing today, the Academy Award-winning When Magoo Flew.

To say it exceeded my expectations is a gross understatement–having been used to the cheap, minimalist animation of UPA in its 1960s death throes, I was unprepared for the dose of just what UPA could do in its prime.

It was, for one,  fully animated, giving lie to the belief that UPA was responsible for “limited animation”. Stylized it was, but limited? Hardly.  The characters moved smoothly, and in the illusion of three-dimensional space–just like characters in a Disney cartoon–yet are far more aggressively drawings than the literalistic Disney creatures. (Note the foreshortening on Magoo’s hand in the frame below right, something you’re not bound to see in the typical limited-animation cartoon).

I’d eventually learn, thanks to Leonard Maltin and Of Mice and Magic, that those cartoons I’d been unfortunate enough to see at thirteen or fourteen were done late in UPA’s existence, for television, under new management (Henry G. Saperstein) that slashed budgets to the bone. In other words, hardly “UPA” cartoons at all.

I was well on my way to learning about another, far better UPA–the UPA that released cartoons to theaters–and about another, very different Magoo.

To my surprise, I learned the Magoo I’d grown up with was a mere shadow of the character as envisioned by John Hubley for the cartoon The Ragtime Bear in 1949. Much as Hubley himself was reputed to be, this version of Magoo was loud, abrasive and above all, stubborn. He blundered frequently, not because he was unaware of his nearsightedness, but because he was simply too bullheaded to admit to it.  In Ragtime Bear, he thought nothing of threatening to shoot his raccoon coat-wearing nephew Waldo for making too much noise (or rather, the bear Magoo mistook for Waldo–not that it would have made any difference).

By the time of When Magoo Flew, the character had been softened considerably, thanks largely to its director, Pete Burness–a move that would ultimately rob the character of much of his humor. The decay had not yet completely set in, however; those only familiar with the TV Magoos will find When Magoo Flew to be quite an eye-opener.

Like the later cartoons, it has Magoo mistaking one thing for another–in this case, an airplane in flight for a movie theater–but this is just part of the story. The “B” plot involves a mysterious, mustached fellow with a briefcase, and a terse, nameless cop in the Jack Webb mold. A case Magoo, however unwittingly, helps to solve. And in quite a funny way, at that.

THE CARTOON

Magoo fighting off a vicious metal lawn ornament, from WHEN MAGOO FLEW.

Magoo heads off to the Rialto Theater for a night at the movies, though anyone with even a passing acquaintance with the character knows that’s the last place he’ll end up. Sure enough, with the theater right behind him, he ends up at the international airport.

Mistaking the fortune from one of those fortune-telling scales for a movie ticket, he gets behind a group of traveling musicians about to board a plane. Magoo tells the stewardess–who he believes to be a theater usherette, naturally–”Orchestra, please”. Thinking

Magoo thinks he's going to see a 3-D film--in an airport--in this scene from WHEN MAGOO FLEW

he’s with the band, she ushers him on board and to the front row of the plane–right next to the aforementioned “Mr. Briefcase”. (So typical of the charmed life Magoo seems to lead–but more on that later).

Magoo, thinking he’s talking to another theater patron, engages in some annoying idle chatter before our cop enters–which Magoo thinks is all part of the 3-D movie effect (“Oh, this realism! I feel he might reach out and grab me!”)

Thinking Magoo might be on to him after he remarks the “movie” cop must be after “some bank teller with a briefcase of stolen liberty bonds”, our suspicious fellow retreats quickly–but leaves the briefcase behind.

The rest of the cartoon concerns Magoo’s efforts to return the “misplaced” briefcase to the man, eventually climbing outside onto the plane’s wing (he thinks the emergency exit is an elevator to the lobby) to look for him. There’s a few mildly amusing gags, first involving some poor unfortunate woman who faints when she sees Magoo outside her

Magoo tries to get information from an unfortunate passenger...

window, as well as  a similar scene with the equally shocked pilot and co-pilot. Possibly the funniest, however, involves his unknowingly manipulating the rudder so the plane goes around in circles.

So unaware of his surroundings he doesn’t even realize he’s right in front of the plane’s propellers, he merely complains about the “blasted air conditioning.”

Meanwhile, the stranger tells the skeptical cop he’d neither seen nor heard of any briefcase–just as Magoo finds him and returns it.

Magoo, thinking he’s just seen the film of his life, remarks to the stewardess that his only complaint was “no cartoon”. He then engages in a strange bit of what I think is referred to as “meta-commentary” by asking if they ever show any cartoons about “that nearsighted fellow” as he goes murmuring and blundering his way home.

Dare I say it? Oh, Magoo, you’ve done it again…

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

In comparing the “old” Magoo with the “new”, Michael Barrier had this to say:

The early Magoo was very adept at molding the world into whatever he wanted it to be at the moment; the later Magoo was often pitiable instead. (Hollywood Cartoons, p. 536)

Though he would certainly become “pitiable” in the TV shorts (which seemed to try to answer the question, “how many times, and in how many ways, can we get Magoo to accidentally destroy something?”), it’s probably overreaching a bit to apply the same word to the Magoo of the later theatricals. If the early Magoo molded the world to fit his reality, the later one often had reality mold itself to him as well.

In When Magoo Flew, he wanders into an airport he believes to be a movie theater, then just happens to get behind a group of musicians boarding a plane. Before he even gets to the top of the gangway, he’s taken for a member of the band, simply because the stewardess misunderstood him every bit as much as he misinterpreted his surroundings. Even more amazingly, he just happens to stumble into a little bit of intrigue with “Mr. Suitcase” and the cop, which he conveniently interprets to be all a part of the “show.”

Later, he inadvertently causes the plane to turn around and head home, preventing him from being stranded God knows where. And on and on it goes: an impossible number of coincidences had to occur for him to continue believing in his version of reality. As far as he knew, he had a wonderful time at the “movie theater”, and nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened–even though he’d come within a hair’s breadth of being killed on several occasions. Hardly pitiable, I’d say.

Barrier accuses director Pete Burness of being “selective” with Magoo’s handicap, pointing to the fact he can see certain things, such as the “FASTEN SEAT BELTS” sign, yet is completely unaware later on that he’s outside the plane (p. 536).  It’s important to remember, however, that as we’ve already seen, the world around him has pretty much conspired up to now to confirm his delusions.  That, combined with a bit of his old stubbornness, would make it plausible that he could end up teetering on the wing of an airplane and still think he’s in a theater lobby. Not to mention funny.

Some familiar names grace the credits, such as musical director Hoyt Curtin (who’d go on to greater fame writing scores for Hanna-Barbera) and Warner’s alumnus Tedd Pierce.  Curtin’s score for this cartoon is almost unrecognizable as his, but in a good way. It’s vastly different from his work at H-B, which makes me wish he’d been allowed to flex his musical “muscles” more during the years he’d worked for Bill and Joe.

As to Pierce’s contributions, I can’t say, though the poster gag referred to at

A very Warner's-like inside joke: note the film title "The Tattle-Tale Heart" (referencing UPA's animated verison of Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart) and the name "Theodora Parmalee" (a reference to Tell-Tale Heart's director, Ted Parmalee)

right looks as though it might have been his (sign gags abounded in cartoons like Bugs Bunny Rides Again, which Pierce worked on–remember GUNSHOT SALOON–COME IN AND GET A SLUG?). I also wonder about this wonderful little exchange between the cop and the stewardess, done in true Dragnet style:

COP: I’m a cop…

STEWARDESS: A cop??

COP: Yes, ma’am…

STEWARDESS: What do you want?

COP: A man…

STEWARDESS: Me, too….

This cartoon, like Magoo’s night out, was a pleasant outing. But is it worthy of the Oscar? Not quite.

Despite the little flashes of genius in the dialogue and the funny subplot, this feels too much like a standard Magoo cartoon of the day. It takes no artistic chances, as did Gerald McBoing Boing or Tell-Tale Heart, which is odd coming from a studio built on taking artistic chances.

My heart aches for the old grouch John Hubley created, and wish some of the earlier cartoons–like Fuddy Duddy Buddy (perhaps the only cartoon in which Magoo actually acknowledges his inabilty to see) could have been given the honor instead.

But as it is, at least the five-year-old in me is happy. That “silly old man” isn’t all bad.

(Typos corrected, additional passage referring to Gerald Mc Boing Boing added, 3/10/10)

A circus elephant battles a swarm of fleas in a startling--and funny--break from Disney-style realism. From CIRCUS DAZE.

by Rachel Newstead

Perfection is an elusive goal, and particularly hard to define in the medium of animation. There are so many factors to consider: character design, the storyboard, the timing, the gags (if the cartoon is meant to be funny), the music, the voice work. It’s an often delicate balancing act, combining all of the aforementioned elements in exactly the right proportions, in order to make something that’s not only enjoyable to watch, but which stands the test of time.

By those criteria, Hugh Harman’s Circus Daze, released near the end of his and Rudy Ising’s stint as independent producers, is as perfect a cartoon as any I’ve seen.

In a way, it’s as much a surprise to me as it must be to you; it’s not the funniest cartoon I’ve seen (Bob Clampett and Tex Avery pretty much have a lock on that category) nor is it the most frenetic (though it is still very much so, for its time.) Why, then, would I consider it to be a perfect cartoon? Quite simple.

I’ve found, as I’ve grown older and my tastes in animation have changed, that a cartoon no longer need be of the Tex Avery variety to attract my interest.  I’ve seen, in my lifetime, literally hundreds of cartoons, hundreds of times each; when one views a cartoon that many times, it becomes easier to notice, and appreciate, certain subtleties in each one. I found myself starting to say, “I never noticed that bit of music on those few frames berfore (or that sound effect, or how well that scene was timed)…it really makes the cartoon funny….”

A hot dog vendor runs the same scam as the bartender in SHE DONE HIM RIGHT. From CIRCUS DAZE...

Further, in all the cartoons I’ve seen, regardless of era, studio, animators or director, the cartoons that approach perfection have these things in common:

First, they start slowly, and build to a thunderous climax.  Tex Avery’s King Size Canary, for example, starts out innocently enough as a standard “cat vs. canary” cartoon–until he introduces the plot device of the stray bottle of Jumbo-Gro. From then on, the plot absurdities multiply in size as rapidly as our cast of characters–at one point, the now-gargantuan cat pursues a not-quite-as-gargantuan mouse–the mouse evades him by ducking into a train tunnel as if it were a mouse hole. It ends as each fights the other for control of the bottle,  growing with every sip until, by the time they run out of “the stuff,” they’re precariously balanced atop a comparatively tiny planet Earth.

One of Hugh Harman's many open-mouth wipe dissolves...

Circus Daze too starts slowly, with random scenes of a small-town circus, the sort we knew of long ago: in successive shots, we see–from a child’s eye view–a “test-your-strength” game as the customer rings the bell; a shot of a ragtag band (a clown band, perhaps?) playing lively music; a shot of a barker on the midway, enticing people to see his side show;  a belly dancer; a group of trained horses circling in front of the camera; a cackling clown; a hot dog vendor cheating his customers. Into the excitement and the noise come  Bosko, Honey, and their dog Bruno.  Honey’s main preoccupation is with the animals; the first thing we hear when she enters the frame is her excited chatter, while Bosko’s main preoccupation is keeping Bruno under control. (With questionable success).

It promises to be an ordinary day for two kids at the circus, until this cartoon’s plot device–a tiny flea–starts to drive poor Bruno insane. One flea, however, isn’t enough to create complete havoc–it’s not until Bruno chases that one flea toward a flea circus containing thousands of them (and subsequently setting them loose) that all you-know-what breaks loose.

Second is how well the musical score complements the action: we all know how Carl Stalling at Warner’s used music to make an ironic comment about the action on screen; Scott Bradley would do much the same at MGM, even at this early date. In Circus Daze, when the tiny invading insects are unexpectedly unleashed on a clown orchestra, the conductor trembles–in perfect time–to the rumbling strains that begin the middle section of von Suppé’s Poet and Peasant. (A piece of music which also begins slowly, and builds to a thunderous climax).  The action on screen becomes faster as the music becomes faster, the cuts more rapid, until the entire circus seems to collapse around our ears, and those of our confused protagonists. It’s so fast, and so sudden, that we feel winded.

THE CARTOON

It’s a day at the circus in Anytown, USA; the aforementioned opening, while not technically a montage, comes quite close, and is rather ambitious for the era. (Only Frank Tashlin at Schlesinger would attempt anything similar in this period. )*

One of the images in the opening, of a clown laughing maniacally as he swings from a trapeze, utilizes a type of shot Harman was extremely fond of using–having a character’s open mouth fill the screen in extreme close-up. (He’ll use it once more in a later scene, as we’ll soon see.) Why he chose to do this I never fully understood–perhaps he considered it an innovative way to “wipe” from one scene to the next–but it’s something prevalent in his work from his earliest days with Walt Disney, and despite its constant repetition, is strangely enjoyable.

Bosko and Honey, as we knew them for most of their years at MGM

This cartoon features Bosko and Honey, in their later MGM incarnation as little black children (more on that in my Concluding Thoughts); they enter the scene from behind a confused clutter of circus props. Honey skips along, carrying a red balloon, not so much holding Bosko’s hand as pulling him along, while Bosko’s being pulled from the other direction by a recalcitrant, off-camera Bruno on a leash. Honey’s chatter is excited, almost indecipherable:  “Look, a hip-, a ‘hippopotusment!’ Look at the clowns–ain’t they funny…look at the big lion! Ain’t he fee-rocious!…”

Enter Bruno, who seems intent on seeing, tasting and smelling everything in the vicinity as Bosko unsuccessfully tries to pull him along; he continues to go his own way even after Bosko and Honey stop at the monkey cage, tangling poor Bosko up in the process.

Of the monkeys, Honey utters what is now her catchphrase: “I think they is simply ab-dominal!” The monkeys are engrossed in getting rid of a flea; so is Bruno, once the flea leaps out of the cage. Heedless of Bosko’s yells to stop, Bruno sets off after the flea, unwinding the rope around Bosko like a top–which sends him spinning into a nearby wooden vat of water. No sooner does Bosko climb out than Bruno heads off in the other direction, pulling Bosko face-first down into the vat again: “You…gon’…git…licked…sho’!” Bosko sputters.

Bosko gets dragged through the dust several feet as Bruno very nearly catches up with the flea–he swats at it but doesn’t catch it, as he’s interrupted by an irritated Bosko: “I’s…I’s re-zasperated!…Doggone, Bruno, is you is, or is you ain’t gonna behave yourself!…”

When Bosko orders him to lie down, Bruno inexplicably begins to speak as he whimpers in protest: “Awww, I never have any fun! Other dogs have fun….” This is another curious quality of Harman’s cartoons, the tendency to mix Disneyesque realism with the cartooniness of the days of “rubber house” animation. We’re so accustomed at this point to accepting Bruno as a “real” dog, it can be quite jarring when he suddenly starts speaking. Then again, perhaps that’s what Harman wanted–to build up one set of expectations through Disneyesque realism, then immediately puncture those grandiose expectations with cartoony slapstick.

Bosko, still indignant, sputters: “Y-y-y-you watch your step!” Unfortunately, he doesn’t watch his, and winds up right back in the vat of water.

Here we get what is perhaps the cartoon’s only truly regrettable sequence, as Bosko and Honey engage in a bit of minstrel-show patter:

HONEY: (laughing): Bosko, what’s the difference between you and a fish?

BOSKO: Well, I don’t know…

HONEY: A fish is all wet, silly…

BOSKO: Well, I’s all wet…

HONEY: Well, den–dere ain’t no difference!

This fortunately doesn’t go any further, as Honey is soon distracted by the monkeys, who grab her red balloon. She calls for Bosko to help; once they’re both absorbed in getting the balloon back, Bruno makes a break for it, renewing his pursuit of the flea.

The scene that follows is, I believe, is perhaps the most underrated of any in any Hugh Harman film, if not in all animation, as Bruno goes off swatting at the flea with his paw. Just when he thinks he has it, it turns up somewhere else; it plays the “old shell game” with Bruno a bit, appearing under one old peanut shell after another. It appears under one of Bruno’s paws, then another, then another, until Bruno finds himself with all paws in mid-air–and crashes to the ground. Bruno spins around until he’s dizzy; once recovered, he hears the flea mocking him from off in the distance (taunting “nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah,” in bicycle pump-sounding squeaks.) One notable gag: the flea at one point squeaks a five-note melody–”he’s-a-hor-se’s-ass!”–the same five note melody one hears in the Private Snafu cartoons.

Seeing this sequence I was struck by its similarity to that in a Disney cartoon made three years earlier, Playful Pluto, considered by animation scholars to be a watershed moment in the development of personality animation. In it, Pluto, pursuing a fly, gets his nose caught in flypaper. He tries to pull it off with his front paw, and it ends up on his paw. He tries to pull it off with the other paw, and it ends up on that paw, and so on.

Straight from the master: the possible inspiration for the scene with Bruno and the flea in CIRCUS DAZE, from Disney's PLAYFUL PLUTO (1934)

Not only does Harman pull off a sequence that seems equally as good, he may well have surpassed it, as his sequence is faster-paced and funnier than Norm Ferguson’s Pluto scene, and serves as a warm-up to the chaos that’s about to follow.

The flea continues to lead Bruno on, running him around in circles several times; the action then abruptly cuts to Bosko and Honey, still at the monkey cage trying to free the balloon from the monkeys’ grasp. It should be noted here that in this sequence, Scott Bradley plays parts of Poet and Peasant, perhaps to foreshadow the action that’s coming.

When Bosko pulls the balloon free, it deflates and propels him backward into the clown orchestra–he weaves back and forth through them, toward, then away from the camera, in a dandy little perspective shot. (I believe, in a description of a similarly complicated shot in Disney’s Three Orphan Kittens, it was referred to as “moving-point” perspective.)

Bosko finally gets propelled in the opposite direction, then pulled back and forth by the slide of a trombone a few times before hitting the ground. In the meantime, the now-deflated balloon is re-inflating, courtesy of the clown trombone player–the balloon had been stuck inside the trombone. It grows to such tremendous size, it floats off into the air, carrying trombone, clown–and eventually Bosk0, who grabs ahold of the clown’s leg–with it.

Meanwhile, back to Bruno and the flea. The flea is still taunting him, making huge leaps forward which Bruno vainly attempts to match. One of his jumps, however, goes a little too high, and into the general vicinity of a flea circus–on which he happens to land. Hold on to your hats, because here we go…pay close attention, because one could go cross-eyed trying to follow this.

The resulting black cloud of fleas surrounds Bruno–he goes yelping off in the distance in an effort to get rid of them. We must leave him for a moment, though, because we’re back to Bosko, the clown and the balloon, all three of whom are soaring rapidly upward. While they’re doing this, we cut back to Bruno, who has his own problems, alternatively running, scratching, and  batting at the huge cloud of fleas.

In his desperation to flee from the fleas (like that?) Bruno doesn’t realize he’s heading straight into a cannon–and before he gets a grasp of what happened, both he and the fleas are shot skyward. In an instant, poor Bruno is propelled across the length of the big top, just inches ahead of the cloud of fleas. He passes by Bosko, the clown and the ever-expanding balloon, grabs the clown’s pants–but can’t hold on.

Just moments before disaster: the fateful fall onto the flea circus...

Bruno and fleas land inside a clown musician’s tuba–the clown lets loose with a couple of huge blasts, which has the effect of spraying the huge mass of  fleas all over creation.

It’s here that we come to the cartoon’s high point, as the clown conductor vibrates in agony to the rumbling notes of “Poet and Peasant.” His arms flail about as he madly “conducts”, swiping desperately at the fleas.

Another clown drums in rhythm to the music on the sound track, only to be beset by the fleas himself, writhing and scratching.

Of course, while all this has been going on, Bruno is still stuck in the tuba, and the oblivious clown musician is still tooting like a fiend to get Bruno loose, and still completely unaware of the flea plague he’s unleashing on the entire circus.

In yet another instance of cartoony impossibility in this otherwise very Disneyesque cartoon, the clown’s tuba expands to an impossible width as the pressure builds up inside it, eventually expelling Bruno. Bruno is shot forward, where he runs headlong into a banner, which stretches to that wonderful “bwoooong!” noise on the sound track–the sound effect that’s as much a part of Harman cartoons as Bosko himself.

When the banner snaps back, it sends both Bruno and fleas crashing into Bosko and the clown, who are still in mid-air. As Bosko and the clown fall to earth, Bruno gets his neck caught in the trombone’s slide–and is shoved backward into the now-huge balloon. Bruno, unlike Bosko and the clown, gently floats back down to the ground (his neck’s still caught in the trombone slide) spraying fleas as he goes. He appears to have a goofy expression on his face, or he’s not quite conscious, as if knocked senseless–it’s hard to tell from my print.

The clown is the first to land, then Bosko, then a shower of random instruments, then finally–and inevitably–the fleas.

As Poet and Peasant picks up pace on the sound track, Bosko and the clowns follow suit, scratching so violently they seem to whirl suspended in midair. We now see the effect of the fleas on the entire circus, as we get quick gag shots of Jo-Jo The Dog-Faced Boy biting away at his own rump;  an elephant breaks free of its chains, settling back on its rear and rubbing its stomach violently with its forelegs (a move as amusing as it is anatomically impossible). With every passing second, this very realistically-rendered elephant becomes more and more of a cartoon, standing up on its hind legs like a human, even putting its front legs between its back ones to scratch its own rear. As with Bruno speaking, it’s funny in a strange way, because it so violates our expectations.

Even the clowns and the dog-faced boy (above, and below left) get into the act, from CIRCUS DAZE...

The elephant runs directly toward the orchestra pit, where the clowns are still fighting off the biting menace themselves. When it lands, the clowns, fleas, Bosko and all are propelled into the air again. Bosko lands on the trapeze and swings from clown  to clown, bumping into one stray instrument after another,  before finally being caught in one clown’s accordion.  It snaps him toward the clown with the tuba, which propels him upward even more–until he hits a bass fiddle. Desperately trying to cling to its strings, they unfortunately give way, sending him down again. His fall, this time, is broken by a giraffe, whose neck is more than a bit distorted by the experience. (Does anyone else find it strange that Harman would use the sound effect of a bleating sheep to represent the sound of the giraffe–which technically, can’t make a sound?)

By now, it’s total bedlam–cages are twisted pieces of metal as the writhing animals burst their way out of them; we get quick wipe dissolves of clowns, monkeys, animals, Bosko, all jumping around as if they were on fire. A “laughing hyena” cackles hysterically as it scratches;  a charging rhinoceros splinters the tent’s support beams; the clown we saw laughing maniacally at the beginning of the cartoon is still laughing maniacally, albeit for a far different reason. Even the two-headed alligator from the freak show can’t stop scratching itself (themselves?)

We get a possibly unnecessary repeat of the previous actions–animals scratching, clowns scratching, Bosko scratching–in a series of wipe dissolves that could easily lay claim to being a legitimate montage, if the scenes at the beginning could not.

An elephant charges straight for the camera–and us, the audience. As with the clown, it’s mouth soon fills the screen as we wipe to…

…Bosko, with Honey in tow, dodging animals and speeding circus wagons to escape the disaster. A tiger even leaps over Bosko’s head, for just an instant.

Honey, had she been like any other creature in the universe, would have been frightened half to death, but instead she considers it all great fun. Bosko, again, has only one concern: “Where’s Bruno?” he says.

We quickly find out where Bruno is–being unceremoniously booted from the premises, as he whines “What’s the idea? I didn’t do anything…”

Before he can say any more, he’s thrown headlong onto the “Test Your Strength” meter, and the cartoon ends as it began–with the ring of the bell.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Bosko is little-remembered today by all except animation historians and the most ardent fans; those new to the character might be surprised to learn that there are, in fact, three Boskos.

The first is the bouncing, singing, ever-smiling, Mickey Mouse clone, always ready with a song or dance, the little “inkspot” character that launched the Looney Tunes in 1930. When Harman and Ising left Warner’s three years later, they took Bosko with them, and it’s that Bosko we see in Hugh Harman’s first two MGM cartoons, Bosko’s Parlor Pranks and Hey Hey Fever.

In these cartoons, he continues pretty much as before: Bosko’s Parlor Pranks, in fact, is little more than a redrawn Looney Tune with the addition of color. In Hey Hey Fever, he bounces through Mother Goose Land, teaching the inhabitants some good old Depression-era self-reliance. All to music, of course.

But artistic styles change, and when Disney began moving away from the “rubber hose” character, so did every other animation producer, Harman and Ising included. At the Harman-Ising shop, we begin to see an increasing, if awkward, realism in cartoons, and that new attitude was reflected in Bosko. He, and eventually Honey, would be “reborn” as regrettably stereotypical little black children, starting with Run, Sheep, Run (1935).

The third, and final, incarnation comes with the so-called “Bosko Trilogy”. Honey is no more; Bosko is now a very little boy with a very big imagination, dreaming all manner of adventures as he walks through the woods. In a curious return to his roots, he’s now a very musical character once again, leading a group of humanized, jazz-loving frogs in swinging little production numbers.

All have their merits, but Kevin and I share a particular affection for the “second Bosko”, the one we see in Circus Daze, Run, Sheep, Run, The Old House and Bosko’s Easter Eggs. As we’re both fans of the Hal Roach Our Gang shorts, we can’t help but notice certain similarities between the above cartoons and their live-action counterparts. Both evoke a more innocent time, when circuses such as the one seen in Circus Daze were an event in any small town. Kevin more than once has compared the wilder sequences of Circus Daze to the “undercranked” scenes in the Our Gang shorts, in particular to a 1926 silent film called Thundering Fleas. As with Circus Days, a swarm of fleas gets loose, this time invading the person of one Oliver Hardy (sans Laurel).

I regrettably have no copy of Thundering Fleas on which to base a comparison (but will get one, rest assured).  But based on Kevin’s description, with the aid of the undercranked camera, Mr. Hardy moves at the same breakneck speed as Bosko and the clowns, tearing off his pants to get at the little pesky insects. It would be fascinating to see Hardy’s 300-pound frame, scratching and writhing so rapidly as to seem to rise off the ground.

It has always amazed me how well-constructed Circus Daze is–the framing device of the “Test Your Strength” bell is a rather nice touch. Like a boxing match, the bell here signals the beginning and end of a total free-for-all, though the opponents here are barely large enough to see.

As I said in the beginning, perfection is an elusive quality. Unfortunately, artistic recognition is equally so; Circus Daze represents a huge step forward, both for Harman and Ising and animation in general.  But it’s rarely seen, will never be restored, and will likely fade from memory, because of the unfortunate stereotypes of another time. When it and other cartoons like it finally deteriorate beyond repair, they’ll take a huge chunk of film history with them. And future generations will never get a chance to look beyond the uglier aspects of our history, and see these cartoons for the masterful little films they are.

*Harry McCracken’s blog, “Scrappyland”, quotes Paul Etcheverry as saying that two Columbia “Scrappy” cartoons by Art Davis (Let’s Ring Doorbells and The Puppet Murder Case) preceded both Harman and Tashlin in using montage, but not having seen either cartoon, it’s impossible for me to verify this statement.

(3/5/10: Tightened up the writing in what I felt were rather clunky passages).

Both Fred and a poor schlub of a prowler underestimate Wilma’s mastery of the art of self-defense in “The Prowler”

by Rachel Newstead

The Prowler

Episode P-3

Original Airdate:  Dec. 30, 1960

Writer: Joe Barbera

In short:  Fred poses as a prowler to scare Wilma, but doesn’t count on a real one showing up…

Having already utilized the “dueling neighbors” and “battle of the sexes” plots, it’s perhaps inevitable that today’s episode, “The Prowler,” would make use of the next item in the Stock Sitcom Situations Handbook, the “wounded male pride” plot.

That’s not a criticism–every sitcom works its way through these, sooner or later. The good ones burn them off quickly and get them out of the way before moving on to more original material. The great ones take these stock situations and still make a brilliant episode. “The Prowler”‘s use of this particular standard situation reinforces this series’ position as one of the great ones.

“The Prowler” very nearly subverts the standard plot structure it’s placed in. Fred objects to Wilma’s taking up judo to defend herself not so much because he’s the man of the house (or cave), but because he’s too darned cheap to pay for the lessons. Pride matters to him, but not as much as money.

The male characters in this sort of plotline often sulk for days before something happens either to convince them they really are big strong he-men after all, or (more common these days) show them they don’t have to be.

Not Fred–he’s too full of misplaced confidence (and too stubborn) to go the “sulking” route. He takes a unique approach by posing as a prowler himself, to prove first that Wilma really needs him, and second (and most importantly, to Fred) that they don’t need the expense of lessons. But as we’ll soon see, the best-laid plans of Fred Flintstone often turn catastrophic.

THE CARTOON

The scene opens on an exterior shot of the Flintstone home, as we hear  Fred making his usual “shower noises.” Wilma calls him to breakfast, and we get a cute gag involving Fred’s “shaver”–a clamshell with a bee inside. (Forget the potential danger of stings for a moment–just what does he do if no bees fly outside his window that morning? Not that it matters–his permanent five-o’clock shadow couldn’t get much heavier anyway).

As Fred sits down to his breakfast of “soft boiled three-and-a-half-hour dodo egg”, he’s interrupted by some rather strange crashing and bumping noises coming from Barney’s place.  When Barney comes over, he explains the noises are coming from Betty–and her judo instructor, Mr. Rockimoto.

It seems a prowler is on the prowl, according to the local paper; when Fred asks Barney about the judo lessons, we get one of the better exchanges in this episode:

BARNEY: A woman’s gotta know how to protect herself…

FRED: Well, what about you?

BARNEY: Oh, she’ll protect me, too…

Ba-dah-boom. These are the jokes, folks….

Fred naturally thinks this is hilarious (that Betty’s “protecting” Barney, not the one-liner)–until Barney accidentally lets slip that Wilma, too, is taking lessons:

WILMA (to Fred): What’s wrong with wanting to protect myself?

FRED: What about me?

WILMA: Oh, I’ll protect you, too….

Bah-dah-boom again. Remember what I said in my last review about repetition making a joke funnier if timed right? Well, this is what I mean.

Fred’s also not particularly thrilled when Barney starts making the same sort

Attention, young animators: this is how to make limited animation funny, in this sequence of Fred blowing his top (as usual) in “The Prowler”

of wisecracks Fred made just a moment before, and lets his feelings be known with a vase thrown near Barney’s head.

Wilma calls Betty to say the lessons are off. Betty tells her to come anyway, as the first lesson is already paid for, and the good Professor (a typical bucktoothed Oriental stereotype) does not give refunds. Once Wilma arrives, Betty suggests she can make do with just one lesson. Until, that is, Wilma gets thrown halfway across the room by Rockimoto. Joined by Betty a moment later (I’m a bit tickled by her “save me a seat, I’ll be back in a minute” remark, as well as Wilma’s “One thing about judo–you take a polite beating.” I suspect Mr. Barbera had a little help from Mr. Foster and Mr. Maltese on those lines).

Cut to Fred and Barney a few days later, driving home from work. According to the paper, Barney says, the prowler’s still at large. Fred can’t resist ribbing Barney a little more about Betty taking lessons; Barney happens to mention she’s on her fifth one.

Next comes what I consider the highlight sequence in the episode, which I’ve tried to illustrate here in the best way possible. Fred launches into a tirade about Barney’s allowing Betty to take judo lessons, on the grounds it’ll cost him money. There’s just something about the way the eyes are drawn and the way the mouth moves (it flaps up and down like a Muppet) that’s truly funny here, on the bit of dialogue that starts, “You heard me tell Wilma–no judo lessons! That’s final, clear and once and for all, no judo lessons, no judo lessons!” Sometimes limited animation has its good points–if his mouth movements had been fully animated here, it wouldn’t have been as funny.

“No judo lessons…no judo lessons!”…Nothing quite says “loudmouth” quite like this series of drawings, which despite their simplicity show that FUNNY personality animation is possible even when the animation is limited

The wide-mouthed, flapping-up-and-down motion is pure Fred.

Congratulations on that sequence likely go to Carlo Vinci, the credited animator on this episode; I suspect it’s Vinci mainly because Fred is animated in a similar manner in certain scenes of “Hollyrock, Here I Come,” also from the first season (another in which Vinci gets credit).

UPDATE 9/3/12: My friend good friend and fellow Flintstones fan Howard Fein has the scoop on who actually animated these sequences in his comments at the bottom of this post.–Rachel

One can see it immediately when Fred’s rehearsing his role as “The Frogmouth” with Wilma–there, and in “The Prowler,” he’s quite the literal “frogmouth.” Pity that after those two episodes, he’s never drawn quite that way again.

Meanwhile, back to Betty and Wilma: Betty is teaching Wilma Mr. Rockimoto’s lessons as she goes, since cheapskate Fred will have none of it. Betty demonstrates a hold by grabbing ahold of Wilma’s sleeve; her insistence that there are pillows for Wilma to land on aren’t very reassuring (especially since Wilma “misses” them by a few inches).

When it’s Wilma’s turn to throw Betty, we come to perhaps the second-funniest sequence in the episode, starting with Betty’s line:

BETTY: Now, I’m a prowler! I’ve picked the lock on this door! You hear it–your heart’s pounding with excitement. You see the prowler’s hand reaching (cont. after pictures):inside…reaching…reaching…reaching! What do you do?

WILMA: I scream for Fred…

BETTY: Oh, no, that won’t do you any good–Fred’s under the bed! What else do you do?

WILMA:  I faint–that’s what else…

“Hello, Fred–why steal it? Why not borrow it as usual?” Fred’s reaction to Barney’s wisecrack would fall flat in the hands of a lesser animator, but is perfect here…

This particular exchange is notable because hiding under the bed is precisely what Fred thinks Wilma will do later on (which is correct up to a point, but I don’t want to reveal too much right now). The cap-off to this particular scene comes when Betty poses as a prowler so Wilma can use Lesson #5–but Wilma instead accidentally throws Fred, who just happens to come in at that moment.  The ruse, it seems, is blown.

Proof the animation could be above-average even in these early years…

Cut to a couple of days later, and Fred’s in a foul mood as he’s mowing the lawn (big surprise there), and berates Barney for “thinking” too loud, and in particular, thinking about the judo lesson issue. Barney retorts with “Well, at least I don’t have to hide under the bed!” (Another instance of the funny use of a repeated bit of dialogue).

To prove to Barney just who will be under the bed, Fred proposes to dress up

The puzzled prowler can’t quite make heads or tails of things as he sees Fred sneak by…

as a prowler himself; if he fails to frighten Wilma or Betty, he’ll pay for the lessons himself. Noteworthy is Fred’s expression after he asks Barney what Betty will do when she sees the “prowler”: it takes real ability to deliver laughs in a single frame.

Come nighttime. Fred, feigning his usual buzz-saw snoring, sneaks out of the house on all fours; once outside, he dons his prowler disguise and heads toward the Rubbles. Little does he know, however, that the real prowler just happens to be behind a nearby rock–and he’s more than a bit confused by Fred’s presence (honor among thieves, and all that).

The IMDB, the Big Cartoon Database, and TV.com credit a “Mark Rosenbloom”

The staging may be a bit off-center, but Fred’s stunned expression is still unbelievably funny

as the voice of the real prowler, which is something of a curiosity. It sounds for all the world to me like Alan Reed doing a “dumb” voice (he would, occasionally, do incidental voices in certain episodes, but quit when it became clear he still sounded too much like Fred). As this Mark Rosenbloom is only credited with this role and no other, I’m tempted to think it might actually be a pseudonym for Reed himself. (If anyone has evidence to the contrary, please let me know in the comments).

As confused as the prowler is by the presence of another prowler in his territory, he’s even more confused by Fred’s rehearsal and scary “prowler faces”, asking “What is this, amateur night?” He’s further amazed by Fred’s attempting to go through the door. He decides to head over to Fred’s house first before the “other prowler” gets to it.

Fred yells to Barney to help Fred inside; as Barney pulls, the prowler, remarks, “Gee–I never got that kind of cooperation!”

Right about this point we come to what I’ve come to call the “Barney Rubble voice anomaly”: just as Barney pulls Fred inside and sends him flying across the room, out another window and into a flowerpot, Mel Blanc switches to his “later Barney” voice, rather than his “early Barney” voice.

Blanc always claimed that he changed his Barney voice after Daws Butler filled in for him for five episodes (to allow Blanc time to recuperate from his January 1961 auto accident.) Blanc changed it, supposedly, to bring it more in line with what Butler had been doing, thereby making it less nasal–and a bit more Art Carney-ish–than he originally wanted it to be. But here, as early as the third episode in production, we hear the so-called “post-accident Barney voice” when Barney says the line, “Hold on, Fred–I’ll have you out in a jiffy!” and a moment later, when he grabs a croquet mallet to knock Fred loose: “I think a number five mallet will do the trick!”

It couldn’t have been that he did pickups later, when one considers when this episode was recorded (about nine months before his accident).

I consulted both Jerry Beck and, if memory serves, Mark Kausler about this long ago, and both agreed that Blanc’s voice does indeed change in certain early episodes. It’s likely that he was experimenting with the alternative voice very early on, and Hanna-Barbera, with too tight a budget and schedule to do many retakes, kept it in. It’s equally possible that he slipped into that voice accidentally in certain scenes, liked the way it sounded, and decided to do it that way permanently later on. As no one who was there is alive to tell us, we probably will never know for sure.

But back to Fred and Barney, who are still trying to pull this charade off–with not much success thus far. Barney’s mallet whack not only knocks Fred out of the flower pot, but through the wickets and into a tree. A further problem arises, however, when Barney discovers he’s locked himself out, and can’t let Fred in through the door. After failing to accomplish the old “alley-oop” handhold (fat Fred just drives poor Barney into the ground like a tent stake) they decide to use a ladder.

Rather noisily, both fall through the window inside–fortunately, Betty’s a heavy sleeper. At least, until Barney nudges her and tells her a prowler is in the room.

Fred goes into his “scary faces” routine, and Betty screams, but Fred didn’t quite figure on what would happen next. She grabs his arm, and with a “Ah-sitake-ha!” throws him back and forth a few times, finally hurling him out the window. All the while yelling “Help, Barney, help!”, no less.

Fred, having had enough, decides to beat a hasty retreat. Meanwhile, let’s check in on the real prowler, who still happens to be at Fred’s place.

Fred tries to sneak back into his house, hoping that Wilma won’t hear him come in. He doesn’t know, however, that the real prowler happens to be watching him: “Talk about nerve–two houses in one night!” he says as he watched Fred tiptoe in. The prowler confronts Fred, quickly throwing him out.

Deciding to call the police over at Barney’s, Fred scrambles through Barney’s window again. Big mistake, as Betty grabs him, and with another “Ah-sitake-ha!”, he finds himself hurled around again. Of course, this time we only hear her reaction rather than see her–we can’t use too much animation, after all. I rather like the remark coming from Fred at this point, who says what we’re all thinking after Betty yells for the police: “She needs the police??”

Shortly thereafter, Barney explains it’s actually Fred masquerading as a prowler; Betty decides to call Wilma and warn her about her “big fat practical joker”. But when she calls, who should happen to be ransacking the bedroom but the real prowler, who actually answers the phone and hands it to Wilma! Wilma screams (earning a confused “Shee! Dames! from the prowler) but thinks it’s Fred (naturally) when Betty informs her of Fred’s little scheme. Remember this for later…

Meanwhile, the real Fred (are you following all this?) hears Wilma’s screams and goes running toward the house. Unfortunately, he still has his prowler get-up on, and is greeted by a phony scream and even phonier spiel from Wilma: “It-is-the-prowler! Luckily-I-have-had-judo-lessons–which my chintzy husband didn’t want to pay for!” Her kick sends him backward into the real prowler’s bag, prompting the prowler to remark: “Hey buster, haven’t we

Wilma’s about to unleash judo lesson #3 on poor Fred…

met before?”

The real prowler’s getting tired of Fred fast, and decides to pitch him out the nearest window. This time, Fred wisely chooses to stay where he is. Now, just the real prowler’s left in the house–but Wilma thinks it’s still Fred. (Don’t you just love these escalating sitcom misunderstandings?)

A prowler’s got to learn how to protect himself from an episode like this…

She decides to give the real prowler–who she thinks is Fred–lesson number five, but we don’t get to see the actual thrashing. We just hear it from outside the window, as we see Fred’s incredulous reaction. One final throw from Wilma sends the real prowler right through the wall, and on top of Fred. (Stronger than we thought, that Wilma).

The prowler, atop the debris, remarks “Lady, you been takin’ judo lessons!” to which Fred rises from underneath the pile and adds, “That’s for sure!” When Wilma realizes she’d just fought the real prowler, she screams again, prompting the confused prowler to tell Fred, “It’s all yours, bud–I’m cuttin’ outta here!”

When Barney and Betty come over to inspect the wreckage, Fred tells them a real prowler showed up–and true to form, she screamed and went under the bed. Fred mocks Wilma by saying, “Did the big bad prowler scare you?” but his smugness doesn’t last long. The real prowler returns to collect his loot, which sends Betty, Barney, and Fred cowering under the bed with Wilma. The prowler can only remark to the audience, “Boy, this is a for-real nuthouse–that’s for sure!” (In my concluding thoughts, I’ll discuss the use of that phrase in this episode,  and why it contributes so much to the humor).

In the tag at the end, everybody’s signed up for lessons–including Fred and Barney. As Barney says, “A guy’s gotta learn to protect himself–from his wife!” There’s a couple of funny bits at the end, politically incorrect though they are: as Rockimoto explains the various levels they can advance through for “just a few measly dollar” (“gold medal, diamond medal, et-a-cet-er-a, et-a-cet-er-a) we get Fred’s whispered wisecrack, “What does ‘et-a-cet-er-a, et-a-cet-er-a,’ mean in Japanese–sucker??” (I’m ashamed to admit my brothers and I used to imitate Rockimoto when we used to watch this episode).

But we’re not quite to the end yet–seems there’s another customer: the prowler, who asks, “How’s business? Pretty good?” Rockimoto gets the rather funny closing line,” You not just-a whistling Dixie!” Iris out.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

“The Prowler” is so polished, so “right”, so typically “Flintstones”, it at times can be hard–very hard, indeed–to believe it was only the third episode produced. It “belongs” in a later time, we think to ourselves; all the elements are there. The characters are starting to look as we know them to look, act as we know them to act. The roughness and harshness that plagued the “The Swimming Pool” and “The Flintstone Flyer” are gone; when Wilma unleashed her fury on Fred in “The Flintstone Flyer”, it seemed painful. Now, when she does something even more brutal, it seems funny. It’s a “cartoonier”, more slapstick kind of mayhem–she appears to have an impossible amount of strength, as she drives the unfortunate prowler, whom she’s mistaken for Fred, through a stone wall. It’s all the funnier for being accidental–no threatening Fred with a bowling ball to the skull here.

The writers by this point have found their groove as well–this really is a rather complex story for a cartoon, as misunderstanding piles upon misunderstanding, calamity upon calamity. It’s also more verbally sophisticated than anything we’ve seen so far: they’re starting to play with words now, getting laughs out of innocuous utterances. They take one little phrase–”that’s for sure”–and treat it as if it in itself were a running gag; it’s spoken by Wilma at the beginning, by Fred once, by Barney once, by the prowler once, and  it’s practically Professor Rockimoto’s catchphrase. If, that is, a one-shot character can be said to have a catchphrase.

You might have noticed I have made very little mention up to now of the very politically incorrect Professor Rockimoto, and I haven’t for good reason. He matters so little, his un-P.C. nature can be easily overlooked. He’s merely the catalyst of the story–the “McGuffin”, if you will. He serves his function when necessary, and is quickly gone; he also, despite the stereotypical nature of his character, is kind of a funny little guy, particularly when he delivers the closing line at the end. (Mel Blanc’s delivery contributes much to what appeal the character has, certianly).

Finally, “The Prowler” has that elusive quality, that intangible something that marks a great episode–repeatability. It makes people want to see it again, and so imprints itself on people’s minds, it stays with them for years, even decades. The 2001 made-for TV revival on Cartoon Network, Flintstones On The Rocks, not only paid tribute to Ed Benedict’s drawing style in the “look” of the characters and backgrounds, but gave a little wink and a nod to this episode when Wilma at one point attacks a pursuer with a “Ah-sitake-HA!”

If the word “classic” is defined as “enduring through time”, then “The Prowler” more than meets that definition.

That’s for sure.

(Edited for clarity, 3/2/10)

(Picture added, 3/2/10)

Dumb and dumber: "Filligan" and "Artie" from "Hush My Mouse"

by Rachel Newstead

It doesn’t happen very often, but I will occasionally resurrect post ideas I’d once rejected for whatever reason, should I find myself stuck for material.   The Avery series was one of those, something I’d knocked around in the back of my mind for two years before committing it to print. What follows is another: an abandoned, unpublished 2007 entry from the old Orphan Toons blog–my review of the 1946 Chuck Jones Looney Tune,  Hush My Mouse.

I quit this abruptly after writing the introduction, but exactly why is lost to time. Perhaps I felt there was too much research involved; perhaps another subject began to occupy my time, or I just plain lost interest.  Whatever my reasons may have been, after looking at it again a few days ago, it seemed too promising a piece to keep in a dusty corner of the internet any longer.

So for today, I’m temporarily setting aside the Flintstones review series to take you back to Jan. 6, 2007 and my review of Hush My Mouse, complete and slightly revised.

“A Respectable Jernt”: HUSH MY MOUSE (1946)

If scouring the net and my personal collection for classic cartoons has taught me anything, it’s this: some cartoons are born to obscurity,  and some have obscurity thrust upon them.  Hush My Mouse could easily fit in either category, I suppose–a little-known animated parody of a little-remembered radio show–but unlike most cartoons consigned to animation’s attic, it deserves it the least.

Hush My Mouse is certainly one of Chuck Jones’ less-celebrated efforts, less than even his “Conrad Cat” cartoons. But not, I should add, for lack of quality. It instead has the misfortune of being one of the few topical Warner’s cartoons, a parody of what was once one of the most popular situation comedies on the air: Duffy’s Tavern. On radio, that is. For you younger folks, that’s the thing your grandparents–or perhaps even great-grandparents–stared at before there was any such thing as television.

Consequently, few have seen “hide nor seek” of Hush My Mouse (to quote the malaprop-spouting protagonist of the cartoon) in recent years. Programmers gradually removed it from the regular rotation with no fanfare, thinking kids would be baffled by most of the references. Of course, they didn’t count on kids like me, who grew intensely curious about the source material after seeing the cartoon.

Hush My Mouse is enjoyable on its own merits, even if the material being parodied isn’t obvious to contemporary audiences. But for those wishing a little background knowledge, there’s an excellent page on Duffy’s Tavern here. For the less patient, here’s a somewhat capsulized version:

Ed Gardner as Archie, from the short-lived 1954 TV version of "Duffy's Tavern"

Duffy’s Tavern was the 1941 creation of Astoria, Queens-born and bred comedy writer Ed Gardner, who incidentally was also the program’s star. He hadn’t intended to be in front of the mike originally, but his nasal “Toity-Toid and Toid Street” New Yorkese proved an ideal fit for the show’s main character, Archie. Archie ran Duffy’s Tavern for his perennially-absent boss (Duffy was referred to, or spoken to by telephone, but he never once set foot in the place).

Every show would open with the ring of a telephone and Archie’s signature lines, “Duffy’s Tavern, where the elite meet to eat. Archie the manager speakin’–Duffy ain’t here…” Archie was an uneducated, rough but generally good-natured type whose attempts to sound respectable usually resulted in hilarious malapropisms. Much like another, better-known Archie from decades later, in fact–who ironically also ended up running a bar.

Because of the setting, it made sense for celebrities of the day to frequent Duffy’s as guest stars, and the show served as a training ground for many a future star, such as Shirley Booth, who went on to television immortality as “Hazel”; Alan Reed (the future Fred Flintstone),  Sandra Gould (“Gladys Kravitz” #2 on Bewitched) and even, later in its run, Sid “Baby Huey” Raymond, the second actor to play dimwitted waiter Finnegan. It lasted ten years on radio–a respectable run by any standard–and even moved to television for one season in 1954. But as with most attempted radio transplants, people balked at seeing characters they heretofore had only imagined. Which is funnier, for example: hearing the contents of Fibber McGee’s closet cascading down on the poor guy’s head, or seeing them?

Rather than wait for an answer to that question, “leave us proceed wit’ business”, as Archie himself would say.

“Where the felines wines and dines…”

The cartoon opens to a panoramic shot of a city, and the scene dissolves to show the open door of a saloon. Ah, but we’re not going into that saloon, but into the feline version located in the alley behind it: “Tuffy’s” Tavern.  According to the menu tacked up on the packing-crate wall, the “speshul” of the day is “mouse knuckles.” But there’s a slight complication….

As with his human counterpart, the feline version of Archie–or “Artie”, in this cartoon–is on the phone with his absentee boss “Tuffy,” and it seems Tuffy has a little trouble getting that day’s special. Unfortunately, it’s “Edward G. Robincat’s” favorite dish. (I shouldn’t have to explain who he’s patterned after).  Even more unfortunately for Artie, Robincat’s not the type to take its disappearance from the menu lightly–and he’s on his way over.

Before Artie even hangs up the phone, Robincat arrives, as tough-looking as his human counterpart–and then some. Artie therefore calls on “Filligan” (as dumb as his human counterpart–and then some) to make himself “useful as well as oriental” by rounding up a mouse.

The mouse, in this case, just happens to be Sniffles, who in the last couple of years had taken on some of the characteristics of his gabby little friend in 1941′s The Brave Little Bat. Or rather, just one characteristic,  a tendencytotalkaimelesslyandonandonsofastyoucanhardlyunderstandhim  (lack of spacing intentional).

"You can't fool me, 'cause I'm too stupid!" Filligan encounters Sniffles

Being bombarded by this verbal tsunami doesn’t phase Filligan–much. He retains full confidence that Sniffles is his “prisoner”. Sniffles, however, has other ideas, deciding to “play” with Filligan a little with a vertigo-inducing game of Blind Man’s Bluff.

Meanwhile, Robincat’s getting more hostile; the scene of him pounding the table (and Artie in the process) is a perfect example of the sort of  “Chuck Jones middle period”

A split-second of gorgeous mayhem, courtesy of Chuck Jones

smear animation I’ve written enthusiastically about so many times before.

But back to Filligan–who’s still spinning like a top, and Sniffles, who’s still talking. It’s the sort of timing only Jones could accomplish–by having the action cut away while Filligan is in mid-spin, then cut back to him a moment later, it serves to emphasize just how ridiculously long–and funny–that spin is.

When Sniffles learns Filligan wants to catch him for mouse knuckles, he tells Fillligan where to find some much bigger than his own puny little specimens (of course, we know he’s just put Filligan’s own hand in a paper bag with a hole at the bottom). Filligan happily rushes off to the anxious Artie, who in the meantime has been taking quite a beating from Robincat.

Of course when Artie grabs the knuckles and discovers Fillligan’s attached to them, he berates Filligan for having the “verve” to come in empty-handed.  Before Artie can kick the oaf out, however, Robincat grabs the bag, reaching through the hole to grab his own foot–which he promptly chomps down on. This time, the infuriated Robincat does the honors of kicking Filligan out.

Outside, Filligan sees Sniffles enter a hole in a nearby fence; what he doesn’t

Filligan--and the ersatz Edward G. Robinson--are due for an unpleasant surprise

know, however, is that a rather large, vicious bulldog is on the other side.

Filligan grabs the dog bone, which the bulldog is none too pleased about.  Knocking down the entire fence, he sets off in pursuit. Sniffles explains to us–at a rate of about 2000 words a minute–what’s about to happen, but it doesn’t take  Nostradamus to figure that out. A split second after Robincat bites down onto the dog bone, the dog appears (proving, again, that Jones’ timing was razor-sharp even at this early date).

What follows is a wonderful little scene which proves an animated sequence needn’t be wild and fast to be funny (though I do admit it helps, a lot): Robincat, his teeth still clamped down onto the bone, slowly flashes a big, nervous, toothy grin as he stares the dog in the face. (Similar to the “my teeth are bigger than yours” scene between the cat and the bulldog in The Aristo-Cat, but funnier). As is usual with Jones’ work, it’s timed to the frame, neither too slow nor too fast.

The dog and Robincat disappear into a cloud of dust as a battle between them ensues, eventually pulling Artie in with them. At that moment, the phone rings. Since Artie is a bit…occupied at the moment, Filligan answers.

If you ever needed proof truly funny animation depends on the single frame, here it is...

It’s Tuffy, who wants to know if Artie still wants the mouse knuckles; but since Artie’s being beaten to a pulp by both Robincat and the dog, he’s in no position to answer. Filligan, therefore, delivers the closing line:  “I don’t think he needs the mouse knuckles, Tuffy, but he sure could use some brass knuckles!”

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Sniffles began life in 1939 with both feet firmly in Disney territory, as a young, childlike innocent. Much like a human child, Sniffles often found himself in a world that to him seemed overwhelming, frightening, and dangerous. The cartoons explored this in various ways: in Sniffles Takes A Trip (1940)–Jones’ answer of sorts to Disney’s The Country Mouse–city mouse Sniffles looks forward to a day of peace and quiet in the country, only to go rushing home when, at nightfall, the peaceful landscape transforms into a nightmare world of eerie sights and sounds. In Toy Trouble, the menace comes from deceptively harmless childrens’ toys and one very real cat. In The Egg Collector, Sniffles and his little bookworm friend are as frightened of the stark shadows and creaking rafters of an old barn as they are of the owl who threatens to eat them.

What difference a couple of years make: by the time of Unbearable Bear in 1943, Sniffles was unrecognizable, his personality completely transformed to match the studio’s new smart-aleck sensibility. Where Sniffles might have trembled at the sight of a cat just a couple of years before, he now found them easy to subdue, mainly because he didn’t have to do much of anything; his antagonists did themselves in through their own incompetence. He’d become, in a manner of speaking, the Road Runner in a mouse suit.

Rather than make him a funnier character, this personality makeover only made him annoying, stripping him of his most endearing quality–his innocence. The incessant, rapid-fire babble didn’t help–he’s such a pest, we soon find ourselves hoping he’ll be some cat’s dinner.  Hush My Mouse marked his last appearance on screen; to audiences, it must have seemed like an act of mercy.

Hush My Mouse, however, has too much going for it to simply dismiss as a failure. The cartoon’s helped along not just by Jones’ animation, but by Mel Blanc’s superb voice work. If anything, his feline Ed Gardner is funnier than the original; one can’t help but chuckle at lines like “I’m standin’ here wit’ me life in Picardy…” and “Gentleman, please, please–after all, this dump is no ordinary joint! Leave us not turn it into no fight aroma.” (I’m laughing, but my spell-checker’s reduced to tears…)

Another of Ed Gardner's animated progeny: Tex Avery's George (of George and Junior). From RED HOT RANGERS (1947)

Ed Gardner lived long enough to see the character he created embodied in yet another cartoon cat, Hanna-Barbera’s Super Snooper–which must have seemed like a mixed blessing at best. Yet in a strange way, the animated parodies have kept his show alive, as fans like me who have seen the cartoons want to discover the source.

As Archie might have said, that’s quite “exempulary….”

[On the subject of discovering the source, you might want to take advantage of this link to my new best friend, the Internet Archive, which contains many wonderful episodes of the Duffy's Tavern radio series. Including one featuring a certain "Colonel Stoopnagle", who'll get his turn on this site very soon.]

(Incorrect time stamp corrected, 2/26/10).

by Rachel Newstead

The Flintstone Flyer

Episode P-2

Original Airdate: Sept. 30, 1960

Flintstone Firsts: This is the first time Fred gets clobbered with a stone newspaper, and the first time he shouts his famous line, “Yabba Dabba Doo!”

In short: If you try to put one over on your wife, you could take a POW-der (get it?)

Cliché though it may be, The Flintstones was never any better than when it used that old standby, the “battle of the sexes” plot. Clichés become clichés because they work, after all, and that plotline has not only been a staple of  sitcoms from The Honeymooners to According to Jim, but, more often than not, their only reason for being.  (Home Improvement, for example, ran for eight seasons solely on that premise).

Perhaps it’s appropriate, then, that when television audiences turned on their sets that fateful night of Sept. 30, 1960, this was the episode they saw.  Nothing could scream “this is a sitcom, dammit, not a kiddie show!” louder than an episode in which the boys con their way out of a night at the opera with the wives in order to go bowling. (One could just as easily imagine Tim Taylor stripping off a tuxedo jacket to reveal a bowling shirt).

At the same time, it was perhaps the worst thing Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera could have done, as they squandered the tactical advantage they would have gained with critics for attempting something as new and untested as an animated sitcom. Critics live for the opportunity to pounce on anything in television they see as derivative (which, in their view, covers just about everything on the air) and true to form, they went for this episode like sharks after a wounded swimmer.  Jack Gould of the New York Times termed it “an inked disaster” (wouldn’t he just?), a quote now cited again and again as the epitome of critical short-sightedness. (Tellingly, in Bill Hanna’s obituary, the Times attributes the offending quote to The New Yorker).

An excerpt of the infamous "inked disaster" review, Oct. 1, 1960 (Reprinted in the book Popular Culture, David Manning White 1975). Click to enlarge.

Though said critics were, it sometimes appears, genetically programmed to dismiss any animated effort to which the name “Disney” wasn’t attached, their criticisms weren’t entirely unfounded, either. The series is still finding its way, deciding on its tone, and the tone here at times is more Jiggs and Maggie  than Fred and Wilma.

A little of the "Three Stooges-like" violence that bothered the critics of 1960 (above) and again later in the episode (below)

It says a lot for the writers (as before, Mike Maltese and Warren Foster) that they’re able to be so funny despite such dated stereotypes. Where “The Swimming Pool” had been conservative with the jokes, “The Flintstone Flyer” is practically bursting with gags both verbal and physical.  As with the characterization, Maltese and Foster are throwing ideas like paper airplanes to see which will fly, and many of them do. A lot more easily than Fred and Barney in this episode, in fact.

THE CARTOON

It’s Sunday, Fred’s day off, and he anticipates a quiet day in his hammock, reading the paper.  Speaking of the paper, there’s a nice little gag about the paper boy hitting Fred with a huge stone slab–the first of many clobberings. Anyone who’s ever been bewildered by the fact the Sunday paper is the approximate  size of a Russian novel would find that amusing, surely.

But his long-awaited day of rest isn’t to be; he’s interrupted by a loud “Fore!”, which turns out to be coming from Barney next door.  Barney’s trying–and none too successfully–to hit a golf ball with a club. When he finally does manage to connect with it, it lands right in–you guessed it–Fred’s mouth.

Taking the rule “play the ball where it lies” a little too literally, Barney attempts to knock it loose, but Fred knocks him first, with Barney’s own golf club; uncharacteristically, Fred actually hits Barney–all the way back home, yet–instead of merely threatening to. (This sort of open cartoon violence is likely the thing the critics most objected to–Fred’s hostility would be toned down a bit in later episodes).

More "mindless violence"--but boy, doesn't it look good?

Fred’s rest gets interrupted yet again as he hears a steady hammering coming from Barney’s yard, which leads to a subtle bit of business I’ve always enjoyed. In an example of pure “cartooniness”, Fred doesn’t climb or leap over the wall separating his house from Barney’s as he did in “The Swimming Pool,” but walks up one side of the wall and down the other, as if gravity hadn’t yet been invented in the Stone Age. Why the series would eventually feature far less of these inventive little moments of cartoon magic is beyond me; they contributed

A sitcom character, but still very much a cartoon. We never quite see such delightful moments of cartoon impossibility quite like this again.

greatly to the humor of the show.

It turns out Barney’s working on some wooden Rube Goldberg gadget, with gears at the bottom and what appear to be propellers at the top. Making such odd little gadgets is his hobby, he tells Fred, to keep his “nimble little fingers” busy (for some reason, I always liked the way Mel Blanc delivered that line).

Barney Rubble, first Cro-Magnon to fly...

The gadget is a sort of Stone Age pedal-powered helicopter, which Barney says–or hopes–will make him the first man to soar off “into the blue.” (“Pterodactyl Airlines” must not have been around yet–oh, the royalties Barney missed out on). At first Fred threatens Barney with a “little invention” of his own–a “rap on the noggin”–but he’s intrigued enough to ask about it anyway. Which brings us to a little bit of dialogue–probably thanks to Maltese–that deserves special mention, as Barney explains how it’s foolproof:

BARNEY: Oh, it’ll work, Freddy friend–on account of the spiggle bolt’s connected to the toggle switch; the toggle switch’s connected to the ratchet rod; the ratchet rod’s connected to the tension <indeciperable>…which in turn is connected to the flywheel…and  ZOOOOM! Before ya know it, you’re airborne! Now whaddaya think of my invention, Fred?

FRED:  You still insist you’re gonna fly in that crazy contraption?

BARNEY:  Just like the birds…

FRED: Now, listen, neighbor–I’m gonna save you a whole lotta work and inventin’! I’m gonna fix it so you won’t NEED that thing to fly in. It works like this: my fist-bone connected wit’ ya jawbone! And ZOOOM–before you know it, YOU are airborne!

Back in his hammock, Fred continues to mock Barney, calling his contraption

A historic moment for "Flintstones" fans--the first "Yabba Dabba Doo"

a “dinosaur egg-beater”–until, that is, he sees him fly by, doing various aerial stunts in the whirlygig contraption. Then and only then do the limitless financial possibilities start to seep into Fred’s thick skull. When Barney lands, Fred’s so overjoyed, we hear for the first time the exclamation purportedly ad-libbed on the spot by voice man Alan Reed: “Yabba Dabba Doo!”

The president of the "Flintstone Flyer Corporation" has his first near-fatality...

Fred immediately appoints himself president of their new “corporation”, with Barney vice-president in charge of production (translation: Barney does all the work). Fred even has a name for it–”The Flintstone Flyer”–which trumps Barney’s choice of “Barney-Copter”. Disaster strikes, though, when he takes it for a “trial spin”–it wasn’t equipped to handle a Fred-sized load. He crashes into a ravine before the thing gets an inch off the ground.

Later, a bruised and bandaged Fred, outraged at Barney, “resigns” from the “Flintstone Flyer Corporation.” Barney, as he leaves, offhandedly mentions the bowling match Fred’s supposed to captain that night (we learn this earlier in the episode, when he’s reading the paper) and asks how the injured Fred plans to bowl in his “crash condition”. Nothing short of world annihilation will  deter Fred from showing up at the match, of course–but Wilma will, when she reminds Fred about the opera tickets they bought for the evening. Or rather, Barney bought.

We get another critic-unfriendly instance of a knock on Barney’s noggin when Fred stalks over to “opera lover” Barney’s house. (Those little scenes of Fred stomping in anger–in both “The Swimming Pool” and this episode–are an understated yet funny little piece of personality animation, a surprise for a show as minimally animated as this one.) I’m not sure I agree with the critics here–the repetition of the hammer-to-the-head gag actually makes it funnier, at least to me. As we saw in “The Hot Piano”, repetition–timed at the proper moments, that is–often breathes life into what otherwise might be a forgettable gag.

But when Barney suggests Fred might “have a fractured skull and don’t know it, hey…” it gives Fred an idea. He’ll suffer a sudden “relapse” just as they’re ready to go out for the evening.

Come time to go to the opera, Wilma and Betty get a little suspicious of Fred and Barney’s feigned enthusiasm (with their “finiculi finiculas”, and what-not) but suspect nothing once Fred starts to go into his “sick” act. Barney, of course  “selflessly” volunteers to “baby-sit Fred’s shook-up head” while the wives go off alone.

But there’s a problem–how are they going to get home from the match before the wives do, since they took the car? Simple, says Barney–none other than his reinforced Barney-Copter, equipped to carry fat Fred.

They’re off to a rather shaky start and it almost looks like we’ll have a repeat of the crash, until Fred starts to flap his arms, giving them the extra boost they need. Naturally, Fred re-dubs the handy little machine The Flintstone Flyer.

But unknown to them, Betty and Wilma are concerned about “poor Fred”, and plan to call home at intermission. Need any guesses where this is going?

Cut to Fred and Barney at the bowling alley. Make note of this, folks–this is the first time we see Fred’s fabled “tip-toe” bowling delivery, so well-known it was copied by John Goodman in the Flintstones movie. Barney, however, doesn’t do so well; there are a couple of bits of business in which he lets go of the ball too

These frames (above and below) display a fluidity rare in limited animation

soon, only to have it land on Fred’s foot.

A couple of “Flintstones gadget alerts”, incidentally–aside from the monkey-powered pinsetter, there’s the “vending machine” in which a guy inside hands out the drinks (I hope he has a union–those are terrible working conditions).

One thing that occurred to me–if Fred is bowling for his company team, and Barney bowls with him, that would imply he and Fred work at the same place. (Barney couldn’t be an outside “ringer” the way he bowls). But the series has always made clear Fred and Barney don’t work together, even if it’s rarely explicitly mentioned just what Barney’s job is. Another one of those cartoon mysteries, I guess, like the parentage of Donald Duck’s three nephews.

Back now to Betty and Wilma at the opera–Wilma’s still worried about “poor Fred,” so Betty suggests they leave immediately to call home. The nearest place with a phone just happens to be…guess where. Uh-huh–the bowling alley, located just across the street from the opera house. (They have weird town planning in Bedrock…)

They start to wonder what’s up when there’s no answer at home; meanwhile, Fred and Barney happen to notice them at the pay phone.

Cut to Betty, who catches a glimpse of Fred and Barney; fortunately, they duck out of sight in time, and devise a plan to evade the wives with the help of an old broom. Here, we get what perhaps is the funniest scene in the episode, starting at the point the irate Betty and Wilma clobber them with

Possibly the only time in the series Wilma actually hits Fred...and it doesn't feel right

their purses.

They turn to reveal they’ve used the broom to make the most unconvincing false mustaches in history.  Since the plot requires it, Betty and Wilma fall for it for now, and we get this priceless dialogue, which might be useful to remember for later:

FRED: (in mock German accent) Iss dot der vay you alvays treat your husbands?

BARNEY: (in similar accent): Yah–”Hello, darling POW!?”

FRED: Der average husband can schtand just zo many “Pows”…

BARNEY: Yah, den he takes a POW-der…get it?

I have a confession to make--my brothers and I used to imitate Fred and Barney's "take a POW-der" routine, phony German accent and all...

Wilma and Betty, embarrassed, decide to go home to check, which means for Fred and Barney it’s a mad dash back to the flying contraption as they rush to be the first ones home.  The wives, still suspicious, aren’t making it easy, but Fred and Barney do manage to arrive first. When Wilma and Betty look in on them, Barney appears to be reading poor sick Fred a bedtime story (Barney here makes a reference to the old “Uncle Wiggly” stories, which anyone under forty today is unlikely to have heard of).

As usual, Barney doesn't know just when to shut up...

Wilma vows to never distrust Fred again–but leave it to Barney to blow the whole cover story when he  slips back into his “German guy” persona: “…Let dot be a lesson, never doubt your husbands–or dey might take a POW-der, get it?”

We then get a moment of  off-camera violence, as we hear Fred yell, “No, Wilma, not in the head!” followed by various crashing sounds. (Limited animation can sometimes be a blessing in disguise.) Of course, there are some funny lines at the same time, such as Wilma’s “Play that on your fortissimo!”

When we see the boys again, they’re scrambling for the Flyer, narrowly escaping their wives. But Wilma and Betty are patient souls; hours later, we see them playing cards together as they wait for their pooped husbands to land. Barney, sadly, is running out of pedal power, and it won’t be long before he and Fred can look forward to an even more serious walloping. Fortunately, we’ve bid them goodbye by then.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

I’ve always felt a bit guilty about liking this episode; make no mistake, it’s quite  an improvement over “The Swimming Pool”: by now, Mel Blanc and Alan Reed have started to hit their stride. Their timing is snappier, their delivery funnier; they’ve learned how to play off one another, like a good comedy team. This is especially evident in the scene with Fred and Barney in disguise. Using their considerable talent for dialect, Blanc and Reed take what would have been mundane dialogue in the hands of a lesser performer, and make it not only memorable, but quotable.

The writing, too, has improved by leagues. “The Swimming Pool” had its memorable lines, but “The Flintstone Flyer” is so full of them, it’s impossible to list them all, and they don’t all come from Fred and Barney, as can be seen from this exchange from Wilma and Betty as they’re racing home:

BETTY: What do we say when we ask why we’re home so early?

WILMA:  Oh, just say we missed them…

BETTY:  Why not tell them the truth?

WILMA: And say we don’t trust them around the corner?

Yet, there’s a…harshness to this episode that doesn’t seem right for the characters. It’s as if co-writer Warren Foster dusted off an old Tweety and Sylvester script and split the “Granny” role among Wilma and Betty, with Fred and Barney in the “Sylvester” role. Granny bashing Sylvester in the head is standard cartoon slapstick; Wilma doing the same to Fred seems too real for this sort of cartoon, not to mention against her nature.

Such is the dilemma when doing an animated sitcom for adults; the writers somehow feel that exaggerated “Wile E. Coyote”-type gags–in which characters are bent, twisted, mutilated, and go through all manner of mayhem, only to emerge whole a scene later–are too “kiddie cartoon”-like for the type of material they’re doing, but they want to have the slapstick anyway. Therefore–and I’ve seen this time and time again inThe Simpsons and Family Guy–they just make the bashing more realistic.

Fred and Barney, unlike Sylvester or Wile E.,  don’t get flattened like a pancake when hit–we’re made to imagine that it really hurts, and for that reason this episode was always a bit unsettling for me. It didn’t go quite as far as animated programs today–1960s Standards and Practices guidelines wouldn’t have allowed it–but a lot gets left to the imagination. The worst thing for me as a child was imagining the beating Fred and Barney were going to get as soon as their little flying machine landed. That for me very nearly negated the funny things that happened in that very same episode.

I’ve never been able to adequately express why, but there’s something about the character design in “The Flintstone Flyer” that I love. It’s sort of a rounded-off version of Ed Benedict’s angular shapes (Fred and Barney’s hair doesn’t have points, but looks instead like a floor mop).  It gives the characters a rather loose look,  similar to the style John Kricfalusi would eventually adopt. For some reason I’ve never figured out, no other episode from then on looks quite like this, much to their detriment–and ours.

My reservations about certain aspects of the episode aside, it’s still one of my favorites, second only to “The Hot Piano.” Not bad for a series that was still very much a work in progress.

by Rachel Newstead

(Note: in my ongoing series on The Flintstones, I’ll be discussing the individual cartoons in order of production, not airdate. “The Swimming Pool” was the first episode produced, but the third aired)–R.

The Swimming Pool

Episode P-1

Original Airdate: Oct. 14, 1960

Writer: Warren Foster

In short:   Fred learns a pool, and his buddy, are soon parted (I can’t believe I wrote that…)

“Flintstones, meet the Flintstones…”

How familiar those words are to us now. It’s hard to believe we’ve been singing them for close to fifty years, and even harder to imagine what it must have been like for audiences in 1960, their Philco sets tuned to a still all-black and white ABC, to witness something brand new:  a half hour, prime-time, animated network sitcom.

It didn’t matter that the premise wasn’t original (more on that point later). What Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera did with it was; they dared to make a cartoon sitcom for adults, with all the trappings of its live-action brethren: laugh tracks, grown-up commercials (courtesy of Winston cigarettes and Miles Laboratories) and jokes more old-school vaudeville than grade-school playground.

To be fair, Hanna and Barbera weren’t venturing completely into the animated unknown.  They had been producing cartoon shows for prime time for three years already:  Ruff and Reddy, Huckleberry Hound, and Quick Draw McGraw were hugely popular; grafting the conventions of the sitcom onto such a program was the next logical step.

“The Swimming Pool” looks like a first effort, as rough and primitive as the era in which it was purportedly set. It’s like an early Bob Clampett cartoon–a jumble of mismatched shots and wildly varying character models, to the point that the characters look like entirely different individuals from scene to scene. But like Clampett’s cartoons, it’s also pretty damned funny, thanks to an A-list staff which included Warner’s alumnus Warren Foster, who, with Mike Maltese, made his way to the new Hanna-Barbera operation in 1959.

Ed Benedict's original 1959 model sheet of Fred "Flagstone". Compare with image from "The Swimming Pool" below. Courtesy of the "John K. Stuff" blog.

Foster came to H-B after a long, profitable association with director Friz Freleng, for whom he’d written the Oscar-winning Speedy Gonzales, Birds Anonymous and Knighty Knight Bugs. TV.com and the IMDB credit Mike Maltese and former Colgate Comedy Hour writer Artie Phillips as co-writers with Foster, which seems likely considering the very Maltese-like wordplay and the sitcom-y, “battle of the neighbors” plot (undoubtedly provided by Philips). They take a standard sitcom situation, based on the homily that one should never enter into any joint venture with a friend, and manage to squeeze more humor than one would expect from what was even then a clichéd situation.

One contribution that certainly cannot be underestimated is that of character designer and layout man Ed Benedict. Benedict’s work on Tex Avery’s The First Bad Man (1955), itself a sort of proto-Flintstones, is well known, and his angular style did much to establish the look of the show–his characters were simple without seeming crudely done, flat yet visually appealing, despite his abandoning Disneyesque curves for the sharp angles of UPA.

His design style is far more apparent, however, in the minute-and-a-half “pilot” for the network and sponsors (done sometime in the spring of 1960) than in the eventual episode, which I’m sure contributes to the uneven nature of the artwork.  There must at one time have been more scenes in the original presentation reel than shown in the footage uncovered in 1993,  because certain scenes we don’t see in the brief pilot (and I’ll point these out as we go along) follow Benedict’s earliest character models more closely than others. It looks as though scenes he originally laid out were simply traced over by the animators, while others seem to have been done from scratch; it’s a shame his designs weren’t more closely adhered to, as Benedict was capable of conveying a great deal of personality in a simple line drawing.

But as I’ve said numerous times in reference to The Flintstones, the writing is the “star”–as with the earliest Rocky and Bullwinkle or Simpsons episodes, a well-written cartoon can make audiences overlook, or forget outright, any technical flaws. You’ll soon see just what I mean.

THE CARTOON

We see Fred Flintstone in his first moments in animation, driving his Stone Age car. Already in the very first scene we can see the design inconsistencies: Fred when driving looks different from Fred getting out of the car, which in turns looks different from Fred in the house; in the earliest scene, his hair has the “messy” look seen on Benedict’s 1959 model sheet.

Here, we see something approaching "Ed Benedict Fred" rather than the later "Dick Bickenbach Fred" (below)

He’s bringing home a couple of “New York cut” dinosaur steaks  (n0t, as should be noted, “New Rock”, as he might have said later–they hadn’t quite settled into the puns yet). But no sooner does he get inside his “split-level cave” than he starts to pick a fight with neighbor Barney Rubble–the steaks are missing. He sees Barney cooking a couple of very suspicious-looking steaks, and in a manner that we come to know as typically Fred for the next 165 episodes,  comes to the wrong conclusion.

Determined to put a “fist full of fingers” in Barney’s mouth, Fred jumps the fence to retrieve “his” steaks, causing a tussle as minimally animated as possible (we only see the two of

Obvious corner-cutting, certainly, but funnier than if they'd actually showed it

them flying in the air, while the appropriate effects play on the sound track).

Of course, Wilma interrupts the meleé to tell Fred he’d actually left his steaks on the fence in his front yard. Not willing to let a little thing like his being in the wrong stop him from getting a few good licks in, Fred gives Barney one last wallop with Barney’s own steaks: “That’s for the next thing you do wrong,” he says.  (A line I’ve always found funny).

The feud is on–as it enters day five, Wilma and Betty order a cease-fire (using the dreaded “mother-in-law invitation” threat), if not an outright truce. Barney arrives to retrieve some items Fred borrowed, but never returned. Unfortunately, one of them happens to be the ladder Fred is standing on. Fred gives chase, but when he jumps the fence this time, he falls into an incredibly deep chasm on the other side. Which, Barney tells the infuriated (and considerably bruised) Fred, happens to be a swimming pool.

Suddenly, the friendship is on again, as Fred, with typical Flintstone logic, insinuates his way into the pool deal by offering to build half of it in his yard, thereby giving Barney “his” half free. Which Barney digs and fills, of course, with the aid of a “Do-It-Yourself Pool Kit” Fred so generously provides (a shovel).

Not quite ready for Olympic sychronized swimming...from "The Swimming Pool."

We get a couple of funny scenes in which Fred explains the advantages of owning a pool jointly, such as sharing the expense of maintaining the “cranafrazz” and the “fornisteen” (a bit of classic Warner’s-style double talk which has “Mike Maltese” written all over it). The next comes at the pool-accessories shop “Swim Togs ‘N’ Stuff” when Fred tries on an innertube that’s a mite too…erm…snug (or in the words of the wisecracking salesman, “Around The World In Eighty Inches”.)

And for his next trick, he'll balance a ball on his nose...we're back to "1960 Fred" in this scene

Within a week, the new pool’s a hub of activity, as half of Bedrock’s population seems to be taking up every available square inch of water (including members of the “YCMA”–Young Cave Men’s Association.) All of whom are Barney’s friends, or friends of friends, and possibly even enemies of friends of friends, much to the irritation of Fred (even though, we learn, Fred hogged it just as much).

In a particularly funny scene, Fred walks his way across the “carpet” of people to argue with Barney, and continues to stand there yelling for as long as a minute, despite protests from the unnamed fellow he happens to be standing on. We won’t get into why tubby Fred didn’t cause the poor fellow to sink to the bottom and drown immediately…

Quicker than you can say “of course you know this means war”, the feud is on–again. Fred vows to do something about the “ungrateful ingrate” (a lovely bit of alliteration I suspect belongs to Maltese as well).

Fred fires the first volley by dividing the pool with a fence, to which Barney responds by taking out “his half” of the water. (Before Fred realizes it’s gone, naturally). Though the wives intervene in forcing them to tear the fence down and re-fill the pool, the fight continues.

A short time after “D-Day” (“Down With The Fence” Day) Fred overhears Betty and Wilma talking about Barney’s supposed upcoming pool-warming party–with seemingly no invitations to Fred forthcoming.  When he confronts Wilma with this knowledge, she warns him not to try anything funny. It’s this scene that has a bit of dialogue I’ve loved (and imitated) from the first time I saw this episode, so many decades ago:

FRED: You’d think I’d make trouble for my close friend, bosom buddy, and lifelong pal? Is that what you’re “intimatin’”?

WILMA: No, that’s not what I’m ‘intimatin’! <Moves toward Fred’s face> That’s what I’m saying!

Ah, but even this early in the game, we know Fred well enough to figure he’s got something up his jagged sleeve–and he has. He gets on the horn (literally, in this case) to his buddy Joe at the pool hall, and tells him to show up in his policeman costume from last Halloween, and threaten to break up the festivities.

Of course, this is before Barney arrives at the door, birthday cake in hand, to let him know the “pool warming” is actually Fred’s birthday party. Barney, in one instant, goes from “knee high Gila monster” to “buddy.”

Later that evening, they’re partying like it’s a million and nine B.C.–and one irate neighbor, prevented from sleeping by the incessant noise and vibration, isn’t too pleased. The Bedrock police station, meanwhile, is  deluged with calls, and dispatch a police unit to quiet things down. (I really love the giant- armadillo police car, by the way). And wouldn’t you know it? One of the cops bears a striking resemblance to Fred’s pool-hall buddy.

As quickly as you can say “mistaken identity,” Fred puts his big, fat, square foot in his mouth by smarting off to the real-cop-that’s-not-Joe, and sending him vibrating into the pool. As any student of Wacky Sitcom Situations 101 would know by now, now is naturally the time the real Joe shows up–without the policeman disguise–to tell Fred he couldn’t find it.

You can pretty much guess what happens from there: he’s run in for “resisting arrest, dunking an officer, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.. .” (and I have to say,  the “et cetera” must have been a real doozy.)

Cut to Fred in jail. As he laments that he didn’t even get a piece of his own birthday cake, Barney arrives to let him know he’ll soon be out. In the meantime, he passes a piece of cake to a tearful Fred. Iris out.

In the “tag” at the end (the portion of the sitcom in which there’s usually one parting joke) Barney drives Fred home from jail, and both have the same idea: a dip in the pool. Changing into their swim duds (re-using the same footage from an earlier scene, Fred speeds toward the pool and dives in. Unfortunately, Barney forgot to tell him he drained the pool to clean it. So we close the curtain on our introduction to Fred Flintstone, as he grumbles indecipherably with his head in a bucket. Can we assume the feud is on again?

You know, a thought occurred to me as I was writing this: doesn’t it seem that Fred (and sometimes both Fred and Barney) end up in jail a lot in these first-season episodes? Or at least narrowly escape arrest: we saw it in “The Hot Piano”, and we’ll see it again in “The Prowler” and “The Babysitters”. I’m sure more will come to mind; at any rate, it serves to show that this version of Fred is a much more incorrigible character than he would later be, and a good deal more impulsive. The later incarnation is, too, but in a Lucy Ricardo way, not a Ralph Kramden way. Which brings me to an issue I wish to discuss in my Concluding Thoughts….

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

In my travels through the internet, if there’s one phrase I’ve come across that I never wish to see again, it’s “Hanna and Barbera weren’t original!” These cyber-critics point to the obvious influence of The Honeymooners on The Flintstones, but the more diligent often go through the trouble of listing the individual “offenses”: that Snagglepuss is an animated Bert Lahr, Yogi Bear is a combination of Art Carney’s voice and a baseball catcher’s name, Huckleberry Hound is part Andy Griffith and Tex Avery’s southern Wolf, and on and on.

Yes, that much is true. But so what? Why aren’t the Warner Bros. characters these same fans love so dearly leveled with the same criticism? Or those of any other Golden Age studio?

In the classic Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, incidental character and star alike owed a great deal to movies and radio. Bugs is a pinch or two of Disney’s Max Hare and a whole lot of Groucho Marx, with a bit of Leo Gorcey for good measure. Daffy got his trademark “Hoo Hoos” from Hugh Herbert; Foghorn Leghorn got his bluster from The Fred Allen Show‘s Senator Claghorn. Even the names of the latter two sound the same if you say them fast enough.  Crosby, Durante, and Abbott and Costello–or reasonable facsimiles thereof–did their stuff in the guise of various cartoon animals.  Porky Pig was the result, originally, of an effort to on the part of Leon Schlesinger to make an animated clone of Our Gang.

Even Fleischer’s Betty Boop, his only “original” character, was a pen-and-ink Helen Kane, regardless of what any court of law might have ruled.

Get the point? The inspiration may have come from elsewhere, but the characters became distinct entities in their own right, as different from their source as a child is from its parents.  This is what Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera did for us; we’ll likely remember Snagglepuss, Huck, Yogi, and Fred far longer than the people who inspired them.

Original or not, “The Swimming Pool” is a stumbling but promising start to a classic series. While there are fewer classic lines than in later episodes, all of the familiar tropes are there: the bumbling yet well-meaning husband; the misunderstandings and miscalculations; the on-again, off-again sparring between Fred and Barney, the “modern Stone Age” gadgets, the battle of wits with the wives. Almost from the onset, we know about these people and get a quick outline of the situations–and jokes–we can expect as the series goes on.

Traces of the 1959 Ed Benedict Wilma linger in "The Swimming Pool" (above) as can be seen in the pilot (below)

The “Barney practices spear fishing” scene, the scene used in the original presentation reel, occurs at about the 11-minute mark in the finished episode. If you want to see pure, unadulterated Ed Benedict designs as shown on his original model sheets, look here–it’s probably as much as 75% “retraced Ed.” When Wilma walks out of the house, has her conversation with Betty, and gets frightened by Barney, it’s Ed Benedict’s 1959 Wilma we see there–and nowhere else. She plops the tray onto 1959 Fred’s stomach, but the next scene is 1960 Fred. In every case, his design of the characters has more…well, character.

Such are the economics of television production, I suppose–the style that gets used is the one that’s the easiest to animate, regardless of how pretty it looks. It almost makes one wish Fred could have debuted on the theater screen, not the TV screen.

When searching for the best way to celebrate the birthday of George Pal, I could think of none better than to discuss a work of his that is itself a celebration–of triumph over adversity, of hope over despair: his 1942 Oscar-nominated Puppetoon, “Tulips Shall Grow.” May you find the cartoon as inspirational as I did.

by Rachel Newstead

Animation at its best has tremendous persuasive power:  the power to evoke laughter or, as we’ve seen as recently as Pixar’s “Up,” tears. It can make us forget our plight, or see ourselves in pen-and-ink drawings, lumps of clay or blocks of wood. At no time, however, is that power more evident than in times of war.

The animators who worked on the home front during World War II to entertain and inform the public instinctively understood this. The war years represented a creative blossoming of the medium of animation; this was the era of Tex Avery’s Blitz Wolf, of Walt Disney’s Der Fuehrer’s Face; when the animated denizens of the Walter Lantz studio moved to a swing beat. Bugs Bunny would find his comedic voice in these years, and set the pattern for other studios to follow.

Yet ironically, the man who most understood the persuasive and emotional power of animation is perhaps, today, the least talked-about. It’s that man whose birthday, whose life we celebrate today, the stop-motion animator and filmmaker George Pal.

To call Pal’s work “stop-motion animation” almost seems to disparage it somehow; it falls into a category all its own. It always fascinated me how Pal could bring his characters to life. Using interchangeable parts with varying degrees of distortion, he could simulate the “squash and stretch” of hand-drawn animation.

Not only did this enable him to avoid the jerky movement so typical of stop-motion, but it bestowed on his characters that same “illusion of life” Disney so fervently strove for. One could “believe” Pal’s characters were living, breathing creatures, and audiences cared for them as if they were. This ability proved invaluable in what is perhaps Pal’s greatest animated film, Tulips Shall Grow.

Tulips Shall Grow couldn’t be a more personal film for Pal, his allegory of the 1940 Nazi occupation of Holland. A country that, for a brief time in the thirties, he had called home. (He produced animated commercials there, for Phillips radios). Pal himself was a refugee, having fled Germany at the beginning of Hitler’s rise to power; he, his wife and family would later barely escape Nazi rule in Holland. He would experience the pain of hearing of the fall of his native Hungary. No one could say, therefore, that he didn’t know his subject.

The cartoon opens much as Hugh Harman’s Peace On Earth did, with a deceptively cheerful atmosphere. (The parallels to Peace On Earth, in fact, are so obvious one wonders if Pal had seen it before making this cartoon). Dutch boy Jan calls on Dutch girl Janette in her windmill home; he presents her with a red tulip, while she presents him with a cake. Jan plays a tune on his accordion to which they both do a lively dance.

But all is not right in their idyllic little land. Dark clouds start to form–Jan and Janette’s peace is shattered by the “Screwball” army, who look just as their name implies: like anthropomorphic metal spheres with screws attached to the top of their bodies. (They don’t have anything resembling a head, or features). At once both silly and terrifying, they destroy everything they come in contact with as they goose-step their way through the countryside. Their transparent, bat-winged planes bomb a nearby church, and the beautiful little windmills, to ruins.

Jan and Janette run in desperation to escape the Screwball tanks and machine guns, and although Jan manages to run to safety, he and Janette are separated in the confusion.  He watches in horror as Janette’s once-cozy little home is smashed to bits by a tank–presumably with her still inside.

With everything gone, and believing Janette to be dead, Jan prays for deliverance in the remains of the bombed-out church. His salvation–and that of the land he lives in–comes in the form of the only thing that can vanquish the metal monsters: rain, which causes them to rust.

The Screwball onslaught soon bogs down as their inner workings start to seize up. One is permanently frozen in a “heiling” position; a tank, meanwhile,  sinks slowly in the mud in an eerie echo of the “last men on earth” scene in Peace On Earth.

As soon as the Screwballs are defeated, everything returns as it was: Jan finds Janette, and their joyous dancing makes the tulips return, bringing life back to their land. They look off in the distance to view  clouds in a “V For Victory” formation as the cartoon ends.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

It would be too easy–and innacurate–to dismiss this as a frivolous treatment of a serious subject, in contrast to the presumably more realistic Peace On Earth mentioned earlier. Harman’s cartoon might have portrayed war more realistically, but Pal’s film is about its effect on innocent people rather than warfare itself. Pal does what Harman did in combining the serious with the lighthearted, but does it better by making us care more. In Pal’s cartoon, the enemy is impersonal. In Harman’s, man is.

Harman sees no hope in the human race, preferring to look instead to the animals. Pal couldn’t think that way–humans may have caused the war, he felt, but humans could stop it. It’s a pretty difficult statement to argue with.

(Edited 2/3/10 to correct minor typos and “tidy up” the text a little).

(Edited to remove embedded video due to a claim by the copyright owner, 3/2/10)