Dig This Crazy Test Pattern!

by Rachel Newstead

If I have one flaw, it’s this: one little comment is often enough to send me into a depressive tailspin.

I didn’t react well to Bob Jaques’ recent comments on my recent Freeze Frame Friday post. Though I know, intellectually, that he was only trying to be helpful, I became so self-conscious over the last week or so that it has become difficult, if not impossible, to write anything without second-guessing myself. Consequently, I haven’t been around much lately.

Fortunately, the bout was temporary and my confidence has returned. It has not, however, returned quickly enough to do a Freeze Frame Friday this week. That feature will, however, return on April 9, with a look at a cartoon that is perhaps Hugh Harman’s single finest work, The Field Mouse. There’ll also be a bit of a surprise. What that will be, I’d rather not say–you’ll have to, as they used to say on TV, tune in next week.

I can, however, give you an idea of what’s in store over the next few days:

• Buddy has to be the “Rodney Dangerfield” of cartoon characters, but is that reputation deserved? You’ll find out what I think tomorrow when I talk about the last–and possibly the best–Buddy cartoon, Buddy The Gee Man.
• As you might have already guessed, I love early television as much as I do cartoons, and have a little piece for your consideration about the man who invented the home video recorder–in 1928.
• If you ever needed proof that Pinto Colvig was as much an actor as a voice man, you need look no further than the 1942 Ding Dog Daddy, which I’m going to review.

The time I’ve spent away hasn’t been entirely unproductive–in addition to enjoying some unseasonably warm spring weather for Wisconsin, I’ve been haunting Stu Shostak’s Shokus Internet Radio site. I have to tell you, this is one of the net’s little undiscovered treasures, especially Shostak’s own Stu’s Show. This week our friend Mr. Shostak has as his guest the king of oddball radio, Dr. Demento–a man who introduced me to the novelty records of a fellow named Benny Bell.  It’s been airing since Wednesday, but repeats will run for the next few days.  I strongly urge you to catch Stu and The Demented One tomorrow at 7 PM Eastern Daylight Time. You were warned….

An image from the "Flagstones" pilot. But is that pilot the ONLY one?

by Rachel Newstead

It’s amazing what one can learn on the internet sometimes.  Case in point:

When doing research for my upcoming review of “The Swimming Pool”, I couldn’t help but think back to a mystery I encountered when researching the episode “The Hot Piano” two years ago. You might call it The Mystery Of The Missing Pilot.

In a routine Google search I ran across this page, a site called DVDVerdict.com. In its review of The Flintstones: The Complete First Season, it states:

After a moderate success with the Ruff N’ Ready [sic] Show, the duo was ready to try their hand at a prime time series. They made a deal with ABC; all they needed was a program. In 1959, a Belgian animation unit (that would later make the cult classic Pinocchio in Outer Space) tried their hand with a half-hour pilot titled The Flagstones. Hanna and Barbera did not like the end product, so a new approach was taken with the next pilot.

Wait a minute. Belgium? Next pilot??

You can understand my confusion, I’m sure. The reviewer says that Hanna-Barbera actually intended to outsource The Flintstones (or The Flagstones, as it was still known at the time) to a foreign studio, which flies in the face of everything I’ve ever read, or heard, about the origins of the show.

I unfortunately don’t have a copy of Joe Barbera’s autobiography in front of me, but I seem to recall he said he first talked to potential sponsors early in 1960, then made the well known three-minute minute-and-a-half pilot in house sometime in the spring of that year.  Something like this wouldn’t appear to fit the timeline.

Yet there was supposedly a half hour pilot done as early as 1959 by this Belgian outfit, at about the time–as far as I knew–the very first concept sketches were being done? Curiouser and curiouser.

I remember asking Mark Kausler about this, and he wondered, as I did, why H-B would go through the trouble of outsourcing when it would have been easier to do it in-house, even with their busy production schedule at the time. Therefore,  I simply dismissed the story as a flight of fancy on the part of the review’s author, and that was that.

A more recent find, however, punched a huge hole in my air of smugness. This morning I ran across an old post on Cartoon Brew which essentially says the same thing as DVDVerdict–that a Flintstones pilot, made in Belgium by a company called Belvision, existed. The word of Jerry Beck is hard to dispute.

Now that there’s confirmation it exists, the next obvious question would be “Where is it?” I for one would jump at the chance to see this studio’s take on the characters. Judging from what little I’ve seen of Belvision’s  style in Pinocchio in Outer Space, their version would have been very different from what we’ve come to know. Not bad, necessarily, but certainly different.

This pilot is likely to be an interesting curiosity, at least. Though in all honesty, I’m rather glad things turned out as they ultimately did.

Jerry, should you come around this way, please give me some more details about this if you can.  Though screen grabs would be even better.

by Rachel Newstead

As some of you may have noticed in the second part of my recent essay about Tex Avery’s early years at Lantz, I love the cartoon She Done Him Right, especially the signature number of the cartoon, “Minnie The Moocher’s Wedding Day.” I first fell in love with that number in Hugh Harman’s Swing Wedding, but the hot blues rendition in She Done Him Right is far superior. I had to know the identity of that voice, and in an effort to find out, I wrote to the webmaster of the Walter Lantz Cartune Encyclopedia.  Well, it seems I not only have him stumped, but the people to whom he forwarded my letter: neither Jerry Beck, Mark Kausler, nor even Keith Scott had any idea.

Since I seem to have done the near-impossible and stumped the animation historians, I thought it best to appeal to the music historians. Lantz likely used a popular artist of the day, as Fleischer was inclined to do. My knowledge of the artists of that period is sadly limited, however, so I would appreciate hearing from anyone who can give me at least an educated guess.

To whom does this voice belong?