VOLUME 11 - NUMBER 01 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1975

Fraternity rites in BIMBO' S INITIATION. Bimbo & Betty in BIMBO'S INITIATION. by Mark Langer alittle help from Ko-Ko, Betty Boop, Popeye, and the Bouncing Ball. unjustly punished by Max. At the film's schers to make a number of historically endless choruses, but are still imaginative end, a shrunken Max is punished by Ko- significant films in the Twenties . and funny. Ko. More usually, Ko-Ko's fate is dictated by Max, his father-tormentor; the cartoon The Fleischers' interest in educational The \"Song Car-Tunes,\" although popu- shows how the clown both tempts fate and films did not end after their short Army lar, were made only until 1926. The Red struggles against it. In KO-KO'S HAUNTED film experience. In 1922, Max attempted a Seal Picture Corporation, never a finan- HOUSE, Ko-Ko and Fitz are tormented by four-reel animated explanation of THE cially stable company, had undergone a an animator who rings a gong and blows EINSTEIN THEORY OF RELATIVITY (1923) . number of changes of management, end- air into their model house. The characters This first-ever animated feature was ing with Max Fleischer as president. De- ask Max for help, and he draws hundreds played primarily for schools, and was so spite publicity tours, and the introduction of Ko-Kos, which frighten the animator completely forgotten that a publicity sheet of the new live-action two-reel series out of the studio. issued by the Fleischer Studio in 1938 neg- \" Keep 'Em Guessing\" and \"Carrie of the lected to mention it. THE EINSTEIN THEORY Chorus,\" the company closed in Sep- At times, the conflict between the real OF RELATIVITY was followed by a partly tember 1926, and the Fleischers were and comic worlds grows increasingly vio- animated feature, EVOLUTION (1925), a without a distributor. lent. In KO-KO'S EARTH CONTROL (1927), minor sensation, made the same year as Ko-Ko and Fitz come to a shed, they play the Scopes Monkey Trial. In 1927, the Fleischers released KO-KO with the controls, and Fitz attempts to pull PLAYS POOL through Paramount, an associ- a lever marked \"Danger! Do not touch An even more Significant achievement ation that was to last for fifteen years . At earth control. If the handle is pulled, the followed. In 1924, the Fieischers, working world will come to an end.\" Despite with Dr. Lee DeForest of the DeForest first, the Fleischers produced a series of si- Ko-Ko's desperate interference, Fitz suc- Phonofilm Company, produced the first lent \"Inkwell Imps\" cartoons with Ko-Ko, ceeds, and the cartoon world begins to sound-on-film cartoon , OH MABEL. In its but with the immmense popularity of crumble. The two characters jump out of first public showing, the audience refused Disney's talkies, Max and Dave returned the drawing to the supposed safety of the to watch the feature until the cartoon was to sound cartoons. Fleischers' office window sill. Much to rerun . OH MABEL was the first of the \"Song their surprise, they see that the real world Car-Tunes,\" which were more generally THE SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK (1929) , a is also being destroyed, as the ground distributed in silent versions. However, \"Screen Song,\" was the Fleischers' first shakes, and time runs backwards. Hor- the sound prints were true synchronized sound cartoon for Paramount, and marked rified, Ko-Ko and Fitz jump back into the sound films. In MY OLD KENTUCKY HOME a return to the \"bouncing ball\" format of inkwell, leaving the world in a state of (1926), a dog repairs his false teeth, plays a the \"Song Car-Tunes.\" Paramount pro- chaos. trombone, and requests that the audience vided the records or film clips, and the sing along and \"follow the bouncing bal!, \" animators, working under Dave's direc- The filmed process of drawing Ko-Ko at all in perfect synch. Generally, the \"Song tion, would devise cartoon action to ac- the beginning of almost every silent car- Car-Tunes\" were cheaply animated in company the music . Often, as in I'LL BE toon shows a Fleischer fascination with comparison with the \"Out of the Inkwell\" GLAD WHEN YOU'RE DEAD YOU RASCAL YOU mechanics and processes that is evident in films . Most began with a stock clip of Ko- (1932), they would incorporate animated other ways. In KO-KO THE HOT SHOT (1924), Ko and the Ko-Ko Kwartette, who would characters into previously filmed live se- Max is shown flipping through a stack of introduce the song. Then the lyrics would quences. This use of pre-recorded material cels; in KO-KO'S EARTH CONTROL, we see a roll by, accompanied by the now-famous was closer to today's animation methods cartoon explanation of how nature is con- Bouncing Ball. The las t few choruses of the than was the early Disney method of trolled. Much of this fascination probably song would have a cartoon character re- post-recording. originated with Max, whose interest in place the ball, and perform amusing ac- mechanics brought him to animation, led tions as it jumped from word to word. At first, there was no story department him to patent more than a dozen anima- Today, the films seem overlong with their at the Fleischers' studio. Max and Dave, as tion processes, and was to lead the Flei- producer and director, would receive re- cordings from Paramount, and would de- cide on a rough action outline or theme. Then Dave would go to work with the FILM COMMENT 49

Top to bottom : Popeye's film debut in POPEYE THE MAX & DAVE FLEISHER CONTINUED and death as various characters drink SAILOR; Popeye hangs precariously from a girder in Jippo. An old man drinks and jumps into DREAM WALKING; skull-rock background in POPEYE animators. The animators were divided his grave. The entire cast marches towards THE SAILOR MEETS SIN BAD THE SAILOR; Popeye, into units, each unit working on a different the camera, their bodies elongating in time Olive, and Wimpy in POPEYE THE SAILOR MEETS ALI cartoon. The head animators would listen with the music. Finally, a baby drinks, and BABA' S FORTY THIEVES . to the music with Dave, and would devise turns into Mr. Hyde. Despite the grue- the action of the film, subject to Dave's ap- someness of these images, the effect is We are grateful to Ivy Films , the exclusive dis- proval. This gave the head animators more pleasant because the characters' move- tributors of all the Betty Boop cartoons, for their freedom than the Disney animators, but ments are so closely choreographed with generosity in furnishing prints for this piece. not as much as the animators at Warners the infectious jazz score (penned by Lou were to have. Fleischer). The new sound series was far better Other revue cartoons entered the realm animated than the first, but marked the decline of Ko-Ko the Clown, who was of social satire. In BETTY BOOP FOR quickly losing his popularity to Mickey PRESIDENT (1932), the Fleischers parody Mouse. The \" Inkwell Imps\" silents ended Prohibition and campaign promises as in 1929, and were replaced by the \"Talkar- Betty imitates a number of politicians, in- toon\" series. Max appeared less frequently cluding Herbert Hoover. BETTY BOOP'S UPS in the films , and Ko-Ko was joined by AND DOWNS (1932) is the Fleischers' Grapes Bimbo, a more anthropomorphic dog than of Wrath, where everyone on earth is dis- Fitz. Bimbo's presence failed to restore the possessed. Neither cartoon has a plot; in- series to the success of earlier silent stead, they gently poke fun at the prob- Ko-Ko's. lems of the country in a number of short, almost unrelated sight gags, and pleasant, In August 1930, the Fleischers intro- but forgettable songs. Their charm lies in duced a new character, developed with their light-hearted approach to the subject animator Grim Natwick, called Betty matter, in contrast to the overpowering Boop, who first appeared as a dog-like imagery of the psycho-sexual dramas. character in the \"Talkartoon\" DIZZY DISHES (1930). In 1931, after ad~ertising for a girl In 1932, the Fleischers arranged with \" with a cute voice,\" the Fleischers hired Mae Questel to provide the Helen Kane- King Features Syndicate to bring to the ish voice for the new character. Questel's screen E.C. Segar's popular Thimble voice first appeared in BETTY CO-ED (1931), Th eatre comic strip character, Popeye the which opens with Betty Boop as she is Sailor. Popeye's debut was in a Betty Boop carried by cheering college students. We cartoon, POPEYE THE SAILOR (1933), where see Bimbo walking to Betty's door with he was first shown in a newspaper that flowers and candy. He is seized by two announced that Popeye was now a movie fraternity men, who bounce him into the air with a blanket. Bimbo faJis into a tree, star. Ko-Ko was merely a re-creation of which comes to life and deposits the hap- Dave; Betty had appeared with her \"Uncle less dog at the fraternity door. After a Max\" in a few cartoons. But Popeye was live-action sequence of Rudy Vallee sing- the first Fleischer character who was inde- ing the title song, Bimbo gets to see Betty, pendent of his creator, and the only one and a number of shots give a satirical view who never returned to the inkwell. of college graduation. POPEYE THE SAILOR provided the basic BETTY CO-ED illustrates the weakness of plot of many Popeye cartoons. Popeye and many of the \" Screen Songs.\" The live- Bluto arc rivals for Olive Oyl's love. They action sequence in the middle of the car- compete for her favors, and Popeye even- toon disturbs its kinetic pace. The film just tually wins by eating his spinach, and beat- stops while Vallee sings, although it may ing Bluto in a fight. The early Popeye was a not have seemed so to theater audiences simple gruff character, but with the de- who joined him in song. Also, at this time, velopment of a story department in 1932, the Betty Boop character was not yet fully and with the later addition of actor-writer formed, being awkwardly half-woman, Jack Mercer (who provided Popeye's de- half-dog. lightful ad Iibs), the characters attained a richness denied earlier Fleischer cartoon As in other Fleischer cartoons, there is a characters. tremendous sense of fatalism in BETTY CO-EO. Bimbo cannot get to Betty through In A DREAM WALKING (1934), we see de- his own attempts, but is brought to her by velopment in both character and style. The chance . He is tormented by fraternity film begins with a REAR WiNDOW-ish track members and struggles with an an- along an apartment building wall, reveal- thropomorphic tree in an expression of vio- ing Popeye, Bluto, and Olive asleep in lence and mutability. BETTY CO-ED also their separate apartments. Olive begins to contains strongly sexual elements. sleepwalk, and exits through a window, upsetting a flowerpot. The crash awakens Not all of the early sound Fleischer car- Popeye and Bluto, who rush out to save toons were psychodramas. Some were re- her. vues, composed of a number of loosely- related sight gags and musical numbers. Olive walks along rooftops into a build- BETTY BOOP M.D . (1932) has Betty and ing under construction. The two sailors friends in a medicine show, selling Jippo. struggle with each other for the privilege of The cartoon is a dance of metamorphosis rescuing her. Their fight goes on within a marvelously mechanistic geometric envi- ronment of moving beams and girders, 50 JAN.-FEB. 1975

with the sailors using the beams and tools Ko- Ko cartoons. Previously, Max and villain . The three-dimensional effect given as weapons. After eating his spinach, Dave had presented their cartoon charac- by the turning set gives a visual as well as Popeye wins the struggle, but Olive has ters in a real world . The stereoptical pro- an emotional, excitement to the scene. walked right off the building, and is only cess adapted a real set to a cartoon world . saved from falling by the miraculous but A miniature set was constructed on a circu- Aside from their use as technical exer- seemingly inevitable presence of swinging lar table, and the cels were mounted in cises, the \" Color Classics\" were experi- beams that appear as she is about to step front of it. When the set was photographed ments with sentiment. All too often , through the cels, it appeared that the though , they became exercises in the most out into space. characters were moving in the set. By rotat- maudlin sen timentality, outdoing Disney's Popeye reaches Olive's window just as excesses. In SOMEWHERE IN DREAMLAND she reclines peacefully back into bed. The M. fLEISCHER. alarm clock goes off, Olive wakes, and thinks that Popeye is a peeping tom. As METHOD OF PRODOCING MOVING PICTURE CARTOONS. she hurls everything she can find at him, Popeye turns to the audience and says, \" I 1 , 2 4 2.. 6 7 4 . APPLICATION flUD DEC.6. 1915. saw my duty and done it, 'cause I'm Popeye the Sailor Man!\" Popeye's invinci- Patented Oc~ 9, 1917. bility is somewhat modified by his lack of success in love in A DREAM WALKING, and .Fi!/_1_ 2 SHHTS-SHEEr I. his endurance of the slings and arrows of outraged Olive reveals a stoic side of his IS nature. INVENroR FOR BETTER OR WORSER (1935) combines #d'..r r/'''·cScner grotesquerie and pessimism with the BY~ Fleischer cyclical plot. Popeye and Bluto live in a filthy tenement labelled \"Bachelor ArrORIIEY8 Apts.\" After burning his dinner once more, Popeye says \"It's no use, I have to ing the table, the Fleischers could get the (1936), two poor little children visit the sac- get me a wife.\" He and Bluto visit a mat- effect of tracking through a three- charine wonders of Dreamland in their rimonial agency, and both select a picture dimensional cartoon set. The effect was sleep; when the children awaken, they of Olive. As soon as Olive enters, in gown quite startling. In LITTLE DUTCH MILL find that local merchants have visited their and veil, Bluto grabs her and tries to carry (1934), the Fleischers rotate a centrally pi- hovel, and transformed it into a Dream- her off to a Justice of the Peace. Popeye voted model of the inside of a windmill, as land on earth for the little tykes and their follows, but in the struggle is covered with two cartoon children are chased by the cement, and frozen into a statue (yet CONTINUED ON PAGE 53 another metamorphosis) . As Bluto drags Olive into Justice Wimpy's office Popeye manages to move under a pile driver, which breaks the cement and crushes him grotesquely into an accordian shape. Un- daunted, Popeye rushes into Wimpy's of- fice, takes his spinach, and defeats Bluto. But when Popeye sees his bride, looking none the better from her ordmal, he rushes back to his apartment, where he picks up an eggbeater and beats oeuf. By the mid-Thirties, the Fleischer studio was rivalled only by Walt Disney Produc- tions . Although Disney was more \"artisti- cally\" respectable at the time, Popeye had outstripped Mickey Mouse as the most popular cartoon character in the world. Both companies sought to refine their products in order to market more spectacu- lar cartoons, through longer color films. Many of the early Fleischer cartoons were tinted, including at least one sound \"Song Car-Tune,\" HAS ANYBODY SEEN KELLY? (1926), but the practice was discon- tinued in 1929, because it was unprofita- ble. Disney's success with Technicolor changed that; and in 1934, the F1eischers produced their first \"Color Classic\", POOR CINDERELLA. This was shot in a two-color process, because Disney's arrangement with Technicolor prevented other animators from using the process until 1935. Max compensated for this technical deficiency by devising the stereoptical pro- cess, which, he claimed, introduced a three-dimensional effect to animation. This process was a refinement of the first FILM COMMENT 51

SEX,DEAlH, phosis, that they are all Betty Boops. man character resembles Popeye. Both are In the 1932 MINNIE THE MOOCHER, the invincible, both series of cartoons often re- AND BEITY BOOP volved around a fight. Popeye and Fleischers created a film replete with Superman are each involved with foolish Images of sexuality and mortality, star- metamorphoses, sexual imagery, and women, and neither relationship is physi- tling in their Freudian density, resound fears of death and the unknown . Flowers, cally consummated. Both characters must throughout the Fleischer cartoons. trees, a blot of lipstick all come to life, and perform a ritual action before they gain Generally, the sexual elements .were Betty's nagging father is transformed into a their strength-Popeye must eat his stronger in the sound cartoons, while the phonograph. Within Betty's home, this spinach, and Superman must change into F1eischers' horrifyingly morbid humor, mutability is harmless, but outside it can his uniform. The sexual conflict between worthy of the East European Starevich, become a dangerous and frightening force. Clark Kent and his alter ego Superman is was emphasized in their silent work. The Betty is unhappy with her home life, but similar to that between Popeye and Bluto silent HAREM SCARUM (1928), for example, the Sight of ghosts in the cave to which she in certain Popeye cartoons, such as YA begins with a live-action .sequence show- flees with Bimbo persuades her to return GOTTA BE A FOOTBALL HERO (1935) . Just as ing a sultan as he paces the floor, ranting, home, just as Ko-Ko must return to the Olive falls in love with the powerful Bluto \"It's time that boob was here with the inkwell . and rejects the mild Popeye, so Lois Lane treasure .\" Enter the boob bearing a box, rejects the mild Clark Kent in favor of the which he gives to his master. The sultan In MINNIE THE MOOCHER, Betty and stronger Superman. Unlike Popeye, Clark opens the box, revealing an inkwell, from Bimbo elope, and flee to a deep cave (a Kent is never united with his love, and the which he produces Ko-Ko and Fitz. In one place associated with sexuality in the sexual tensions are not resolved as they are of the most gruesome moments in anima- Fleischer cartoons). Inside the cave, they in the Popeye cartoons. tion, the sultan picks them up, pulls out a are confronted with symbols of fertility and death: an androgynous walrus dances ALADDIN AND HIS WONDERFUL LAMP, a knife, and slices their heads off, the heads with phallic tusks and feminine grace; Popeye two-reeler of 1939, probably con- fall to the ground, blink once, and lie mo- skeletons court each other and dance; tains the last homosexual joke in Fleischer tionless. The violence here is committed by nursing kittens consume their mothers. cartoons. The genie of the lamp is an ef- a living character upon a cartoon character, Betty and Bimbo are frightened not only by feminate character-the final echo of a thus violating a basic law of cartoon fan- the ghosts, but by horrible images of their series of jokes like the one in DIZZY RED tasy: that only a totally artificial environ- union. RIDING HOOD (1931), when Betty skips mer- ment turns violence into humor. The Flei- rily along to Granny's house, picking schers' sound cartoons were not quite so The visual richness of MINNIE THE flowers, and singing\"A flower for Granny, grotesque as the silents in their use of MOOCHER is matched by SNOW WHITE for Granny . .. \" A tree minces out, grabs sadism and catastrophe. When violence (1933). Pursuing Betty through a cave, her flowers , and sings \"The fairies like was later used, its impact was softened by Ko-Ko is transformed into a pole-shaped them too!\" ritualization and stylization, as in the ghost, expressing both sexuality and \" Popeye\" series. death. The walls of the cave are painted By the end of the Thirties, the Betty Boop with ghastly scenes of dancing and gambl- cartoons had undergone a considerable Sexual elements in silent Fleischer car- ing skeletons. As Ko-Ko progresses change. Betty had softened from a sexy toons were less obvious than those in the through the cave, his body elongates and actress to a responsible young woman. sound cartoons. In NO EYES TODAY (1929), contracts in time with his singing of \"St. Her dress lengthened, she acquired a dog, Ko-Ko loses his eyes after he ogles a ba- James Infirmary Blues,\" and he turns into a grandfather, baby brother, and the duties thing beauty . This punishment for sexual- twenty-dollar gold piece in illustration of of house cleaning and baby sitting. The ity expresses a castration fear that is ex- the lyrics . character of Betty Boop was unable to sus- pressed in the 1924 KO-KO NEEDLES THE tain the change from the lower class sen- BOSS (where Ko-Ko's weapon wilts in a Different elements of this scene work at suality of the Depression to the middle duel with Max), and in HAREM SCARUM varying levels. Ko-Ko's phallic shape, and class respectability of the films of the late (where Ko-Ko and Fitz are chased through the death images on the walls of the vagi- Thirties. a harem by razor-wielding guards). In nal cave, confirm the link with the visions BETTY CO-ED, Bimbo tries to visit a of sex and death in MINNIE THE MOOCHER . Animator Shamus Culhane, who temptress. His inability to see Betty by But Ko-Ko's movements, his transforma- worked for both Disney and the Fleischers, himself, and the way in which he is held by tion into a gold coin, and the singing of remarked that while Disney worked to the motherly tree, reduce him to an impo- \"St. James Infirmary Blues\" do not fit the perfect his art by refining character, the ten t, childlike state. chase situation. The cave sequence be- Fleischers perfected theirs through the comes a musical and visual interlude elaboration of action and drawing. This Bimbo's loss of masculinity is dealt with within the chase. would account for the kind of compact im- again in the Talkartoon BIMBO'S INITIA- agery and rapid action of the Fleischers' TION (1931) . Bimbo falls down a manhole, The relationship between Popeye and SNOW WHITE, where the musical, sexual, where is is invited to join the masculine, Olive Oyl bears some resemblance to that and morbid imagery is so dense that one animal-like Order of Kucamunga Frater- which existed between Bimbo and Betty experiences it almost subliminally. nity. Bimbo's refusal is a refusal to recog- Boop. Whereas the early Betty Boop rep- nize his sexual identity. The fraternity resents a comically bohemian and attrac- As sexual as the images appear, it was members torture Bimbo, but he escapes. tive sexuality, Olive is a thin spinsterly not the conscious intention of the Fleischer Betty Boop calls \"Come in, Big Boy,\" and figure who dreams of sex with a pile of Studio to deal with sexual themes. Bimbo responds to this sexual invitation, romance magazines by her bed . But Animator Myron Waldman recalls their following Betty down a long vaginal cor- dreaming is all she can do. Whenever she surprise when a sequence of BOILESK (1935) ridor, as huge blades shash down, and is confronted with the possibility of sex was censored in Philadelphia. In A LAN- traps clash , in an expression of his castra- through an abduction by the powerful GUAGE ALL MY OWN (1935), Japanese stu- tion fears. Bimbo finally emerges in a room Bluto, she reflexively struggles to save her dents were consulted to determine if any filled with the fraternity members. One of virtue. Popeye loves Olive, but is usually of Betty Boop's gestures in an Oriental them removes his pelt to reveal that he is rendered harmless by Bluto, the elemental dance might be considered obscene in Betty. Bimbo agrees to join, and is re- male. Spinach acts as a kind of wonder Japan. This conflict between the expres- warded for this assumption of his sex role drug for Popeye's impotence, strengthen- sion and repression of sex by the Fleischer by the sigh t of all of the fraternity members ing the old one-eyed sailor so that he may Studio might explain the link between sex stripping to reveal, in another metamor- win his love and beat a more vigorous and death in their films: death is the threatened punishment for sexual desire. rival . In many ways, the Fleischer's Super- 52 JAN.-FEB . 1975

MAX & DAVE FLEISHER visual puns . During the fight between that existed at Disney's or Iwerks' studios . CONTINUED FROM PACE 57 Popeye and Sindbad, Popeye is squeezed Also, while Disney provided his staff with mother. The cartoon suffers further from in Sindbad's grip. First, his face turns as the latest of equipment, the F1eischers 9id impossibly sweet voices and a gooey red as a beet, and then actually turns into a not. As iate as GULLIVER'S TRAVELS (1939), choral accompaniment to the action. The beet-a new development from the usual the Fleischer Studio had only one Moviola, metamorphosis. while Disney had many. F1eischers, with a few exceptions, seemed Most importantly, SINDBAD was the first The strike went on for many months unable to deal with sentiment in an effec- true cartoon epic, impressive in length, and, although it was finally settled, the tive manner, a fault that was to harm their color, and spectacle. The low-angle shots new situation did not please the F1eischers. first sound feature. of the dark, massive Roc, and the accom- In February of 1938, the Fleischer Studios panying sound of rushing wind, give a announced plans to construct a $300,000 For two years, the \"Color Classics\" were sense of menace on a scale larger than any studio in Miami, far from the labor prob- the only Fleischer color cartoons. In 1936, of the F1eischers' previous works . Al- lems of New York . In the meantime, pro- the Fleischer Studio released a two-reel though the environment of A DREAM duction continued in New York, and the special, POPEYE THE SAILOR MEETS SINDBAD WALKING had been as interesting in its Fleischers released perhaps the best of the THE SAILOR, posSibly the most spectacular mechanical expressionism as the set of two-reel Popeye cartoons. cartoon made up to that time. The film SINDBAD was in its exotic expressionism, opens on Bluto, as Sindbad, who takes the the gritty city streets of the Popeye series POPEYE THE SAILOR MEETS ALI BABA'S audience on a musical tour of his stereopti- were forsaken for the exotic environments FORTY THIEVES (1937) , opens once more cal island, where the very stones resemble of MINNIE THE MOOCHER and SNOW WHITE. with a musical introduction by Biuto, this skulls and beasts. Sindbad spies Popeye, time as Abu Hassan, the scourge of the Wimpy, and Olive as they sail past his POPEYE THE SAILOR MEETS SINDBAD THE East, as he rides with his band through a island, and orders the Roc to \"Wreck that SAILOR was instantly successful, and was stereoptical desert. Popeye, Wimpy, and ship, but bring me the woman. \" The Roc often billed over its accompanying feature. Olive, stationed at a Coast Guard base, are destroys the ship, and abducts Olive, as It also won the studio its first Academy ordered by radio to stop Hassan. Popeye's Popeye stoically observes, \"That's the big- Award nomination for Short Subjects, but boat metamorphoses into an airplane, gest buzzard I ever saw.\" Popeye and the award went to Disney for THE COUNTRY which crashes in the desert. Wimpy swim to the island, where Popeye COUSIN (1936). Encouraged by success, the defeats the Roc, Boola the Two- headed Fleischer Studio began work on two more As day turns into night, and back again, Monster, and finally Sindbad. The film Popeye specials. Before they were re- we see Popeye, Olive, and Wimpy trudge ends as all the beasts of the island join leased, an unsettling event occurred at the wearily through the desert, as Popeye Popeye in the same song they sang with Leh: Betty and Bimbo sell \" Jippo\" to suckers in BErry BOOP, M.D. Center and right : The Lilliputians lead Gulliver into the c ity, in GULLIVER' STRAVELS. Sindbad at the film's beginning. Fleischer Studio in New York. whimsically mutters \"I wish there was a On April 20, 1937, the Commercial Art- boardwalk on this beach.\" When Olive col- POPEYE THE SAILOR MEETS SINDBAD THE lapses, Popeye pushes her into the shape SAILOR is refreshingly free of the sentimen- ists and Designer' s Union charged that of a camel, and they continue on until both talities of the \"Color Classic' series. It uses Max Fleischer had refused to negotiate the Fleischer cyclical plots but without the with the union after hearing the requests Olive and Wimpy collapse. Popeye trans- usual pessimism, grotesqueries, and mor- for pay increases and shorter hours. This forms them into a tank tread, and in this bid overtones of many of the earlier was so. While Dave had worked fairly form they rush through the desert and into Popeye cartoons. The film also shows a closely with the animators, Max preferred a town. While the travelers refresh them- concern for style and language that had to work on management, development of selves in a cafe, Hassan and his men raid been developed in earlier works . techniques, and story ideas. He took a the town. When Popeye pulls Hassan off paternalistic attitude to his employees; to his horse, Hassan bellows \"Think you're a Many Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons him the demands of the striking inkers, tough guy, eh?\" The embarrassed Popeye depended on the use of verbal humor for opaquers, and inbetweeners were like the blushes and says \"You can take me home comic effect. A similar outrageous use of demands of ungrateful children. Although for only $1.98.\" They fight, and Popeye is language occurs in SINDBAD. A sign greets salaried employees only received fifteen to defeated. Hassan and his men leave town visitors to the island with the message: twenty-seven dollars a week, this was on a with Olive and Wimpy, Popeye pursues \"Enter Not. Whosoever Passeth In, Pass- par with wages at other animation studios . them, and cuts his way into Hassan's cave eth Out.\" Later, when Popeye combats However, the work load was heavy, and with the flame of his pipe. Boola, the monster swears \"By Carbonate! since the F1eischers did not shoot pencil I make from you Chicken Fricassee Assisi!\" tests, there was not the margin for error The sumptuous, three-dimensional in- The film also includes one of the F1eischers' terior of the cave has no equal in any of the FILM COMMENT 53

MAX & DAVE FLEISHER CONTINUED Popeye's self- consciousness finds from studio to studio. A strong Disney greater expression in GOONLAND (1938) . A influence can be seen in the \"Color Clas- Fleischers' work. Popeye proceeds ap- climactic battle between Popeye, his father, prehensively past brightly -colored heaps and the hostile Goons is so fierce that the sic\" A KICK iN TIME (1940), animated by of jewels and gold, and finds that Olive film \"breaks,\" and all of the Goons falloff Shamus Culhane and AI Eugster after their and Wimpy have been enslaved by Has- the screen. Popeye comments, \"That was a return to the Fleischers from Iwerks and san. Popeye pulls out his spinach, says lucky break!\", pulls the two halves of the Disney. Spunky, a baby donkey, is sepa- \" Open Sez-Me,\" and the can miracu- broken film together, and the cartoon con- rated from his mother Hunky-a stock lously opens. His flexed bicep shows the tinues . Unlike all the earlier Fleischer Disney theme, but uncommon in the form of a tank within-a typically characters, Popeye does not need the in- Fleischer films. He is kidnaped and sold mechanistic expression of strength. In a tercession of an animator to control his into slavery in a scene that bears an amaz- battle royal, he defeats Hassan and the fate . ing resemblance to the end of the Pleasure forty theives, and returns in glory to the Island sequence in Disney's PINOCCHIO. In Arab town . As the Betty Boop character became A KICK IN TIME, the usual stereoptical pro- more domesticated in the late Thirties, her cess was discarded in favor of a less effec- ALI BABA was a distinct improvement popularity declined, and when Mae Ques- tive approximation of the Disney Multip- over the first two-reel Popeye. It replaces tel refused to move with the studio to lane camera effect. Also the characters Sindbad's long, tedious musical introduc- Miami in 1939, the series was dropped . were more naturalistic than the funky orig- tion, with a shorter introduction of Abu The Popeye character continued to change inals developed by Myron Waldman. Hassan that is intercut with the introduc- as well, becoming increasingly gentle, Many Fleischer characteristics remained, tion of Popeye . ALI BABA shows much often to the poin t of being foolish. In LEAVE however, including a long passage de- more verbal and visual w it than its pred- WELL ENOUGH ALONE (1939) , Popeye frees voted to the process of harnessing Spunky, ecessor. And it is enriched by a reference to all the animals in Olive's pet shop despite a and occasional Fleischeresque language, some of the darker psychological themes wise parrot's advice to leave well enough like \" I'll be back in a flash with the trash.\" alone. Popeye realizes that he is wrong of the earlier works . When Popeye first en- when the dog catcher rounds up the hun- In 1938, the Fleischer Studio moved to ters Abu Hassan's cave, he remarks: \" I gry strays. In PUTTIN' ON THE ACT (1940) , Miami, where the staff was swollen by the don ' t like it in here a bit!\" This is rem- Popeye and Olive polish. up their routines addition of hundreds of artists hired to iniscent of the anxieties of Ko-Ko and after reading a newspaper article on the work on a sound feature, GULLIVER'S Bimbo in the caves and hallways of TRAVELS. KO- KO'S HAUNTED HOUSE, BIMBO 'S Continuation of the Lilliputi an montage from GULLIVER'S TRAVEL S. INITIATION, and SNOW WHITE. renaissance of vaudeville. Swee'pea dam- Perhaps part of the reason that the pens their enthusiasm when he points out Fleischer cartoons changed was the impact The last of the Popeye specials was not that the paper is several decades old. of \"Disneyfication.\" Many of the Fleischer the equal of the first two. ALADDIN AND HIS Popeye's senile father, in WITH POOPDECK staff of the Forties had worked for Disney WONDERFUL LAMP (1939) , a Hollywoodized PAPPY (1940), wants to spend his nights or Iwerks in the Thirties, often moving version of the Aladdin story, is interesting carousing, but Popeye worries about the from studio to studio. A strong Disney in- for two reasons. First, it has a different old man's health. After many attempts to fI uence can be seen in the \"Color Classic\" A type of self-consciousness from the silent get Pappy to bed, Popeye finally chains KICK IN TIME (1940), animated by Shamus Fleischer films . No animator appears in the him down . Popeye climbs into his own Culhane and AI Eugster after their return Popeye cartoons, yet Popeye is aware that bed, turns out the light, and says \"Good- to the Fleischers from Iwerks and Disney. he is in a film. When he kisses Olive in night Pappy.\" No answer. Popeye turns on Spunky, a baby donkey, is separated from ALADDIN, Popeye hesitates shyly and says , the light, and finds that he is chained to his his mother Hunky-a stock Disney \" Gosh, I've never done this in Technicolor bed, and the old man has escaped . This theme, but uncommon in the Fleischer before. \" This kind of self-consciousness was a far cry from the gruff character of films. He is kidnaped and sold into slavery had occurred in POPEYE THE SAILOR, when POPEYE THE SAILOR. in a scene that bears an amazing resem- a newspaper proclaimed Popeye as a star. blance to the end of the Pleasure Island se- It was developed further in HOLD THE WillE Perhaps part of the reason that the quence in Disney's PINOCCHIO. In A KICK IN (1936), when he temporarily forgets his Fleischer cartoons changed was the impact TIME, the usual stereoptical process was part. Olive has to remind him that he is of \"Disneyfication.\" Many of the Fleischer discarded in favor of a less effective ap- supposed to take his spinach. \"I never staff of the Forties had worked for Disney proximation of the Disney Multiplane thought of that,\" he replies. or Iwerks in the Thirties, often moving camera effect. Also the characters were 54 JAN .-FEB . 1975

more naturalistic than the funky orig inals comic-sexual relationships with a blandly GULLIVER'S TRAVELS was tried o ut in a developed by Myron Waldman . Many \"d assy, \" sexless, over-romanticized one. \"Gabby Color Cartoon\" or an \"Animated Fleischer cha rac teristics remai ned , Antics,\" but none was success ful. Ex- however, including a long passage de- Many of the backgro unds of GULLIVER'S penses were high at the studio, with a staff voted to the process ofhamessing Spunky, TRAVELS recall-notalways to their credit- of hundreds, and this was aggrava ted and occasional Fleischeresque language, the backgrounds of earlier Fleischer films. when Paramount ob tained the rights to like ''I'll be back in a flash with the trash .\" The interior of King Little's palace shows animate Superma n, the popular Action the same kind of d etailed chiaroscuro as Comics character, in hopes of repeating In 1938, the Fleischer Studio moved to the backgro unds of MINNIE THE MOOCHER Popeye's success, despite Dave Fleischer' s Miami, where the staff was swollen by the or SNOW WHITE, but without the menacing protests that production costs would make addition of hundred s of ar ti sts hired to imagery. Perhaps the bes t sequences in the any profit impossible. work on a so und feature , GULLIVER'S film deal with mechanical processes. The binding of Gulliver begins with a bit of SUPERMAN (1941) revealed some styli stic TRAVELS. comic foreshadowing. As the tiny figures difficulties that the Popeye cartoon s did ad vance on the sleeping giant, they tie not have. Segar's style of drawing had GULLIVER'S TRAVELS did well at the box more in co mmon with the Fleischer sty le of office, but the Fleischers were dissatisfied. down a particul arly noisy member of their the early Thirties than the drawings of Para mount, eager to duplicate the popular- party. Then, by the light of the moon , they Superman cartoonist Joe Shuster had in ity of SNOW WHITE ANDTHE SEVEN DWARFS, tie cables aro und Gulliver, construct had forced the Fleischers to rush their film Left and right : Clark Kent and hi s alter-ego , Superma n. Below : In the model c hart, note discrepancy between cartoon and rotoscoped characte rs. Model Chart for 'GULLlVE~S TRAVELS' COMPA•ItA'LTIIIVICENILS'II'VZOEIS06-JO/IFMJMIt&A.vI»N ..C.H..\"R~TERS . through production. Max and Dave felt cranes, and lift him onto a cart. Hundreds the early Forties. As a result, SUPERMAN that the film suffered, and indeed it had of cartoon horses are sho wn in heroic ang- was an unhappy amalgam of different many problems. It lacked stylistic unity. les as they strain under the weight of styles, combining Shuster' s more Gulliver, Prince David, and Princess Glory Gulliver. Similar attention is given to the naturalistic artwork for the heroes, w ith were heavily rotoscoped, but the other grooming of Gulliver with scythes and the Fleischers' more grotesque style for the characters were dra wn in the free style of rakes. Unfortunately, more detail is given villain . the Popeye cartoons. The contrast often to these physical properties of Gulliver the made the rotoscoped characters look giant, than to the personal qualities of Gul- The \"Superman Color Cartoons\" were awkwardly lifelike, and the others crudely liver the man. well received, but were too expensive to drawn. yield any significant profits. The Fleischers Some of the darker themes in the Flei- desperately needed to have a hit with their The script suffered from an apparent in- schers' earlier work are repeated in next feature, MR. BUG GOES TO TOWN (1941). ability of the Fleischer Studio to make the GULLIVER'S TRAVELS. Gulliver's pistol is The advance publicity for the film had an hero or romantic leads interesting . The ob- taken from him when he is bound, in sym- ominous ring to it. Not since the final days server does not care whether the lovers are bolic castration . He does not have the of Red Seal Pictures had the studio been so united, and one suspects that the F1ei- power to return home until the gun is re- press-conscious. Weird publicity stunts schers did not care either. More attention turned to him. Furthermore, Prince David were tried, such as an $185,000 ins urance was given to the subsidiary comic charac- does not marry Princess Glory until he policy with Lloyd s of London on the hand s ters, particularly King Little. Like the takes this pistol away from his father's of the head animators. Even hangnails Popeye of the later cartoons, Little is reluc- agents. were to be covered. tant to fight, but is on the winning side, and has Popeye's benevolent, slightly The Forties found the Fleischers without MR. BUG GOES TO TOWN was billed as the foolish quality. Bombo resembles Bluto in a replacement for the defunct Betty Boop first feature cartoon with an original s tory, series . The donkeys Hunky and Spunky, although Dave Fleischer admits that he physique and temperament. In contrast, had a limited success, but a was influenced by Maeterlinck's Life of a Princess Glory and Prince David are the proto-Flintstones series of \"Stone Age\" Bee. The film opens with lyrical tracking antithesis of Betty and Bimbo or Popeye cartoons proved very unpopular. In one shots through the sky, down past the and Olive, replacing the former lower class form or another, every comic character of b!lildings of a stereoptical New York, to a FILM COMMENT 55

MAX & DAVE FLEISHER CONTINUED Frank Capra' s films go beyond the similar- the insect world. This is similar to Disney's ity of the titles. In physique, sincerity, and use of rotoscoping in DUMBO, where the park, where a man discards a lit match . a faith in the future, Hoppity resembles circus laborers are rotoscoped, but the The camera follows the match down to the Capra's arch-heroes, James Stewart and animals are not, defining two different, but world of the insects, finishing a poetic Gary Cooper. Mr. Beetle is the dark force related worlds. This separation between transition from the cosmic to the micro- that threatens the well being of the animal and human was a fairly late de- cosmic. MR. BUG tells the story of a young community, much like Edward Arnold in velopment in the Fleischers' work. In early grasshopper named Hoppity, his wooing MEET JOHN DOE and MR. SMITH GOES TO Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons, the two of the lovely Honey Bee, and his search for WASHINGTON. Hoppity experiences the mingled on an equal basis. The Jitterbug a safe home for the entire insect commun- moment of disillusionment and despair sequence where Hoppity gets electrified is ity whose existence is threatened by the that strikes Capra's heroes, but regains his an abstract interlude similar to DUMBO'S construction of a skyscraper. The insects' faith and that of his fellow citizens at the Pink Elephants On Parade sequence in its hopes become linked with the hopes of end of the film . use of music and image. struggling songwriter Dick Dickens, who plans to rebuild his home where the sky- Nevertheless, the film does show a Perhaps the greatest weakness of both scraper is to be built, if his song is sold. The number of typical Fleischer features. The the Fleischer features is that they do not evil C. Bagley Beetle, however, has designs preoccupation with construction echoes deal with the great fantasies and fears of on Honey, and tries to thwart everyone's GULLIVER'S TRAVELS, as the process of childhood, as did the Disney films. Instead plans to achieve his own nefarious ends. building the insect wedding chapel and they concentrate on adult anxieties-fear Beetle's attempt to hide Dickens' check the skyscraper show. Rotoscoping and of death, sexual fears, and fears of fails, and although the skyscraper is built, conventionally animated figures are used change-that could not effect children . Hoppity, Honey, and the other insects find more successfully than in the earlier fea- Also, the studio suffered from a rift be- a home in Dickens' penthouse apartment ture. Instead of producing a disunity of tween Max and Dave Fleischer. garden. style, here the two styles illustrate a barrier between the rotoscoped human world and Since 1937, when they clashed in a per- The connection between MR . BUG and sonal matter, the brothers had refused to talk to one another. Apparently, they were MR. BUG GOES TO TOWN . Above left: the insect world. able to function in this manner. Dave di- Above right : Hoppity and Honey Bee embrace. rected the films, and Max handled techni- Below: The human and insect worlds interact in the construction locale. cal and administrative matters. Early in 1942, Dave resigned, although he retained his share of the company, and within the year he was producing \"Color Phantasies\" and \"Color Rhapsodies\" for Columbia, some of which were remakes of earlier Fleischer cartoons. In the meantime, the returns on MR. BUG were not as good as had been hoped. Due to the war, the European and Japanese markets, which had made up a great part of the Fleischer audience, were cut off. It also seems as if Paramount wanted the Fleischer Studio to founder: the Para- mount publicity office had actually sent advisors to Disney's studio to help prepare publicity for BAMBI. Max was now so deeply in debt that he was forced to sell the company to Paramount. In mid-1942, the studio was renamed the Famous Studio, with Fleischer employees Seymour Kneitel and Isadore Sparber as studio heads. The staff was pared drastically, and the studio re- turned to New York, where it was to pro- duce cartoons that continued to decline in quality. After losing the studio, Max developed a gunsight recording mechanism for the army. He worked for the Jam Handy Or- ganization, a Detroit concern that pro- duced advertising films and educational filmstrips, and then returned to the Bray Studio . In the Fifties, he was involved in a short-lived \"Ko- Ko\" cartoon series for television. Dave remained at Columbia for several years, and then joined Universal as a special effects man, where, he recalls, he painted cracks on someone's glasses for THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE. Max Fleischer died on November 12, 1972. Dave lives in semi-retirement in Hollywood, California. The brothers never did speak to each other again..~~ 56 JAN.-FEB. 1975

Grim The great Grim Natwick was in town. Natwick The animator who created Betty ' Boop for Max and Dave Fleischer, and who was He created Hetty Hoop, responsible for anima ting eighty-four animated Snow White, and scenes in Disney's SNOW WHITE AND THE after 50 years of cartooning SEVEN DWARFS (mostly of the young prin- cess herself), was in New York completing is still going strong. the last leg of a cross-country journey visit- ing friends and relatives. \"I've been draw- by John Canemaker ing Betty Boops and Mickey Mouses and Sinclair dinosa urs and all the various things we used to animate, for the nieces and nephews as I come across the country. And you'd be surprised at what they bring you to draw with and on!\" Grim Natwick is considered by his peers to be perhaps the finest animator of the female form and character. Certainly he is a pioneer in this special area; for besides his masterly work on the Misses Boop and White, Natwick brought to life Princess Glory in Max and Dave Fleischer's GULLIVER'S TRAVELS; Nelly Bly, the champagne-glass-shaped sexpot in U.P.A.'s ROOTY-TOOT-TOOT (1952) directed by John Hubley; and most recently, the Mad Holy Old Witch in Richard Williams' long-awaited feature cartoon, THE COBBLER AND THE THIEF. Natwick claims this will be his final animation in a career of brilliant versatility which has allowed him to mas- ter at one time or another such diverse characters as Mr. Magoo, Popeye, Woody Woodpecker, and Mickey Mouse. Grim Natwick was born in the lumber region of Wisconsin. \"I never give my age. If they know I worked on Betty Boop they can make their own guesses. I guess you can call me a veteran, an antique, or one of the pioneers.\" In high school, Natwick was a track star: \"I was never a great sprinter, but I knew the form of running the hurdles, and form Left: Grim Natwick, by Richard Williams. Above: Richard William s and Grim Natwickatthedrawing board in preparation for THE COBBLER AND THE THIEF. FILM COMMENT 57



wood censors as \"lewd.\" The Fleischers except he had a blunt nose and he wore a thing.' So he'd have the old character come were sued by Helen Kane who claimed funny hat. Otherwise they were almost the in and turn on the water faucet and maybe Betty was stealing her trademark, but Miss same characters, which helped me because mice would come out! Everything except Kane lost the ensuing court case when it after drawing Flip for a while, when I fi- water.\" was revealed that she had picked up the nally did go to Disney'S, Mickey came very \"Boop-Boop-A-Doop\" from a lesser- easy.\" After almost three years working at Walt Disney was the first cartoon pro- known black singer, Baby Esther. the Iwerks Studio, Natwick decided to ducer to utilize his various animators' in- make overtures to the Disney organiza- dividual talents by allowing them to Natwick animated the first six of about tion. \"Someone told me that if you ever spedalize. Some animators specialized in one hundred Betty Boop cartoons. Some turned Walt down he'd never hire you.\" heavil?s (Bill Tytla's Stromboli from of the \"pure cartoonists\" who had to draw But Ted Sears intervened on Natwick's be- PINOCCHIO, and the devil in FANTASIA 'S and animate her following Natwick, and half and in early 1934 Natwick joined the Bald Mountain sequence), while other who did not have the academic art back- Disney Studio. men found comic characters more to their ground he had acquired in Vienna, found liking (Norm Ferguson, Bill Roberts, and her troublesome . \"I had gone to life classes At that time Walt Disney had already Shamus Culhane became Pluto experts). for three years over there, plus previous art Disney, of course, was well-aware of education here, and most of the men in started preliminary work on SNOW WHITE, Natwick's expertise in animating the animation then-almos t all of them-were and was enlarging his production staff of female form, so Natwick attended many of just cartoonists. They didn' t pretend to artists, animators, writers, musicians, and the early meetings regarding Snow draw anything that had any serious man- technicians to an eventual total of almost White's design and personality concept. ner. I guess I was probably the first person seven hundred employees by late 1937 \"They didn't want her to look like a prin- to animate a female character and really try when the film was completed. The Mickey cess, really. They wanted her to look like a to develop the feminine qualities. The Mouse shorts and Silly Symphonies were cute little girl who cotild be a princess. So early animation was simply trying to make in full production and Natwick at first instead of a little crown, it ended with a lit- something funny, and if anything popped worked on several of these films: MICKEY'S tle bow; and with the hair we did many into your head to make it funny, you did FIRE BRIGADE (1935), MUSICLAND (1935), . things. They allowed me two months of it. \" experimental animation before they ever COOKIE CARNIVAL (1935), ALPINE CLIMBERS asked me to animate one scene in the pic- It was a scene of Betty Boop climbing up (1936), MICKEY'S POLO GAME (1936), MOTHER ture. I might even take a scene we knew a rapidly moving locomotive engine that GOOSE GOES HOLLYWOOD (1938). would be there, that had this song in it, caught the talent-searching eye of Walt and play around with it and see how the Disney. Natwick had animated the scene Art classes, under the direction of Don test looked . Then we'd say, 'Well, we're with detailed touches unusual for that Graham, had been started by Disney in having trouble with the sleeves or some- period in animation, such as her hair and 1932 to prepare his artists for complex fu- thing. Can they be Simplified?' We would dress being whipped about her by the ture projects. \"1 went to the night classes bring up any question with the designers. 1 wind. (Natwick calls it \"the first serious and there was a life class there all the time, had a lot to do with the designing of it be- animation I ever did.\") Natwick was soon and of course, there were certain talks by cause I would try things myself. But Snow visited in New York by Roy Disney, Walt's Rico LeBrun, Jean Chariot, and that great White was a sweet and graceful little girl brother and business partner. \"Roy came pianist and musician, the tall, skinny guy and we just tried not to down her up. Betty out and took me to dinner every night for who composed the music for SNOW WHITE, Boop gets quite wild at times, you know, about a week. It was a glorious time to be Frank Churchill. He told us how to inter- but it's in her character. See, about ten dif- an animator. We were offered usually two pret a certain type of music from a ferent artists worked on that character and jobs a month, but we respected contracts. musician's point of view. I remember once they kept sending up models to us. You But I accepted thl? Iwerks shop [in I had a grasshopper-this was in the POLO California] because at that time the rumor picture--who played his violin . Frank very in the East was that the genius of the politely and casually said, 'Don't you think [Disney Studio] was Iwerks. I'm awfully it would work better if the bow were going glad I did.\" in the opposite direction?' Violinists get certain notes by bowing up and certain Ub Iwerks was Walt Disney's former notes by bowing down. I didn't know that. partner and the designer of Mickey So it did work better. Mouse. He was thl? sole animator on the first five Mickey Mouse shorts and the de- \"They gave you all sorts of help that no signer and animator of the earliest \"Silly other studio in the world could ever give Symphonies.\" Iwerks has been described you. You had a hundred very talented ar- by Christopher Finch as being \" ... next to tists there at that time, like [Gustave] Walt Disney himself...the most important Tenggren . With THE OLD MILL [1937], I single figure in the development of the guess he spent a year on that making [Disney] Studio.\" In 1930, however, sketches. Albert Hurter had a big room Iwerks quit the Disney operation and set and a big desk and did exactly what he up his own studio. Natwick recalls: pleased. Walt would say, 'Well, we're going \"Iwerks did everything well. He could to make an animal picture, it'll be located draw like a fiend. He'd make a few draw- so and so. See if you can think of funny lit- ings then run down to the basement to tle positions.' And Albert would play work on his multiplane camera. We had a around with it. The Disney Story Depart- multiplane camera before Disney did.\" But ment had superb artists. They were all Iwerks was not the business genius Disney good cartoonists, fellows like Webb Smith, was, and he didn't have Disney's talent for Ted Sears. story editing, nor his dramatic sense. And after these guys came up with a Iwerks created a character called Flip the funny idea, they turned it over to that big, Frog that proved unpopular. \"If you picked muscular professional football player who him apart,\" says Natwick of Flip, \"he was was always bumping in and out, Roy Wil- designed very much like Mickey Mouse liams. He would turn out eight or ten gags. For instance, if you had to turn on a faucet, they'd say, 'Well, this scene is dead. Hand it to Roy and see if he can think of some- FILM COMMENT 59

M ad Hol y Old Witch of the Desert Mountain for Richard Williams' THE COBBLER AND THE THIEF. GRIM NATWICK CONTINUED years before. To some, Snow White seems ADVICE FROM A MASTER: \"younger\" in contrast to the Disney see the different models in that book [771e heroines Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. \"The only advice for anyone who wants to Art of Walt Disney]. \" Natwick responded : \"I guess so. We were animate is to draw every second they can, younger, too. Maybe that had something and work with a good animator.\" Natwick Disney hired eighteen-year-old Marjorie to do with it. The problem was too new. casts a cold eye on a certain group of West Belcher (later Marge Champion) as a We were too young to know what the hell Coast TV animation factories claiming they model to aid the animators in capturing we were doing. I don't know how we did \"are doing nothing to improve animation. Snow White's expressions, movement, it. I don't think anyone does really.\" They're just trying to make a quick buck so and poses. Miss Belcher would dance and that they can make another quick buck, act scenes from the script for a live-action During his twenty months' concentra- and it's a shame. I have ideas on what can camera (see Life magazine, 4 April 1938, tion on SNOW WHITE, Natwick completed be done. I don't think animation has even pp. 18-19) as part of a technique known as eighty-four scenes (or a tenth of the foot- been tried yet. Animation can stand ten \"rotoscoping .\" Natwick explains how this age), many of them major components of years of experimentation, particularly in a aid was used: \"They would take a film of the story. He was assisted at times by five feature picture.\" younger animators who \"cleaned-up\" his this girl acting out something. Then they basic rough \"pose\" drawings, and fol- Natwick's natural gift for \"teaching would put a bunch of beginning artists in a lowed his instructions in the preparation of without teaching\" demonstrates itself in dark room where they could run the film inbetween drawings to smooth out the several casually mentioned tips on anima- over so it reflected against the animation action's flow. Near the picture's deadline tion technique which are the result of years board exactly with pegs and everything came a rush order for completion gnd spent mastering his craft: \"We used to bet the same as we used it. And then they Natwick pushed out thirty-five feet of film, $10 to a dime that you could take any would trace, rather hurriedly sometimes, or about a thousand drawings a week. character and walk it across the room and every second [frame]. In a photograph get a laugh out of it. And it still can be done you'd lose half; they'd trace as much as While Natwick was on vacation after by the animator. We used to have about they could see, and give us the action as working on some animation in the twenty-four different walks. We would nearly as they could see it. Then these \"Sorcerer's Apprentice\" sequence from have a certain motion on the body, a cer- drawings were photostatted and given to FANTASIA and some layout for PINOCCHIO, tain motion on the head, a certain kind of us. We would put those on our board and his car slid up a wet embankment and fell patter walk, a big step, or the 'Goofy-walk' then recreate, you know, this character, over, tearing his right arm (\"my drawing that Art Babbitt developed. We made a this Snow White. arm\") out of the socket. \"While I was in a study of walks and dances. While the op- plaster cast I visited New York and the posite arm naturally moves with the oppo- \"For instance, her chin would come Fleischer Studio. They were building the site leg, we would break those rules eight about here, then we had to cut off her new studio down in Florida and they or ten different ways to make the walk in- shoulders and start from the bottom. You wanted me to come down there, much to teresting. Lots of silly little commercial car- kept a short blouse so that if you keep the my surprise. So I thought, well, I've been toons have been saved because there was a legs long enough, she did dancing and at Disney's four years. Why not? I always walking and things. The Snow White we enjoyed working with Fleischer and I drew was usually only five or six heads knew them very well. high. We had to reconstruct the character over [the model drawingsl Very often \"I never had any gripe with Disney'S. It about all we could use might be the leg ac- was a great place to work, terrific experi- tion and then we could exaggerate that if ence, and, I believe, the greatest college of we wanted to . And very often some of our animation in the world . Disney had only best animation we could do without the one rule: whatever we did had to be better rotoscope. The best animation, generally, than anybody else could do it, even if you that I think I ever did-and that's what had to animate it nine times, as I once did. [Dick] Williams thought and that's why he The animation is still gorgeous, but now wanted me to come to London-was they've lost their storymen-the former where she runs down the stairs. It was too newspaper cartoonists and comic-strip risky a thing to rotoscope so I had to ani- mate that and it turned out to be one of the men.\" nicest... I think we could have animated a lot of that probably. But we didn't know. The new Fleischer Studio in Miami was Nobody had ever done a character like this. It was a new problem for all of us .\" the second largest unit for the production of animated cartoons in the country. The Many of the older Disney artists still at $1,250,000 complex occupied an entire city the Studio today consider Snow White the block and employed about seven hundred most successful female animation ever people producing thirty cartoons a year for done there; so much so that, in the 1973 Paramount release . On GULLIVER'S TRAVEis, Fleischer's first feature cartoon, feature cartoon ROBIN HOOD, the animation Natwick was Sequence Director of one thousand feet of film and animated the of the fox Maid Marian dancing at a forest third great female character of his career: party is' the same used to make Snow White dance at the dwarfs' party thirty-six 60 JAN .-FEB. 1975

GRIM NATWICK ON ANIMAnON the Princess Glory. He deep-sea fished mation in Europe. I had no sample reel. I and worked on some Popeye shorts after went in once to make a sort of try-out. I funny walk in there. GULLIVER. Money and film were becoming was scared; 1didn't speak English . I didn't \"The editing of a picture an animator has scarce due to the War, and all studios with- know what they were talking about. So I out government contracts for training to learn, too. An animator should spend films-necessary to keep revenue flowing was just waiting, waiting, and Grim came days experimenting to learn how to move as the European market shrank-were in by. U .PA . had an awful lot of work and [camera] fields. Never waste a drawing, trouble. Natwick returned to California they needed an assistant to him, so they but always get everything out of a drawing and worked with Walter Lantz on two told him I needed the work. And so I that you can. hundred Army Educational films and worked with Grim for twelve years . Woody Woodpecker shorts. He spent a \"If we wanted to know how to do some- year animating in an aircraft plant while il- \"First we worked at U.PA . as a team, thing [at Disney's], we'd go to the greatest lustrating comic books on the side. After then when U.PA. closed down we went guy in the world who could do it. 1learned the War, he joined U.PA . over to Bob Lawrence . Then we free- how to deliver a punch from Art Babbitt. lanced. We always free-lanced as a team. He said, 'Don't ever show the hand hitting U.PA. (United Productions of America) We picked up a job, then more and more it the chin; show the hand after it's past the happened he did half of animation, I did chin and the chin has moved out of place was formed by a small group of former half of animation, and I 'cleaned up' the and there's lots of stars where the contact Disney artists, among them Stephen whole thing so it looked like one. We did was.' Bosustow, Bill Hurtz, Pete Burness, John several pieces of animation for John Hubley, and Bob Cannon, who sought to [Hubley] and this is how John knew me . I \"There's a vocabulary of two thousand prod uce cartoons more freely and in a saw SNOW WHITE in 1938 and I thought, things-just as if they were two thou- wider variety of individual styles than was 'Now this is something I want to do.' Isn't sand separate words-that you have to allowed at the Disney Studio. Ultimately, it strange that SNOW WHITE got me into learn about animation. If you've got that U.PA.'s diversification and encourage- animation and I really learned my anima- vocabulary, you're a great animator. If you ment of different work opened the doors to tion from Grim.\" have two hundred of them, you could get a general change in approach to cartoon by today. A lot of animators are getting by style and content not only in America but In 1968, Natwick retired from animation with a very small vocabulary. What do you around the world . Their movement away know about animation today and what from realistic, natural settings, and charac- in order to pursue oil painting. \"I spent my will you know ten years from now? Youll ters, and toward sharper, more sophisti- whole life drawing and I went to Vienna find that in ten years youll be able to do in cated, even cynical, abstractions of with the idea of being a serious painter. In one hour what you take a day to do now. realism, returned animation to its basic order to earn a living I had to get into ani- That's because you keep piling knowledge magic of making the impossible plausible. mation, so I spent most of my life there . upon knowledge till pretty soon you have But I decided to quit and wanted to do five hundred words in that vocabulary that Grim Natwick worked on many U.PA. some painting, and I've spent the better will make it a lot easier.\" classic shorts, including TROUBLE part of about five years trying to reach that INDEMNITY (1950: the second Mr. Magoo point. \" cartoon), WILLIE THE KID (1952), GERALD MCBOING BOING (1950) , and ROOTY In 1973 Natwick was coaxed out of re- TOOT-TOOT (1952). He was Supervising tirement by an invitation to lecture on his Animator on countless TV commercials at U.P A. 's New York office, and when that approach to the art of animation to branch closed in May 1958, he free-lanced younger animators at Dick Williams' Lon- successfully with Tissa David for ten years . don studio. The agreed-upon two months stretched into eight months because he Tissa David is one of the few women \"got so intrigued with that witch\"-the animators to have made it to the top of her fascinating old crone in Williams' feature profession. Her animation is much in de- THE COBBLER AND THE THIEF. mand by TV commercial, industrial, and educational film producers. Most recently Film animation celebrates its diamond she was sale animator of John Hubley's anniversary this year; this date is based on award-winning COCKABOODY (1973) . \" I the existence of a paper print of an ani- learned animation from Grim Natwick. I mated cartoon in the Library of Congress think he is the greatest animator that ever by an unknown artist working for the Edi- lived and he is the greatest teacher of ani- son Company in 1900. Grim Natwick is yet mation. Not only does he have that know- another of the many individual artists who ledge, but he has a way to give it away. have toiled anonymously under corporate Even today I don't do one line without banners and are only now receiving long- something in my brain that Grim told me. I overdue public recognition of their special came to New York in 1955 [after working as contributions. Grim Natwick has always an animator in Paris and Budapest]. At had total command of the animation that time U.PA . was the big name in ani- \"vocabulary\" he refers to; he has spoken it fluently and with eloquence throughout a long and distinguished career advanCing the new art of film animation. 'X, THE COBBLER AND THE THIEF : The Mad Holy Old Witch FILM COMMENT 61 examines the Enchanted Prince before beginning her magic.

~~~~(Q)(Q)rMrrrM~ Bill Tytla got a bright look in his eyes when I mentioned, one Saturday after- ~ noon in the Spring of 1934, that except LQ) for The New Yorker, most magazines weren't buying my cartoons any @~(Q)~lQ)W~W more-because the Depression had Meanwhile, back in New York . .. by!. Klein driven them out of business. \"You were an animator before you jumped into THE SUNSHINE MAKERS. Above: The \"g loom \" characters. Below: The \" joys\" ca rrying bottled sunshine fortheirwar magazine cartooning,\" he said. \"You aga inst the \"g loom s.\" Redrawn for FILM COMMENT by I. Klein. animated on The Katzenjammer Kids, Mutt and Jeff, Krazy Kat. Maybe you could do some free-lance animation to give your income a lift. Burt Gillett is back in town, as directing supervisor of the Van Buren Animation Studio. \" Bill, who would later become a top animator at the Disney studio (designing important sequences for SNOW WHITE, FANTASIA, and DUMBO), had signed on at Van Buren after learning how serious the studio was about competing with Disney. The boss, Mr. Amedee Van Buren, had hired Burt Gillett, the direc- tor of the smash THREE LITTLE PIGS, away from Disney at the then-fabulous salary of $400 per week. If that kid Disney in Hollywood made a big hit, Mr. Van Buren reasoned, it must have been be- cause he had the right director: Burt Gil- lett. Now Burt was in the process of reor- ganizing the Van Buren studio. When I arrived at their offices in the 729 Seventh Avenue building (it still stands, just off Broadway, and still houses a number of film companies), I immediately realized the extent of Burt's reorganization . By a coincidence, it was the same floor of the same building that had once been the location of Hearst's In- ternational, where 1'd held my first job at animated cartooning. But the office was changed beyond recognition. Walls, par- titions, everything had been rearranged -except for the Men's Room. Burt Gillett had r:hanged, too, since the days ten years earlier when we' d worked together for The Associated Animators in Long Island City. Now he wore an expensive-looking suit that fit perfectly and was pressed to cardboard sharpness. In our conversation he told me I could either animate or do story work, but on staff-no free-lance . I chose to animate , we agreed on a salary, and I started the following Monday. I did not meet Mr. Van Buren then or at any other time during my months at the Van Buren Studio. But along the way I learned that he had made his money on the fringes of show business-supplying peep-show machines to Penny Arcades -before buying into the Aesop's Fables Studio, which was subsequently named after its new owner. At work, he sat be- hind a desk that hid his shortness of sta- ture, and made any employee sum- moned into the Sanctum stand in his presence: there were no other chairs in the room! When I reported to work the following Monday, I saw some familiar faces 62 JAN .-FEB. 1975

~. Above left: In THE SUN SHIN EM A KERS, the \" joys\" attac k the \" glooms\" with bottled sunshine. Left: The \" gloom s\" are happil y transformed into \" joys.\" Redrawn for FILM COMME NT by I. Klein . Above : I. Klein self-portrait. (George Stallings, George Rufle, and humanized, for a film Jim Tyer directed, in response I sent Ted a story board of my Carl \"Mike\" Mayer) and some new ones: and scenes with a parrot for a adaptation of \"The Emperor' s New Bill Littlejohn , Jack Zander, Pete Bur- \"Toonerville Folks\" cartoon; also little Clothes,\" with the characters drawn as ness, and a guy named Frank Tashlin. flame characters for a picture directed by familiar, fairy-tale men and women. Gillett had three directors working Steve Muffati. under him: Jim Tyer, Steve Muffati, and In view of later developments at the Ted Eshbaugh. I was assigned to Later on I animated about twenty-five Disney studio, I believe Ted's letter to me Eshbaugh's unit, to animate a cartoon or thirty per cent of a color cartoon, THE is worth quoting from: \" Walt liked the called PASTRYTOWN; my sequence in- SUNSHINE MAKERS, for Ted Eshbaugh-a way that story you worked up was pre- volved a lot of elves acting out the trim- story about some happy sunshine elves, sented. Having just completed THE PIED ming on a wedding cake. I was pleased in conflict with gloomy elves, who used PIPER, we've just come to the conclusion to discover that, though my experience their secret weapon of bottled sunshine that our best screen values are small, in animation was completely with silent to disperse the forces of gloom . As the cute, animal characters, and we haven't films, I could catch on quickly to the picture was being finished, there was an advanced far enough to handle humans technique of making cartoons talk. ominous mood in the studio . People properly and make them perform well were being fired before they could really enough to compete with real actors. \" Each Saturday (we worked five- prove themselves, and Burt Gillett and-a-half days a week), Burt Gillett seemed more interested in building par- I sent Ted no more material for Disney. would call his animators into the screen- titions between floor areas than in But by that time I was fed up with Gillett ing room for a lecture on Disney anima- supervising cartoon production. When I and the Van Buren studio, so I went back tion methods; sometimes a Disney asked him how he liked my animation in full-time to magazine cartooning. Then animator who happened to be in New THE SUNSHINE MAKERS, he answered that again I received a call from the Charles York would talk to us. Burt would also one scene I did was all right. I told him Mintz studio. This time, my wife Ann read from a chart how much footage each that I'd done a good part of the picture, and I decided to go to Hollywood. We ar- animator had completed. My first week, he responded as he had to my defense of rived there in January 1935, and I when he came to Littlejohn's name, Burt Littlejohn's work: \"I didn't know that!\" plunged into work the day after our arri- said, \"Bill, this is no good. You only did val. For a year I animated Krazy Kat (this six feet .\" Littlejohn only shrugged his Earlier in 1934, before joining the Van time with sound), Scrappy, and other shoulders and looked sad, so I found Buren Studio, I'd been offered an anima- Screen Gems characters. myself speaking up: \"Burt, the scene tion job at Charles Mintz's Screen Gems Bill's working on [for PASTRYTOWN] is full Studio, but had chosen to remain in New We were able to socialize with a lot of of elves riding egg-beaters on unicycles York, where I could keep in contact with old friends, Ted Sears included . One inside a huge bowl of cake-mix-a hell of the magazine editors, especially at The evening Ted remarked, \" When you ar- a lot of work!\" Burt could appreciate the N ew Yorker, who continued to publish my rived in Hollywood, I told Walt Disney importance of quality over quantity, and occasional cartoons. Toward the end of that Klein had just come to town to work lauded Littlejohn for his work. the year, however, Ted Sears, an old for Charles Mintz . Walt said, 'Why the friend who had become a story man at hell didn ' t he come to work for me?' I The studio produced a variety of car- Disney, wrote me saying that Walt was answered, 'Why the hell didn' t you ask toon subjects. I can remember animating interested in seeing any story material or him?' \" Two weeks later I was at my ani- sequences of grandfather clocks, gag lines I might have for his films; and mation desk at the Disney studio. But tha t's another story . .. ~1~ FILM COMMENT 63

In some respects, there may be no cul- of the universe? How many of us re- extremely problematical to deal with, be- tural figure in the West who is as poten- member Uncle Walt on television, situated cause, like it or not-and most audiences tially controversial as Walt Disney, even in his cozy study with All the World's like it-Disney does embody a specific though love and hatred for what he rep- Knowledge and All the Great Literary aesthetic intelligence; and for the past resents are frequently felt by the same Classics bound in leather-the titles let- thirty years, intellectuals have generally re- people. At the same time, there is certainly tered in gold, if we had color TV- fused to take him seriously on any level at no other filmmaker whose aesthetical and presiding benignly over his globe of the all . A besetting limitation of Richard ideological preoccupations have per- world, which he patiently explained and Schickel's useful and factually interesting meated so much of modern life that, described to us? The Disney Version (Avon Books, 1968) is paradoxically, his omnipresence verges on that it virtually dismisses Disney as an ar- invisibility . Even beyond the grave, con- It was and is a strange relationship that tist while pursuing various sodal implica- tinuing manifestations of his vision have he had with that globe: not at all like the tions of his career-as if talent, integrity, become so integral to American society one that Chaplin had with his own globe in and taste were all somehow synonymous that they are commonly regarded as THE GREAT DICTATOR, because it wasn't and interchangeable. (If one approves of it, natural and relatively unquestioned parts subject to easy irony or ridicule-no, it was it's art; if one disapproves, it's mass cul- of the landscape, like a salt shaker or a much too good-natured and paternal for ture.) And other studies, usually more babysitter or a place to go on vacation. that, too harmless in all of its most obvious sympathetic, tend to sing praises to implications. Like Mickey Mouse and Disney's \"artistry\" without seriously ac- It has been reported that in 1966, the Donald Duck, whenever or however they knowledging anything else. year that Disney died, two hundred and appear, it usually makes one smile because forty million people saw at least one of his it is so cheerfully legible. A critic once re- A formidable task faced by any Disney movies while eight hundred million read a marked to me that much of the continuing critic is the squaring of art with ideology book or magazine bearing his imprint. One would not be unduly surprised to learn DREAM MASTERS I: that last year the figures were even higher. In an w1Characteristically provocative and by Jonathan Rosenbaum rather corrosive account of the opening of Disney World in Newsweek (October 18, The Supreme Heart-crusher contains multitudes: 1971), Joseph Morgenstern charged that Hugh Hefner, Leni Riefenstahl, John and Henry Ford Walt Disney Productions was \"nothing more or less than a royalist plot, a compu- excitemen t of THE GREAT DICTATOR resided without distorting the nature or values of ter program to take over the United States in the fact that, when Chaplin made it, he either. In the absence of a methodology and turn it into a continental Magic was probably more widely known than that can adequately accomodate both as- Kingdom .... any other human on the planet, illcluding pects, I have limited myself here to a few Hitler. Whether or not this is true, the notes and suggestions, listed under four \"There is reason to suspect that the Dis- mind boggles before the likelihood that the headings. For the sake of convenience, my ney interests have done more than install non-human and imaginary Mickey Mouse range of references has been narrowed to a an Audio-Animatronic Nixon in the Hall of may be even more universally familiar: ac- few of the animated and semi-animated Presidents here, that the man in cording to Lewis Jacobs in The Rise of the features-not only because these tend to Washington is programmed to abdicate in AlIlerican Filll1 (1939), \"His popularity out- be the best-known works, but also because favor of a Disney-designated ruler. ranks that of kings and dictators; he is the they appear to be the richest single area for best-known figure of the twentieth cen- investigation. Unfortunately, the bulk of \"And why not? Who else but Disney has tury. \" I don't know whether he has pene- the early \"Silly Symphonies\" and many of been able to build an American city that trated Red China yet and I hope he never the features are notoriously difficult to does, but I rather suspect he is likely to get come by, and not having been around for works? All the answers are here. [ . .. J there in some form or another even before the massive Disney retrospective at lin- Coca-Cola . coln Center in 1973, I can't be quite as What works here can work in a larger comprehensive in my use of examples as Magic Kingdom. [ ... J All of this is unsettling, awesome, and \" In Walt we can trust to reform our schools and put history in its proper per- spective: an Attica land in which Audio- Animatronicized prisoners sing the praises of Governor Rockefeller for respecting their right to privacy, a Thinktankland in which Dan Ellsberg takes the Pentagon papers with a grain of salt. In Walt we can h·ust to clear the slums, renew the cities, wipe out poverty and the balance-of- payments deficit by putting up turnstiles and charging admission to our shores. It is our manifest destiny to become Disney- land to the world .\" If Morgenstern's anger sounds exagger- ated, it is worth recalling that many years ago , Ray Bradbury quite seriously pro- posed to Disney that he run for mayor of Los Angeles . As the story is related, the gray eminence wa s flattered but unin- terested: \" Why should I run for mayor,\" he said, \" when I'm already king?\" And in- deed, one could hardly blame Disney for his response. Why should he have bothered with trifles like managing a city when to minds all over the country he al- ready came across as the benevolent ruler 64 JAN .-FEB . 1975

I'd like to be. A recent Paris revival of consumption of wealthy A Rebours types, on the screen an expressive part of a con- SALUDOS AMIGOS, for example, was wel- come; but how often does one get to see except for the crucial fact that Disney and tinuous animistic whole, implicity turning THE THREE CABALLEROS outside of, say, Buenos Aires? (An Argentine friend has Hefner both have \"cross-section\" per- the entire cosmos into a single idea. THE told me that it is quite popular there, and sonalities. There are obviously a lot of peo- BLUE LIGHT, Riefenstahl's first feature, is shown almost perpetually.) ple around who feel as ambivalent about full of striking correspondences to the car- (1) Authorship. No one has ever been able to tackle the slippery matter of assign- sex and nature as Disney and Hefner (re- toon features. It begins with the framing ing Disney precise authorship. On the one hand, the cartoon features exhibit a spectively) do, and experience much the device of a luxurious leather-bound vol- style that is both unmistakable and all- pervasive: a tree in a Disney film is a Dis- same mixture of worship and fear in regard ume being opened to lead us into the story ney tree, a doorknob is a Disney doorknob. On the other hand, Disney was not even to both categories. The wholesomeness proper; even in Riefenstahl's glistening capable of duplicating the famous \"Disney signature\" that appears on the credits of projected by the worldview of each empire blacks and whites, the book' s cover ap- each of his films. Five directors are listed on the credits of DUMBO, six in BAMBI, but is situated in a porcelain temple of the pears to shine with the regal splendor of in- the Disney style of animation persists as a mind where all notions of waste become laid gold . The intense pantheism and the recognizable entity even up to the present, regardless of who happens to be working magically absent, swept away by water towering vistas of the landscape shots, the at the studio, and despite the frequent modifica tions (e. g. , the influence of that is kept permanently purified, thanks poetic innocence and purity of the heroine U P.A. animation in ALICE IN WOND- ERLAND, the even flatter greeting-card to beneficent, invisible powers. The (played by Riefenstahl herself), the tele- perspectives in more recent films like THE ARISTOCATS). categories are thus enabled to maintain pathy and empathy shown by animals (a In certain respects, the creative relation- their pristine and ideal states: pure idea, lamb and a dog) toward her fluctuating ship between Disney and his films might be seen as roughly equivalent to the one without the threat of contamination of- moods, the sheer terror of her flight from between Hugh Hefner and Playboy: in and above the multiple contributions, the mas- fered by any experience but a vicarious angry villagers and the sheer intolerance of ter fantasy of one individual finds a setting for them all, a \"perfect\" landscape con- one. their persecution, the misty idealism of the tinually rebuilt, redecorated, and elabo- rated by others-rather like the made-to- A man whose highly ambivalent feel- blue light itself shining on a mountain top order pornography written for the sole before the diamonds that provide its \" source are despoiled by greedy invaders ~ (like the hunters who invade the paradisial g'\" forest in BAMBI): all are recognizable fea- tures of the Disney kingdom. ~ Indeed, one could trace this relationship ~ further into certain aspects of the later, bet- [ ter known Riefenstahl films , TRIUMPH OF a THE WILL and OLYMPIA. The arrival of ~. Hitler' s plane over Nuremberg in the former suggests the weightless flights of Peter Pan and Mary Poppins over London; the monumental low-angle shots of certain Nazi figures echo the camera's mythic dis- covery of Bambi's father, s tanding proudly on an imposing cliff to witness his son' s birth; the monstrous rally decor (sets by Albert Speer) and its dwarfing of individu- als is comparable to the palace in CINDERELLA; the torch-bearing sequence that opens OLYMPIA and the equally re- markable \" light show\" that concludes it each find rough counterparts in FANTASIA. As the latter example surely indicates, Riefenstahl is formally much more sophis- ticated than Disney, and this comparison is not meant to imply direct stylistic influence in either direction or any precise ideologi- cal equivalence, but rather to isolate a par- ticular aesthetic attitude that is unusually open to ideology because of its child-like innocence and its predilection for primal ings about art were expressed equally well myths of unity and perfection.] As a fur- by the term \"Silly Symphony\" and by his ther indication-if not a demon- notorious comment after seeing one of the stration-of the compatibility of these two sequences in FANTASIA (\"Gee, this'll make temperaments, it is worth noting that, ac- Beethoven!\") may never have resolved cording to Robert Gardner (FILM these conflicts-he never really had to COMMENT, Winter 1965), when Riefen- -but he certainly knew what he liked. stahl visited the United States in 1938, Dis- And the Disney style might be described as the putting into practice, by countless em- ployees, of what Disney liked. I If Riefenstahl's style and vision have a ny other (2) Style and vision : a comparison. contemporary echoes , these a re to be found , Perhaps the one word that could best en- perhaps, in some of the exhilarations of Michael capsulate this style is idealization . It is Wadleigh's WOODSTOCK, the TRIUMPH OF THE WILL of chiefly this quality that suggests a rather Six ties counter-culture, which uses its split- screen strong parallel between Disney's vision images and stereo-sound to create an epic portrayal and Leni Riefenstahl's-a dream of perfec- of Consensus, which the audience is invited to lean tion and simplicity that makes every detail back and absorb like a three-hour bath. A crucial cross-reference to Riefenstahl and WOODSTOCK is, of course, Cecil B. De Mille. FILM COMMENT 65

DREAM MASTERS 1 CONTINUED parts, only Pinocchio himself and the ma- and Disney World-executed with com- ternal fairy watching over him come across parable skill, and usually received with the ney was \"the only film celebrity to greet as \"purely\" American, and rather same lack of resistance. her publicly, out of the scores that pro- homogenized specimens at that. fessed to admire her. \" The bebop crows in DUMBO (1946) are (4) Towards an aesthetic evaluation. For (3) Ideological substructures. Conscious commonly ~ited as an example of Disney's critics of the Thirties and early Forties, Dis- and unconscious propaganda of all kinds raClSm; but It should be kept in mind that ney was an essential figure in the arts. In are observable in the cartoon features. A 1930, Eisenstein declared him to be the characteristic and fairly innocuous form of this aspect becomes modified-if not most interesting filmmaker in America, conscious propaganda can be found in the eliminated-in foreign-dubbed versions, various attempts to persuade children to \"behave properly\" in SNOW WHITE AND which are generally the only versions and over the decade that followed, Erwin THE SEVE N DWARFS (1937): household availa~le in most non-English-speaking Panofsky praised the early cartoons and chores such as dusting and dishwashing are shown to be \"fun\" - \" Whistle While countries. (The same, of course, applies to \" certain sequences\" in the later ones as \"a You Work\" (although Snow White ap- many of the nationalities in PINOCCHIO .) In chemically pure distillation of cinematic pears to do most of the whistling, the ani- French, for instance, the crows come ac- possibilities\"; Gilbert Seldes offered many mals most of the work)-while another lengthy musical number is devoted to the ross as clochards as much as black sympathetic critiques; and even E.M. For- importance of washing up before eating. The first of Disney's cartoon features was stereotypes; the two caricatures become ster published a brief tribute to Mickey regarded by many as an enormous finan- merged and confused. cial risk, and it appears likely that a particu- Mouse. Lewis Jacobs's assessment of Dis- lar effort was made here to please the par- ents as well as the children. If the racism of SONG OF THE SOUTH (1946) ney in The Rise of the American Film is cer- Probably less conscious are the implica- is infinitely more disturbing and conse- tainly more likely to raise eyebrows today tions behind the decision to ha ve the quential, this is because it bowdlerizes than it was in 1939: dwarfs chase the Wicked Witch up a mountain and to her death (a beautiful, American history with such consummate \"In the realm of films that combine sight, blurred fadeout of two buzzards circling down a chasm after her) before they've mastery that its tactics go virtually un- sound, and color Disney is still unsur- had a chance to discover that she's fed Snow White a poison apple-in fact, be- noticed. Aided by the richly textured color passed. The wise heir of forty years of film fore they' ve bothered to inquire into Snow White' s welfare at all. Their vengeful pur- photography of Gregg Toland and the fre- tradition, he consummates the cinematic suit is motivated by nothing but the forest animals' mute warnings-that is, by pure netic emotional traumas of the plot, the contributions of Melies, Porter, Griffith, hysteria-and the Witch's evil has already been depicted so vividly and persuasively film captures and reflects the conscious- and the Europeans. He has done more (to us, if not to them) that it is virtually im- possible not to share their mob-like re- ness of a child so adroitly that all of its with the film medium since it added sound sponse as they goad her to her doom. Curiously, Snow White, who is visibly submerged biases are made to ring like and color than any other director, creating young enough to be the daughter of any of the dwarfs, acts like a mother towards simple mythic truths . The physical pain of a form that is of great and vital conse- them, a clever ploy permitting various sub- liminal satisfactions to children and par- the cartoon sequences (e.g., Br'er Rabbit quence not only for what it is but for what ents alike. When the dwarfs need affection or guidance, she is maternal; when she and the Briar Patch) alternates with the it portends . He is the first of the sight- needs to be avenged-or protected and preserved in a glass casket for the Prince's emotional pain of the live-action (the de- sound-color film virtuosos, and the fact arrival-they assume the parental role. parture of the boy's father from the planta- that he is still young and still developing A sample instance of submerged nationalistic propaganda can be seen in tion corresponding to the experience of the makes him an exciting and important fig- PINOCCHIO (1940) . A quick survey of the recently-ended war, when many fathers ure to watch.\" various nationalities crowded together in the plot reveal a lower-class Italian were away): both lines culminate in the But by the middle Forties, after the (Stromboli) and two pseudo-English trick- sters (the foxes) as villains;2 the \"bad boy\" hysterical climax of the boy chasing across commercial failure of FANTASIA and several who is Pinocchio's naughty counterpart is a vulgar Cockney, as is the demonic a pasture after Uncle Remus, departing on government-supported films led Disney to coachman who transports them both to Pleasure Island; Geppetto, the \"father,\" is a wagon for Atlanta, before he is charged a more mercantile attitude towards his apparently Swiss; Jiminy Cricket, whose attire and movements seem partially de- and gored by a killer bull. __ productions, his critical reputation was al- rived from the Chaplin tramp, appears to be a subtle blend of English and American Unele Remus, who has assumed the pa- ready on the decline. And by the middle attributes. Of the remaining speaking rental role of the missing father, has been Sixties, one could say that he was more 2. Otis Ferguson has observed that the lead fox can be traced back to John Barrymore, the goldfish to Betty ordered to stop seeing the boy by the generally regarded as anything but an Boop. latter's mother after telling him stories (the artist-at any rate, something much closer interpolated cartoons), which she thinks to Henry Ford than to John Ford-to the gets him into various kinds of mischief and extent that Richard Schickel could confi- trouble, butwe know are conventional and dently assert in The Disney Version, without respectable moral lessons that have the apparent fear of contradiction, that \"Our opposite effect. The impossibility and environment, our sensibilities, the very sheer absurdity of a black slave's being (in quality of both our waking and sleeping effect) \" fired ,\" sadly packing his meager hours, are all formed largely by people possessions into a bandanna fixed on the with no more artistic conscience and intel- end of a pole, and boarding a wagon for ligence than a cumquat.\" Atlanta, successfully eluded critics and For Panofsky, Disney's \"fall from grace\" audiences not only in 1946, but in 1972, occurred when \"SNOW WHITE introduced when the film was reissued (to reap greater the human figure and when FANTASIA at- profits than ever before), and not because tempted to picturalize The World's Great of any sleight-of-hand in the dialogue: Music.\" Today this judgment sounds a lit- quite simply, Uncle Remus's status as a tle too pat, although it is easy enough to slave is ignored when it no longer suits the see what he meant. It was probably inevi- story's purposes . (His status as a man is table that once Disney took on the chal- similarly held in check by a scene in the lenge of cartoon features he would come plantation kitchen, when it's clearly estab- closer to the conventions of non-animated lished that he's interested in the presiding Hollywood films and further away from mammy only because of her cooking.) He the relative abstractness and \"purity\" of exists as a literal appendage to the boy's the early \"Silly Symphonies,\" at least in ego-returning, in the last scene, to revive the overall breadth of his films. him from a coma-and is scaled down But one also suspects that Disney was throughout the film to fit this emotional kept in the Pantheon as long as he re- logic. Needless to say, similar \"improve- mained a novelty, and dismissed as soon ments\" in history abound in Disneyland as he became commonplace-a ruling that 66 JAN.-FEB. 1975

Above : PINOCCHIO. Below: Above: DUMBO. Below: ALICE IN WONDERLAND . Mickey Mouse in the Sorcerer's Apprentice sequence from Right : SNOW WH ITE AND THE FAN TAS IA. SEVEN DWARFS. FILM COMMENT 67

DREAM MASTERS 1 CONTINUED If SNOW WHITE and PINOCCHIO can be ings of Edward Hopper. There is a te,l- said to take on a related visual aspiration, dency for most of the features to break has little to do with the intrinsic worth of this appears to be-at least intermittently down into separate sequences, from the his separate films, and a great deal to do -a recreation of the silent German \"ex- best (PINOCCHIO, DUMBO , ALICE IN with shifting fashions . One might add that pressionist\" cinema in color and sound, WONDERLAND) to the worst (THE LADY AND the use of the human figure and the musi- simplified, abstracted, and \"perfected\" to THE TRAMP, SLEEPING BEAUTY, THE SWORD cal pretensions of FANTASIA were already the point were characters are truly con- IN THE STONE). As Marie-Therese Poncet implicit in the anthropomorphism and use tinuous with the decor, and actors are no and others have noted, FANTASIA is nearly of music in the earlier cartoons, and a case longer strictly necessary, except as disem- always discussed as a feature when it is in could certainly be made that what Disney bodied voices for the speaking parts. But fact a collection of shorts, and this applies lost in purism he gained in proficiency. SNOW WHITE surpasses PINOCCHIO in its to most of the other \"feature\" cartoons as stylistic integration of character with wei\\.4 SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS is character, and of characters with settings. rich with a kind of pictorial beauty that is The forest animals are carefully indi- One of the most interesting things about light years ahead of the crude barnyard ef- viduated, and yet, like the crowds in SALUDOS AMIGOS (1947) is the various tran- fects of the early Mickey Mouse efforts; METROPOLIS , they often seem to breathe sitions between abstract and concrete ap- and it is more than incidentally graced by a and move-implicitly, feel and think-in a proaches to the same subject. In live- score (music by Frank Churchill, words by common pulse. The same paradox applies, action, we see Disney animators crossing Larry Morey) that is probably superior to of course, to the seven dwarfs: they are sections of South America by plane, that of any musical released the same both a gallery of distinct types and the in- sketching different forms of local color year. 3 The fairy-tale castle occupied by the terworking parts of a continuous or- while the narrator rattles off canned Witch-a lovely construction that seems to ganism, like fingers in a fist. itineraries and cultural.tidbits (\"The music combine aspects of Brueghel's Tower of is strange and exotic,\" etc.); eventually the Babel with a distillation of almost every Perhaps the pinnacle of Disney's pictor- sketches become cartoons. The cartoons, other storybook dream palace-is so rich ial achievement is to be found in the Dance in turn, go from abstract to concrete and in suggestions that a near-replica, on From left : ALICEIN WONDERLA ND; BAMB I; CINDERELLA; James Baskett as Uncle Remu s, with Bobby Driscoll in SONG OF THE SOUTH; theclochard crows in DUMBO. which former Disney employees collabo- of the Pink Elephants in DUMBO (a film, in- back again: each begins with a plane flying rated, wound up serving admirably as cidentally, that appeared not long after the over not so much a country as a three- Xanadu in the powerful opening shots of alleged decline announced by Panofsky). dimensional map, like the opening shot of CITIZEN KANE: not only the long-shot vista This prodigiOUS dream sequence, with its Florida in DUMBO, with cities and countries of it standing on a mountain, but virtually continual shifts of color, shape, and scale indicated by printed names-a chip off of the same lap dissolve to an almost identical to match the metamorphoses of dream- Uncle Walt's globe so to speak. This be- grilled window in the subsequent closer elephants into a variety of apparitions comes a more concrete location as soon as shot. In a more general way, the water ef- -beginning as champagne bubbles, and the plane lands. And then the cartoon fects in the bottom of a well and in a stream ending as clouds-could probably be might turn relatively abstract again, as in are animated with a translucent brilliance stacked against any of the \"Silly Sym- the semi-drippy final sequence, \"Water- that recalls some of the watery dissolves in phonies\" for formal beauty, purity, imagi- color of Brazil,\" which culminates in arty Murnau's SUNRISE, while the throbbing nation, lack of pretension, and its use of silhouette effects after red drops of paint lights and billows of magical smoke in the music: for its surrealist terror, it even ap- turn into storks, yellow drops into Witch's laboratory evoke some of the look proaches some of the best of Tex Avery . bananas, and then the bananas into crows. On the other hand, one cannot call the se- Or on a more subtle level, the visually pro- of his FAUST. quence an entirely original one: some of saic antics of Donald Duck as a naive and the beasties and their transformations can affable American tourist suddenly be- 3A t least three of its so ngs - \" Someday My Prince be partially traced back to the early sound comes a kitsch extravaganza of pictorial Will Come,\" \" Heigh-Ho,\" \"O ne Song\" -have en- and color values, as duck and assorted pot- tered the jazz re pertoire a nd served as graceful masterpieces of Max Fleischer. tery go toppling down a mountain slope frameworks for improvisa tions by Miles Davis, Bill Nothing else in DUMBO quite equals this, Evans , Da ve Brubeck, and many others (a practice 4. Poncet is probably the most exha ustive of the initiated by Brubeck, although Davis made it fash- although scenes of a train arriving in a French Disney critics; cf. in particular her L'esthetique io nable) . Other \" Disney\" so ngs to have served this small town at night and a circus tent being du dessill anime (A.G. Nizet, 1952). function include \" When You Wish Upon a Star\" and erected in the rain have a sullen poetry that \"G ive a Little Whistle\" from PINOCCHIO, \" Alice in unexpectedly evokes some of the paint- Wonderland,\" and \" Chim Chim Cheree\" from MARY POPPINs-the latter performed by John Coltrane. 68 JAN.-FEB . 1975

into the sea, while the bay is lit by a sunset character, they're very close relatives.) quence\" in 2001: ASPACE ODYSSEY is partially that resembles a hemorrhage. Like some of Does my liking for that horse reflect a dis- echoed in a Trip into the Cyclotron ride in the train shots in DUMBO, it is calender art like or fear of real horses, or does it make Tomorrowland. On your way out of the raised to a level of stupefied genius. me like real horses more? I suspect it Haunted House, your car passes a mirror somehow manages to do both. which reveals that a grinning ghoul is sit- Even more than other Hollywood fea- tures, Disney's are manifestly factory I have no particular fondness for scor- ting next to you. products in which the personalities and ef- pions. But when I see the mating move- Film is also centrally used in the Trip to forts of scores of individuals are blended ments of a couple of them synchronized to and absorbed, including influences from square-dance music in one of the True-Life the Moon, to depict simultaneously the re- previous films: much as Howard Hawks Adventures, I feel that a crime is being ceding Earth and the approaching satellite. borrows from CASABLANCA in TO HAVE AND committed. Not so much a crime against Straight movie theaters and projections of HAVE NOT, the sequence about Pedro the scorpions-I imagine they couldn't care various kinds are in evidence everywhere. Plane in SALUDOS AMIGOS seems to owe less-as a crime against me and my rela- And what is Main Street, U.S.A. , which something to Hawks's ONLY ANGELS HAVE tionship to scorpions. stands at the entrance gate, but the set for a WINGs. With so many identities at play in nostalgia film like STRAWBERRY BLONDE or the features, it should come as no surprise • MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS? Disney once gave an that so many of them are uneven. The ex- interesting account of its governing princi- traordinary thing is that such teamwork A day at Disneyland , August 1971. It ple: \"It's not apparent at a casual glance often worked as well as it did. In BAMBI, a looks even newer than it did in 1956, the that this street is only a scale model. We lyrical grasp of the textures, colors, and first and only other time that I visited. had every brick and shingle and gas lamp shapes of plant life is juxtaposed with a Technologically, it was and is one of the made five-eights true size. This costs vulgar anthropomorphism in the animals most extraordinary things in America. more, but made the street a toy , and the that implies an antithetical approach and Who could blame Khrushchev for wanting imagination can play more freely with a attitude towards nature-analagous, to see it? Everyone appeared to assume at toy. Besides, people like to think their the time that he must have been joking; but world is somehow more grown up than perhaps, to the cosmetic \"improvements\" even cinematically, there's much more of Papa's was.\" made on Hugh Hefner's Playmates over interest in Disneyland than one could have Midnight or so, passing back through conceivably found on the set of CANCAN at the gates and in to the cosmic reaches of the the years, particularly when pubic hair was the Fox studios. Disneyland parking lot, I look up at a dazzling skyful of stars, every constellation excluded . In the Haunted House here-one of the in its appointed place-stars poised and undisputed masterpieces of the park, and ready like raindrops about to fall. Are they More than one commentator has com- a relatively recent addition-the pro- Disney's too? grammed effects are nearly all heightened pared Hefner to Disney, particularly as a developments of cinematic possibilities • and principles. You step first into a circular businessman with a genius for spin-offs low-ceiling waiting-room decorated with Ultimately, the strengths and weak- family portraits; the doors close, the lights nesses of Disney's art are both bound up in and a capacity to use various products as dim, the walls grow higher and higher and its well-preserved and self-sustaining in- the family portraits stretch out accord- nocence, its refusal or inability to move advertisements for still other products. For ingly, until eventually it's like being at the beyond a child's perspective. Within these bottom of a well. The doors open, and boundaries, its capacity to elicit certain those interested in tracing the geneology of everyone gets into little cars-continues on emotions is uncanny: at least half of the a journey up and down hills in a nocturnal people I know were scared out of their wits Playboy's rabbit symbol and its multiple setting, through a graveyard; past a dis- by the Wicked Witch in SNOW WHITE when embodied and speaking female head that's they were children-as I recall, I was pretty manifestations, it is tempting to recall all clearly a projected (but three-dimensional) jumpy myself-and to recognize Disney's image; countless other delights . It is as power and pre-eminence as the Supreme the ingenious repetitions of rabbit-shapes \"purely cinematographic\" as the flight of Heartcrusher today, all one has to do is Mephisto over western Europe in witness the forcible separation of Dumbo in the house of the March Hare in ALICE IN Murnau's FAUST, just as the \"trip se- from his mother at a kids' matinee, where the scene will invariably produce a discon- WONDERLAND (in the furniture, decor, fam- solate chorus of howls. And apart from the terror, there is all the cute, cuddly humor, ily portraits, etc.): Disney's ALICE appeared frequently built around a kitsch dream of the Arcadia myth or the awkwardness or in 1951, the first issue of Playboy two years mere embarrassment of being a child in certain situations; d., respectively, the later. • nauseating centaurs moved around to Beethoven' s \"Pastoral\" in FANTASIA , the .I have a special fondness for a chummy turtle painfully making its way up a flight of stairs in SNOW WHITE. DIsney horse who appears in drag both in The probable key to Disney's success is the Goofy-gaucho section of SALUDOS that he has shown himself capable of un- derstanding the way that children think AMIGOS and the second half of ICHABOD and feel better than any other filmmaker of his time. The question that remains is how AND MR. TOAD. (If it isn't exactly the same wisely and how well he put this special understanding to use. I don't think it's a question that children alone can answer, and I don't think it can be answered sim- ply; I suspect that a lot of us are going to continue to be bothered by it, and bothered a lot, for a very long time. ~{. FILM COMMENT 69

DREAM MASTERS II: CANAR Y (194 7), inset, and THE HA LF-PINT PIGMY (194 7), in which explorers George and Junior Bear the smallest o f all. by Jonathan Rosenbaum For sufferers from Disney piety, Avery offers lasting relief. Paris, late Jan uary, my dead line a week Avery cartoo n . or two, and all but slaver at the mouth as away (later postpo ned). Tuesd ay mo rn- It's not a bit like Disneyland. If the wo rld he's herded into an a mbulance by two men ing, a ca bl e arrives: YES TO DISNEY AN D in white coa ts ( DROO PY ' S DOUBLE TROUBLE, AVERY ARTI C LE. Tues d ay af te rnoo n, o f Di s ney is litera ll y red ucibl e to a 1951, an ode to sado-masochistic schizo- rummagin g th ro ugh pages of fra ntic no tes funho use, the very no tion o f Averyland phre nia); ca rtoo n cow boys in a ca rtoon scribbled las t Septe mber while wa tchi ng s u gges ts so me thing much cl ose r to a sa loon ca n watch a rea l Western o n TV .eleven Avery cartoo ns o n French TV (a lit- madho use-a madhouse where a wise-ass ( DRAG ALONG DROOPY , 1954); a clown in a tle like reading a book while rid ing a bicy- flea circus ca n sing \" My Darling Clemen- cle), a nd las t Dece mbe r, w hile seei ng a d og na med George can strip the skin off a tine\" in Droo py's voice (TH E FLEA CIRCUS, progra m of eleven more at a local theater live chicken w ith an axe, revealing black 1954); a d eranged squirrel can comment on (no tes in the da rk are even less legible). bra a nd pa nties und erneath (H ENPEC KED his ow n ca rtoo n (\" Y' kn ow, I like thi s Tues d ay nig ht , a re turn to th e seco nd H OBOES, 1946); another d og's eyes can turn e ndin g-it' s s ill y\": H A PPY -G O- N UTTY , p rogram , inferio r to the firs t but still acces- into a n Ame rica n roadma p (COC K- A- 1944); a streetcar can make an apparentl y sible , more scribbling, gigglin g, crazies DOO DLE DOG, 1951 ); di se mb odied s h oes co ming o ut of my eyes and ears. Wednes- can perfo rm a layer-peeling striptease 11 la scheduled s top inside a treetrunk (SCREW- day, a fresh \" mini-festi val\" of six Droo pys Buii.uel to an enthusias tic burlesque crowd BALL SQUIRREL, 1944); Fairy Godmo thers comes to town. How do yo u notate a cy- (TH E PEAC HY COBBLER, 1950); a d og w ith a n can drin k mar tinis, hop on motor scooters, clone? Willy nilly- or sho uld I say Chilly Irish accent named Spike can go daffy be- and pursue Don Ameche-ty pe wolves in Willy?-l find myself livin g insid e a Tex fore yo ur eyes, drop his jaw on the ground pretze l- sh a p ed zoo t s uits ( SWINGSHIFT like a slab of concrete, rattle his retinas, CIN DERELL A, 1945); a cat, ca nary, mo use, scream , bulge out his sockets at least a foot 70 JAN .-FEB . 1975

and dog can grow larger than skyscrapers COU RTESY JOE ADAMSON oz (KING SIZE CANARY, 1947); the culprit in a lunatic whodunit can ultimately turn out to V> be the live-action announcer who intro- duces you to the cartoon (WHO KILLED :2 WHO? , 1943); or a piano, tractor, tree, and o< bus can all fall from the sky (BAD LUCK < BLACKIE, 1949).1 Q Indeed, Disney and Avery are com- ~ plementary and contrasting figures in many im portan t respects. If the former has l- been prodigiously over-exposed, the lat- e< ter, in recent years, has been just as pro- digiously neglected and under-exposed. o:::J (Notwithstanding the recent-and very exceptional-Avery programs in Paris and U one or two in New York, the very notion of a comprehensive Avery retrospective in this Top left : The Country Wolf's impa ss ioned re sponse to day and age is probably as rarefied and un- the City Red Riding Hood 's nightclub act in LITTLE likely as a Paul Fejos Festival.) RURAL RIDI NG HOOD (1949). Top right : A dog- faced detecti ve o rders his s uspects to lay a ny weapons they According to Manny Farber' s useful ha ve on the ta ble, and wind s up with an arsenal , in categories, Disney is white elephant art in WHO KillED WHO (1943). Left : Bl ac kie demonstra tes all its star-spangled trappings, while hi s jin xing powers in BAD LUCK BLACKIE (1949), first Avery, essentially concerned with proving with a flower pot, then a piano, a tractor, an o cean nothing and without an honest pretension liner . . .Below left : The skinned chic ken in to his name, is an important figure in the HENPECKED HOBOES (1946). Below right : The Wolf's termite range. Disney's exclusive focus on jack-in-the- box head in SHOOTING OF DAN the experience of children is neatly bal- McGOO (1945 ). Bottom left : and right : Objects as anced by Avery's preoccupation with Creatures in THE CAT THA T HATED PEOPLE . peculiarly adult problems and concerns (mainly sex, status, and procuring FILM COMMENT 71 food)-the voices given to his animals are nearly always grown-up ones. And if the aim towards \" timelessness\" in Disney features effectively means that most contemporary references are either accidental or non-consequential (except- ing his propaganda films, the Depression uplift offered by THE THREE LITTLE PIGS, and occasional vulgarities in the rest, such as the reference to television at the end of THE SWORD IN THE STONE), the usual ten- 1. In all, I've seen two dozen Avery cartoons re- cently (after deducting overlaps), all of them made between 1942 and 1954 and all of them MGM . Con- sequently I can't hope to be anything but incomplete here, and Avery' s periods at Warners and Universal-which include his creations andior de- velopments of Bugs Bunn y, Daffy Duck, and Chilly Willy-have to be omitted. For a full account of Avery's career, one eagerly awaits Joe Adamson's rex Avery, King Of CartoOilS , scheduled for publication in the near future . In the meantime, check out Adamson's interview with Avery in rake One, vol. 2, no. 9.

DREAM MASTERS 2 CONTINUED ticipate a concept-or even an image this may have been how to use objects and dency of an Avery cartoon, on th e con- -fro m an Ernst or a Magritte: an explosive animals surrealistically. The two headless trary, is to be as con temporaneous as pos- shower of \" d efen se bonds\" in BLITZ WOLF giraffes connected by their necks and the sibl e, so that one finds allusions to-or and a Rock of Gibralter gag in DUMB- alligator with a handle in HALF-PINT PIGMY echoes of-Mae West (as an Indian named HOU N DED are striking approximations (1947) , and particularly the use of objects Minnie Hot-cha) in DUMB HO UNDED (1943), aval1t la lett re of Magritte's Galcollda (1953) as Creatures in THE CAT THAT HATED PEO- Th e Lost Weekend (rebaptized Th e Lost and \"The Castle of th e Pyrenees\" (1959) , re- PLE (1948), might well have influenced Squeaken d) in KING SIZE CANARY, a nd even spectivel y. (John Boorman , by th e way, some of the forest beasties in ALICE IN President Truman at the end of DROOPY'S WONDERLAND (1951). GOOD DEED (1951), appearing offscreen as a makes a playful allusion to the latter paint- not very talented pianist. Inspiration fre- ing in ZAR DOZ .) If the Di s ne y factory To be sure, if you see as few as half a quently seems to come from non-cartoon learned something concrete from Avery, dozen Averys at a stretch, yo u're likely to so urces: HE N PECKED HOBOES (1946), which gives us a smart little dog and a large dumb Two Tex Avery model-sheets: fo r Droopy in \" Bullfight,\" finally one who keeps saying things like \"Yeah, retitled SENOR DROOPY (1949), and forthe Wolf in George, I'm go nna do good this time, NORTHWE ST HOU NDED POLICE (1946). George,\" harks back to and parodies Of '4+. AVf.RY PROOOCll0N II ' Mice and Men, while THE FLEA CIRCUS pays ~NORTH WEST HOUNDED PoLICE : glancing tribute to Busby Berkeley and DROOPY'S DOUBLE TROUBLE reflects P. G. .........--_ _........... ........... ...u .. WI .. ..u - Wodehouse by offering a butler named .- - -=:.... .,..I...... ....,.. .•• Jeeves . \".a..:a.r._:ta:. :,~ One even find s an allusio n to Disney in THE PEACHY COBBLER, a side-s pliting and ?;Y.a:....:...:--- = ~~:~~ 1 fairly devastating parod y o f so me of the ~\".:-~ Mas ter's sentimental excesses. We open with an unctuo us narrator introducing us : >-. I to the story proper, his condescending voice drowning in bathos while the ca mera - takes us on a to ur of a kitsch Disney cot- tage: \" One cold winter's night-long, long cr ' ago-there lived a poor old shoe cobbl er and his wife . .. \" Stifled sob. \" .. .All they had to ea t was aile crust of bread . .. whole wheat!\" Outside, a fl ock of path etic little birds are shivering, and when the cobbler a ives them a crust o ut of the Goodness of His Heart, they p ro mptly turn into \" happy little shoemaker elves\"- sligh tly de monic versions of characteristic Disney imps. Avery had reason to be disre5p ectful: w hile Disney in his features was generally iss uing his benign pronouncements from some imaginary Mo unt Olympus, Avery a nd hi s tea m of a nima to rs a nd write rs (us uall y Rich Hogan and Heck Allen) were commingling intimately with their cas ual a udience on a strictl y mea t-and-potatoes level, seven or eight minutes at a time. Not much worried about good taste or more than a modicum of wholeso me fam- ily standard s, an Avery cartoon could get cheerful la ug hs out of a hillbilly farmer with a s peech impe dim e nt (\" H ' Jl o thar Billy boy boy boy boy boy,\" in BILLY BOY, 1954), jokes about Texa n s reflecting Avery's backgro und (he was born in Dal- las), Cinderella in a boiler s uit go ing to work o n the nig ht-shift at a wa rtime muni- ti o n s fac to r y (SWINGSHIFT CINDERELLA), some arabesq ues describing sexual desire that d efy belief, and any number of racial and ethnic jokes, each one as trans parent and good-natured as the last. (One glaring exception , in BLITZ WOLF, 1942: apart from Ad olf Wolf and \" Der Fuhrer d er better\" scrawled o n a truck, one encounters a \"No Dogs Allowed\" sig n with \" Dogs\" crossed o ut and replaced by \"Japs.\") At the sa me tim e, his unu s uall y free im agination and tas te for s urrealist jux- tapositions occasionally reca pitulate or an- 72 JAN.-FEB . 19 75

notice repetitions of gags and certain re- do to keep abreast of it, and Scott Bradley's Me Tight,' which rouses the wolf no end . curring obsessions (size, insomnia in- care full y synchronized musical scores His eyes burn straight through the menu duced by rackets, all kinds of inside refer- -with their generous helpings of Rossml in fron t of him, he smashes his head w ith a ences to the cartoon yo u're watching), and and other classical touchstones-are often mallet and turns it into a Jack-in-the-Box, as many as a dozen together is an experi- remarkable merely by virtue of the fact that he kicks himself behind the ear as part of ence promoting migraines and nervous they don 't stray behind the action. . some perverse notion of a donkey imita- exhaustion. Even so, the frantic pace isn' t tion , he slams his head aga inst a nearby always sustained by consistent looniness Sexual hysteria is a frequen t occaSlOn for post an d in the excitement chomps away at (some of the best of Max Fleischer cartoons the speed and frenzy, and UTTLE RURAL the pos t as if it were a giant carrot, he beats of the la te Twenties and ea rIy Thirtie s RIDING HOOD (1949) is probably th e hIgh his chair against the ta ble, he picks the -notably KOKO'S EARTH CONTROL and the point in Avery's manic sex cycle. Com- table up and beats it against the floor.\"2 extraordinarily demented \"sing-along,\" me nting at len gth on thIS fnghtenlI1g STOOPNOCRAcy-are even crazier); the series, Joe Ada mson offers an elegant de- On the other sid e of the coin is Avery's blackout gags in the Oroopys of the early scription of a characteristic sequence in THE fl air for ridiculous u nderstatemen t. The Fifties, often isolated like beads on a string, SHOOTING OF DAN MCGOO (1945) - a se - typ ica l utterances of hi s ba sset-ho und aren't half as funny as the intricate de- quence, incidentally, that recalls some of Droopy are u sually in this category, but velopments and variations in the ea rlier the finer excesses in L'AGE D'OR: my favorite exa mple comes from his arch- ones. But in his prime efforts, Avery can rival in DR AGALONG DR OOPY. While rattle off a complex narrative situation so \"The 'lady that's known as Lo u' gets in- Droopy's herd of sheep move like a battal- troduced as the stripper sensation of the ion of law n mowers across the wilderness, quickly and efficiently that it's all one can joint, and she does one ro using chorus of d evouring every spot of g ree n in their 'Put Your Arms Around Me, Wolfie, Hold path, the camera pans pas t the m to a sign HECK ALLEN an extremely able gag man and a good reading: CATTLE COUNTRY story man . Tex never had anybody. He After twelve on-and-off years as Tex laid the pictures o ut for the go ddamn KEEP OUT Avery's story man at MGM, Heck Allen background man; he did everything for the (THIS MEANS EWE); became a successful writer of Western fic- so-called character man , who draws the tion under the alternating pen names of models of the characters; if we had three then, while Sco tt Bradley supplies \" Home Clay Fisher and Will Henry. He no w has pages of dialogue, he would scratch it out on the Range,\" continues past an endless over thirty novels to his credit, including with his lead pencil, and I'd take this stuff stretch of cows smo thering the te lTai n, a No Survivors, the first expose of the Custer and translate it into English. But he did crowded assembly of animals so vas t that it myth, and the books on which Raoul everything, including some of the voices. 1 makes the las t shot of Hitchcock's THE Walsh's THE TALL MEN a nd J. Lee He's really the original one-man band . BIRDS pale by comparison; fin ally arriving Thompson's MAC KENNA'S GOLD are based . at the rancher sitting lazily on his front This interview was held in all seriousness Tex was a bearcat for dialogue . God, porch, surrounded by acres of beef, who on April Fool's day, 1971. -Joe Adamson he'd have twenty or thirty takes on a line. turns to us cas ually and remarks: Hell, I couldn't tell one from the o ther. But \"Y'know-I raise cattle .\" HECK ALLEN: Tex never understood Tex would eventually pick one, and I'd the quality and extent of his own genius. say, \"Yeah! Just the one!\" If the bulk of Avery's perpetual-motion Otherwise he would have simply picked machines tend to hold up well, this may be up his briefcase, gone up on the front lot, Tex is a true , old-time Texas boy- a because, like the classics of Sennett a nd and said, ''I' m Tex Avery. I can make the lineal blood descendant of Jud ge Ro y Keaton and Chaplin, they are usually ir- funniest goddamn live-action pictures yo u Bea n. I think Texas gives flavor to his relevant about everything excep t mo tion , ever saw in yo ur life, and we'll get rich to- humor. His stuff, and the style he set- and because their hysteria is often beauti- gether.\" But he never did. He is totall y which I'm convinced he set, and Jones and full y formalized (i. e., \"orches trated,\" syn- modest. The most unbelievable thing was Freleng just followed-is earthy. What copated, balanced, articulated as cleanly that they didn't appreciate it, that they they' re still doing with that damn Coyo te and clearly as notes in a scale) . According didn't snare him and elevate him to the and the Roadrunner, this is fundamental to this latter criterion, I tend to prefer the papacy of humor on the front lot. The car- Tex Avery stuff. cartoons that thematically and plastically toon business is full of brilliant people like take o ff in a ll direction s- SCREWBALL that who never get heard of. Their tragic I think Chuck Jones was a kind of split SQUIRREL, LITTLE RURAL RIDING HOOD-to flaw is that they're hung up on these god- personality in that business. He was an in- the ones that move relentlessly and pre- damn little figures running around on that tellectual in a no n-intellectual business . I dictably toward s reductio ad absurdul17 drawing board. don't think either Tex or Friz Freleng conclusions, like KING SIZE CANARY a nd would be called intellectuals. The people HALF-PINT PIGMY. A good exam ple of rela- Tex was always totally in charge of any- who built the cartoon empire are not often tively intricate butul1predictable plotting is thing he ever did . To this day, he works found with a higher educational back- the hilarious ROCK-A-BYE BEAR (1952), even alone. He just doesn't want to argue with ground. So in that business, ifyou'reanin- though it devotes its entire middle section people. And I never argued with him. tellectual yo u d on't really belong. -successfully-to variations of a single Well, how could you? I mean, yo u're sit- gag. ting there knocked out on yo ur chair, 1. Only upon questioning did Tex Avery admit that laughing yo ur ass off all day long-yo u he is the voice of Junior (of George and Junior), and For anyo ne suffering from an overdose can' t very well argue with a guy that's the very simil ar voice of Willoughby (the hunting of Disney piety, one Avery cartoon a day is bringing tears to your eyes. I thought, and d og in THE HECKLING HARE , THE CRACKPOT QUAIL , guaranteed to deliver immediate and last- stilI think , that he 's a gen uine , na ti ve a nd OF FOX AND HOUNDS) . At Warners , his voice pops ing relief. Next to the usual sadomasochis- American genius. And he has done it all up from time to time embod ied in a hippo or wal rus tic rituals of Tom and Jerry and the increas- alone . He never had any help, as I see it. who laughs so ha rd he can hardl y take his ne xt ingly formularized progressions of a Road breath. Avery also does the ch uckle of the bulldog in Runner, the best Avery efforts are explo- Now Chuck Jones, I don't care how bril- BAD LUCK BLACKrE. For a nyo ne w ho wa nts a clue to sions of maxi mal energy and ingen uity liant Chuck is-and I've heard enough what Avery's voice rea lly so unds like, the re a re the w ithin a very confined space-familia r times that he is brilliant-he didn' t do it all little ouches tha t come o ut o f a bottle in DEPUTY voices leading us, like the descriptions and by himself. He had, in this Mike Maltese, DROOPY. -Joe Adamso n. dialogue in a Kafka tale, through impossi- ble landscapes. :{. 2. \"Tex Avery and the Plea s ures of the Fles h ,\" FUl1I1yworid No. 15, Fall 1973. FILM COMMENT 73

Tom and Je rr y started life in a s hort The cartoon animator is an artist, too. called puss GETS THE BOOT (1941) , an MGM cartoo n produced by Rudolf Ising. The di- Tom and Jerry in their masterpiece, MOUSE CLEAN- rectors, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, were ING (1948). uncredited and evidently this was their first attempt at directing a film together. of Jack Zander and Pete Burness, among and bursts into a multi-colored American Puss GETS THE BOOT is a very slow cartoon others. flag. in which the cat is called Jasper and the mo use is unnamed, although he was pat- By 1942, when YANKEE DOODLE MOUSE In THE ZOOT CAT, another hilarious entry terned after Rud y Ising's character Little won the series' first Academy Award, the in 1943, Tom wears a zoot suit, cut from a Cheeser. The plot revolves around pacing had begun to quicken . This film in- hammock, and calls on his girl who does Mammy Two-Shoes and the disruption of troduced an element of topicality with an incredible eye-popping \"take\" (ani- her household by \"dat mouse.\" Jas per is Jerry, as a mouse-soldier, in a mock battle mated by Ken Muse) at the sight of her called upon to get rid of the mo use butis in with Tom in the basement to an incredible new boyfriend. There is a good jitterbug the e nd tossed out on his ea r (kicked, arrangement of Sousas and other patriotic sequence with Tom and his girlfriend danc- actually) when he fail s to get his quarry. tunes arranged by Scott Bradley. Bradley's ing (Irv Spence), followed by an imitation There is a series of gags concerning broken music, with its peppy, jazzy sound (using of Charles Boyer by Tom Cat as he plays dishes that the mouse heaps upon Jasper's such tunes as \"The Trolley Song,\" the the piano after slipping on a banana peel tousled head. \"Hoedown\" music from one of the MGM and bouncing off the piano keyboard . The Garland-Rooney musicals, and several change in personality occurs so quickly Jasper is a considerably more cat-like cat songs made popular by Fats Waller) , was that one laughs as much at the \"voice\" as at than Tom was to be later; his head has becoming a real asset to the series. YANKEE the speed of the transformation . This se- more space between the ea rs, and his teeth DOODLE MOUSE featured animation by Irv quence was also handled by Ken Muse. are smaller and sharper. There was more Spence, soon to emerge as the series' best hair on his body and more \"self lines\" animator. He was given mainly action In 1944 TEE FOR TWO was made, a film (color ink lines) separating the green shots to do, such as Jerry throwing hen- with a great beginning and a shocking end~ around his pupils and the light gray marks grenades (eggs) at Tom, one of them form- ing . In the beginning Tom is swinging at a between his eyes. The mouse's ears were ing a monacle and chain, and Tom \"sunk\" golf ball with his club in a sand trap. The larger and his belly more pronounced than by a flying brick while floating on the tea scene opens with a slow pan across a golf the later Jerry, but he changed little over kettle in a wash-tub. But the star animator course which has been almost totally de- the years. at this time was Ken Muse, who got all the stroyed by irate golfers, as we hear the close-ups and \"personality\" sequences jazzy theme by Bradley, each beat punc- The cartoon was animated by Ising 's and the big gag at the end where Tom is tuated by the sound of a club swing. On staff of the time, Carl Urbono, Tony fired up into the sky on a giant sky-rocket the last beat the ball pops out of the hole Pabian , Jack Zander, Pete Burness, and and Tom chases it. Throughout this mar- Bob Allen, who also directed for Rudy. This film owes a lot to Ising's timing style, ! \\--_- which was better suited to fantasy than comedy. The early \"Tom and Jerrys\" suffer r-'\"'- j from too much detail and slow timing and did not improve noticeably unW 1944. Bill ~~~ Hanna was directing \"Captain and the Kids\" cartoons on the MG M lot and Joe Barbera was a story man , out from Van Buren 's in New York, where he had been a gag man. Barbera had had something to do with the making of Van Buren's \"Tom and Jerry\" series (Tom was a tall dark man and Jerry was a short blond man) , and it was probably Barbera who used the names for the cat and mouse characters . Their first picture was quite successful; it was held over at some theaters for as long as six weeks. The seco nd picture , THE MIDNIGHT SNACK, was almost a paraphrase of the first, with Tom getting the \"boot\" at the end by Mammy Two-Shoes (so named be- cause her face was never shown: only shots from the mid-shoulders down, ex- cept in the 1945 PART-TIME PAL, when Mike Lah accidently brought her head down into the frame for a couple of feet during the chase sequence). The third film, THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS , introduced an element of pathos into the series which Hanna and Barbera were never to repeat. Tom takes pity on Jerry after he throws him out into the snow on Christmas eve and thaws him out. The animation at this point in the series was highlighted by the close- ups of Ken Muse and the action sequences 74 JAN.-FEB. 1975

but forgets the pie, which fal ls on top of his head. This seq uence was animated by Ke n Muse, who was especially good at defining Tom and Jerry's personalities, with a grea t deal of attentio n paid to th e expressioll s on their faces. Then th ere is a scene animated by Ed Barge wh ere Jerry op ens the front door of by Mark Kausler the ho use and an old junk-wago n ho rse walks in . Tom runs in a nd makes a long skidding run in an ticipation o f grabbing the horse a nd heaving him th ro ugh th e door. We really feel the horse's weight in this sce ne; To m' s legs scra mble and he d oesn' t make much headway as he tries to run ca rry ing the h o rse. It was Barge ' s hallmark to give weight and solidity to the characters; one gets an extrao rd inary sen- ~ sation o f volume and a th ree-dimensional y. quality in his animatio n . ~ The next seque nce (a nima ted by Ken ~ Muse) shows Jerry pressing a sta mp pad ~ fill ed with ink onto To m's fee t, then snap- o<S ping the pad on his nose, causing Tom to chase Jerry all over the ho use (off-screen). ~ When Tom turns aro und, he gas ps at the :< in k footprints all ove r the wa ll s, chairs, MOUSECLEAN ING. MO USECLEAN ING. floor, and ceiling. He then picks up Jerry and throws him into the basement. Jerry h ea rs th e coa l truck chute slid e into th e velo us scene (Irv Spence), the excite ment This is fo ll owe d by a ma rve lo u s se - base ment window and ties the chute with of the music and the ferocity o f To m' s club quence in which To m runs with the in k- a rope and hoists it up to the living roo m swinging promise much. The film rambles stained curtain to the washing machine, window. Mea n while, To m has been fran- along, with Jerry being washed in a golfball dunks it in, puts it th ro ugh the wringer, tically trying to d ean up the ho use before cleaner, a go lf ball going th ro ugh To m's irons it, and hangs it back up, never once Ma mm y Two - S h oes ge ts h o m e. H e teeth, and a woodpecker pecking the golf stopping his running action, his legs like finish es, th rows the cl ea ning things be- balls to pieces. an egg-beater. This is one of the best ex- hind the couch, a nd innocently folds his In the next-to-Ias t gag, To m is chasing a mples of an actio n at which Spence ex- hands a nd waits for her. The coal chute is Jerry, who launches a line of angry bees celled : keeping the character moving all just outside the window near where Tom is afte r the ca t, w h o di ves into a wa te r the time he is d o ing so mething, so rt o f sitting. The coal spills into the ho use and haza rd , breathing through a tube . Jerry \"running in the air. \" carries Tom away with it. (Ed Barge's a ni- puts a funnel on to p o f Tom's breathing Aft e r To m res ts fro m his curtain mation of the coal pouring in is a mazing ly tube and w histles to the bees to fl y d own ad venture- and w hat a res t! his tong ue d etailed; one can almost feel every lump .) the tube. They do so, and we wait fo r a hangs almost to the floor as he pants--he breathless mo ment as the camera trucks looks off to s tage right and does a \"take.\" Fro m 1941 to 1945 the co medy in the back fro m the water to a longer shot show- Jerry is up to his messy tricks again , this \" To m a nd Je rry\" ca rt oo n s improve d . ing the e ntire h ole . Then a fter we have time juggling eggs in the kitche n . To m Whether or no t the fast, fas t gags of Tex wa ited jus t lo ng enough , all the water in looks worried as he tries to keep the eggs Avery's cartoons of the sa me period were the hole fl ies up in the air, and there is the fro m falling to the floor; then Jerry throws an influence is no t known . There is little di- m ost te rrifying draw ing (Ke n Muse) o f them off- screen, Tom runs to catch the m rect stealing, but the w ildness o f the Tom being stung in his wide open mouth and then s tarts juggling the m to avoid \"takes, \" and the quality and humor o f the and th roa t by the angry bees, acco mpanied d ro pping them . Jerry throws a spoon and ex tre m e draw in gs, a re ce rta inl y by the most anguished screa m ever put on a pie in the air, and Tom catches them on \"improved by association .\" Then in 1945 film . The scene sound s horribly painful his nose; then Jerry pulls the rug o ut fro m lrv Spence left the MG M Cartoon Depart- when d escribed , but to see it is to laugh; it under Tom's feet and all the stuff goes fl y- ment to work for John Sutherland Prod uc- really works, so that one laughs all through ing through the air. Tom zips out and back tio ns on ind ustrial cartoons . H e was re- the last gag, which is not as funny as th e in again with an egg carton and catches all pl ace d o n the se ries by Michae l La h , a bee gag. the eggs before they can hit the ground- good actio n animator, but whose d rawings lacked S pe nce's ca rtoon y fl air. So me of Lah 's best animation was on such cartoons as PA RT-TI M E PA L a nd T RAP H APPY . l rv Spence ca me back in 1946 on the picture SPRI NGTIME FO R THOMAS (for w hich he re- ceived no screen credit) . H ere he animated an incredible chase and fi ght seque nce , ( during which To m drinks all the water o ut of a swimming pool, gets socked w ith a playground swing, and is roas ted o n a barbe que s pit-a ll in the na me of love. Mike La h s ubse qu e ntl y wo rk ed for CONTI N UED ON PACE 88 FILM COMMENT 75

I lr\\\\U ~((1)11 nn ~lr110((1) The decline and pratfall of a popular art by Leonard Maltin A Jay Ward family portrait. From left: Rocket J. Squirrel , Bullwinkle Moose, Boris Badinov, Natasha Fatale.

Television cartoon series are the Muzak Woody Woodpecker and friends. Warner innovating these same ideas). The series racked up an amazing seven Academy of animation. There's nothing jarringly Brothers had thirty new Looney Tunes Awards in the Forties and early Fifties. wrong with that tirelessly uninteresting and Merrie Melodies directed by Friz Fre- Suddenly unemployed, Hanna and Barbera developed a proposal for what music one hears in restaurants, airport leng, Chuck Jones, and Robert McKimson. they called \" planned animation\" to gear cartoon-making for television budgets. lounges, and elevators; the musicians play Columbia released ten new shorts from the MGM told them there was no future in car- toons for TV, and other executives ex- the proper notes at the proper time. But youngest of the cartoon companies, UPA, pressed similar disinterest. Then George Sidney, who had worked with the team on there's nothing particularly right with including four with Mister Magoo . Not the now-classic sequence in ANCHORS AWEIGH where Gene Kelly dances with Muzak either, which is part of its design: to counting one-shots and independent re- Jerry Mouse, got them an entree at Col- umbia and a deal with the studio's televi- provide businesses with innocuous back- leases , this accounts for well over one sion subsidiary, Screen Gems. Their first product was a series of cartoons called Ruff ground music that helps submerge (or hundred new theatrical cartoons in the and Reddy which sold to NBC for inclusion in a Saturday morning show with a live camouflage) the sounds of regular opera- year 1953. host. 2 tions. By this time, television was beginning to In 1959, Hanna-Barbera unveiled their completely animated half-hour show, The essential difference between Muzak have serious effects on the movie industry. Huckleberry Hound . This syndicated pro- gram was a tremendous success, and in- and TV cartoons is the difference between Short subjects had already begun a slow troduced a likable character named Yogi Bear who soon became the star of his own a subconscious massage and an insistent death because of double-features, chang- half-hour program. To this youngster, Hucklebernj Hound was a most entertaining assault of mediocrity. Whereas Muzak is ing distribution patterns (including the show, but even then it was dear that the principal appeal of its characters was their intentionally bland, the cartoons produced end of block-booking that forced theaters voices. Using such expert vocal talents as Daws Butler, the studio gave its characters by Hanna-Barbera and their legion of im- to take a studio's shorts) , and the competi- highly individual and amusing voices, whose similarity to those of famous come- itators are consciously bad: assembly-line tion of similar material on the home screen. dians fell just short of plagiarism: Snag- shorts grudgingly executed by cartoon But cartoons were still in demand, and still glepuss was Bert Lahr, Doggie Daddy was Jimmy Durante, etc. veterans who hate what they're doing. essentially the domain of the movie com- As Hanna-Barbera's output increased, Most serious of all, perhaps, is its effect on panies. Animation was thought too ex- however, even a ten-year-old began to recognize (and tire of) the repetition in the audience: no one actually listens to pensive to be feasible for TV. 1 each show: the same canned music, the same gags, the same sound-effects and Muzak, but millions of children eagerly Meanwhile , studios were jealously gimmicks, and the same characters, only in different guises. The Hanna-Barbera await new episodes of Magilla Gorilla and guarding their film backlog, refUSing to format of a tall hero and a short sidekick quickly wore out its welcome; and after The Jackson Five. compete with themselves by selling their Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo, Quick Draw McGraw and Baba Looie, Lippy de Lion What's missing here is not money but most valuable properties to television. The and Hardy Har Har, Peter Potamus, Wally Gator, and all the others had presented imagination. To criticize Hanna-Barbera first cartoons to appear on TV were old sil- themselves for approval, this viewer switched the channel to return to Bugs because their cartoons look cheap is beside ent shorts and Thirties efforts from inde- Bunny. the point. Winsor McCay's 1914 GERTIE pendent studios such as Van Beuren, Vb Hanna-Barbera's biggest problem was mass production. At MGM the duo pro- THE DINOSAUR looks better-and is Iwerks, and Charles Mintz. Around 1957, duced about fifty minutes of film a year; at their new studio the quota became over an better-than Hanna-Barbera's product, the dam burst, with several studios con- hour a week! How was it possible to turn out so much animation so quickly? The even though this black-and-white silent summating major television deals for their essence of \"planned animation\" was re- ducing movement to an absolute film is composed entirely of line drawings feature films and cartoons. Soon the day- minimum. Bill Hanna once explained for with simple backgrounds. The difference time hours on TV were filled with Bugs 2 This was not the first made-for-TV cartoon . Other independent producers had developed car- is elementary: McCay made his cartoons Bunny, Popeye, Betty Boop, and other car- toon series with varying degrees of success. At one end of the spectrum was a \"cheater\" series of filmed with wit and care, and all the technique or toon stars enjoying a new lease on life. comic strips, while at the other end was the success- ful syndicated series Crusader Rabbit , which em- money in the world cannot replace those The TV sale marked the end of Popeye's ployed the talents of one Jay Ward. But Hanna- Barbera were the first to make a major dent in this commodities . Indeed, the Bullwinkle theatrical career of thirty-four years, al- area. cartoons from Jay Ward Studios represent though Paramount continued to make the apex of corner-cutting, but no one other theatrical cartoons, and always kept cares, because they flaunt their cheapness, a handful of Popeyes in re-release. These and substitute verbal imagination for vis- TV deals did not curtail production at other ual ingenuity. The cartoon scripts are so studio&-with one notable exception. In funny that one is willing to forgive their the spring of 1957, Bill Hanna and Joe ragged execution. Barbera were twenty-year veterans with the MGM cartoon department, having When television became a fixture in been promoted to heads of production most American homes during the Fifties, when long-time producer Fred Quimby the Hollywood cartoon studios were still at retired. Then one morning the telephone work producing a regular quota for theatri- rang . \"We were told to discontinue pro- cal distribution. In 1953, for example, Dis- duction and layoff the entire staff. Twenty ney released fifteen cartoons, including years of work suddenly ended with a the featurette BEN AND ME; the Academy single phone cal!,\" they later recalled. Award-winning CinemaScope, Stereo- phonic-sound TOOT, WHISTLE, PLUNK, AND The two men had become co-directors BOOM, a successful departure into stylized on the long-running \"Tom and Jerry\" animation; two cartoons in the new 3D series at MGM, creating slick, entertaining process; and the last Mickey Mouse short, cartoons which explored new avenues of THE SIMPLE THINGS. MGM produced fif- comic violence, solidified the cat-and- teen shorts, including Hanna and mouse cartoon formula, and maintained Barbera's popular \"Tom and Jerry\" series, one trademark-neither character spoke and Tex Avery's wildly inventive films like (pre-dating Chuck Jones' \"Roadrunner\" TV OF TOMORROW. Paramount had eight cartoons, which have been credited with new Popeye titles, seven with Casper the Friendly Ghost, and fourteen other ani- 1 In the wake of UPA's success with stylized ani- mated reels. 20th Century-Fox distributed mation, most of the major Hollywood cartoon thirty new titles from Paul Terry's Terry- studios did assimilate some of that company's cost- cutting ideas, retaining full animation in terms of toons unit featuring such continuing character movement and such, but incorporating in- characters as Mighty Mouse. Universal re- leased thirteen Walter Lantz products with creasingly impreSSionistic backgrounds and layouts, instead of the finely detailed landscapes and foliage that had always populated such cartoons. FILM COMMENT 77

Hanna-Barbera 's Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo. Hanna Ba rbe ra's Huckleberry Hound . TV AN IMATIONS CONTINUED sides, what purpose would it serve? men who cared, and aimed at adults as When one reads Bill Hanna's comment well as children. Quality was evident in the reporter Digby Diehl: \" Disney-type full drawing, the backgrounds, the level of animation is economically unfeasible for that planned animation was largely a mat- humor, the topicality, the use of good television, and we discovered that we ter of \"getting away with less,\" it is mind- music-in every aspect of creating the could get away with less .... The old theat- boggling to think what the credo must finished product. The youngster watching rical cartoons kept characters moving have been at Max Fleischer's studio in the these cartoons on television grew up with constantly-no holds, no heavy accents. early Thirties, when director Dave an attendant sense of quality; they de- Free-flowing stuff is harder to watch be- Fleischer and his animators seemed -to be veloped his sense of humor, his ear for cause of all that tedious detail. \" trying to see how much they could cram music (how many kids were introduced by into every frame. In the classic Betty Boop cartoons to the Hungarian Rhapsody or the \"Tedious detail\" would include such SNOW WHITE, it isn' t enough that icicles theme from Barber of Seville?), and even his niceties as Wile E. Coyote's pupils dilating come to life to herald Betty's arrival at the sense of history in deciphering or asking as he senses that a gigantic boulder is about castle, while Bimbo and Ko-Ko literally about once-topical gags. What can the to crush him, or Bugs Bunny wriggling his pop out of their suits of armor; after Betty Hanna-Barbera cartoons offer a child ex- eyebrows at the audience in anticipation of steps over a suit of flannel underwear sub- cept a baby-sitting service? a trick he's about to pull on Elme~ Fudd . stituting for red carpet, a tiny mouse peeks \" Keeping characters moving constantly\" out from under the flannel flap and Adding salt to the wound, many people was more a matter of keeping characters squeaks, \" Hello, Betty!\" This is not de- fear that a steady diet of these cartoons will moving according to their personality . signed as a major gag in the film; it is dictate future evaluations of quality. Dis- Bugs' walk is different from Tweetie Pie's; merely a throwaway in a scene already ney veteran Ward Kimball told Mike Bar- Popeye 's is different from Mister brimming with movement and humor. rier in an inteview why he edited scenes Magoo's.3 In Hanna-Barbera cartoons, Fleischer cartoons of this period are over- out of lHE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE and THE there are no nuances in the design or flowing with ideas , just as Disney's Mickey BAND CONCERT when the classic cartoons movement of characters' faces; wriggling Mouse shorts of the early Thirties piled gag were shown during a Mickey Mouse an- an eyebrow would probably throw off the upon gag at a breathless rate. niversary program on the Sunday night budget for an entire series. What's more, Disney TV show. \"The Hanna-Barbera Yogi Bear walks the same way as Ranger One of the treats of vintage Hollywood Saturday morning fare ... has conditioned Smith, who walks the same way as Magilla cartoons is the fine music on the sound- kids to expect this kind of quick timing. Do Gorilla, who ... track. The major unsung hero in this field away with all the dissolves and fades and is Carl W. Stalling, who composed an orig- all the artwork we used to throw into our All of the action in a Hanna-Barbera car- inal score for every Warner Brothers car- cartoons. Communication has to be sud- toon takes place on the same plane. There toon, combining popular songs, classical den and quick now.\" is no such thing as moving toward or away themes, and original ideas in order to from the camera (except, notably, in the complement and enhance the visual This paints a sad picture indeed, espe- main titles for a series, where the humor. Many cartoons, from Disney's lHE cially when one sees other successful car- animators could splurge) . A critic once BAND CONCERT to Friz Freleng's RHAPSODY toon studios like Filmation and DePatie- wrote that DUMBO had \"as many camera IN RIVETS and Walter Lantz's \"Swing Freleng following in Hanna-Barbera's angles as CITIZEN KANE,\" while Bob Clam- Symphonies\" -and even Hanna- footsteps. (At least DePatie-Freleng's Pink pett delighted in having his Looney Tunes Barbera's own Tom and Jerry CAT CONCER- Panther character has some subtlety in his characters run amok inside the cartoon TD--Were built entirely around famous movement and design; but their Saturday frame, dashing away into the background pieces of classical music. The most familiar morning show now has a laugh-track to only to scramble frantically right into the music on the soundtracks of Hanna- tell the kids when to be amused .) camera lens a moment later. One will Barbera TV cartoons is the same canned never find such movement in a Hanna- theme used for years on Listerine commer- The question remains, does it have to be Barbera cartoon; working out the perspec- this way? tive detail would take too long, and be- cials. Finally, the great vintage Hollywood The dual obstacles to quality are money 3. Cf. Grim Natwick's\" Advice froma Master,\" on and time. As with live programs on TV, page cartoons were quality products, made by even creative talents are bound to wear 78 JAN .-FEB. 1975

themselves out on a weekly grind. But the lifeless examples of form without con tent. Only on the Rocky show would a fairy true irony is in the contrast between the Ironically, an early Fifties UPA cartoon tale involving a group of mice in an old problems of producing animated pro- shoe contain the following passage: the gramming and creating animated com- like the Magoo SLOPPY JALOPY seems posi- head mouse warns his frie nds that they mercials. This too is identical to the Iive- tively lavish today when compared to may be dispossessed, but they have no- action world: more time, money, and standard TV fare, including the cartoons where to go. Another mouse asks, \"What creativity is poured into the making of a produced by the very same UPA in recent about Disneyland?\" \" Nah,\" replies the one-minute commercial than is used for years . After a series of funny and well- leader, \"Cousin Mickey's got that place all the production of a half-hour show. Thus, made Magoo shorts for theatrical release, sewed up,\" pointing to a painting of MM some of the best animation on TV is in the company (with few of its stalwarts still on the wall (from the waist down). commercials. Quality animation is also on the staff) produced a series of a found on the two Public Broadcasting hundred and fifty five-minute \"Magoos\" The animation in these high-spirited car- shows Sesame Street and Electric Company, for TV using Hanna-Barbera techniques, toons is sometimes downrightinept, with which commission short animated se- with predictably bleak results. The studio no continuity from one shot to the next. quences from small, creative animation fared better with half-hour and hour-long But in addition to the irresistible humor on houses. These segments, designed to im- Magoo specials, and a series of Dick Tracy the soundtrack, Ward and crew had press the meaning of certain letters or TV cartoons spiced with a gallery of color- learned an important ingredient for mak- numbers on young children, not only in- ful characters. ing funny cartoons: design funny-looking spire but demand ingenuity on the part of characters. Thus, Ward ' s \" cast\" is the the filmmakers, unlike the cartoons- A few UPA veterans (director Pete Bur- weirdest looking bunch since Ma x for-cartoons'-sake that fill the commer- Fleischer's menagerie of the early Thirties, ness, deSigner-director Bill Hurtz, writer where being cross-eyed was the norm. cial airwaves. Bill Scott) teamed up with producer Jay And happily, they have voices to match, Time restrictions are difficult to sur- Ward in the late Fifties to create Rocky and with Bullwinkle's dialogue spoken by His Friends , a limited-animation half-hour Ward 's co-producer Bill Scott. mount, but the money factor is not so with a difference: humor. Combining one-sided. A few individuals have shown sharp comedy writing with a general air of The story of Jay Ward Productions is, that cheap animation need not be tiresome irreverence (Rocky and Bullwinkle fre- sadly, laced with the bitter irony of televi- (as in the deceptively simple styles em- quently talk back to the narrator of their sion reality. Ward hasn't had a new show ployed on Sesame Street and in many com- adventures) and a sterling cast of voice on TV since George of the Jungle several mercials). Animator-director Gene Deitch players, Rocky soon earned as big an adult years ago, because he refuses to be trendy created the Tom Terrific character for Ter- following as it had among the smallfry set. and give the networks the pablum they rytoons' use on Captai/1 Kangaroo, and The Bullwinkle Show was an extension of want for weekend mornings. Instead, he turned his limitations into an asset. These Rocky's format, but when originally broad- has spent most of his time the past few cartoons use line drawings for all charac- cast on NBC early Sunday evenings, a years producing commericals for Quaker ters, and sparse, impressionistic back- Bullwinkle puppet m.c. got too pointed in Oats cereals featuring Cap'n Crunch and a grounds to suggest a city street, a play- his satiric barbs at the network and the cast of characters no less endearing than ground, or an ocean. The major asset of program returned to full animation, in the loonies who populated his half-hour hero Tom Terrific is that he can turn him- which the network brass felt the same kind programs. Quaker has given Ward amaz- self into any kind of object at whim; thus, of satire was less threatening, since fewer ing freedom in the creation of these one- the keystone of the series is a purely visual people would tend to take a cartoon seri- minute spots, and needless to say, enough idea. Clever direction, endearing tongue- ously. in-cheek voice work, and a serviceable DePatie-Freleng's Pink Panther, music score using just an accordian add up painting a sad picture indeed. to a pleasing and entertaining cartoon with more verve and innovation than most TV outings-on a small budget. Of course, Deitch's graphic format for Tom Terrific was merely an extension of the style made famous by UPA in the late For- ties and early Fifties (Deitch was UPA's New York chief before joining Terrytoons) . At that time, such cartoons as GERALD MCBOING BOING, MADELEINE, and the \"Mis- ter Magoo\" series were considered rev- olutionary in their stylized approach. Crit- ics hailed the studio product as a refresh- ing change from the so-called literalism of Disney, while Disney answered back with some limited-animation endeavors like TOOT, WHISTLE, PLUNK, AND BOOM and PIGS IS PIGS, scoring on the same ground as UPA but making it clear that this was a device to be used for special occasions, and not a way of life. Similarly, UPA discov- ered that this unique style of designing . cartoons was not appropriate for every kind of subject. Moreover, an attempt to duplicate the success of the classic GERALD MCBOING BOING revealed that even brilliant designers, directors, and animators were lost without an idea worth developing; most of the \"McBoing Boing\" sequels were FILM COMMENT 79

TV ANIMATIONS CONTINUED lex Avery varmints from a Raid commercial. money for him to turn out a finished prod- uct much handsomer tha n any of his . Jones' budgets are re- shows ever were! The studio is able to do in the business, and pencil-test dry runs for these commercials, product every time. a luxury it could not afford under network budgets and time restrictions; and all of the whether based on Dr. work for these commercials is done in- Seuss or conceived as original stories, tend ho use under the supervision of Bill Hurtz, to be terribly \" cute\" and self-conscious. unlike most of the half-hour shows, where Jones is a master of personality animation, animation was farmed out to low-quality but the personality he seems to favor is that Mexican studios to save money. Needless of Sniffles, his first cartoon star back at to say, the Cap'n Crunch commericals are Warner Brothers. Without writer Michael better in every way than most of the shows Maltese to provide brash, violent gags for they interrupt. characters like Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote, Jones has reverted to his own, Ward is not the only producer capable of more personal style, which is far more lim- crea ting good cartoons for tel evision . But ited in appeal and more difficult to sustain the fact remains that in terms of entertain- over thirty minutes' time. One can only ment and humor, no one has come close to wish that Jones would take his skill (and his track-record. Chuck Jones' half-hour television clout) and find some way to re- specia ls (HOW THE GRINCH STOLE juvenate Bugs and the Warners cartoon gang for TV. CHRISTM AS, THE CRICKET IN TIMES SQUARE, Lee Mendelsohn and Bill Melendez's e tc.) are perha ps the best-an illla ted pro- Peanuts half-hour specials are generally well done, although severely restricted by A co lor ce l from lex Avery's the graphic aridity of the Charles Schulz Koo l-Aid commercials , featuring comic strip. But perhaps the two- Bugs Bunn y. dimensional nature of the characters is es- sential to Peanuts' appeal: one permits the 80 JAN.-FEB . 19 75 suspension of disbelief in order to accept such unusual looking\" children\" who speak like mature adults; adding a third dimension, and asking us then to believe in these characters, would be an unbear- able strain on all of us . The Peal1uts pro- grams largely overcame this dilemma, and found voices that suited the characters, but one insuperable problem remains: stretch- ing a four-panel strip to half-hour length without letting the seams show. Bob Clampett, another Warners graduate, temporarily abandoned anima- tion in the early days of TV to create the popular children's puppet show Time for Beany . Some years later, he revived these characters in a series of half-hour cartoon programs called Beany and Cecil , starring Cecil the Sea-Sick Sea Serpent, his pal Beany, the villainous Dishonest John, and

Left: Charlie Brown and Linus in the Mendel sohn-Melendez PEANUTS. Right : Torn Terrfic , with Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog, by Gene Deitch. a rotating cast of assorted friends. The he helped to create the character at War- land a steady assignment, producing seg- Beal1Y cartoons are full of clever gag- ments for Public Broadcasting's Electric writing, heavy on the puns, and the kind ners . Company (chietly the Lettenllan spots), but of adult references that gave Bullwil1kle its Even Max Fleischer found himself as- another projected series for General Food s wide appeal. There is also a healthy supply (Dig, about the earth) was curtailed after of visual imagination at work, and a sur- sociated with television, supervising an one show. Happily, the Hubleys have just prising amount of original music for vari- updated version of Out of the Inkwell in the completed a mini-series for CBS called ous episodes. Yet somehow, Beal1Y doesn' t Sixties that in total couldn' t compare to the Riders of the Carou sel, about the eight stages work as well as one would like; it produces fluid animation and florid invention of one of man's life scheduled for airing in early smiles, not laughs, because everything ten-minute \"Inkwell\" film made in 1921. going on in the program is so blatantly As for the basic idea of combining live- 1975. self-conscious. Even the star character, action and animation, this was just too Hubley, like Chuck Jones, will not bend time-consuming for a series of mass- Cecil, is one step removed from credibility: produced cartoons, so the inkwell gim- to the economic pressure of television . Re- he's supposed to be a hand puppet, so one mick was limited to Ko-Ko's entrance and ferring to the Saturday-morning standard never sees the lower portion of his body, exit in most five-minutes entries. fodder, he told Variety, \" I know how that just a long neck leading (one supposes) to stuff is made. It's assembl y-line stuff the arm of a puppeteer-as it in fact does Oddly enough, one of animation's most which can have no feeling, no personal at- during the main title of each show, reveal- successful and least innovative veterans, tention. As a filmmaker and artist, I'm not ing Bob Clampett as the man behind the Walter Lantz, never got into television in teres ted. \" scenes. animation per se. Instead, he created a half-hour Woody Woodp ecker Show by Alas, the networks don' t seem to be in- The Beal1Y staff included such brilliant stringing together old theatrical cartoons terested in anything but. Yes, the y will cartoon directors as Jack Hannah and Jack with newly-animated introductions and, Kinney, responsible for the best Disney best of all, live-action segments in which sponsor occasional half-hour specials and shorts of the Forties. But Cecil is not as he explained how cartoons were made. Al- pay good money, because these are pro- funny (nor as flexible) a character as though he lacked the likable folksiness of grams which air in prime-time and can be Goofy, and Dishonest John's villainy be- Walt Disney, Lantz did a fine job on these repeated for several years, netting a hand- comes monotonous in a way Donald sequences, building the perfect framework some profit. Yes, they will occaSionally Duck's temper tantrums seldom did. in which to show his cartoons, introduced commission a quality show for prestige's What's more, Clampett couldn't provide each week by Woody, proclaiming, sake, as when ABC hired Jones to produce the budgets that Disney lavished on his \" Here's my boss, Walter Lantz.\" As it Th e Curiosity Shop. But the rules for a cartoons; without the ability to move happens, his cartoons, which almost al- characters around constantly, enjoy the ways looked tacky in theaters, came off weekly cartoon series are more strict: the liberty of cutting and camera angles, and beautifully on television, because even product must be manufactured cheaply, devote enough time to one brief episode to these lower-budgeted efforts were better and earn ratings and attract sponsors im- make it work just right, even the best ani- made than most of the made-for-TV com- mediately. If it doesn' t, it's dropped. It's mation men found themselves unfairly petition. And like every cartoon studio, much easier to schedule a seventeenth confined. Like Jones, Clampett has never Lantz's had a full orchestra playing origi- season of reruns for The Jetsons. topped the work he did while at Warner nal scores for his shorts, an aU-important Brothers in the Forties. factor in comparing theatrical and televi- A disturbing new trend has studios like sion animation. Filmation doing animated programs based Tex Avery has managed to continue on live characters from previously filmed making quality animation-in commer- A pioneer of a later generation, John shows, such as Star Trek, I Dreall/ ofJeanl1ie, cials. His long-running series of spots for My Favorite Martian , and Lassie. This re- Raid insecticide (produced more recently Hubley, has refused to compromise with duces animation to the ultimate level of by another veteran, Jack Zander) with the television, so his work in that medium has non-art, and serves no earthly purpose spray mist turning into various instru- been sparse. The UPA veteran and creator -except to make certain people a lot of ments of death for perennially hapless in- of Mr. Magoo is probably best remem- money. Well, Walt Disney made a lot of sects, showed the kind of visual imagina- bered by children of the TV era as the money, and so did Warner Brothers, and tion missing from so many TV cartoons. creator of the Marky Maypo commercials, MGM, and even Jay Ward. The monetary Ironically enough, Avery animated Bugs rendered in the same visual and aural style goal is simply an inadequate excuse for the Bunny for a series of Kool-Aid commer- as his more prestigious theatrical films garbage that masquerades as animation on cials in the Sixties, some twenty years after MOONBIRD and THE HOLE, but no less en ter- network TV. Creative people have shown taining. A few years ago the Hubley that it doesn't have to be this way. studio, run by John and his wife Faith, did Where are you, BuUwinkle, now that we really need you? ~!; FILM COMMENT 81

An extraordinary journey through all the wonderful worlds of Walt Disney His films have been seen throughout tional and nature films, and the films the world . His characters have enter- released since his death , as well as tained a succession of generations. accounts of the creation of Mickey The technical excellence of his work Mouse and the host of other delight- set a standard for the industry, and he ful cartoon characters. single-handedly raised the animated cartoon to an artform . Now the whole , Leonard Maltin , author of Th e fabulous story of this amazing Great Movie Shorts and one of the genius 's work is here-in THE DISNEY most respected figures in the world FILMS . of movie history and criticism , has produced a comprehensive and pro- This is the book for everyone who fusely illustrated book that will de- has ever been touched by the Disney light film buffs, scholars, and of magic. Included are special sections course the mill ions Disney enter- on his feature films , (with all the clas- tained. Over 200 illustra- sics from Snow White to Fantasia to tions.8V2\" x11 \" . The Jungle Book) , his sho rt subjects, his television shows, his brilliant educa- $9.95. now at your bookstore. or send check or money order to : N!!:-f:::~. '1:.A~ CROWN PUBLISHERS . INC . ~~~: ~g~1t~ 82 JA N .-FEB . 19 7 5

LONDON JOURNAL CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2 One wonders how Straub will resolve the related problem of camera placement in his MOSES AND AARON film: will he reveal the necessary facial distortions of the sing- ers in close ups, or preserve the opera house illusion of relative repose in long shots? October 15: At long last, a Fassbinder film I can celebrate! MARTHA, inaugurating a season of new German cinema at the Na- tional Film Theatre, pushes the campy and distancing effects of THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT and ALl until they serve up their richest fusions and clearest con- tradictions. Practically any given moment of this startling masterpiece is enough to warrant a scream or a giggle, and stagger- ing uneasily between these extremes en- courages us to appreciate the horror story (virgin librarian loses father, marries Jean Simmons in GUYS AND DOLLS sadist) in all its various and overlapping aspects. A parody of bourgeois marriage, ing long shot, the film subsequently re- the lousy idea of broadcasting Dov- zhenko's EARTH w ith added so und informed by Fassbinder's characteristic verses itself in a sequence featuring words effects-a barrage of twittering birds and crickets, moaning peasants, etc.-which empathy and compassion; an improbable and camera movements, where a lecture sabotaged the film even if one turned the volume off, because it necessitated show- meeting ground for Hollywood in the Fif- about the film's subject by Wollen while ing it at the wrong speed. ties and Dreyer (with some scenes suggest- moving through a garden terrace and liv- Since FORTY GUNS has a partially incom- ing either a Minnelli remake of GERTRUD or ing room is accompanied by the \"subtext\" prehensible plot to begin with, the losses tend to be strictly formal rather than narra- a Sirk adaptation of Georges Bataille, with of the camera's independent path through tive (apart from the inevitable censor's cuts). But what still comes through with intermittent traces of VAMPYR); a festival of the same general space, zeroing in on the remarkable clarity is how-in striking con- trast to the mystery-play concentration fluid camera movements, balancing deep- cue cards left behind by Wollen for some and unswerving narrative progression in I SHOT JESSE JAMES-FORTY GUNS is such a focus effects and candy-box colors; and a witty, playful, and paradoxical effects. workshop of uncontinuous formal ideas. Virtually every character, scene, and shot mounting sense of the monstrous as Next comes a lengthy presentation of di- stands at an oblique angle to every other, splintering an already not-so-lucid Helmut's insane demands and accelerat- verse art objects relating to the Amazon storyline into a thicket of uneven, au- tonomous slabs jutting out in every con- ing cruelties against his fragile wife fit with myth (from ancient sculpture to Wonder ceivable direction. This cacophony of styles, like that of Godard's in the late Six- increasing snugness into the common- Woman frames) accompanied by Berio's ties, is curiously enough an attempted negation of style. So powerful is the force place banalities of soap opera. \"Visage\" and separated by animated of the dialectic in each director's work that their strategies often seem to derive from Helmut is played by Karlheinz Bohm, wipes and maskings; then a simultaneous the premise that no single approach is pos- sible, therefore even; possible approach is the creepy hero of PEEPING TOM-fleshed . recitation of a feminist text and projection necessary. No wonder that the ideology of both directors' films is so ambiguous : out here to suggest a hulking slab of re- of a silent feminist film; and finally se- CHINA GATE is as full of paradoxes as LA CHINOISE. spectable granite-while Martha is ex- quence number five which presents four Refusing to stand still long enough to pertly incarnated by spindly and sparrow- TV monitors replaying the four previous sustain a consistent strategy, FORTY GUNS seems to benefit rather than suffer from its like Margit Carstensen, in a freakish man- sections (eventually supplanted by new abbreviated shooting schedule-a ten- days' wonder with all forty of its guns nerist performance of near-epic propor- material) while the camera periodically iso- (figuratively) firing at separate targets, re- sulting in one of the most non-linear tions. People who don' t like this film call it lates individual screens and soundtracks. movies in the history of Hollywood . Perhaps it is the one Fuller film that most self-indulgent, which I take to mean not Initially somewhat soporific-before the reflects his legendary shooting method of beginning every shot by firing a gun and boring enough to qualify as classicism nor overall design becomes evident-but ul- ending it with the command \"Forget it\": it is hard to think of a more succinct parody quite rigorous enough to register as either timately fascinating , PENTHESILEA offers of existentialism. ~ measured or monolithic. I suppose five just as much as one is willing to bring to it, minutes or so could be dropped from the rewarding intellectual collaboration but film without serious damage; but consider- scrupulously avoiding the discourse of il- ing the fact that the film virtually lives in its lusionist narrative while exploring \"the excesses, I can't imagine preferring a tamer space between a story that is never told or saner version. and a history that has never yet been November 1: Laura Mulvey and Peter made\"-contrasting diverse presen tations Wollen's PENTHESILEA : QUEEN OF THE of texts and relative surfaces that accumu- AMAZONS is clearly and unabashedly a late around a hypothetical subject. theoretical film, which means that only a November 16: Samuel Fuller's FORTY handful of people in London seem in- GUNS on BBC-2 . Concluding a series of terested in seeing it . No matter. Split into three Fuller Westerns-I SHOT JESSE JAMES five autonomous \"one-take\" sequences- and THE BARON OF ARIZONA were shown actually two reels each, with semi-invisible the previous weeks-this rough gem is ROPE-like junctures-this ambitious and brutally distorted by the BBe's infuriating difficult work explores a series of didactic habit of (1) cutting off both sides of the possibilities, how to convey information CinemaScope frame and (2) re-editing the through sounds and images, and invites film in the process, so that now (for in- us to compare and juxtapose the alterna- stance) the celebrated endless tracking tives at every level. shot through the town is marred by a cut. Starting with a mime of Kleist's This sort of tampering is nothing new, of Penthesilea filmed in one static and alienat- course: only three weeks ago, BBC-2 had FILM COMMENT 83

From the celebrated WITHER the National Endowment for the Arts. A documentary film maker THEAFI? reading of the bill gives a hint of what the new AFI would have been like . The bill and cinema historian by Austin provided for about fifty per cent govern- Lamont ment represen tation on the API Board of Basil Wright Trustees. It also gave the AFI power to On December 16, the House of Rep- \"undertake and coordinate ... the produc- An idiosyncratic resentatives defeated an e nabling bill tion of films for charitable, patriotic, ed uca- history & appreciation which would have provided the American tional, or other public purposes\"; the API Film Institute with direct federal funding . could also contract out such films . It , of the movies ... The bill, HR17021, was defeated by a two- sounded ve ry much as if the AFI was to-one vote. The House defeat killed any planning to become a producing organiza- ...from Vitascope to Senate action but the bill may b e re- tion, perhaps similar to the National Film Video, from Melies to introduced in the 1975 Congress by its orig- Board of Canada. If this did happen, the inal sponsor, Representative John API as it was originally conceived would Last Tango Brademas ofIndiana. have withered away, which could have meant abandonment of, among other \"A big, bright, breezy mon- Most of the people in the non-theatrical things , the unfinished AFI Catalog-a ster of a book ... one trusts film community who have heard of the serious loss. his eye, his enthusiasm, his API have heard something negative about experience.\" it, and have heard disappointing things Representative Brademas, sponsor of about its director, George Stevens, Jr. The the API bill, assures us that the National - Robert Mazzocco, plain truth, as the AFI's record clearly Endowment for the Arts would continue N ew York Review of Books shows, is that Stevens is mainly interested to make film grants, but no longer to the \"He is one of the treasures of in the Hollywood film industry; and even AFI. The Endowment's Public Media our cinema [and] a brilliant when the API had money, the film com- Panel, which screens all video and film ap- teacher ... he has a lovely munity outside of Hollywood got little of plications , is made up of a broadly rep- wit .. .\" - London Times it, despite their obvious need s. * resentative group of film experts whose \"His pages burst with en- decisions have been fair to the entire film thusiasm ... his canvas is When the API was founded, one pur- community, and whose grants have been large and always alive.\" pose was to coordinate, serve, and aid the well-administered. The film community it- film community as an umbrella organiza- self has become more experienced at coop- - Kirkus Reviews tion . It didn't. The film community found eration and in making group decisions . 709 pages (including a 22-page out that the AFI wasn't really interested in But perhaps an umbrella organization index) • $15 • Knopf ~ serving the non-theatrical section, that would still be needed, and some of the George Stevens, Jr. didn't live up to his things it might want to look into are more 84 JAN.-FEB. 19 75 commitments to them , and that they cooperation between Hollywood and the would have to do their own coordinating non-theatrical film community; distribu- and get their aid elsewhere, And so they tion of non-theatrical films; further de- have , One recent example is the Commit- velopment of regional film study centers tee on Film and TV Reso urces and Services and cinematheques; stronger local film or- (The Mohonk Conference) which was con- ganizations; accreditation for film schools; ceived and organized outside of the AFI and a code of ethics for film festivals . and fund ed by foundations; their report is due in early spring . A second is the As- The best way to keep informed about sociation of Independent Video and Film- any future bill is through your local film makers, a new trade association in New organization, Meanwhile there's still York financed by members' dues and a so mething you can do: write to Senator foundation grant. The AFI directly funds Pell and ask that funding for the Public only two chief activities; the API Catalog, Media section of the National Endowment and the Center for Advanced Film Study for the Arts be increased in the future. in Beverly Hills. Most of the rest of its ac- That's where the non-theatrical film tivities, including its grants to independent community's leadership is coming from filmmakers, are handled by contract (not now, and that's where leadership in film by grant) from the National Endowment. will be coming from in the future. Under the defeated bill, the API would You can get further information on the no longer have had anything to do with API bill, or register your opinion, with any of the following Representatives and Austin Lamont, the former Managing Editor of Senators: FILM COMMENT, has returned to filmmaking. John Brademas, Chairman, House • Film publications documenting this are Film Society Select Subcommittee on Education, Rroiew, January through May, 1971; FIlm Quarterly, Washington DC 20515, Summer 1961 and Winter 1971-72; FILM COMMENT, Summer 1971 ; Screel1, Summer 1971; and Variety, Claiborne Pell, Chairman, Senate Spe- August 20 and November 27, 1974. cial Subcommittee on Arts and Humanities, Washington DC 20510. t';; THE FOREMOST AUTHORITY ON FILM CARE AND REPAIR SCRATCH REMOVAL. INSPECTION COMPLETE FILM REJUVENATION PEERLESS PROCESS FOR NEW FILM PROTECTION FILMTREAT INTERNATIONAL 730 SALEM ST • GLENDALE CA 91203 • 2131242·2181 250 W64 ST • NEW YORK NY 10023. 2121799·2500

\"WHAT IS largely state-aided, and is ruled by an come productive automatons that ha s THE BFI?\" appointed group consisting of a Director widened the gap between cinema and some twenty Governors.) To the specialist and businessman; and the by Verina surprise of many, the Action Group's in- chasm ha s never been so ga ping as it is Glaessner cendiary device caught fire, and Stanley now. More than one anecdote (perhaps Reed resigned as Director; to the surprise apocryphal, but certainly credible) circu- For fifteen days in September, the of some, his replacement by Keith Lucas, lated by the staff portrays members of staid facade of the British Film Institute formerly a TV a nd film designer and the Governing board as woefully lacking was rent by the first strike in its minor academic, failed to clear the air. in savoir-film-such as the one about a forty-year history. The strike gained offi- new appointee who phone s up a de- cial, white-collar union recognition , and Concessions to the malaise endemic partment head for advice on th e best was the result of action taken not by any among staff and membership simply book to tell him all he need s to know radical minority but by a majority of the raised a storm of their own. Much of the about the cinema . Institute's staff. Staff members who had discontent stemmed from an informa- spent most of their working lives with tion bottle-neck; but the publication of a Lucas was originally selected as a kind the BFI-the very last people who ex- BFI News folio packed with intramural of high-powered pro, but some of his pected or wished to become involved in puffery could not satisfy those seriously maneuvers seem less than professional. the whole ritual of industrial activ- concerned with either using or manag- When he named a working party, he ism-were picketing, with placards and ing the various departments . And no neglected to tell them they were sup- leaflets, in front of the Institute's twin sooner had the principle been accepted posed to rubber-stamp decisions he had Dean Street entrances. The strike gained whereby two member governors, already made; when they proceeded prestigious support from, among others, elected by the membership, would be in- conscientiously wi th their ta s k , th ey Alexander Kluge, Otto Pre minger, and cluded on the board than the manage- found everyone of their major decisions R. W. Fassbinder. (\"What,\" Preminger ment ratified the election of Nicolas Gar- overturned. As one staff membe r com- asked as he signed the solidarity docu- nham, the most active and recalcitrant, mented: \"I wouldn' t have minded if he' d ment, \"is the BFI?\") for only one year instead of the usual spent a year looking at the Institute and two. By now, staff feelings were turning at the workings of various departme nts, Against the expectations of many a from muted pessimism to palpable out- and then come to his conclusions. But cynical BFI-watcher, the impossible had rage. the scope of the Archive was simply re- happened: the staff had united. Work defined without consultation.\" No de- ground to a halt in the archive, the in- One pointlessly megalomaniacal partment was immune. formation department, the regional proposal had Lucas himself assuming branches. The editorial offices of the headship of the Archive-a move that It may be the Institute's structure that BFI's publications, Sight and Sound and could have virtually isolated that body is at fault, rather than the way it is being Th e Monthly Film Bulletin , were deserted . from all international cooperation. That managed. But the creation of a welter of The National Film Theatre was picketed: the scheme was seriously suggested at committees and subcommittees, staffed audiences fell off, silent films were run all, and then persisted in despite wide- by minor celebrities dabbling in the cel- without musical accompaniment, and spread opposition, both escalated and luloid arts, has done little to counter the Leslie Hardcastle, the theatre's justified the staff's feelings of persecu- isolation of the governing body and di- controller, was seen performing tion. The principle of consultation (al- rector from the department heads and usherette's duty. The small NFT cinema ways previously acknowledged) seemed other staff-let alone from the user- was closed for a time. finally to have been ignored , especially members. Pe rhaps because the Gover- when one department head found her nors are unpaid , the posts seem to attract The issue which so resoundingly and job advertised in the national press. As (with some exceptions) the wrong peo- unexpectedly provoked what no amount the financial year drew to a close, and ple for the wrong reasons . The appalling of rhetoric had been able to achieve was staff members were attempting to run waste of effort can't be stopped until the abrupt and inept dismissal of Kevin their departments on frayed-shoestring most of the Governors are drawn from Gough-Yates, the acting head of the budgets, some £500 was being spent on a the ranks of those notably committed to Archive. The staff claimed wrongful chandelier, and the Dean Street offices an urgent concern for the development dismissal; the union backed the staff. were being given a needless face-lift. of film in Britian-and there are plenty to (Gough -Yates has since been replaced on choose from-or until the duties now the BFI payroll, and the case is awaiting To be sure, Lucas' decisions were any- resting with the Director and Governors arbitration.) But Gough- Yates' dismissal thing but random. His was the reality of devolve upon Institute staff members. To was less a reason for striking than a the time-and-motion specialist. One of function creatively, the BFI must run on clerks' last straw. his first moves-and one which the staff enthusiasm-especially with the current saw as counter-productive, both eco- dearth of petrol. At the moment, that en- Three years ago, the small, radical BFI nomically and psychologically-was to thusiasm is sadly dissipated. ~{: Members' Action Group expressed and import Alan Hill, a charted accountant. ca pitaJized upon stirrings of discontent But Lucas (with his ideal of COMING ATTRACTIONS when it called for the resignation of the \"pan-institutionalism\") and the Archive Institute's Governors.* (The BFI is (with its vaunted autonomy) could Interviews with Joseph Losey, Mel hardly be expected to coexist peacefully. Verina G laessner, formerly the film editor of Time Michael Pye, in the Sunday Times , Brooks, Martin Scorsese, John Out (London), is now free-lancing . perceptively noted \"the delicate busi- ness of persuading dedicated en- SchleSinger, Dusan Makavejev, 'See Ian Cameron's London Journal in the thusiasts to operate like efficient civil November-December 1972 FILM COMMENT. servants.\" Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, However delicate the Director's at- A.1. Bezzerides. Articles on Paul tempts to run the BFI like a business, the operation proved frighteningly wasteful Mazursky, John Ford's war of.the staff's talent, knowledge, and documentaries, George Stevens' skill, and threatened to corrode any posi- hve role the BFI might play within British wartime comedies, Nathanael West's film culture . It's the staff's refusal to be- B-Pictures, Ernst Lubitsch's THE MERRY WIDOW (with a memoir by Samson Raphaelson). FILM COMMEN T 85

BOOKS Butte, Montana, the combination of a bad OZU: HIS LIFE AND FILMS knee and a touring production of The BY DONALD RICHIE EACH MAN IN HIS TIME Clan sman conspired to initiate Raoul Walsh BY RAOUL WALSH into the acting profession. Walsh's at- University of California Press. Berkeley, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1974; tempts to land a job acting on the New Los Angeles, London , 1974; hardcover hardcover $10.00; 377 pages, index, illus- York stage, his acceptance of movie work $14 .50; 275 pages, illustrations, trations. in a day when respectable actors shunned bibliography, index. REVIEWED BY GEORGE MORRIS film acting, his early acting chores for REVIEWED BY JOAN MELLEN Pathe at Union Hill in New Jersey, and his Raoul Walsh's autobiography won't set fortuitous alignment with Biograph and Donald Richie once compared the any literary precedents, but as one of the D.W. Griffith, all manage to illustrate the form of his witty comic novel, Compan- handful of first- hand recollections of halcyon days when film began to emerge ions of the Holiday , to that of an Ozu major American directors, it is reasonably as a force to be reckoned with, when luck movie. Now he has given us at last his informative, immensely entertaining, and and accident could parlay a man into a full-length study of Ozu. It is a fascinat- invaluable to the film historian. In its in- sixty-year career. ing pursuit of the director, permitting us termingling of the personal and the to witness two artists at work and the specific with a generalized historical The first half of Walsh's autobiography is merging of kindred sensibilities, Richie's overview, the book is not unlike the struc- the most entertaining, the sequence re- and that of his natural subject, Ozu. Each ture of such Walsh classics as THE ROARING counting the director's encounter and views the world through the ironies of TWENTIES and GENTLEMAN JIM. The book journey with Pancho Villa being consider- mono lID aware, that omnipresent sense of further parallels Walsh's career in that ably more than that. The last part of the the unalterability and sweet transience tangy episodes in the director's youth are book frequently lapses into the recitation of things as they are . It is the mood that described with the relish of the anecdotal of \"famous people I have known\" that adds characteristic transcendance and story-teller that flavors Walsh's best Thir- mars so many autobiographies. Walsh also peace to Ozu's work, as in the bitter up- ties and Forties films, whereas a mellow- telescopes events and time to the point that lift at the end of TOKYO STORY or the lim- ness emerges in the later stages of the the reader who is unfamiliar with Walsh' s ited harmony enjoyed by the married book, similar in tone to the serenity of such filmography and its chronology, will get couple at the end of THE FLAVOR OF GREEN late masterpieces as THE TALL MEN and the impression that OBJECTIVE BURMA TEA OVER RICE and by the middle-aged BAND OF ANGELS . (1945) ' was filmed in 1941, and SALTY actor and actress of FLOATING WEEDS. O'ROURKE, (also 1945) in the late Forties. Compared to Frank Capra's clarion call Mono no aware is the lens through to his own greatness, Walsh's chronicle is a These reservations are admittedly which Richie views Ozu, and so the ex- model of unpretentiousness and self- minor, in the light of the abundant IElve of perience of reading his book becomes effacement. Although his penchant for Ir- life and work that filters through every analogous to watching an Ozu film. The relevant anecdotes and amatory dalliances page of Each Man in His Time. I don't be- structure of Richie's book parallels that threatens to interrupt the easy flow of the lieve there can be any doubt, following the of an Ozu film. We follow Ozu through narrative, these indulgences ultimately be- Museum of Modern Art's superb retros- the construction of his scripts, which, come as important in the overall structure pective of Walsh's careeer earlier this year, lacking any \"plot\" as we know it, are of the book as they are revealing about the that Raoul Walsh belongs in the Pantheon composed of what Richie christens man himself. Like his films , Walsh is so of the American Cinema. The depth of \"emotional mod ules.\" Beginning from damned likable, his raucous humor so in- vision and the continual exploration and some pedestrian situation, and before fectious , that any overly analytical criticism refinement of personal themes span five writing any dialogue, Ozu would create would be niggling. (I would like to correct decades . To those critics who believe a card for each scene. Richie visualizes the caption under the illustration that iden- Walsh's career culminates in the three ob- Ozu and his ubiquitous scriptwriter and tifies the actress with Clark Gable and sessive masterpieces of the late friend Kogo Noda \"seated at the big table Walsh as Jane Russell. The actress is Jean FortieS-PURsuED, COLORADO TERRITORY, in their Tateshina villa, moving about, as Willes, and the film, also incorrectly iden- and WHITE HEAT-I entreat that they though in some extended game of dou- tified as THE TALL MEN, is THE KING AND re-view the Fifties films to which the term ble solitaire, large and much FOUR QUEENS.) \"culmination\" more appropriately applies. scribbled-on and sketched -over manila In the majestic leisure of the epic cattle cards. \" The reader becomes a secret Walsh offers no startling insights in to the drive in THE TALL MEN, in the mythical observer, a voyeur as Ozu and Noda, development of the American Cinema, the confrontation between cavalry and Indians long into the night, write and drink, with growth of which parallels his own career. It in A DISTANT TRUMPET, in the helplessness Ozu playfully judging a script's value by is interesting, however, to speculate once and incomprehensibility of man against the number of empty whiskey bottles again on the twists of fate ~hat hurled so God's nature as well as man's in THE lined up the morning after. many early pioneers of film mto their NAKED AND THE DEAD, and consummately, lifelong professions. After a youth of s~il­ in the resignation and anguish of Clark \"Script\" is followed by \"Shooting .\" ing, cowpunching, wrangling, and a stint Gable's Hamish Bond in BAND OF ANGELS, We join Ozu on the set as Richie mediates as an assistant to a French s urgeon m we are allowed the highest privilege of the the world of Ozu's films with that of the artistic experience, a glimpse into the infi- Japanese culture from which they nite. emerge: \"He uses rooms as a pro- scenium . . . and since his fixed camera THE SILENT PICTURE position precluded his following his characters about, their entrances and The 1liiyserious ~erIy dnoted entirely to exits are often as theatrical-looking as theartII historyIi thesilent mction pk:wre they are in real Japanese life.\" \"Shoot- ing\" also contains a fine section on Oz.u's $4.00 per year (USA) $5.00 per year (Omsus) shot composition and a very germame discussion of \" enryo\" or reserve. It re- FIRST tvlEDlA PRESS fers to a formal relationship between people, closest to our ~otio~ of \"stand- 6 East 39th Street New York N Y 10016 ing on ceremony,\" and It defmes the typ- Joan Mellen is the author of Women and Th eir Sexu- ality ill th e New Film , published by HorIZon Press In 1973 . 86 JAN .-FEB. 1975

ical attitude of Ozu's characters toward examinations at the movies, viewing THE ing carefully Ozu's determination of that each other. \"Enryo, \" Richie suggests, PRISONER OF ZENDA. Surprisingly, he was elusive concept, \" tradition. \" Mysenseof permeates the world of the Ozu film, a heavy drinker from his youth. The man concerned as it is with the lives of emerges as a most unlikely creator of Ozu is that his characters are not allowed Japanese who know each other and, in those films characterized by calm and nearly so wide a range of choice as Richie fact, who usually belong to the same staid formality which find profound suggests. But, like O zu, Richie balances family. Last, and least important to Ozu, calm in accepting things as they are and his judgments with a feeling for the Richie shows us the principles of Ozu's life as a diminished thing. Richie ex- evanescence of his subject, its refusal to \"Editing. \" plores the man in terms of what he did, be reduced to categories. as Ozu presented his characters, without Ozu's work took precedence over all psychologisms. This too is fitting , for the One of the bea utiful aspects of Richie's personal elements in his life. heavy drinker obsessed with his mother criticism is that while, as a penetrating Accordingly, only after reconstructing was also a clever and subtle reader of the critic, he e xhausts his subject the typical Ozu film does Richie consider political exigencies of his time . meticulously, he , unlike many, produces the man in a \"Biographical Film- the feeling of leaving it open, providing ography.\" Here we are offered a portrait Richie deals amply with the issue of space for the reader's own experience of of Ozu as the spoiled Mama's boy, a man morality in Ozu' s work. Raising the Ozu. If Ozu embodies the purported who never married and who willfully re- question of the extent to which Ozu af- \" real Ja pa nese f1a vor,\" Richie has nounced a higher education by spending firms traditional values, he persuades us uniquely captured the taste of Ozu in a the day of his Middle School entrance to withhold easy judgment by consider- very lovely book . ~~. the BRUCE LEE book RICHARD CORLISS' -~farewell to . long-awaited reference work on the the dragon'. role and function of American screen writers as film-makers, •All the ACTION! The Bruce lee Memorial Film Book \\ ~~~~ NOW!!! FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER !!!! Not sold in any store! Special limited edition! All the EXCITEMENT! Order now and receive a free Bruce Lee poster!! Including the greatest selection of action photos ever published! All the FILMS of the SEND $322 TODAY TO: King of Martial Arts! The Cinema Attic· Dept. LA· Box 5006· Phila., Pc. 19111 ISTANBUL JOURNAL plation. By ACI, that device had begun to Please send ------copies of CONTINUED FROM PACE 4 go sour-too many \" significant\" poses, TALKING PICTURES held too long with insinuating music at $15 .00 each (check enclosed ). shoot accurately with only his ears to under. Did he, I asked Goren, mean that Name ___________________________ guide him. The final bloody end of the Guney was using more closeups without film (somewhat confusing in the badly dialogue, more emphasis on the slow, Address _________________________ cut and spliced print I saw) is supposed supposedly meaningful shot. The ans- City ___________________________ to be grandly tragic, I suspect, but I could wer was yes. That was presumably what not help seeing it as a Turkish variation my Istanbul acquaintances-most of the State __________________-L.Zi p ______ on the kind of balderdash I knew and Guney detractors had seen UMUT loved in old-fashioned American films SUZLAR-meant by excessive artiness, Please add $1 .00 for postage like MOON OVER BURMA, in which a blind and knowing my own prejudices well, I THE OVERLOOK PRESS Albert Basserman manages to kill a cobra suspect that Guney's poetic journey is P.O . Box 58 , WOOdstock, New York 12498 with a bullwhip. Guney's intentions are one that I would not find comfortable. plainly more serious than that, which Still, to be fair to my first informant in makes the weaknesses of ACI the more Ankara , UMUT and ACI are plainly major disappointing. films in the context of the Turkish movie business. Beyond that, they-par- Goren was sorry that he had been un- ticularly UMUT-are certainly good able to get a print of Guney's most recent enough to command an audience film for me to see because in UMUT suz- outside Turkey. They are not master- LAR (THOSE WITHOUT HOPE) , he exp- pieces by a long shot-not at all in the lained, the director was moving into a PATHER PANCHALI league-but they are new, poetic phase, one that is apparently interestingly conceived, well performed even more evident in the unfinished films which display a fine visual sense, film. Poetic is an adjective that scares me an almost tactile preoccupation with the even when it is used to discuss poetry, intimacies of Turkish life and a concern , and I had a nervous suspicion that I at once local and universal, for man in knew what Goren meant. In UMUT , extremis.'): Guney's camera had indicated a fond- ness for faces, a willingness to linger in silences over the characters in contem- FILM COMMENT 87

TOM &J ERRY speaks in a Negro dialect, \"No, Ma'am, I TRUCE HURTS , PROFESSOR 10M, and OLD CONTINUED FROM PACE 75 ain't seen no cat, no place , no how, ROCKIN' CHAIR 10M, surely one of the best Avery's unit, for which he did some of his NOOOOOOO MA' AM!\" as he gets out of stories, in which Tom and Jerry team up best work, particularly on Butch the Bull- the coal and shuffles along. Only Tom 's against the super-speed cat Lightnin', head is black though, the rest of his body is whom Mammy Two-Shoes hired to take dog. the normal grey and white, so Mammy Tom's place. In a hilarious scene animated Two-Shoes is not fooled for too long and by Irv Spence, Tom shoots an iron into the In the two years that followed 1946, Irv shouts \"Hey youl Come back here! sleeping Lightnin's open mouth, and then Spence's rise was meteoric. He combined Thomas! Come back here! \" and begins to gains complete control over him with a elements of crazy cartoon drawing with a pick up pieces of coal and heave them at magnet. Some other superior titles in this new smoothness of line and animation Tom. (This funny seq uence was animated series are HEAVENLY puss , CAT AND THE that soon surpassed even Ken Muse's ac- by Ray Patterson , who had a knack for MERMOUSE, CUEBALL CAT, SLEEPY-TIME compli shed draughts manship. It is hard to animating mush-mouth dialogue and a 10M, NIT-WITTY KITTY, TRIPLET TROUBLE, imagine 1948, the peak year of \"Tom and peculiarly spikey way of handling action.) MOUSE FOR SALE, and DESIGNS ON JERRY, in Jerry,\" w ithou t Spence's marvelous tim- which Jerry becomes involved with a ing. MOUSE CLEANING, my candidate for The last scene in MOUSE CLEANING is Tom stick-figure cat and mouse. th e best cartoon of the series, is not only a running away from the coal. First he ducks grea t showcase for the animators, but in- one chunk, then gracefully \"Irv Spences\" Some people criticize the \"Tom and tegrates story and gags beautifully. Tom is his body away from the next one, then Jerry\" cartoons for their \"senseless told no t to mess up th e house by Mammy ducks a third, does a \"Nya-Nya-Nya\" with violence\" but the best \"Tom and Jerrys\" Two-Shoes or \"We will be minus one cat his fingers in his ears, then runs toward the have \"violence with sense,\" for never has aro und here when I get back. \" Jerry seizes horizon, followed by a lump of coal grace- animated slapstick been carried out with the opportunity to get rid of Tom by pro- fully arcing toward him. When he and the more pep, more feeling and with better ceed ing to spread cigarette ashes on the coal are both dots in the distance, the coal movement than these venerable bastions carpet from an ilshtray. Tom (animated by hits him on the head, he bounces once and of good fun. Compare them with the Spence) does a marvelous runnin g sk id then falls flat on the ground, followed by \"Herman and Katnip\" series done by and swee ps up the ashes with a whisk an iris out on his prostrate form. Paramount in the late Forties and Fifties broom into a dustpan. Jerry continues to and it becomes apparent that there are no spread ashes, banging on the ashtray's I have tried to describe w.hat I consider to musical scores like Scott Bradley's, just re- spring door like a base drum. Tom is 50 be th e best \"Tom and Jerry\" cartoons. The petitive themes, rather mundane story mad that he reaches for the nearest thing sa me observations can be applied to al- ideas in which you hardly ever feel any he can find which is a big, ripe Technicolor most any of the 1948-1954 films; the same sympathy for Katnip, and a thoroughly tomato, and hurls it at Jerry's head . The re- animators worked on them. Irv Spence, a destesta ble hero, Herma n the Mouse. s ultant splat is surely the best tomato splat \"wild graceful dance\"; Ra y Patte rso n , About the only good thing one can say ever a nimated (Irv Spence). It hits the wall, \"mush-mouthed spikes\"; Ken Muse, about these cartoons is that they have oc- spreads red tomato juice way up the wall scholarly, masterful Character man , and casionally creative \"takes\" by such people in a few frames, and then a secondary s plat Ed Barge, just so lid. The year 1948 also as John Genitellia or Dave Tendlar. .}; follows this by a few frames. Great work! yielded such titles as KITTY FOILED , THE Tom is agitated when he sees this and If it happened in the movies last year, it's here ... The runs to ge t a bucket of soap and wa ter. authoritative pictorial and statistical record of the movIe Jerry puts blue ink in the solution and Tom scene is back in another lavish edition. This new vol- rubs off the tomato juice only to leave blue ume features many large pictorial spreads covering ink in its place. The s ubseq uent \"take\" is each of the hit films, and more than 1,000 profile and perhaps the third best I've ever seen, after scene shots from virtually every domestic and foreign the wolfs in NO RTHWEST HOUNDED POLlCE film released in the United States during the year, plus (Ed Lane) a nd Porky Pig 's in KITTY a 7,000-entry index . Illustrated. $9.95 KORNERED (Rod Scribner). Tom sees the blue ink in the so lution and covers his Now at your bookstore, or send check or money order eyes, not believing it, then slowly uncovers them. Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop, four sets of '€t\"\",to CROWN PUBLISHERS, 419 Park Ave. South, eyeball s pop out, followed by the anvil-like crash of Tom's ja w hitting the gro und (Irv New York, N.Y. 10016 Spence). Then Tom runs in when Jerry is abo ut to sq uirt ink from his fountain pen on to the curtains. He grabs the pen away from Jerry and play full y pulls at the refill lever. SPLAT! A big s pot appears on the curtains, at w hich Tom does another \"take,\" a bit more s ubdued than the last one. Mammy Two-Shoes is just about to open the front door when it bursts open and she is can'ied head over heels by the avalanche of coal which engulfs her. She pops out of the coal, covered with dust, s puttering, \"Boy when I get hold of that low-down , good for nothin ' . .. \" Then Tom's head pops out of the coal and she says \" Hey, yo u! Has yo u seen a no-good cat around here?\" Tom's head is all black with coal, and Mammy-Two-Shoes mis- takes him for a black man. Tom then 88 JAN.-FEB. 19 75

CORRECTIONS: Roger from pagan ruins, seemed to offer her a in quiet places where the fields lay near, Greenspun on LETTER companionship in endurance and the while she strolled further and further over FROM AN UNKNOWN musty incense to be a compound of long- the flower-freckled turf, or sat on the stone WOMAN unanswered prayers. There was no gentler that had once had a use and gazed through nor less consistent heretic than Isabel; the the veil of her personal sadness at the The gremlins were working overtime on firmest of worshippers, gazing at dark splendid sadness of the scene-at the altar-pictures or clustered candles, could our last issue. The chart adapted from not have felt more intimately the sugges- dense, warm light, the far gradations and tiveness of these objects nor have been soft confusions of colour, the motionless Raymond Durgnafs \"The Family Tree of more liable at such moments to a spiritual shepherds in lonely attitudes, the hills visitation. Pansy, as we know, was almost where the cloud-shadows had the lig ht- the Film Noir\" had two egregious errors: always her companion, and of late the ness of a blush. \" I The evocation of land- Countess Gemini, balancing a pink scape painting toward which the passage PORTRAITS AND DOUBLES, listed as a parasol, had lent brilliancy to their equip- builds is hardly gratuitous, for James is at age; but she still occaSionally found herself pains to place his heroine-ga zing film title in the MIDDLE-CLASS MUR- alone when it suited her mood and where \"through the veil of her personal sad ness it suited the place. On such occasions she at the splendid sadness of the scene\"-in DER section, should have been the title of a had several resorts; the most accessible of essential relation to a landscape under- which perhaps was a seat on the low stood as art, to equate Isabel' s feelings with different section, and the titles beneath it what she sees, to objectify, indeed to pic- torialize her situation as at once the raw boxed accordingly; and the subheading material for and the achievement of artistic form. Without willing it, but by living \"Lover Kills Belover, \" with the two films through the misery he has caused her, Isabel has out-distanced her aesthete hus- beneath it, should not be there at all. We're band, Gilbert Osmond, the connoisseur of coins, to become a better work of art than sorry about those mistakes; we're also any he could imagine. The most admirable of those high-spirited American girls who more than a little embarrassed. manages to recreate the spirit of Europe mainly by her unsuspected capacity for In the proofreading and layout of Roger suffering, Isabel begins to fit into the bril- liant \"portrait\" that is the fulfillment of Greenspun's article on LETTER FROM AN James' great novel. UNKNOWN WOMAN there were more than I am reminded of Isabel Archer-her look if not her situation-by the moment in the usual number of typographical errors, LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN when the heroine, Lisa, as a fully grown yOWlg a couple of the photo captions were mis- woman, first confronts the pianist Stefan Brand on the street outside his apartment. labeled, and the order of several parag- It is winter. Lisa, wearing black, stands in the distance . And Stefan, noticing for the raphs was hopelessly scrambled. Staff first time a new and mysterious beauty to add to his string of conquests, begins his changes (we were between assistant line of easy chatter. The evening contin ues through dinner, the marvelous visit to an editors at the time) and an unusually busy almost deserted amusement park (the film's most famous set piece), and finally New York Film Festival schedule had the seduction of Lisa that results in the baby who will cause the first great change something to do with the addled state of in her life. But it is not the event that con- cerns me so much as the figure of Lisa, in the editor's mind; but apologies are more black, alone at the end of a darkened s treet, emerging for the first time not as a self- in order than excuses. We think it only fair effacing love-sick child but as a compelling image, something to make a man turn to Mr. Greenspun and to our readers that arowld and take notice. Like Isabel Archer, she has been in a special sense \"objec- the article be reprinted, as it is below, with tified. \" And as with Isabel, the quality of Lisa as object derives from the intensity of corrections. -Richard Corliss an inward state of being. In Isabel's case, suffering; in Lisa's case, devotion. Stand- Readers of Henry James' Portrait ofa Lady ing in black against the darkness, she has become the type or figure of the woman may recall a passage late in the novel , just who loves and all but hopelessly waits for her love's return. after Isabel Archer discovers the depths of For Ophuls, as for James, this transfor- her husband's complicity with the malig- mation of the point-of-view character into a character to be viewed represents a major nant Madame Merle, discovers indeed that dramatic coup. And for Ophuls, it is one of her own marriage was a calculated product 1. Henry James, The Portrait ofa lAdy, ed. Leon Edel. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1956, pp. 423-424. of that complicity. The paragraph is long, ~ but it is especially beautiful: [;; \"Isabel took a drive alone that afternoon; 3 she wished to be far away under the sky, ~ 6where she could descend from her carriage and tread upon the daisies. She had long ::; before this taken old Rome into her confi- dence, for in a world of ruins the ruin of her happiness seemed a less unnatural catastrophe. She rested her weariness upon things that had crumbled for cen- Joan Fontaine and Louis Jourdan in Max Ophuls' turies and yet still were upright; she drop- LEITER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN. ped her secret sadness into the silence of lonely places, where its very modern qual- parapet which edges the wide grassy space ity detached itself and grew objective, so before the high, cold front of Saint John that as she sat in a sun-warmed angle on a Lateran, whence you look across the winter's day, or stood in a mouldy church Campagna at the far-trailing outline of the to which no one came, she could almost Alban Mount and at the mighty plain, be- smile at it and think of its smallness. Small tween, which is still so full of all that has it was, in the large Roman record, and her passed from it. After the departure of her haunting sense of the continuity of the cousin and his companions she roamed human lot eaSily carried her from the less more than usual; she carried her somber to the greater. She had become deepl y, spirit from one familiar shrine to the other. tenderly acquainted with Rome; it inter- Even when Pansy and the Countess were fused and moderated her passion . But with her she felt the touch of a vanished she had grown to think of it chiefly as the world. The carriage, leaving the walls of place where people had suffered. This was Rome behind, rolled through narrow lanes what came to her in the starved churches , where the wild honeysuckle had begun to where the marble columns, transferred tangle itself in the hedges, or waited for her FILM COMMENT 89

GREENSPUN CONTINUED spot. .. .\" This is where Stefan first up to her last-posthumous-appearance .I speaks to her, \" I've seen you before-a in the movie.) And she sees him as a figure the ways in which Lisa' s story differs from few nights ago-right there- in a wax museum . the stories of her grander sisters in other waiting-there,\" picking up the very movies, Madame de and Lola Montes. terms of her devotion, as if determined \"Would you pay a penny to see me?\" he They too manage a kind of canonization, pathos were its own reward. asks. becoming martyrs to their wayward pas- sions. But on their way to apotheosis they Lisa has not lacked for practice . As a \" If you' d come alive.\" do not quite achieve the recognition in child, before her father died, she took specifically human terms that grants Lisa a imaginary journeys with him via travel Both are on display : Lisa for what she was curious equality with the man she so dog- folders-an anecdote she tells Stefan and never entirely ceases to be; Stefan for gedly adores, and for which she seems to during a make-believe scenic train trip in what he might, if he were not his ir- have been striving from birth (that second the winter amusement park. Michael redeemably dissolute self, otherwise be- birth she speaks of, the birth of her con- Kerbel, in a valuable essay on LETTER come. FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN,2 sees the sciousness) until wished-for death. The make-believe train trip as a metaphor for In fact, as opposed to fancy, both their impulse shows itself everywhere, in the the characters' \"inability to progress, \" positions are extravagant and wildly un- recklessness with which she ruins each and he sees the amusement park gener- wise. They both waste their time . But the chance at conventional happiness, in the ally as a demonstration of Lisa's entrap- alternative to wasting time is saving it, woman of mystery she makes of herself ment in her own illusions. She prefers which is worse. Lisa ' s petit-bourgeois in pursuing her desire (\"She is not like the park in the winter because then you stepfather and her aristocratic husband are the others,\" exclaims the proprietress of can imagine how it will be in the spring: conservers, both prudent and in their own the shop where Lisa models to a would- \" Because, if it is spring, there's nothing ways kindly men . It is not by accident that be admirer, \"I don't understand that they perform the only real acts of willful girl\" ), in the very picture she creates as a to imagine, nothing to wish for. \" On these cruelty necessary in carrying out the film's teenager with her nose pressed against a points I think Kerbel is wrong. Lisa is quite general fate . The time-wasters have the glass door she holds open so that Stefan without illusions, even as to the man she deeper vision, even about time. It is Lisa Brand may pass through. loves. The day her heart really goes out to who more than once has the insight to un- Stefan is the day she, as a young girl, first derstand her life as \" measured .\" In some measure it is how Lisa looks- hears him flub an arpeggio in that glori- the love-light in Joan Fontaine's eyes- ously schmaltzy concerto theme that is, so • that is important, and that so con- far as we can tell, virtually the only piece he sistently outrages modern audiences knows how to play. It is not illusion that Time is of course the key to everything: unaccustomed to the exposition of a snares Lisa, but imagination, the irreduci- \" We' ll come for you at five. That will romantic ideal. The audiences have it ble appeal of not having what you -want. give you three hours.\" wrong. They are really seeing a Roman- As for lack of progress, where is there to \" I don't mind being killed-but you tic ideal-capital \"R\"-and perhaps the go? Stefan travels a lot, picks up know how I hate to get up in the morn- most stunning expression the movies businessmen's wives in America, even ing.\" have given us of a form of awareness that climbs mountains-after which, he ad- \"By the time you read this letter, I may mits, there is nothing to do but come be dead . I have so much to tell you, and I in our literature goes back at least to the down. The film's two real train trips are have so'little time . . .\" Keats odes, with their dense sweet both disasters, one taking Lisa's lover and I count five ways of figuring time just in savoring of a joy perpetually out of the other taking her son out of her life-in the first half-dozen important lines of the reach-and dying. \"And though you effect, forever. Lack of progress, Ophuls' screenplay. Before the movie is over there didn' t know it, you were giving me some celebrated circularity, is a slippery affair. will be several more-including the mar- of the happiest moments of my life ,\" Turning in place may suggest mere Hell, as velous conceit of a closing time for the writes Lisa in her letter, recalling herself in LA RONDE . Or it may promote a greater all-woman orchestra in the amusement as a young girl, alone, in bed, in a dark wisdom, as in LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN park casino. A typically Ophulsian ges- room, listening to Stefan practice his WOMAN, where Lisa's profoundest activity ture: even the musicians who play for the piano-all unaware of the fate she is is in one sense to spin around herself a via- dance of life grow tired and must have fashioning for him in her adoring mind . ble place for loving. The waltzing, twirling, their time off. To be out of time is to be She is virtually a heroine of deprivation. stay-at-home lovers of MADAME DE are dead, like the ghostly narrator, a voice Before the movie is over her triumph will surely prefiguring Heaven, as are the vaca- from the past, who addresses the dar- have been to have made something, not tioning whores in the last part of LE kened movie theater at the beginning of LE only ot\"her love, but also of her depriva- PLAISIR. 3 In Ophuls' cosmology, as in any PLAISIR . Or like Lisa, who, with her letter cosmology worth the name, Heaven and to Stefan, beguiles away his time, though tion. Hell are mirror images of one another. his life hangs in the balance, and if he is to It is surely no original observation to save it he has only three hours left. But if the unillusioned Lisa is happily Molly Haskell, in a brilliant study of see some of the late Ophuls movies as going nowhere , she is not without an MADAME DE,4 has identified \"delirium and machines for the creations of heroines . itinerary and a certain attitude toward determinism\" as \"the twin components of Madame de, Lola Montes-from travel: time travel mostly, as befits the ac- the director's style.\" Let me apply this in- foolishness or promiscuity to a kind of tive mind. She engages Stefan in her at- sight to LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN sainthood, a sainthood directly based titudes. \" I see you as a little girl, \" he tells WOMAN, not to style exactly, butto a matter upon the preconditions of foolishness or her. (Lisa with a candied apple in the of content that is virtually a justification for promiscuity. Lacking either of those amusement park; but she never really more flamboyant options, the middle- stops presenting herself as a little girl, right style. class Viennese Lisa resolutely does In the famous opera-house sequence, without. \"She is not like the 2. FILM COMMENT, Vol. 7, no. 2, Surruner 1971, pp. others .. .every evening as soon as the just before Lisa, after years of separation shutters are closed, off she goes straight 60 and 61. from him, again sees Stefan, a graying and home. \" And Lisa admits that her emp- 3. Like Eurydice among the blessed spirits in rather tired Stefan, she meditates: \"The loyer was right: \"I was not like the course of our lives can be changed by such others . Nobody waited for me. Off I Elysium, or Papageno feeling the first. stirrings of. a little things. So many passing by, each in- went-not home, but to the only place desire for marital bliss--dfered as mUSIcal lessons In tent on his own problems. So many faces that had ever seemed home to me . Night MADAME DE and LETTER. Ophuls' theater-going that one might easily have been lost. I after night I returned to the same heroines tend to leave early exactly the operas they know now, nothing happens by chance. should be hearing out to the end. 4. In Favorite Movies : Critics' Choice, ed. Philip Nobile. New York, Macmillan, 1973, pp. 133-145. This is the best single study of Ophuls I have seen. 90 JAN.-FEB . 1975

Every moment is measured, every step is petually seeing her for the first time-she eventually she will begin to live so as to re- nevertheless comes to stand for something create it. In itself it is essen tially nothing. counted.\" Then she recognizes Stefan and: that moves him, whether he wills the mo- \"Suddenly, in that one moment, every- tion or not. So it is not unfair to say that if The third time , Lisa e nters Stefan 's thing was in danger, everything I thought LEITER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN creates apartment as a woman of the world-a was safe. Somewhere out there were your the image of its heroine, it also creates the woman in love who has made her wager eyes, and I knew I couldn't escape them. It will of its hero. By Lisa's example it brings and now must lose it. Stefan instead ram- was like the first time I saw you. The years the prodigal classicist Stefan, the might- bl es on about clocks and offers a cham- between were melting away.\" It is not the have-been Mozart, into an acceptance of pagne supper. But he has trouble opening luxuriance of the sentiment that engages Romantic (and romantic) responsibility. the bottle and prolonging the conversa- me-though I rather like it-so much as The duel her letter forces upon him is no tion; and in the oddest way he see ms de- the potential of the \"moment\" for both more than just recompense for a lifetime of termined to hold onto Lisa, to keep her in- measure and danger, for both time's inex- seducing other men's wives. But it also orable passing and the instantaneous grants him an unprecedented reward: it al- terest in the poorly managed tete-a-tete, by flash . The first prepares for the second, lows him to remember her. and the second makes bearable the first. the very means most likely to lose her. In The dangerous moments are the only es- In the course of the movie, Lisa enters fact she does disappear, but not without cape from time that Ophuls offers, and Stefan's apartment three times. The first leaving a reminder, a bunch of flowers she they are finally the justification for falling time, as a young girl, she sneaks in and ex- had bought just for her visit. They sit there, in love . All of LA RONDE is an (in tentionally) plores the sacred precincts until she is sur- the token of Lisa, on a little checkerboard unsuccessful attempt to simulate them prised by Stefan's mute servant, John. In table, together with a vase and a burning -which may be why each of the pseudo- the context of Max Ophuls' cinema the candle. Stefan has mentioned that he wor- passionate lovers in LA RONDE finds him- passage is rather special: tentative, uncer- ships a goddess, not a god, and now the self caught short by time. Stefan, the tat- tain, the subjective camera advanCing as if goddess has established an altar of sorts in tered romantic voyager of LEITER FROM AN unsupported by the cranes and dollies her priest's own lodging. This is audaci- UNKNOWN WOMAN, tries a little of the same -those dated instruments of motion- ous, but apposite, considering the nature game in his canned seduction chatter the night after the opera: \"This is just the hour picture destiny that Ophuls helped make of his worship. for a little late supper. Or is it too late? Well, immortal. The camera is preoccupied with Stefan doesn' t play the piano anymore, it makes no difference. You're here, and as the comfortable clutter of the musician's far as I'm concerned, all the clocks in the bachelor apartment. And this time the rich but he still flirts (which has always been his world have stopped. \" And so on, until Ophulsian decor functions as an real metier anyway), and the impulse of impediment-expressive of nothing so the final portion of the film is to raise his flirtation into something different but the Joan Fontaine in the hospital in LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN. same-to change it from an obsession to a commitment conSCiously accepted. Lisa's Lisa, in sheer disgust, runs away. He is of much as the need to get through it, to letter, a moral tale if ever there was one, course wrong about the clocks. One will make contact as it were with the spirit of provides the impetus to Stefan's reforma- toll its bell for him in a little while, as soon the place. The spirit remains all too hard to tion . It has been working all through the as he puts down the letter he has almost find, and Lisa is discovered through her movie, and in the final loving recrimina- finished reading. But in his talk he at least clumsiness in holding onto things . tions: \" I had come to tell you about us, to parodies Lisa's passionate recklessness; offer you my whole life. But yo u didn' t and he knows the terminology, if not the She does not enter the apartment again even remember me....If only you could terms, of the role he is attempting to play. until her one night of love-when she be- have recognized what was always yours, comes another of Stefan's conquests, a fact you could have found what was never Lisa, by her own admission, lives in a that the camera notes from high up the lost. \" The logic of that last statement may state of suspended animation until Stefan building's spiral staircase, the position Lisa have slightly puzzled Stefan, as it does me. in each of his rare appearances awakens used to occupy when jealously watching But its imaginative force is inescapable, her. Stefan lives a flamboyant imitation of the parade of women to the lover's lair. especially for a man who thinks of his life the sam!? condition. His rhetoric and her Nothing remarkable happens this time. It as a search-for some unknown ideal, or reality have a lot in common. But while the is a seduction offered and accepted, a kiss, just for another woman. In the special en- talk is all for him, by him, and-through a blackout. Lisa's sexual victory belongs vironment of Ophuls' movie, I don't think her-about him, the images are generally not to Lisa but to the history of one-night it makes much difference. for her. During the long flashback that stands. Surely that is how it is meant to be. constitutes virtually all but the beginning Fulfillment is typical. But deprivation is un- The treatment of Lisa's last visit to the and end of the movie, it is Lisa's con- ique, personal, creative, the carefully nur- apartment rather casually reverses the sciousness, Lisa's expressive face, Lisa's tured sum of a lifetime of not getting what treatment of the first. It is now Stefan who figure that occupy the screen. And al- was wanted. The only moment when the seems out of place in his own home, at a though there is never a hint that Stefan film is controlled by neither Lisa's vision loss for where to find the champagne glas- penetrates her mind-though lifting her nor her image is the only moment when ses, how to produce the ice-in the most veil is his characteristic gesture, he is per- potential and actual merge . Lisa lives for it; demeaning way, hung up on the sorts of IT'ateriai paraphernalia that Lisa had once been so concerned to spiritualize. Lisa had been discovered by Stefan's servant, John. Stefan is in a sense found out by Lisa's ser- vants, us . But a Stefan seriously on the skids is already a Stefan ripe for regenera- tion. And in the superheated morality that attends the end of LETTER FROM AN UN- KNOWN WOMAN, ripeness is all. So Lisa departs, leaving a modest shrine behind her. It is a noble departure, worthy of the end of Madame de, who comes to rest, together with her well-traveled ear- rings, on display in their own small chapel. But LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN differs significantly from MADAME DE, and FILM COMMENT 91

GREENSPUN CONTINUED Lisa's shrine is not exactly inviolate. For a continuation that eventually becomes an ent a classic moment for Ophuls, before accumulation of memory and desire. the world held close in memory begins to one thing, Stefan doesn' t really know it ex- There is no evading this destiny. But there crack, and the ornate flats of the setting is a way of arresting it, of holding it per- open up to reveal the intricate sound-stage ists; he sees it as a little table with a candle, petually in abeyance-by becoming not its machinery that in the later films justifies victim, but its example. It takes only a cer- the Romantic fiction. a vase, and some flowers on it. For tain recklessness, which the loving but un- fortunately pragmatic Lola Montes lacks, This time, no justification is needed. The another, Lisa is not yet finished. She has but which the protagonists in LETTER FROM Romantic fiction is suffused with meaning AN UNKNOWN WOMAN have in abundance. as perfectly achieved as in the descriptive still to wander off into the night, to contract It takes a willingness not to escape. Stefan passage from Henry James with which I and Lisa even share a certain gallows sense began. For me Ophuls is not a brilliant her son' s fatal disease, and to write her of humor-which makes this in a serious decorator, but a master fabulist. I love his way the wittiest of Ophuls' late movies, stories, or the stories he chooses to tell long, engaging, and also fatal letter. In the and informs the romantic story with an in- -just as I love his performers, and his set- tellectual toughness and resonance that is tings, and the graciousness of the back- complex exchange that ends the film, it not quite what you'd expect at the end- ground music, the themes and waltzes, -and as the end--of such unrequited de- upon which he floats his movies. And seems reasonable at least to consider that votion. Ophuls returns that love with a vision of a cruel and always dangerous, but abso- Lisa, by the crucial process of occupying Everyone admires, or at least respects, lutely cohesive, universe.;r. the spectacular visual programs that satu- his last few hours, effectively kills Stefan. 5 rate the Ophuls films. In this respect, York University LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN is Master of Fine Arts Program People who see the movie as overly sen- more modest, technically less audacious than any of the post-war European films. Applications are invited to the timental would do better to realize that it is But I am inclined to think it not greater Master of Fine Arts Program in but a more satisfactory whole. Its most Dance*, Film*, Theatre and almost as much concerned with the affec- gorgeous effects-the ca.mera looking Visual Arts for the academic down the spiral staircase leading to year beginning September, 1975. tionate combat, as with the unrestrained Stefan's apartment, the beautiful dissolves through darkness from railroad station to *Subject to Provincial approval . affections, of love. If Lisa gets hers against hospital that mark the climactic changes in Lisa's life-these feed immediately into a For further information Stefan, he gets his own in return. Having na rra tive progression of extraordinary and brochure write to: richness and efficiency. This may repres- Graduate Admissions Officer accepted the duel (having had to accept it Faculty of Graduate Studies Leonard Maltin York Universi ty because he has wasted his getaway time The American 4700 Keele Street Animated Cartoon! Downsview, Ontario reading a letter), he has accepted his role as The Hollywood or call 416-667-2426. Application deadline is April 1,1975. seducer. The clock chimes. The seconds for Short Subject the duel arrive. Stefan walks to the little Mr. Maltin's two presentations are developed from his highly checker-board table, pulls a flower from successful recent publications, The Disney Films and The Great the vase, makes it into a boutonniere, and Movie Shorts. Each program includes numerous films illus- goes out to meet his doom. That flower, trative of the highest achieve- ments in the American Cartoon presumably part of the sacred offering Lisa and the Hollywood shorf subject. This is only one of two dozen outstand- had left for herself, becomes a jaunty deco- ing programs on tilm from .NEW LINE PRESENTATIONS. Programs by Robert ration in a gentleman's lapel. The Un- Altman. Lindsay Anderson , Jay Cocks. Bob Downey, Roger Greenspun, Molly known Woman-that mysterious lady of Haskell, Kathleen Karr. Sarah Kernochan . Arthur Knight, John Krimsky. Eve Leof!, the shadows, that image of romantic Joan Mellen, James Murray, Marjorie Rosen , Bruce Rubin, Vito Russo, Andrew fidelity-has been taken on for what she Sarris, Martin Scorsese, Jonn Simon, John Waters. and Holly Woodlawn. also always has been: the Unknown Call or write Woman , like the Unknown Soldier, one of for our new catalogue. The Special Events Division so many, endlessly forgettable, remarkable of New Line Cinema Corporation 853 Broadway (16th floor) chiefly for her anonymity. Actually, Stefan New York, N.Y . 10003 does his best for her, just as she has always Telephone (212) 674-7460 done for him, and his best is not suddenly to become a repentant would-have-been connubial companion. Rather, it is to go out with as much of his own style as he can muster. Near him in mind if not in body, Lisa really is the one thing he has been searching for all these years. Unknown but perfectly familiar, unattainable but always within reach, she could never have been exclusively his life. So she becomes some- thing more special. She becomes his death. • In terms of the Ophuls canon, LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN has a happy ending: everybody of any importance dies. In such less happy movies as LA RONDE and LOLA MONTES everybody has to go on living . The curse that threatens all the pas- sionate people in Ophuls is repetition-the dark obverse to the sustaining dance that is their glory. The old man who cannot bring himself to stop danCing in the first episode of LE PLAISIR illustrates this most poig- nantly; but Lola Montes grown sick from reliving her past, or any of the couples caught in the ceaseless boring sexual ex- change of LA RONDE, will also do. For Ophuls, passing time-age-offers neither peace nor forgetfulness, but rather 5. Whether Stefan survives the duel, which takes place after the movie ends, seems to me about as perti- nent a question as how many children had Lady Mac- beth. 92 JAN.-FEB. 1975

WARNER BROTHERS their spectacular drop to earth is extended for nearly a full-minute's time, and the im- CONTINUED FROM PAGE 76 . possible prolongment makes the once- fearsome falling seem ridiculous, and fi- with egg-yokes, might be interest~d In nally hilarious as Bugs and the dog apply There's a new kind of their breaks, grind to a halt, and land un- American in Paris. finding out that the most up-front articula- harmed on the ground below (Avery had A student of film theory and used this gag before, with a forever-falling history at the Centre d'Etudes tion of this rather bizarre egg-fetISh comes aircraft in his 1940 aeronautics-survey Universitaires Americain du CEILING HERO, and Bob Clampett repeated Cinema. around in BOOBY-HATCHED (1944), an ex- it with Bugs Bunny and a gremlin crewing a long-cascading plane in 1943's FALLING The Center provides U.S. students tremely well-paced accounting of mother- HARE) . Even more \"distantiated\" is THUGS with a carefully designed program of courses and seminars which examine love and a doleful half-hatched duckling, WITH DIRTY MUGS (1939), an insightful and analyze film-its history, theory, Avery treatise on movie gangsterdom at formal structures and its relation to the an egg-with-legs named Robespie~re . Warners, where the dogfaced mobster other arts. Courses and workshops are Edward G. Rob-'em-some successfully held at the University of Paris III and Tashlin's yuks about screaming holds up a phonebooth (\"Operator, this is other film departments of the uni- a stickup!\"), and during a different phone versity, and the program takes full ad- teeny-boppers in the Fifties rock-and-roll conversation, violates the split-screen ef- vantage of the splendid facilities Paris fect by leaning over the divvying has to offer the student of film - satire THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT are preor- diagonal-line, and furtively leads his shifty places such as the famed Cinema- fellow-gangsters to crack a safe, but tells theque Fran~aise. Faculty includes a dained by earlier rollicking cartoon laughs their German Expressionist shadows to number of the foremost film theorists, stay behind, and in the end, gets turned in historians, critics, and professionals at a wartime era's fandom: in SWOONER on State's Evidence volunteered by an now working in France. eye-witness in the theatre's secon?-r~w (\"I The program is open to advanced un- CROONER (1945), bobby-soxer hens vacate know he did it-I sat through thIS pICture dergraduates or graduates proficient twice\") . Avery's syntactical japing often in French, with a background in film their egg-laying posts, cause shutdown at directly intimidates the viewer: in the history and a specific interest in THUGS film, even inspector Sherlock theory. Dates are September 1975 Flockheed Eggcraft, to faint, flip out, or (EH.A.) Homes expresses his displeasure through June 1976. For details, write to with the viewer's tattle-tailing, and the in- Mary Milton, C1EE, 777 United Na- melt-to-puddles at rooster imitations of carcerated Edward G . (being made to stay tions Plaza, New York, New York after school and blackboard \"I've been a 10017. Frankie Sinatra, Bing Crosby. naughty boy\" one hundred times) sticks his tongue out at the audience just before IVY FILMS: In his intro to the Edinburgh Film the iris-out. THE HOME OF MAX FLEISCHER Festival monograph on Mr. Tashlin, Robert Where Harman-Ising and Friz Freleng BETTY BOOP SCANDALS were sticklers for tight sound-and-image (Fleischer Retrospective #1) Mundy notates that t.he di.re~to;, ~'us~s synchronization, Tex Ave~, like any other BETTY BOOP'S GOODIES self-respecting ModernIst, got. more (Fleischer Retrospective #2) Brechtian devices of distanhahon ill hIS mileage by having his sound- and Image- GULLIVER'S TRAVELS tracks fall out of proper alignment, so that TALKARTOONS feature comedies, and this Tashlin does, when the narrator gushes Longfellow in INKWELL IMPS VILLAGE SMITHY (1936), he has to bide his HOPPITY GOES TO TOWN but as far as the semantics go, the time while waiting for the expected SCREENSONGS \"spreading chestnut tree\" to thu~ into COLOR CLASSICS \"Brechtian\" biznis is something of an ex This ad sent along with post facto ascription, ?oncha think? If your order will entitle Tashlin were knowingly emulatIng you to a 10% discount!! CALL OR WRITE anybody's \"devices of dista~tiati~n,\" it IVYI~II~\\\\ probably would be those of his earlier ~o­ 165 West 46 St., NYC 10036 (212) 765-3940 cartoon-practitioner Tex Avery, an arh~t who has demolished more formal screen Il- lusionism, and has exposed more levels of artifice per foot of film than any movie-maker, live-action or cartoon, be- fore or since. For example, in the stunning aerial finish of Avery's HECKLING HARE (1941), Bugs Bunny plummets down fro I? a lofty pirmade precipice and falls screammg through the sky, along with t~e. dolti.sh canine nimrod who's been traIlIng hIm throughout the film, and their fall, at first, is vertiginously terrifying, their scream- ings and their arm-flaili~gs. really. b~ood­ curdJing-butTex Avery s VISual dIction IS distinctly modernistic, so enforces our awareness that we're watching a cartoon: frame, and while waiting for the villa!?e smithy to stand. The fairy-godmother m CINDERELLA MEETS A FELLA (1938) doesn't arrive on schedule either, since the old u crone was out galavanting at some be~r ~ joint the night before, and once sh~ IS 1 bum's-rushed in at last, her maladrOItly ~ percolated magic wand sparks Santa Cla':ls ~ and reindeer instead of a luxury pumpkm ~ coach. Most often, at Warner Brothers, ~ Avery worked with pre-existent texts, so ~ that his zany cartoon imagery could mod- Standard pose of Friz Freleng's regular supporting- ernize and bowdlerize traditionally sim- player Yosemite Sam. pering adaptations of Charles Perrault (in ,,-... 1937's LITTLE RED WALKING HOOD), of Mother Goose (in 1940's GANDER AT MOTHER GOOSE, so that we finally see who ~ fathered all those children who ~ive in ,a .~ shoe), of Harriet Beecher Stowe (m 1937 s ~ UNCLE TOM'S BUNGALOW, so that during the mellerdramatic finale, Topsy and Little ~ Eva can ham it up on ice floats that were CONTINUED ON PAGE 96 Freleng'~ Bugs Bunny, FILM COMMENT 93 as hoofer, in STAGE DOOR CAR- TOON H945).

LETTERS add, to dissuade glibness in his own com- minor virtues to be found in the Ellery ments on Chabrol in \" Paris Journal .\" Queen novel. To the editor: Charles Wolfe (2) Perhaps the best general case for or Contrary to Jonathan Rosenbaum's in- University of Western Ontario against recent Chabrol has been put by troduction to his interview with Jacques Robin Wood: \"The savage derider of the Rivette (FILM COMMENT, Sept.-Oct. 1974), Jonathan Rosenbaum's reply: bourgeoisie has become its elegaic poet. \" the first major Cahiers critic to embark on a Since I happen to find the French feature film was Claude Chabrol, not As far as dates are concerned, I stand bourgeoisie loathsome, I'm not tempera- Rivette . Chabrol shot LE BEAU SERGE corrected; my own hasty references-Roy mentally suited to appreciating elegaic between December 1957 and February Armes' French Cinema Since 1946, the \"June poems on the subject, although if I found 1958, finished editing in May, and pre- 1957\" setting of PARIS NOUS APPARTIENT Chabrol even half as interesting as Ozu, 1'd sented the film at the Locarno festival that -may well have been less reliable than probably change my mind. One certainly year. Rivette began work on PARIS NOUS Mr. Wolfe's. I apologize, too, for a certain can't call Chabrol uncritical of the APPARTIENT in the summer of 1958 while unexplained flippancy about Chabrol ex- bourgeoisie---JUsTE AVANT LA NUIT is sub- Chabrol filmed his second feature, LES pressed in some of my Paris Journals, versive enough to make out a case for COUSINS. This infonnation is confirmed in which I'll try to account for below. But if murder-but I think it's fair to say that his Claire Clouzot's Le Cinema Francais depuis la Mr. Wolfe will forgive me, I don't think sensibility is closer to that of M. Homais in nouvelle vague and Guy Braucourt's Cinema he's exactly dissuading glibness himself Madame Bovary than it is to Flaubert. d'aujourd hui volume on Chabrol. when he assumes that Chabrol was a \"major\" (Wolfe) or \"important\" (Rosen- (3) Certainly, all of Chabrol's films All this may seem trivial, but it reflects a baum) Cahiers critic. This is a common as- should be distributed in North America; to general misunderstanding of Chabrol's sumption, but what supports it? Next to, my mind, even the worst of his movies is crucial role in the transition of the Cahiers say, Bazin, Godard, Rivette, Rohmer, Fies- better than the best of most of the other critics from writers to filmmakers . Chabrol chi, Ollier, Bellour or even Moullet, his Claudes (Berri, Lelouch, Sautet, etc.) But first realized what he and his colleagues work for that magazine strikes me as minor to suggest that any of the recent ones are had been asserting in print: a feature film indeed-unless one accepts his little within hailing distance of the last films by could be made for very little money. He polemic on \"Little Themes\" or \"Evolution Bresson and Rivette---which are unavail- also made more tangible contributions, du film policier\" as major pieces of criticism. able in North America, while NADA is raising money for Rivette's first short (LE not-is too reactionary a position for me to COUP DE BERGER, 1956), Eric Rohmer's first The historical role of Chabrol in the New consid~r. I regard the former (LANCELOT DU 35mm short (VERONIQUE ET SON CANCRE, Wave is indisputable, and I'd be the last to LAC, OUT 1: SPECTRE, CELINE ET JULIE VONT 1958) and first feature (LE SIGNE DU LION, deny that this phenomenon was made EN BATEAU) as landmarks in the history of 1959), and Philippe de Broca's first feature possible by economic as well as aesthetic cinema; if Mr. Wolfe thinks the same case (LES JEUXDE L'AMOUR, 1959.) Chabrol also factors. But what has Mr. Wolfe to say can be made for DOCTEUR POPAUL or NADA helped finance Rivette' s PARIS NOUS AP- about the worth of Chabrol's films, except or even BLOOD WEDDING, I'd like to hear his PARTIENT (1958-60) and when that project to assume it? Admittedly, my less than reasons. over-ran its budget gave Rivette the left- kind remarks about DOCTEUR POPAUL and over filmstock from Les Cousins. NADA are equally suspect; i.e. , what had I STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT to say about their worth, except to deny it? I appreciate Rosenbaum's strategy in at- Clearly discussion must begin on a higher AND CIRCULATION (Act of August 12, 1970: Sec- tempting to call attention to an important plane if it is to proceed anywhere at all. My French filmmaker neglected by North biases on the matter are as follows : tion 3685. Title 39. United States Code) 1. title of pub- American critics with their accustomed bias toward Truffaut, Godard, and Resnais (1) If I haven't written more often about lication Film Comment 2. date of filing October 1, 1974 (a bias born of that triumvirate's rise to Chabrol's films , this isn' t because I haven't fame at Cannes in 1959.) Indeed Rosen- been seeing them; I'm still catching up 3. frequency of issue bimonthly 4. location of known of- baum could have pointed out the vital role with LANDRU and LA ROUTE DE CORINTIiE, LE COUP DE BERGER played as the first of a but I have gotten to twenty-two of his (by fice of publica/ion 1865 Broadway New York NY 10023 series of shorts by the Cahiers group be- my count) twenty-nine movies. I used to tween 1956-58, and made his point with keep going in the hopes of finding another 5. location of tile headquarters or general busll1ess offices equal force. As it stands, however, his work as powerful and/or as fonnally in- commentary obscures the facts at the ex- teresting as LES BONNES FEMMES; now the of the publishers 1865 Broadway New York NY 10023 pense of a filmmaker whose contributions most that I look for is the rough equivalent and achievements have received little seri- of a James M. Cain novel-and sometimes 6. names and addresses of publisher, edItor, and busmess ous attention in North America. Many of I don't get that much, either. ... I revelled Chabrol 's films have yet to receive com- in the baroque excesses of LA RUPTURE, and manager: publisher The Film Society of Lincoln Center mercial release here, and those that have was disconcerted only when I discovered often suffer glib and misinfonned criti- that certain English and American critics 1865 Broadway New York NY 10023 editor Richard cism . Rosenbaum has done little, I might were being very solemn and serious about them . I also like the way Chabrol uses Jean Corliss 1865 Broadway New York NY 10023 business Yanne's vulgarity, and his usual veryeffi- cient manner of telling a tale. I'm less sym- manager Suzanne Charity 1865 Broadway New York pathetic to the pomposity of TEN DAYS WONDER, with its conceit of turning Welles' NY 10023 7. owner The Film Society of Lincoln Arkadin into Zeus, Hitchcock's Anthony Perkins into Christ and Marlene Jobert into Center 1865 Broadway New York NY 10023 8. blOwn Stephane Audran while squashing all the bondholders, mortgagees, and otiler security holders OWII- illg or ilolding 1 percell t or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages or other securities none 11. extent and nature of circulalioll: ..act lIalllllllliJer ofcopies ofsi/lgle issue published lI earest tofilillg date average II wilber of copies cadI isslIe durillg precedillg 12 1I101lills a. lota/mllll ber copies prill ted 9800 10100 i? paid circulatioll 1. sales tll rough dealers Q/l d carriers, stree f velldors 3821 4015 alld call II fer sales 3217 3538 7038 7553 2. \",ailsubscriptiolTs c. fatal paid circufatioll 500 500 d. freed istri/Jutioll by I/Iail, carrier or . oilIer JIIe{1/IS 1. samples, complilllClltary, 2015 1665 9553 9718 alld oth er free copies 2. copies dis/rilm1ed 10 news ngl\"llts 247 382 9800 10100 but IIot sold e. lota l distribution f. office use, left·over, IIIIf1CCOllll ted, spoiled after prilltillg g. /0111/ 94 JAN.-FEB . 1975

The cUlenta\" has been doculented. The author of the definitive History of Broadcasting in the United States has written the definitive history of the non- fiction film-from the early experiments of the Lumiere brothers, through the works of Flaherty and Riefenstahl , to the latest trends in direct cinema and cinema verite. \"A splendid Iy succi nct di sti Ilation of the development and achievements of the documentary.\" -Basi I Wright \" Extraordinarily concise and informative:' -Ceorge C. Stoney, New York University AHISTORY OFlHE NON-FICTION FI ERIK BARNOUW With 157 photographs, $10.95 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 200 I'v\\adison Avenue. New York. N .Y. 1001b FILM COMMENT 95

WARNER BROTHERS of ISLE OF PINGO PONGO (1938), the geyser that must have been inspired by Spike that turns out to be a little squirt in Jones' bandsmen (he accompanies himself CONTINUED FROM PAGE 93 DETOURING AMERICA (1939), the lion-tamer with firecrackers, and by clunking himself who lost his head over his work in DAY AT in the head with bricks). ground out by an automatic ice-cube- THE ZOO (1939) or the supersensitive mi- making machine), of Public Domain folk- crophone in BELIEVE IT OR ELSE (1939), low- Even more is left unsaid of Friz Freleng's lore (in 1938's JOHNNY SMITH AND ered down to record a niggling species of postwar work with Yosemite Sam-a POKER-HUNTAS, so that the otherwise glum insect that is calling to its spouse (\"Hey, Western desperado who, in many ways, is beheading can be greeted with a football Mabel!\"). the exact antithesis of Elmer Fudd cheer: \"Give 'im the ax, the ax!\"), and of -countering Elmer's hairless dome and John Steinbeck. Apparently, Avery found Even worse, Bob Clampett's phantas- hairless body in that Sam was a tremendous mirth in Steinbeck's mogoric styling and splendiferous exag- handle- bar- moustached character archetype-troglodyte Lenny, who must gerations cannot be studied in any more cOl11pletely covered with red hair (except for have seemed to combine the comic qual- depth, at least not in this now-uncon- the nose, there's nary a flesh tone or a ities of both the ultimate mental-defective trollable article, though one wishes to terra-cotta visible). And, unlike the often and the ultimate rube: in his wonderful thank Clampett for the nebulous figments sappy and gutless Elmer, Yosemite Sam spoof OF FO X AND HOUNDS (1941), the and apparitions that appear to Porky in was risible and fallible by virtue of his oafish, Lenny-like bloodhound repeatedly PORKY IN WACKYLAND (1938), and for the over-aggressiveness, outwittable and out- asks to know an elusive fox's whereabouts somewhat less abstruse visions that ap- smartable by virtue of his easily galled and from the smoothtalking fox himself pear to the \"Fats\" Waller cat in TIN PAN consternated, anything-you-can-do- 1- (\"Which way did he go, George, which ALLEY CATS (1942), and for the freaked-out can-do-better desire to prove his gump- way did he go?\"), and the bozo is re- camel hallucinating other camels in the tion and gusto: in HIGH-DIVING HARE peatedly sent off heedlessly galumphing sweltering arid climate of PORKY IN EYGPT (1948), Bugs Bunny can hornswaggle over the same picket-fence and over the (1937) , and for the cometary, blue-streaked Yosemite Sam again and again to do those same precipitous cliff-edge (incidentally, draft evasion of Daffy Duck in DRAFTEE dare-devil, death-defying dives from the this fox-a rather debonair, \"city DAFFY (1944), and for the teensy-weensy platform's dizzying heights by simply dar- slicker\" -kind of fox, was a trickster who Russian Kremlin gremlins who appear in a ing him to \"step across this line\" (\" Ah' m a' was like enough to Bugs Bunny, whom weightless zigzag single-file formation in steppin',\" Sam would foolhardily say, and Avery had more or less perfected with A the sky and proceed to dismantle Hitler's down he'd go). Freleng made several other WILD HARE the year before, for Friz Freleng airplane piece by piece in 1944's RUSSIAN Yosemite Sam pictures worth talking to later do a fairish remake of OF FOX AND RHAPSODY and, lastly, for his boggling about-before the merry-go-round broke HOUNDS as a Bugs Bunny picture-retitled, blackface SNOW WHITE parody COAL BLACK down in 1962 or 1963. ~!: appropriately, FO XY BY PROXY). Avery's af- AND DE SEBBEN DWARFS (1943). fection for Lenny didn't stop with his CONTRIBUTORS TO \"THE HOLLY- Warners period, and he went on to direct There's not quite enough time to do full WOOD CARTOON\" several other Of Mice and MI!I1 spinoffs at justice to the postwar Jones-McKimson- MGM, such as the George and Junior Bear Freleng triumvi.rate of cartoon directors- Greg Ford has assembled retrospectives films, and also LONESOME LENNY (1946), there was, for instance, Robert where he allows a different Lenny-like McKirnson's anthropoidal omnivore with on the Hollywood cartoon for the New personality to crush to death his most ob- the sub-Cro-Magnon IQ, the Tasmanian noxious character-the literal snot-nose, Devil, in whose melees with Bugs Bunny, York Cultural Center and Philadelphia 's Screwy Squirrel (and the mutilated such as in BEDEVILLED RABBIT (1957), the Screwy raises a sign: \"SAD ENDING, entrances, if nothing else, were excellent: Annenberg School of Communications. ISN'T IT?\"). the Tasmanian Devil would chomp through anything in its path, gnaw More recently, he assembled this issue. \"For the benefit of the fight-fans in the through trees and buzz-saw through solid audience,\" the narrator freeze-frames a rock while in a shape of a tornado-y fun- Richard Thompson, critic and teacher, is cartoonily blur-lined fist-fight in Avery's nel. After Clampett left Warner Brothers in DANGEROUS DAN MCFOO (1939), and to his the middle Forties, Friz Freleng had exclu- /lot the Richard Thompson who worked in queasy embarrassment, learns how often sive dibs on the Tweety and Sylvester his combatants are hitting each other stories, which Freleng would most often Warner Brothers' animation unit. below the belt, konking innocent bystand- begin by with the sight of the grubby un- ers. In Avery's pictorial calendar review John Canemaker, an actor, singer, and HOLIDAY HIGHLIGHTS (1940), the two mop- kempt scrounge Sylvester using a pets exemplifying Valentine's Day hug animator, is preparing a retrospective each other with an alarmingly adult lewd- garbage-can lid as a platter as he serves ness, and the April Fool's Day calendar- himself trash and fishbones picked out program on Winsor McCay. He writes for entry is nothing at all (at this, the narrator from the ashcan heap-this · pitifully giggles idiotically until the theatre- eked-out repast probably being the only Filll/II/akers Newsletter and appears regu- management slides a warning in: T' AIN'T explanation as to why Sylvester would FUNNY, M'GEE!). Reversing audience ex- find as measly a twit as Tweety ever palat- larly on the WCBS-TV series, The Pat ch- pectations frequently and smashingly in able in the first place (this vision of these blackout visual sallies, Avery some- Sylvester, more commonly known, con- work Falllily. times slips in gratis pinches of an ironic so- trasts violently with Chuck Jones' spine- cial outlook: in the June Graduation Day of less craven cat). Perhaps Sylvester's finest Mark Langer is in the doctoral program HOLIDAY HIGHLIGHTS, an idealistic profes- hour finds him caterwauling in his typical sor magisterially presents a diploma to his back-alley setting, as Freleng combines his at Columbia University's School of the student, and the kid scrams off with it to postwar Sylvester characterization with take his rightful place in the nearest his earlier musical themes: keeping Elmer Arts. breadline-and he finds his starry-eyed Fudd awake all night in BACK ALLEY OP- Professor a step ahead of him in line. ROAR (1947), Sylvester, instead of the usual 1. Klein has been an animator at the Dis- feline yowling, dances a sailor's hornpipe, Most lamentably, time is not permitting sings \"You'll Never Know Where You're ney Studios and a story ma nat me to discuss Tex Avery's other newsreel Going Till You Get There\" in marchtime, documentaries: the improbable exoticism and does an \"Angel in Disguise\" number Paramount. Jonathan Rosenbaum, our London cor- respondent, is assistant editor of The Mon th ly Fillll Bulleti/l. Mark Kausler, designer and collector of animated films , was responsible for two exceptional sequences in Ralph Bakshi's films: the Maybelline sequence in HEAVY TRAFFIC, and the \"cat and the cockroach\" sequence in COONSKIN. . Leonard Maltin is author of The Dlslley Filll1s and editor of TV Movies, published in an expanded edition by Signet. Joe Adamson is the author of Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo, and has prepared a book on Tex Avery. 96 JAN .-FEB . 1975

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r - - - - - - - - - - - - I Now Available in 35 mm and 16 mm 1 - - - - - - - - - - - - , \"A REMARKABLE DETAILING OF THE 'EMANCIPATION' OF A YOUNG WOMAN. ONE THAT WILL FASCINATE AND STIMULATE US. Once again, as we have with Bergman, Fellini, De Sica, Chabrol , we must thank a foreign film-maker for exploring the persona of a woman with such perception and in such universal terms that we can claim her as our own .\" -Judith Crist, New York Magazine \"Uncommonly engrossing. A fine, thoughtful and stimulating film that observantly mirrors the tradi- tional subordination of women with truthful, biting irony.\" -Howard Thompson, N.Y. Times \"HONEST AND POWERFUL THE MOST FORMIDABLE DEPICTION OF ONE WOMAN'S DRIVE FOR SELF-KNOWLEDGE AND SELF-EXPRESSION SINCE JEAN-LUC GODARD'S 'MY LIFE TO LIVE'. DON'T MISS IT.\" -Jim D'Anna WRVR MARGARETHE VON TROTTA IN VOLKER SCHLONDORFF'S AFREE WOMAN A SAD COMEDY