Tom Stathes (whose excellent post on the subject can be read here has now informed me that Bonhams did indeed meet their goal on December 14th, and the print sold for $31,250.

The ramifications of such a sale could be devastating for film preservation as a whole, as anyone who has taken an active role in film preservation can see (like me, for one). As I said in my original comment on Jerry’s post, the idea of a print of a single cartoon, silent or otherwise, selling for more than $1,000 is utterly insane.

For starters it’s 16mm, which right off the bat indicates that the print is not unique. Exceptionally rare it may be (as is certainly the case with Hungry Hobos), if one 16mm print exists, there were surely more of them, so they are out there, but who knows where. Secondly, at its running time of 5 minutes, 21 seconds, it most certainly is incomplete. So the unknown bidder sank the over $30K into a cartoon missing footage. And sight unseen, without much of a condition report otherwise. What are we talking wear and splice-wise? Warpage? Vinegar? Thirdly, again it’s 16mm – utterly inferior to a 35mm element – of a copyrighted film. What are you going to do with it? Even at $1,000, your chances of recouping the costs by loaning it to the copyright holder for a transfer are slim.

Given the quality of the Oswalds that do survive and are packaged on the Disney Treasures set is sporadically interesting at best, it’s more than likely Hungry Hobos is no lost masterwork. What is going on in the buyer’s head that makes this seem like a sound investment?

Tom, who has done more than anyone I can think of to preserve silent animation, fears this may set a precedent – that now all silent animation will be marketed as rare diamonds either online or at auction houses, preventing people like him, Steve Stanchfield, and Ray Pointer from making sure these films are truly cared for and made as widely available as possible. There might be a bit of trepidation in thinking like that, but it’s still a fair point, and anything that could sabotage the efforts of fine historians is cause for concern.

It is my sincerest hope that anyone with even a passing interest will publicly scorn Bonhams, and the Huntley Film Archives for that matter, for their recent affront on the institution that is the genuine film archive. Please actively voice your indignation to ensure this is a one-time fluke.

Another holiday eye-glazer from Sid Marcus. Who knows what my post at Christmas will be…

Have a good one, courtesy of Messrs. Huemer, Marcus, Davis, and Pervis.

This is the first time, however, that the cartoons are presented in complete, chronological order on DVD, something that hasn’t been done since the Art of Tom & Jerry laserdisc sets eons ago. The set, which you can buy on Amazon for less than $20 U.S., features the first 37 cartoons, straight from Puss Gets the Boot to Professor Tom.

This is, essentially, almost every Tom & Jerry cartoon worth owning. Great shorts like the lyrical Mouse in Manhattan, Flirty Birdy, the most sexually charged T&J ever, the bizarrely racist Lonesome Mouse (with Jerry talking like James Cagney), and uproariously funny entries like Mouse Trouble and Kitty Foiled are all present and accounted for. Every cartoon is also completely uncut and uncensored.

By and large, they look better than they ever have on home video or television. This is due to Warner Home Video utilizing the oft-forgotten CRI negatives, which, at their best, are the elements on the MGM cartoons that look closest to their original negatives. The MGM restorations will never reach the vibrancy of those on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection or Disney Treasure releases, but having seen rare nitrate material on several MGM cartoons, the best restorations on this set are not unreasonable facsimiles. Truth be known, this is the first time I’ve ever seen a copy of Old Rockin’ Chair Tom that wasn’t a faulty composite (meaning inferior, faded source material was used for the final thirty seconds).

The MGM cartoons, in general, never had a particularly striking sense of color. The color styling of the Tom & Jerrys was always pleasingly cool and low-key, in striking contrast to the abrasive subject matter and entertaining but overbearing soundtracks of Scott Bradley. Nevertheless, there is a decent level of prime restoration going on when you can finally make out Tom’s green irises in just about every shot of the cartoon.

Unfortunately, this is not a perfect release. Unlike with other Tom & Jerry offerings, it’s not due to censorship. The huge plus in this release’s favor is the chronological and uncut presentation. Standards slipped however on the following ten cartoons, all mastered from lesser CRI elements (more on this later), so they fall very short of meeting the standards set by the other outstanding restorations contained therein. The quality ranges anywhere from serviceable to downright garbage quality. The tell-all sign is their retaining of the 1960s MGM lion logo (with no mention of Technicolor – because there was no intention of these versions ever replicating it).
Puss n’ Toots
The Bowling Alley Cat
Sufferin’ Cats
The Lonesome Mouse
The Zoot Cat
The Million Dollar Cat
Puttin’ on the Dog
Mouse Trouble
Quiet, Please!
The Milky Waif

I am not aware of all the inner-workings of this release. But, for the record, there is not a single set of CRI negatives for the MGM cartoons as has been perpetuated all over the Internet. Often, they have as many as two or three in existence. Some look amazing, as close to Technicolor as you can hope for, while some look absolutely putrid because they were made on the cheap (hence the later Metrocolor title cards). Puttin’ on the Dog in particular seems to be taken from faded Eastman elements. Seeing these versions mastered for Blu-Ray is akin to if WHV decided to remaster the old Turner material of the 1940s Warner shorts in high-def.

I know for a fact there are various CRI elements because MGM/UA Labs used them for the 16mm prints they distributed to TV stations and sold to collectors. Quality could vary wildly on the same title depending on how high on chemicals the lab technician was that day. Almost always, they looked absolutely fantastic. My print, struck in 1983, of Mouse Trouble looks wonderful, nothing like the embarrassing version seen on this latest release. (A comparison shot can be seen here. The digital camera didn’t get a great shot of the projected print, but the point is made.) Same goes for Lonesome Mouse and Quiet, Please!. On the other hand, some later 16s have passed through my hands that looked like hell because they were taken from what I’d like to call “Metrocolor” CRIs. One of them was Million Dollar Cat.

Perhaps it’s harsh to call the move of settling for the worser CRIs for some of the titles idiocy, but to invest thousands of dollars in brand new High-Definition transfers from source material that looks awful to begin with is pretty asinine. A lot can change in the thirty years since those pristine 16s were struck, but I have my doubts that the masters here were from the only CRI elements they had access to. Even the earlier Spotlight Collections looked better than the offending versions here. This is simply a continuation of WHV’s long pattern of ineptitude with the MGM cartoon library.

Without meaning to toot my own horn, you will never see a 100% perfect Tom & Jerry release unless either David Gerstein or I are looking over it every step of the way. This is a fact. But given that idealistic scenario will never happen, this is about as good as you’ll be getting. And 27 out of the 37 do look perfect. I’d buy it.

Turner Classic Movies and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Team Up on New TCM Vault Collection DVDs

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (SPHE) are joining forces on a new line of DVDs to be made available as part of the TCM Vault Collection. The offerings will include first-time DVD releases of classic films from the Columbia Pictures library. Like all films in the TCM Vault Collection, the new sets from SPHE are digitally remastered and include extensive on-screen bonus materials, including photos, posters, lobby cards and more. TCM Vault Collection sets are presented in beautiful gatefold packaging and available exclusively through TCM’s online store at http://shop.tcm.com.

UPA Jolly Frolics – This amazing DVD set includes, for the first time ever, 38 cartoons created by United Productions of America (UPA) and originally distributed by Columbia Pictures. The Jolly Frolics series began in 1949 with Ragtime Bear, which introduced audiences to the hilariously myopic Mr. Magoo. Included in this set are the Academy Award-winning [sic] cartoon Rooty Tooty Toot (1952) and the Oscar-nominated Madeline (1952) and Christopher Crumpet (1953). This set includes an abundance of bonus features, including introductions and audio commentaries by film historian and critic Leonard Maltin, who has written extensively on the history of animation. Street date: early 2012.

This set will obviously be a must for your animation library. It will likely contain every UPA cartoon worth seeing, from when John Hubley was the creative leader, a very brief period, but one as important to the art of animation as Tex Avery’s time at MGM or the Fleischer Studio in the 1930s (both inadequately represented on DVD at the moment).

UPDATE: Jerry Beck confirms that this will indeed contain every non-Mister Magoo UPA theatrical (save Ragtime Bear – the best one). A preview image from the remastered Robin Hoodlum can be seen below. It was the first UPA cartoon with the old “Columbia favorites” Fauntleroy Fox and Crawford Crow, one that owes most of its success to Warner Bros. moonlighters than John Hubley.

When I visited him with Tom Stathes earlier in March this year, I made it a point of bringing him copies of the shorts he worked on at Paramount and record his recollections of working on them and of his dealings with Culhane, Al Eugster, Irv Spector, and other underrated stars from NY animation’s past. My apologies for the poor editing and low quality, but at the insistence of Jerry Beck, I managed to make something relatively coherent out of about two hours of raw audio recorded in Howard’s living room. (As you can tell from how often this site is updated, I have very little time to spare.)

You can download an mp3 of this night here. (mp3 file size is 69 MB.)

And for your viewing pleasure, here are several of the shorts we discussed that have been posted online.

The single disc is crammed with 33 cartoons, all of them taken from the 1998 Harveytoons Show masters. Alas, there are no credits, no end titles, fake irises, time compression, and censorship in the case of Drinks on the Mouse. Worst of all: no “Skiddle Diddle Dee, Skiddle Diddle Dey”! Yet it’s amazing that Classic Media even went out of its way to include all of the H&K titles, and included shorts that weren’t available in their entirety or at all on the “Complete” Harveytoons set from years back.

For the most part, the original source, before they screwed around with them back in the day, were the archaic Worldvision syndication masters. In 2011, mastering from such second-generation transfers makes Classic Media look like an even bigger joke than they already are. Anyone who thought they’d be any better at $5.99 a copy is insane, and I can’t imagine anyone buying a restored set of these cartoons outside of us the faithful, but going the easy route isn’t advisable in the long-run of classic animation’s survival.

We do have, incidentally, a glimpse on this disc of what a real Famous Studios restoration project could look like with two innocuous entries: Rail-Rodents and Hide and Peak. These, along with a few others (Baby Huey’s Swab the Duck) were in such bad shape that Harvey actually went and had new transfers struck from Paramount’s material. (The Harvey package survives in pristine condition in the studio’s vault, as Paramount still retains theatrical rights all these years later.) Since they were done so long ago, they’re not great transfers, but they give a hint at the absolute eye candy Famous’s cartoons have to offer in their original Technicolor.

There’s a strong urge to passionately love a cartoon series from the Golden Age that’s completely centered on inane cat-and-mouse violence, but just like the contemporary Tom & Jerry, Herman & Katnip just get taxing. It’s fair to say that everyone would agree that the MGM team’s best moments were behind them when H&K broke free from the Noveltoons and got their own series in 1952.

The problem with H&K is that there were never any best moments, or at least an instance where one cartoon was discernibly better than another. They’re just what T&J became at that point: cat-and-mouse pictures with no personality. In the Famous writers’ defense, they did step up their game eventually by having Herman and his cousins take the “Hubie & Bertie” route by using psychological warfare against Katnip in later cartoons like From Mad to Worse and Will Do Mouse-work, but the animation was getting so meritless at that point that the better writing didn’t matter. The approach did end up working very well in the comic book series however.

Parts of the cartoons are often brilliantly staged and animated when there’s no reason to expect such high quality, as in the opening of Drinks on the Mouse by Marty Taras (embedded below in its entirety uncensored). Many of the Famous Studios animators were truly great, but Taras and John Gentilella were clearly on a playing field above the rest. Their mere posing and drawing have a vigor not present in other Famous animators’ scenes, and the actual movement and timing is vastly superior to a lot of other studios’s animators. (And I’m definitely including 1950s Disney here. Sorry, haters.) The problem is, both of them were rarely given any real acting or anything truly funny to do.

Of the long-running Famous series, though, I have always liked H&K best, even bearing in mind the many shortcomings. Dave Tendlar (the main director of the series) may be regarded as inept, but I’d argue the continuous brutal slapstick is more admirable than what happened to Tom & Jerry, rank heresy it be to say so. Famous wasn’t trying to hide anything with these cartoons: they’re brazenly contentless. Hanna and Barbera showed many times in the best T&Js that they were capable of endearing and truly funny work but settled for shit-formula and grating side characters soon enough. That’s a worse decline than anything at Famous Studios because it was willful.

Arnold Stang is also one of my favorite character actors, whose uniquely charismatic voice gives the cartoons he stars in a life of their own. I did manage to get Mr. Stang on the phone once before he passed away and you’ll be delighted to know there was still bit of Cousin Hoiman in his natural speaking voice. Stang was the titular character in Top Cat, which is probably the best of all the Hanna-Barbera primetime shows.

With a price tag of six bucks, you should seriously buy it without hesitation. Sid Raymond is also featured prominently, as are the eerily catchy tunes of Winston Sharples. It obviously won’t be the most played title in your collection, but what’ve you got to lose if you love cartoon mayhem?

As an added bonus, here is a brilliant novelty record featuring Stang that has to be heard to believe.

I truly know nothing about the history of stock music cues used in vintage television cartoons. I’d leave that mostly to the experts like Yowp, and so on. But the topic of today’s post started because I may be needing some vintage cues for a project I’m working on, and was curious about the royalties involved using one particular cartoon musical director’s: Darrell Calker.

Calker was certainly one of the most underrated of his contemporaries, providing music primarily for the Walter Lantz studio in the 1940s. They are well-done bearing in mind their low budgets and the little access he had to pop music. In its own way, Calker’s music is as pleasant to listen to as Carl Stalling’s, and was never as overbearing as Scott Bradley’s. (Though in some instances, as in his brief stint doing music for the ill-fated Screen Gems cartoon studio, his score is the real star of an other wise incoherent and eye-glazing misfire.)

Calker, like Winston Sharples and Walter Greene, was a theatrical cartoon composer who did cues that were reused in low-budget animation (and sometimes live-action) productions. It’s common knowledge that the third-rate Famous Studios Popeye short Child Sockology was the source for a lot of the Sharples cues, but it’s the only instance I’m aware of where cues had been cut up from a specific cartoon’s score.

All of Calker’s scores for Walter Lantz were registered for copyright by Universal, as was the standard procedure at most cartoon studios. I had never heard of the scores for Lantz’s, or anyone else’s, theatrical cartoons being cut up for use as cues, save the Famous cartoon mentioned above.

The second element of the puzzle… If you enter “beany” into the ASCAP ACE search engine, you’ll find some of the names of Beany & Cecil’s composers. Melvyn Lenard, Eddie Brandt, Freddy Morgan… and Bob and Sody Clampett. But you won’t find Calker.

So our mystery is… how did music from a 1945 Woody Woodpecker cartoon end up in a 1962 Beany & Cecil cartoon?

Note, too, that in the original cartoon, Shamus Culhane’s pseudo-classic Chew Chew Baby, there is extensive dialog and sound effects over the music. This means Clampett had access to the original isolated music track to use for Cecil Meets Cecilia.

This isn’t the only instance of Calker’s music turning up in the Clampett TV cartoons, but it may be the most extensive. But how did it end up there? I can find no reference whatsoever of Universal making the Lantz tracks available, nor can think of any other production that used them. (Perhaps Clampett absconded with the recordings from Universal’s garbage, as he did so often at Warners’ with artwork. Mental image accompaniment: Bob humming through the garbage cans ala Sylvester.)

This mystery was posed to Daniel Goldmark, the world’s classic cartoon music expert, and even he doesn’t know what’s going on with these direct Calker ripoffs showing up in Beany & Cecil. Any help would be appreciated.

UPDATE: TV cartoon historian Yowp has the definite answer!

Calker’s film music was among piles of music repackaged by David Chudnow for the Mutel library music service (Mutel = Music for Television). Chudnow did this with a bunch of ’40s B-movie film cues and listed himself as the publisher under BMI as Byron Music to collect royalties. Clampett must have simply bought the Mutel library and used it.

Thanks, Yowp, you’re man’s best friend.

A gorgeous treat: Hawley Pratt drawings for Friz Freleng’s Peck Up Your Troubles. Could be yours for $1,000, but I’m not dignifying the seller with a link.

(Thanks, Jon.)

In response to this, highly respected historian and author David Gerstein penned this hypothetical scenario of what happened that night the idea of Woody Woodpecker came to Walter Lantz in his cabin.

WALTER: Mmm… mmh… ooh… damn, we better stop this, Grace… the little woman might drop by anytime, and she thinks I’m alone out here…
:KNOCK KNOCK:

WALTER: Ohshit, it’s *her!* Quick, hide under the bed. I’ll straighten up— now get the door…
:nobody:
WALTER: Hmm, false alarm. Back to “work,” babe…
:KNOCK KNOCK:
GRACIE: *Daddy*, it’s that woodpecker again!

Informative!