ReFrederator Blog

Today’s Merrie Melody,”Sport Chumpions”, looks for all the world, to be a spot gag film — no plot, no funny animals, no big pretenses — just a string of goofy jokes, all having something to do with athletics. But in its day, I would guess “Chumpians” was supposed to be a pointed satire of the inane ‘general interest’ short subjects audiences sat through while waiting for the main attraction.

Director Friz Freleng uses unusually realistic animation to set up his gags, and his frame of reference is pretty specific in a couple of sequences. The character in the archery skit, for instance, is a parody of a real personality — Howard Hill. The real life Hill starred in an endless series (A WHOLE SERIES!) of color shorts, all of which consisted, pretty exclusively, of “The World’s Greatest Archer” shooting arrows into different kinds of stuff! Needless to say, a lot of [Read more…]

A crazy 1940 Terrytoon today. “Billy Mouse’s Akwakade” — and first of all, there is no Billy Mouse. The title references an attraction at the 1939 World’s Fair, “Billy Rose’s Aquacade”. Very big deal, and yes, Johnny Weismueller was part of the show at one time (hence all the Tarzan jokes.)

As to the cartoon — what can I say? Dozens of synchronized swimming little girl mice, electric razors and vacuum cleaners, both in dangerous proximity to a very full bathtub, cat and dog chasing floating bubbles containing water and rodents — this one is just nuts, in a laid back, Paul Terry kinda way! Eddie Donnelly directed it, with no small debt to Busby Berkeley. Love that ubiquitous one size fits all water sound effect!

We’ve got more shorts about sports coming your way this week!

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Dave Kirwan

Okay, let’s try that again! We’ve replaced the rotten colorized version of “Porky’s Prize Pony” with the sparkling black and white original. If you HAVE NOT already downloaded the color one, you can simply go to the usual download button — no problem! If you have already downloaded the color film go here

… and enjoy!

For your free subscription to ReFrederator, click
here, or visit iTunes!

Dave Kirwan

It’s Good Sports Week at ReFrederator, but unfortunately we’re not exactly off to a running start with today’s entry, “Porky’s Prize Pony”. The good news is this was originally one of those classy, pre-war Chuck Jones’ jobs with very elegant character animation (all fussy details, like those little chin shadows and such.) The less than good news is we posted the wrong file! The cartoon he have up is one of those clunky ‘colorized’ versions, that were in fact, retraced by hand back in the sixties with, apparently, the warm edge of a Hershey Bar. Sorry, folks! Trust us, we’re working on replacing this ASAP.

Now might be an appropriate time to raise the subject of animation desecration for discussion. Is it ever appropriate to mess around with these old classics — even in cases of racist or otherwise culturally inappropriate content? Let us hear what you have to say — [Read more…]

We’re on the last branches of the family tree in our final Relatively Speaking Week offering. The cartoon is “Baby Be Good,” a 1935 Max Fleischer production starring Betty Boop, a film that raises a couple of provocative issues.

Question One: Who the hell is that kid? Is he supposed to be another one of those cartoon nephews with a suspiciously strong family resemblance? Or did, in fact, our sweet Betty give birth, and is now warbling her way through single parenthood (no trace of a father figure here — biological dad must still be in the inkwell.) Nobody tells us anything!

Question Two: Why was Paramount so ingenious about cranking out CHEATERS? I mean these guys left Disney in the dust when it came to creative ways of filling out the production schedule with minimum effort. This team pioneered the inventive re-use of old footage in their cartoons (remember howPopeye was always taking five [Read more…]

All right, I admit it! I’m a Hunky and Spunky junky! Max Fleischer’s great idea of a burro mother and son cartoon team was about as successful as New Coke, but I, for one, have always been inordinately fond of the little hay burners. Granted, aside from the duo itself, their half dozen or so starring films are pretty average-ish 1930’s cartoons — long on ‘cute,’ short on ‘funny’ — but, heck, they all have Hunky and Spunky, and I love Hunky and Spunky!

I love Spunky’s weirdly oversized head. I love the geeky donkey-speak Mom and offspring use to communicate. I love the large variety of clippy-cloppy sound effects employed for their ever shuffling hooves. Mostly, I love the shamelessly corny little narratives the Fleischer gang cooked up for the pair, always just an eyelash over the top on the maternal-instinct-heart-tug-thing.

So, we’re galloping ahead with our Relatively Speaking Week featuring the [Read more…]

“Me Musical Nephews.” 1942. Great cartoon. GREAT CARTOON! Popeye hustles nephews Pipeye, Peepeye, Pupeye and Poopeye off to bed so HE can get some sleep (we learn that the sailor man not only doesn’t take his pipe out while snoozing, he doesn’t even stop smoking!) Anyway, he never does get a chance to really doze off. Super talented quadruplets are super bored laying around in bed, so they start making musical instruments out of anything on which they can lay their pudgy little fingers. One of the earliest Popeye films made after Paramount took over Max Fleischer’s studio — maybe one of the best!

While watching these classic shorts as a youngster, one inconsistency that boggled my under aged little mind was the head count of Popeye’s nephews. In one cartoon there were four little Popeyes, in another three, and occasionally only two! Where were they stashing those extra kids? It was beyond my [Read more…]

I guess when Felix the Cat became a big deal they hadn’t quite nailed down any expectations for cartoon stardom yet. He might pop up with a wife in one film or, as in today’s installment, as the single parent to a whole mess of kids. Because “April Maze” is lousy with little Felixes, we thought it would be a perfect addition to our Relatively Speaking Week.

Trouble is, “April Maze” is also a great example of the problems the Pat Sullivan Studio and cat creator Otto Messmer had getting hip with the sound revolution. The film is a talkie (barely) from 1930, but it has the rhythms and structure of an old silent cartoon. Doesn’t quite make it. Still, if you’ve got the patience to wait out the repetitive redundancies (this one re-e-e-e-e-ealy gets its money’s worth out of each animated cycle) there’s some lovely stuff here. I love the way Felix and [Read more…]