ReFrederator Blog

Monday’s ReFrederator offering, “Somewhere in Dreamland”, is a Max Fleischer Color Classic, the first one filmed in full, three-color Technicolor.

It’s also one of those Fleischer films from the 1930’s that uses elaborate three dimensional backgrounds. As in today’s film, these eye popping table top special effects were often saved for dream sequences — which makes a subtle comment about the nature of fantasy. As the Fleischers would have it, illusions often appear more real, more solid than two dimensional reality. Or something. Anyway, I think that’s the subtext I unconsciously picked up on when I first saw these cartoons as a kid.

Kinda makes you think. Or not.

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Dave Kirwan

Hang onto your tear ducts, ReFrederator is plunging ahead with Heart Tug Week. And here you thought old cartoons were just about anvils and explosions!

Our first weeper is Max Fleischer’s “Somewhere in Dreamland,” one of an alarming number of depression era cartoons starring starving children. The malnourished little tykes in today’s film, trudge barefoot through snow, do hard labor, eat some unappetizing biscotti like substance then go to bed dreaming of a wonderful fantasyland full of food, toys and clean clothes. Sheesh! Director Dave Fleischer keeps this potential sob-fest on the rails by portraying the kids as relentlessly (and irrationally) upbeat and non-self-pitying. Sure, they’re grotesquely impoverished, but heck —no reason to get bitter about things!

Sniffle your way through this one, and let us know what you think about this week’s theme.

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Dave Kirwan

Look! Over there at that table! No, no! Don’t stare! Just, you know, sorta peek … Could that be…? It looks just like, well, you know! I mean, that’s gotta be him, right? That’s gotta be who I think it is…

Well, no, actually it isn’t. Of all the 1930’s wannabe cartoon characters jumping on the bandwagon owned by a certain Disney rodent, Warner Brothers’ shameless imitation, Foxy, was certainly, ummm… really, really shameless. Bushy tails and those little pointy things on the top of their very round ears were all that kept this impostor and his girlfriend out of copyright court.

[Read more…]

We offer as our final Some Dance Film Festival entry, the very first Merrie Melody, “Lady Play That Mandolin!” This one is straight from downtown 1930’s cartoonland, which means EVERYBODY moves to the music— horses, ducks, furniture, some guy’s beard…

Most memorably, a gorilla bartender does a sort of back and forth slide that steals the show. So producers Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising stole it back. Time and time again. This little bit pops up repeatedly in Harmon and Ising toons for the next few years.

Hope you get all that festivity out of your system, ‘cuz next week we’re goin’ all hearts and flowers on you!

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Dave Kirwan

Yesterday we were talking about cartoons as social artifacts — what better example than today’s Some Dance Film Festival installment? Just a couple of months after Pearl Harbor, Warner Brothers had their number one animated bread-winner on theater screens, hawking war bonds in a dandy little curio usually referred to as “Bugs Bunny Bond Rally” (although the only title card reads “Leon Schlesinger presents Bugs Bunny”.)

Bugs only has three minutes to make his pitch, but that doesn’t stop him from delivering a knock-em-dead performance set to a jaunty Irving Berlin tune. Bob Clampett was director, but this snippet seems less his showcase than that of ace animators Virgil Ross, Bob McKimson and Rod Schribner. These guys went all out choreographing stuff for the bunny, taking full advantage of his lanky frame (Bugs’ chunky co-stars Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd just aren’t in the same league, dancing-wise, as the wubber wimbed wabbit!)

And, once again, alas, this vintage toon [Read more…]

Yikes!!! P.C. Alert!!! Super duper warning!!! Today’s ReFrederator installment goes way beyond offensive into the realm of the other-wordly. We’re talkin’ racial stereotypes exaggerated to the point of near abstraction. An all black community called Lazytown is populated exclusively by Hattie McDaniel and Stepin Fetchit wannabes, and they’re all drawn in that bizarre, post-minstrel show convention of the day — which is to say, everyone looks like they have a partially deflated inner tube attached to the bottom half of their face! A bunch of pretty lame jokes showing us how r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w things are —then a sexy female comes to town, and the whole population starts jiving all over the place!

“Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat” is one of a dynamic series of swing cartoons produced by the Walter Lantz Studio in the early 40’s — Lantz directed this one himself! Mind blowing racial insensitivity aside, the dance animation by [Read more…]

Hot dang! Another thing I really love about 1930’s cartoons— no matter how pressing the business at hand, any character will drop what he (she, it, whatever) is doing and jump into a dance routine at the slightest provocation. Today’s attraction, “Little Boy Blue,” an Ub Iwerks ComiColor release, is a case in point. Ducks, pigs and sheep all take their turns in the spotlight, clogging away like Ruby Keeler, oblivious of any animated calamities just around the haystack. What, you say? There’s a big bad wolf slobbering his way across the countryside? Well, the hairy old bastard is just gonna have to wait until we finish our number!

The real hit of this show is a gangly scarecrow — he has a killer solo right in the beginning of the film. And he turns out to be the hero too, even though he ends up with a different head than the [Read more…]

Mike Sweeney wrote in:

“Just what occurred at the Fleischer Studios that caused Betty to transform so radically? Was it the acquisition by Paramount? The Hays Code? Or a classic case of fixing something that wasn’t broken?

Just wondering.”

Hayes code had a lot to do with it I guess. But keep in mind the thirties were kinda crazy — the industry was growing so darn fast, cartoons in 1939 hardly looked like cartoons in 1931, successful or otherwise. Almost all the major cartoon stars had complete overhauls — some of the most popular ones had the most drastic changes (Mickey, Donald, Popeye, et al) There are some of the later Boops I like a lot (like “Musical Mountaineers”) but it is sorta heartbreaking.

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Dave Kirwan

Betty Boop, 1931: You have a freakishly large head attached to a teeny, child sized body. You greet every situation with a naughty song and inappropriate sexual innuendo. You hang out with bizarre beast-people and a creepy looking clown. And everybody loves you.

[Read more…]

This is Some Dance Film Festival Week at the ReFrederator ballroom. We’ll be screening five great musical cartoons, all of them spotlighting characters who trip the light fantastic, even though I personally have never been able to make much sense of that particular phrase. We’ve got a buck and wing bunny. We’ve got some flamenco foxes. We’ve got a gorilla — well, we’re not exactly sure what the gorilla is doing, but it sure has rhythm!

Our first episode is “Musical Mountaineers,” a Max Fleischer goodie from the late thirties. Lotza music. Lotza dancin’. Check it out!

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here, or visit iTunes!

Dave Kirwan