Mildred's Fatburgers
  • Home
  • The Blog
  • Clips & Quotes
  • Blogathon Archive
  • Contact

Blockbusters and Bobby-Soxers: Bugs Bunny Gets Annoyed

5/4/2015

11 Comments

 
Falling Hare 1943
Bugs in Distress

Little Red Riding Rabbit, Shorts Blogathon
Bugs in a Dress
Pookus in San Francisco
This old picture of my son always reminds me of the title card for Little Red Riding Rabbit. Included, because he's cute.

Oh, Mur-Der

Fans of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies know of the famous "Termite Terrace," the workspace for Warner Bros.'s brilliant short subject animators, so named for the dilapidated condition of their original back lot studio. Even after the artists moved to grander quarters, they kept the nickname and the irreverence until members of the group moved on to different studios or television. The output from Termite Terrace -- particularly from 1938 to 1949 -- include some of the best cartoons ever made, in my opinion (which is correct). 

From the beginning, Warner Bros. cartoons were known for caricaturing Hollywood stars, satirizing current events, and making musical and anecdotal references to pop culture. That attention to what consumed the popular imagination continued throughout WWII, mixing in soft lampoons of real-life anxieties, like the draft, rationing, and espionage, with overt (occasionally racist) propaganda.

I picked two wartime beauties for this Blogathon, because I like to imagine myself sitting in the balcony of the Castro Theatre in 1944, waiting to see Arsenic and Old Lace after my shift at one of the Bay Area shipyards in among my friends and neighbors --  a newsreel, the coming attractions, then Bugs Bunny (Mel Blanc) giving some jerk his come-uppance. I imagine it would have felt remarkably comforting.

Falling Hare (1943)

Bugs Bunny is hanging out at an airbase reading a book that describes how Gremlins (which are an actual mythological Thing, apparently) sabotage airplanes. As he is mocking the idea, a real life gremlin walks by and begins to wreak havoc. Bugs tries to best the creature and is hilariously frustrated until nearly the end.

There's many a great gag in this picture, made all the better by director Bob Clampett, that dark genius, who was also responsible for Russian Rhapsody, another gremlin-themed short starring Hitler (best Hitler EVER) beset by tiny Russian saboteurs.

The angry rabbit is my favorite rabbit.

Little Red Riding Rabbit (1944)

Bespectacled Bobby Soxer, Red Riding Hood, is taking Bugs Bunny to grandmas (ta HAVE, see?), but the Big Bad Wolf has other plans. Red is grating, grandma is out working the swing shift at Lockheed, and (spoiler) Bugs is not eaten by the wolf.

Soooo many references in this short that I didn't get until much older, especially in the music: "Five O'Clock Whistle," about a factory worker who doesn't know when to quit; "They're Either Too Young or Too Old," a woman's lament that all the good men are away at war [which is (sorta) sung by Bette Davis in Warner's Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943)]

The great radio and television actress Bea Benadaret. known best as George & Gracie's neighbor in The Burns and Allen Show, provides the unforgettable voice of Red Riding Hood. I defy you not to incorporate some of the things she says in your regular life after watching this. Billy Bletcher provides the voice of the Big Bad Wolf, which is extra funny, because he was the voice Disney's wolf about a decade earlier in The Three Little Pigs.

This is a weird one, but a good one.
Wouldn't you much rather see a cartoon or two instead of 20 minutes of Coke ads and 12 minutes of previews? 

Me too.

Shorts! Blogathon, Movies Silently
This post is my contribution to the Shorts! Blogathon, hosted by Movies, Silently

Please take a moment to peruse the many excellent entries in yet another fab-themed event.

11 Comments

Birthday of the Week: Friz Freleng

8/21/2014

2 Comments

 
Friz Freleng
Born Isadore "Friz" Freleng on August 21, 1906; died May 26, 1995

Essential

Of Mice and Magic, Leonard Maltin
Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons, 
By Leonard Maltin, Plume, 1987 

Try to Overlook Speedy Gonzales and Bosko

I can only imagine what was in the drinking water in Kansas City, Missouri, at the turn of the last century, but somehow that town was the stomping ground for some of the most influential and important animators in film history: Walt Disney was barely in his twenties when he started his own company, Laugh-O-Gram Studio, and hired cartoonists Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising, Ub Iwerks, and Isadore "Friz" Freleng, to produce animated shorts for local theaters.

The popularity of his creations (if not the studio, which went bankrupt within a year), sent Disney and Iwerks to Hollywood to complete the weird live-action/animated short subjects called the "Alice Comedies," and develop the more enduring cash cow that would be Mickey Mouse. Harman, Ising, and Freleng stayed behind to found their own short-lived studio, creating their own Mickey-like character Bosko, a happy-go-lucky Negro boy. Their cartoon was one of the first to synchronize speech and music with animation and was quickly picked up by Leon Schlesinger, producer of what would become Warner Bros. Animation classic series, Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. 
Bosko Cartoon
Yikes!
While Harman & Ising were making money for Schlesinger, Freleng went to New York to work on the animated version of the sublime Krazy Kat comic strip, eventually coming round to Warner Bros. to be replace Harman & Ising who had quit Schlesinger over contract disputes.* Freleng became the head director and developed the first fully-defined character, Porky Pig, in 1935. He in turn left Warner Bros. for an unhappy two-year stint with the animation studios of MGM (because those cartoons were stupid), then came back to Warner's to stay in 1939. 

Thus began the Golden Age of movie cartoons, particularly for Warner Bros. Some of the finest, funniest, sharpest shorts were created under the direction of Friz Freleng and his fellow animator/directors, Bob Clampett, Robert McKimson, and Chuck Jones. Freleng introduced or retooled such beloved characters as Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam (whom he was said to resemble), Tweety Bird, and Sylvester Cat, and went on to win four Academy Awards for the studio. 

Freleng was also responsible for Speedy Gonzales, a cringeworthy character developed in the mid-1950s and a precursor to the less clever, less-deftly animated creations of the DePatie-Freleng Enterprises (DFE), which he co-created with Dave DePatie around the time the Warner Bros. animation studios folded in 1963. You can thank DePatie-Freleng for the Ant and the Aardvark series, The Barkleys (a cartoon based on All in the Family ...only with dogs), and most famously and profitably, The Pink Panther.  DFE made cartoons until 1981, when it was bought by Marvel Comics Group and renamed Marvel Productions. 

And that, Jimmy, is where Transformers comes from.

Eventually (and inevitably) the Disney Conglomeration bought Marvel Entertainment in 2009, so here we are back at square one and the drinking water in Kansas City.

Throughout the 1980s, Freleng did very well for himself as an executive producer of various Looney Tunes-related vehicles and revivals. He retired from Warner Bros. in 1986, handing the reins to his former secretary, Kathleen Helppie-Shipley, who has quietly become the longest-serving producer of the franchise, second only to its creator, Leon Schlesinger. 

Friz Freleng died of natural causes on May 26, 1995 at the age of 88.

He did great things.

* This does read a bit like the history of dotcom techboomers, I realize. Everyone knew everyone and only worked places for two years at a time, then took each other's jobs.
2 Comments

Birthday of the Week: Mel Blanc

5/27/2014

2 Comments

 
Mel Blanc
Born Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blank, May 30, 1908 - July 10, 1989

Autobiography

That's Not All Folks, Mel Blanc autobiography
That's Not All Folks!
By Mel Blanc and Philip Bashe, Warner Books, 1989

Mel Blanc's tombstone
Okay, Now That's All Folks.

But how cool is that?

That Left Turn at Albuquerque

It's quite possible that Mel Blanc was my first personal hero. In our household, Warner Bros. cartoons were the main source of information about how movies work, particularly how they work well, through direction (including art and music direction), writing, editing, scene composition, and character development. When I realized that one guy did 90% of the acting, it kind of blew my mind and helped me develop an abiding respect (and an ear) for voice actors thereafter.

Melvin Blank (with a "k") was born in San Francisco to a couple who ran a ladies-wear business, and moved with his family shortly thereafter to Portland, Oregon, where he lived until the mid-1930s. By the time he graduated from high school in 1927, Blanc had already displayed a talent for mimicry and character voices. That awful Woody Woodpecker laugh came from one of Mel's class clown improvisations, for instance, but his post-school career was as a musician in the NBC Radio Orchestra and pit conductor at Portland's Orpheum Theatre.

Blanc married Estelle Rosenbaum in 1933 and the couple hosted a local radio program called "Cobwebs and Nuts," in which Mel provided all the voices (because the management was too cheap to hire more actors). Eventually, the couple moved to Los Angeles where Mel picked up a lot of work as a character actor on a variety of radio programs, not the least of which was as "The Maxwell," Jack Benny's car. He also voiced the first four Woody Woodpecker cartoons (thanks to that horrible horrible laugh) and did some work for Disney Studios, but was soon under exclusive contract to Leon Schlesinger's company, which produced all of the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for Warner Bros.

Mel Blanc helped create some of the most famous characters in motion picture and television history: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Marvin Martian, Foghorn Leghorn, Sylvester Cat, Tweety Bird, Wile E. Coyote, and the Roadrunner, to name a few. By 1960, Blanc had switched to television cartoons, still for Warner Bros. Looney Tunes franchises (The Bugs Bunny Show and its derivatives), but also for Hanna-Barbera classics, such as The Flintstones (Barney Rubble and Dino), The Jetsons (Cosmo Spacely), The Perils of Penelope Pitstop (The Bully Brothers), and Yogi's Gang (Secret Squirrel) among many others.

In 1961, Blanc was nearly killed in a car crash and lay unconscious for weeks in the hospital. He was unresponsive to doctor's questions when they asked how Mel Blanc was feeling, but when they asked after Bugs Bunny or Porky Pig, he answered in the character voice. This went on for days until Mel Blanc finally woke as himself. Perhaps this is an apocryphal tale, but I like it. It's spooky. 

He made a few appearances as a human being in character spots on the Jack Benny program and other shows in the early 1960s, but stuck mainly with cartoon voicing and worked on nearly every popular Saturday morning cartoon up until 1989 -- including a lot of crap (I'm talking to you, Scooby's Laff-A Lympics), but the man enjoyed his work.

And he was so very good at it. If it weren't for Mel Blanc's tremendous talent and influence, we probably would not be enjoying the work of today's best and most versatile voice actors: Hank Azaria, Tom Kenny, Seth MacFarlane, Tress MacNeille, Harry Shearer, and Tara Strong, to name just a few. He raised the bar incredibly high.

Mel Blanc died of heart disease on July 10, 1989, surrounded by his family very much loved and very much missed. 
2 Comments

Stop Steaming Up My Tail

1/30/2014

0 Comments

 
Bully for Bugs, Bugs Bunny
Whaddya tryin' to do? Wrinkle it?

What a Gulli-Bull. What a Nin-Cow-Poop.

I woke up this morning with the entire Looney Tunes cartoon, "Bully for Bugs" (1953) playing in my head. Probably because last night my son was being extra space-invasive and "Stop steaming up my tail!" is our running joke when one of us needs the other to back up a few spaces. 

It reminded me of a slideshow I put up a couple of years ago about studio cartoons, so I'm taking the opportunity to recycle it and add a few things. 

But watch this first:

Best Animated Shorts*

My sister and I first became acquainted with the different personalities of the major Hollywood studios by studying cartoons on television. In our house, the Warner Bros. cartoon was king, followed distantly by MGM for the great music and their acquisition (from Warner Bros.) of Tex Avery, but never for Tom & Jerry. In a pinch we'd go for the Fleischer Popeyes (Paramount) or Gulliver's Travels whenever it was on — and only then for its Rotoscoping. Then maybe the Technicolor Popeyes, which were watchable if the only other available choices were Woody Woodpecker (Universal) or some Terrytoons crap from 20th Century Fox.

For many years, my cartoon prejudices kept me from truly appreciating the greatness of Fox or admitting the meanness of the Warners. To think that I might have missed out on many a Noir classic on account of Mighty Mouse. Still, no matter how you slice it, Heckle and Jeckle is one stupid-ass cartoon and to this day I'll drop everything to watch a Looney Tunes or Merrie Melodies short made in the mid- to late 1940s.

*Originally posted on the original Mildred's Fatburger site, 2/24/2011
0 Comments

    About Mildred

    I'll do just about anything a movie tells me to do. Unless it tells me wrong...

    Then I get cranky.

    But go ahead, like me on Facebook.

    RSS Feed

    Visit Mildred's profile on Pinterest.

    Proud Member Of

    Picture
    Classic Movie Blog Hub Member

    Archives

    May 2019
    December 2017
    October 2017
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013

    Categories

    All
    Agnes Moorehead
    Akira Kurosawa
    Alan Mowbray
    Albert Salmi
    Alice Terry
    Aline MacMahon
    Allen Jenkins
    Alloy Orchestra
    Anna Massey
    Ann Dvorak
    Anne Bancroft
    Anne Baxter
    Anne Revere
    Anne Shirley
    Ann Miller
    Ann Sothern
    Anthony Quinn
    Anton Walbrook
    Arthur Penn
    Art Linkletter
    Arturo De Cordova
    Audrey Hepburn
    Baby Peggy
    Barbara Bel Geddes
    Barbara Stanwyck
    Barton MacLane
    Basil Rathbone
    Bea Benadaret
    Beatrice Straight
    Bette Davis
    Beulah Bondi
    Billie Burke
    Bill Scott
    Billy Wilder
    Birthday Of The Week
    Bob Newhart
    Bonita Granville
    Boris Karloff
    Brian Aherne
    Bugs Bunny
    Burt Lancaster
    Busby Berkeley
    Butterfly Mcqueen
    Carl Boehm
    Carl Theodor Dreyer
    Carol Haney
    Cary Grant
    Charles Boyer
    Charlton Heston
    Chester Morris
    Christopher Morley
    Claire Bloom
    Claire Trevor
    Clark Gable
    Claude Rains
    Claudette Colbert
    Cliff Robertson
    Cloris Leachman
    Connie Gilchrist
    Conrad Veidt
    Constance Bennett
    Cybill Shepherd
    Dana Andrews
    Dana Delany
    Dan Duryea
    David Niven
    Dean Stockwell
    Deborah Kerr
    Dennis Morgan
    Diana Lynn
    Diana Wynyard
    Dick Moore
    Dick Powell
    Donald Sutherland
    Donna Reed
    Doris Day
    Dustin Hoffman
    D.W. Griffith
    Eddie Albert
    Edie Adams
    Edith Fellows
    Edward Arnold
    Edward Everett Horton
    Elaine May
    Elissa Landi
    Elizabeth Taylor
    Ella Raines
    Ellen Burstyn
    Elvis Presley
    Emilio Fernandez
    Ernest Borgnine
    Ernst Lubitsch
    Errol-flynn
    Ethel Barrymore
    Eugene-pallette
    Eve-arden
    Evelyn Varden
    Fay-bainter
    Fay-bainter
    Firesign-theater
    Frank Hurley
    Frank McHugh
    Frank Morgan
    Frank Sinatra
    Freddie Bartholomew
    Frederic March
    Fredi Washington
    Fred MacMurray
    Fritz Lang
    Friz Freleng
    Gabriel Figueroa
    Gary Cooper
    Gary Merrill
    George Brent
    George Murphy
    Geraldine-fitzgerald
    Ginger Rogers
    Gladys Cooper
    Glenda Farrell
    Gloria Jean
    Government Cheese
    G.W. Billy Bitzer
    Hal E. Chester
    Hal Roach
    Harold Lloyd
    Hedda Hopper
    Henry Fonda
    Herbert Marshall
    Howard DaSilva
    Howard Hawks
    Howard Hughes
    Howard Keel
    Hume Cronyn
    Humphrey Bogart
    Inga Swenson
    Ingrid Bergman
    Irene Dunne
    Jackie Butch Jenkins
    Jackie-coogan
    Jackie Cooper
    Jack Lemmon
    Jacques Tourneur
    James Craig
    James-garner
    James Gleason
    James Mason
    James-stewart
    James Whitmore
    Jane Darwell
    Jane-powell
    Jane-withers
    Jane-wyman
    Jay Ward
    Jean Dixon
    Jeanette-macdonald
    Jean Harlow
    Jean Simmons
    Joan Blondell
    Joan Crawford
    Joan-fontaine
    John Carradine
    John Ford
    John Hurt
    Joseph Cotten
    Juano Hernandez
    June Foray
    Karin-swanstrom
    Karl-malden
    Katharine Hepburn
    Kathleen Byron
    Kathryn Grayson
    Keenan Wynn
    Kevin Mccarthy
    Kirk Douglas
    Lauren Bacall
    Lee J. Cobb
    Leif Erickson
    Leila Hyams
    Leonard Nimoy
    Letitia-palma
    Lew Ayres
    Lewis Stone
    Lillian Gish
    Lillian-roth
    Lizabeth-scott
    Loretta Young
    Louise-beavers
    Lucille Ball
    Lurene-tuttle
    Lyle Talbot
    Maggie-smith
    Marcia Mae Jones
    Margaret Sullavan
    Maria Schell
    Marie-dressler
    Marjorie-main
    Marni-nixon
    Marsha Hunt
    Marx-brothers
    Mary-boland
    Maxine-audley
    Max-linder
    Max Ophuls
    Mel Blanc
    Mercedes McCambridge
    Mia Farrow
    Michael Powell
    Mickey Rooney
    Mike-mazurki
    Mike Nichols
    Miles-mander
    Miriam Hopkins
    Moira Shearer
    Montgomery Clift
    Movie-theatres
    Ned Sparks
    Niall Macginnis
    Nicholas Ray
    Nigel Hawthoren
    Ninon Sevilla
    Norma-shearer
    Orson Welles
    Pamela Franklin
    Patsy Kelly
    Patty Duke
    Patty McCormack
    Paulette Goddard
    Paul Henreid
    Paul Lynde
    Peggy Cummins
    Percy Kilbride
    Peter Bogdanovich
    Peter Breck
    Peter Falk
    Peter Lorre
    Peter Ustinov
    Preston Foster
    Ralph Bellamy
    Ramon Novarro
    Renee Falconetti
    Rex Ingram
    Ricardo Montalban
    Richard Barthelmess
    Richard Basehart
    Richard Briers
    Richard Mulligan
    Rita Hayworth
    Robert Benchley
    Robert Ryan
    Robert Wagner
    Rock Hudson
    Rodolfo Acosta
    Roger Livesey
    Roland Young
    Rosalind Russell
    Royal Dano
    Rudolf Valentino
    Sabu
    Sam Fuller
    Sandra Dee
    Shelley Winters
    Shirley MacLaine
    Shirley Temple
    Skippy/Asta
    Soyuzmultfilm
    Spencer Tracy
    Spring Byington
    Sterling Hayden
    Susan Hayward
    Sydney Greenstreet
    Takashi Shimura
    Teri Garr
    Tim Holt
    Tod Browning
    Tommy Kirk
    Tony Randall
    Toshiro Mifune
    Una Merkel
    Van Johnson
    Veronica Cartwright
    Victor Buono
    Victor McLaglen
    Virginia Weidler
    Walter Huston
    Walter Matthau
    Walter Tetley
    Warren William
    Wednesdays Child
    Wendy Hiller
    William Demarest
    William Powell
    William Shatner
    William Wyler
    W.S. Van Dyke
    Yasujiro Ozu
    Zero Mostel

    More

    Upcoming Blogathons

    Picture
    Rhoda Penmark flaunts some norms in THE BAD SEED (1956)

    Blogathons Gone By

    Great Breening Blogathon
    NIGHT NURSE (1931)
    Picture
    THE LAST PICTURE SHOW
    Nature's Fury Blogathon
    THE GRAPES OF WRATH
    Reel Infatuation Blogathon
    Sugarpuss O'Shea changes my life in BALL OF FIRE (1941)
    Great Villain Blogathon 2016
    Charlotte Vale's Mean Mom in NOW VOYAGER (1942)
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.