Animated Cartoons in the Golden Era

[herringbonekid]

i'm a fan of 30s Betty Boop. 30s Popeye is good too and has some inventive use of 3-D backgrounds, although the plots are a bit formulaic compared to the
more unpredictable, freewheeling, surreal Boop storylines.

also a fan almost anything directed by Chuck Jones (especially Roadrunner), and Tex Avery:

 

[Espee]

Janet Klein's monthly shows in Hollywood are always preceded by four to five cartoons and musical shorts, from the Twenties and Thirties, presented by animation historian Jerry Beck. On 16mm film (mostly from 1950s television distribution.)
Plenty of Betty Boop, Bosko, Felix, and "bouncing ball" singalongs.
The live-actioners often feature Rudy Vallee, Ruth Etting, Ethel Merman, Lillian Ross, Frances Williams, the Mills Brothers, and the Yacht Club Boys.

 

[Doctor Strange]

As it happens, Jerry Beck was Leonard Maltin's teaching assistant when I took that cartoon class at NYC's New School in 1982!

And truthfully, I visit Jerry's site frequently - http://cartoonresearch.com/ - there's always something interesting there for toonheads.

 

[Lady Day]

As an animator myself I hate to say, but as far as the animation of cartoons pre mid 30s, I find a lot of the animation unwatchable. I prefer to see my characters animated with weight, and after the principles came to be widely adopted, you see a much better storytelling via the character's movements as opposed to simple visual cues. To me, that's when the characters became characters and not simply these drawings that people watched.

 

[GoldenEraFan]

As an animator myself I hate to say, but as far as the animation of cartoons pre mid 30s, I find a lot of the animation unwatchable. I prefer to see my characters animated with weight, and after the principles came to be widely adopted, you see a much better storytelling via the character's movements as opposed to simple visual cues. To me, that's when the characters became characters and not simply these drawings that people watched.

I can fully agree with that! With the exception of some pre-1935 cartoons, specifically Fleischer, Disney, and MGM most cartoons look really floaty and have rather dull plots. Though I imagine most audiences were excited to see their favorite comic book characters move at all! One can only imagine the audience reaction to Gertie the Dinosaur in 1914!

 

[rjb1]

"As an animator myself I hate to say, but as far as the animation of cartoons pre mid 30s, I find a lot of the animation unwatchable. I prefer to see my characters animated with weight, and after the principles came to be widely adopted, you see a much better storytelling via the character's movements as opposed to simple visual cues. To me, that's when the characters became characters and not simply these drawings that people watched."
I can partially (or mostly) agree with that. Some of the early stuff is good, such as Felix, as mentioned above, but a lot of it is almost intolerable. Even when we were five years old we would groan when they showed a "Farmer Al Falfa" cartoon on TV. Those were devoid of any redeeming social value, as were a lot of the others of that sort. Just "moving" images with no personality at all... If a five-year-old can tell it's bad - it's *bad*.

 

[Lady Day]

Im not talking about the actual script, Im speaking purely on movement of characters. I grew up on the post war Warner Brothers catoons and early Popeye. It was actually Popeye cartoons that made me want to be an animator.

 

[Shangas]

Tom & Jerry, Mickey Mouse and his friends, Betty Boop, Bugs Bunny & pals, etc, etc,...they were all my favourites. The mindboggling detail used to create these filmic masterpieces is nothing if not astounding.

 

[GoldenEraFan]

Im not talking about the actual script, Im speaking purely on movement of characters. I grew up on the post war Warner Brothers catoons and early Popeye. It was actually Popeye cartoons that made me want to be an animator.

It was when I first saw an episode of "Rocko's Modern Life" in 1998 that I decided I wanted to be in the cartoon business, but it was in highschool when I spent my free time studying Popeye cartoons from the 1930's-1940's that I finally started animating.

 

[Shangas]

You absolutely have to admire the skills of the illustrators, the painters and the animators when they did this stuff back in the 30s and 40s and 50s. The PATIENCE and the SKILL and the EXPERIENCE. The eye-bending attention-to-detail...I'd go blind just thinking about it!

They talk about skill these days. Pffft. I'm telling you. THAT was real skill. No computers. No scanners. Nothing but a pen, pencil, ink, paint, celluloid sheets and paper. The guys who managed to do that as a job have my respect.

 

[Lady Day]

I have respect for 3D but there is something about it that seems distant. It seems to be all about making it look as real as possible even to the point of motion capture, but 'realness' isn't the only aspect of making something seem animated (using the word's real definition there). That's the art of the craft in what you choose to show in your translation of a movement and mostly when I see 3D, all I see are wire frames. I'm thinking, "Oh, that's how they rigged this character."

 

[GoldenEraFan]

"She Done Him Right" (1933). A typical of the period 1890's nostalgia spoof cartoon, featuring some of Tex Avery's earliest work. The animation gets a little stiff and floaty in a few places but it's a very polished cartoon for the time.

[video=youtube;wcDECY9RqLw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcDECY9RqLw[/video]

 

[rjb1]

One of my favorite "Popeye" cartoons is "A Dream Walking" (1934). Most are probably familiar with the plot of Olive Oyl going sleepwalking (eyes closed, hands out in front) on a building under construction. Popeye and Bluto then fight each other to see who can "save" her. They both get knocked semi-conscious and start sleep-walking themselves, while in the background the song, "Did You Ever See a Dream Walking" is constantly playing.
It's a good cartoon in it's own right, but an additional good memory about it is that it was part of a Popeye-cartoon retrospective that I saw while visiting in Cambridge, MA during the early '70's. The '60's were still going strong there, so a significant part of the audience was in an altered state of consciousness.
At one point in the cartoon, Olive, Popeye, and Bluto are all walking toward each other while sleepwalking, and the beams of the building come to a common point. They walk almost right into each other and then pass through and keep walking. The audience gave a collective, "Oooooh" as they pass through.
It's a great sequence if you're straight/sober. Probably even more so when you are not.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

One of my favorite "Popeye" cartoons is "A Dream Walking" (1934). Most are probably familiar with the plot of Olive Oyl going sleepwalking (eyes closed, hands out in front) on a building under construction. Popeye and Bluto then fight each other to see who can "save" her. They both get knocked semi-conscious and start sleep-walking themselves, while in the background the song, "Did You Ever See a Dream Walking" is constantly playing.
It's a good cartoon in it's own right, but an additional good memory about it is that it was part of a Popeye-cartoon retrospective that I saw while visiting in Cambridge, MA during the early '70's. The '60's were still going strong there, so a significant part of the audience was in an altered state of consciousness.
At one point in the cartoon, Olive, Popeye, and Bluto are all walking toward each other while sleepwalking, and the beams of the building come to a common point. They walk almost right into each other and then pass through and keep walking. The audience gave a collective, "Oooooh" as they pass through.
It's a great sequence if you're straight/sober. Probably even more so when you are not.

[video=youtube;2aoqxPAJAT0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aoqxPAJAT0[/video]

 

[GoldenEraFan]

Indeed one of the best early Popeye cartoons. "Nix on Hypnotricks" (1940) used the sleepwalking Olive Oyle theme again, but this time she was hypnotized. The plot of both cartoons would be reused in the 1949 cartoon "A Balmy Swami". "Mess Production" (1945) also had Olive Oyl sleepwalking through hazards, but in a factory setting. (Loosely based on "Lost and Foundrey" from 1937). While it still reused the same theme it was much better than the direct remake in my opinion. It's also historically the first appearance of the revamped Olive.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

In the early Popeye cartoons Olive Oyl was voiced by Mae Questal who was also the voice of Betty Boop.

 

[Deleted member 16736]

There's no beauty in modern animation. I don't care how realistic they make it, if it isn't beautiful, what's the point? Watch the old Disney films or the old Popeyes. They were gorgeous. The new stuff really is junk, and I don't care what tricks they use.

 

[GoldenEraFan]

In the early Popeye cartoons Olive Oyl was voiced by Mae Questal who was also the voice of Betty Boop.

Olive Oyl had a few different voices in the first few cartoons, but Mae Questel and Margie Hines were the two main voices. Margie was Olive in the cartoons from 1938-1943, because Mae refused to move with the Fleischer's to Miami, only to voice her again when Paramount fired the Fleischer brothers and brought the production back to NYC. Betty Boop was also voiced by several different women, Margie Hines was the first, along with Bonnie Poe and Little Anne Little, but Mae Questel was the most prolific.

There's no beauty in modern animation. I don't care how realistic they make it, if it isn't beautiful, what's the point? Watch the old Disney films or the old Popeyes. They were gorgeous. The new stuff really is junk, and I don't care what tricks they use.

I can understand where your coming from. The issue really isn't that they're putting too much effort into making something look realistic, it's more-so that they're trying to make a 2D styled cartoon in the 3D medium, which defeats the purpose in the first place. If you look at really old 3D animation from the '80s when the technology was in it's infancy, it had a very blocky look to it, but that's what made it unique. The '80s music video "Money for Nothing" features some really nice stylized 3D animation, in which the look could only be achieved through this medium. Too many studio exec's see 3D CGI animation as the "modern equivalent or replacement" to 2D animation and thus end up making something that looks awful. With that said there were 2 CGI films I saw last year that I thought were absolutely wonderful. "Hotel Transylvania" and "Wreck it Ralph", which used the medium the right way in my opinion. When I thought about it, a movie that was about video game characters fully makes sense to have been done in the 3D.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

The former Fleischer Studio in Miami (1938-42) as it looks today.

 

[rjb1]

"Lost 'n Foundry" is also one of my favorites. I show it to my "Manufacturing Processes" class when we talk about safety issues in a manufacturing environment.
To their credit, the college seniors think it's funny and laugh at the right places. (Probably more credit to the people who made it.)