Animation Updates Elsewhere On The Web

Scrappyland, the latest website offering of my longtime friend Harry McCracken (who by day is editor-in-chief of PC World and brother of novelist Elizabeth McCracken), is now open for business. The site celebrates the now-unfortunately-obscure character of Columbia cartoons in the 1930's, whose exploits were delinated by such cartoon talents as Dick Huemer, Art Davis, Sid Marcus, Ben Harrison and Manny Gould.

Also, we note the change in url for Charles Brubaker's DePatie-Freleng Website, which is in the process of being redesigned and expanded. There is some overlap in what I do and what he does, but he does it so much better. The filmography on both our sites is now dangerously close to complete, as regards theatrical cartoons. We are missing the credits from five "Blue Racer" cartoons. We both have gotten the credits for all of the "Dogfather" cartoons and I've now got them up on my 1970's DFE list.

Confession: if there's one thing I'd like to see again from DFE's archives, it would have to be the wonderfully obscure "The Oddball Couple", an authorized refry of Neil Simon's "Odd Couple" concept featuring a neat cat (Frank Nelson) and a sloppy dog (Paul Winchell), which ran for a couple of seasons on ABC beginning in the fall of 1975. The series has been seldom seen since its brief network run; it was never syndicated. Someone's got it somewhere. But where?