Popeye, The Ace of Space

Now you know how much I love to see these with the ORIGINAL titles...



This is one half of the 3D print. There were only a handful of big-studio 3D cartoons. Warner Bros. had "Lumber Jack-Rabbit", Lantz had "Hypnotic Hick", and Famous had two - this and "Boo Moon".

Arnold Stang 1918-2009

Entertainer Arnold Stang has died at the age of 91. His nebbish persona was a hit with movie and television audiences for decades. Even when you couldn't see him, you knew just what kind of body and face went with the voice. He began his voiceover career doing the voice of "Shorty" in Popeye cartoons, then also did "Herman the Mouse" for the same studio, and in the 1960's, Hanna-Barbera toplined him in "Top Cat", using a smoother variation of his voice to emulate Phil Silvers' Bilko routine. Here's a great example of Stang playing Shorty - the 1944 Popeye cartoon "Moving Aweigh" - please forgive the wrong main title card, music in the beginning, and the extremely annoying speed increase. This is one of the very first Famous Studios cartoons scored by Winston Sharples.



Arnold did have one interesting artifact in his career. He was teamed with a young European bodybuilder named Arnold Schwarzenegger for a 1970 film variously titled "Hercules in New York" and "Hercules Goes Bananas". Schwarzenegger's name was changed to Arnold Strong (to play off Arnold Stang) and his voice was dubbed since it was thought that people wouldn't understand his thick accent. Since I can't embed the whole movie here is a selection of clips.

King Features Syndicate Cartoons, 1960-1964

We are doing a comprehensive filmography of the King Features Syndicate cartoon series produced between 1960 and 1964. This includes the "Popeye" cartoons from 1960-1962 and the "Comic Kings" from 1960-1964. (Yes, some of the earliest pilots in this series were done in 1960.) Al Brodax, who was executive producer on all these projects, was involved with other animated projects in the 60's, including two other TV cartoon series, "The Beatles" and "Cool McCool", and the film "Yellow Submarine".

Check out the page here. filmographic stuff that I don't quite have will be entertained via comments to this blog post, or via e-mail if you are one of my regular correspondents. We have a good cross-section of Popeyes and Krazy Kats, most of the Snuffy Smith and all the Beetle Bailey cartoons.

Here's what we need on the Popeyes:

• a smattering of the Jack Kinney and Paramount credits - these cartoons all carried episode-specific credits


• directors on the Gerry Ray cartoons - all other credits are the same - the director is either Tom McDonald or Bob Bemiller


• which Rembrandt Films (Gene Deitch) titles were subcontracted to Halas & Batchelor - these cartoons had no other credits


• all the Larry Harmon cartoons carried the same credits so we have them all by default - yes, I know some of them did not carry Gordon Zahler's music credit


• I also need confirmation that there was a total of 219 cartoons. The contract with Al Brodax was for 220 shorts.

We need two Snuffy Smith credits - "The Hat" and "The Method and Maw", both of which were Paramount theatrical releases. Beetle Bailey is complete, thanks to that series' recent DVD release.

The Krazy Kats are a mess. We're not even sure if the credits we have are correct, as there was great variation in the title cards as shown on the "Advantage Collection" DVD that is my source for this information. We did find some Gerry Ray titles in the mix and even one from Jack Kinney which may have been the first pilot.

New On Our Blogroll

"Spectorphile" (http://irvspector.blogspot.com/) is a new blog devoted to the life and works of animator and comics artist Irv Spector, featuring artifacts from a collection of his artwork curated by his son Paul. Irv Spector was most prominent in animation at the Fleischer and Famous/Paramount cartoon studios first as a writer and story sketch artist, then, in the 1960's, as an animator. He also has some twists, turns and anomalies in his career, such as the one cartoon he directed at DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, "Corn on the Cop" (a Warner Bros. release which, interestingly enough, was written by Friz Freleng). He also worked for Hal Seeger on comic books published under Seeger's Stanhall banner.

Time Out For A Popeye Cartoon

This is a 1945 Popeye cartoon called "Mess Production" directed by Seymour Kneitel. It's got an unbelievable (and unbelievably uncredited) music score by Winston Sharples, who by this time had totally supplanted Sammy Timberg as the musical director for the studio. The last minute has some great music cues including Popeye's romantic stupor and his final walk through the factory, a faster reprise of cues already heard in the cartoon.

It also benefits from the three regular performers of Popeye, Bluto and Olive - Jack Mercer, Jackson Beck and Mae Questel - at a time when various other performers were temporarily doing the Popeye voice like Harry Welch and even Mae Questel.

We haven't the foggiest idea what they're making in this factory, all full of dangerous gadgets which could kill any character at any time. The various scenes of Olive walking on suspended girders (and what are they doing in an already built factory?) call to mind one of the earliest Popeye cartoons, "A Dream Walking" (which was animated in part by Seymour Kneitel).

Al Brodax Toons

Thanks to Charles Brubaker for corrections to this post.

On our Paramount Cartoon Studios 1960's page, we have a major update on the Al Brodax-produced Beetle Bailey cartoons. We got our hands on the DVD release that came out last year and have the credits now for all but two cartoons. Paramount produced 30 of the 50 Beetle cartoons (all directed by Seymour Kneitel), with Gerry Ray/Geoff Pike's unit based in England doing 18 cartoons, one from Gerry Ray made in Hollywood in 1961, and one from Joe Oriolo, the first pilot from 1960 (as noted earlier on this blog).

On our page, we also now have all the titles listed for the "Barney Google and Snuffy Smith" cartoons, all 50 of which were produced at Paramount and again directed by the indefatigable Kneitel.

A lot of the English crew from the Ray/Pike version of Beetle Bailey were involved with the 1965 "Beatles" cartoon series, which was also produced by Al Brodax, such as Peter Gardiner, Cam Ford, Lief Gram, and Aubrey Stapleton. However, even the "Beatles" series had some oddball moments. A few of the early cartoons were produced in Hollywood and directed by a man more remembered as a cartoon writer, John W. Dunn (with help from Tom McDonald, on loan from Format Films). Animators included Dale Case, an acquaintance of John Dunn from the DePatie-Freleng studio (and Dale is the son of Disney animator Brad Case, who also later wound up at DePatie-Freleng). Here's an example of a US Beatles cartoon, "I'll Follow The Sun".

Vote for Me!

Or, you can elect someone more worthy of the title...

More Fun With Popeye!

More Popeye for your Wednesday morning. Here, for your enjoyment is a 1952 Popeye cartoon, "Shuteye Popeye", complete with commentary track provided by what sounds like a couple of Italians who've been up late. They even try to read the credits but don't get past I. Sparber.

Now This Is Weird?

Take a look at this promo for "Matty's Funday Funnies", a 1960ish ABC compilation of Paramount cartoons, narrated by... Johnny Olson?

MATTELL SUNDAY FUNNIES
Uploaded by NilbogLAND

Do Some Research, WENN

There was a riotous post from the World Entertainment News Network (WENN), London-based provider of news and innuendo to IMDb. It was in response to the announcement that Warner Home Video would be bringing forth the first authorized DVD release of Popeye cartoons.

WENN decided to challenge the statement that there were 220 Popeye cartoons made for TV between 1960 and 1962. Guess what, Wenn? This is correct and is an irrefutable fact.

Al Brodax and King Features contracted with Paramount Cartoon Studios (then being run by Seymour Kneitel) for an impossible 370 cartoons to be released to television, including 220 Popeyes and 50 each of Krazy Kat, Beetle Bailey, and Snuffy Smith.

The cartoons were jobbed out to several studios around the world. There were three different production units in Los Angeles alone, headed by producers Jack Kinney, Gerry Ray and Larry Harmon, all doing Popeyes (Kinney's first Popeye, "Barbecue For Two", just may be the worst cartoon ever made). Gene Deitch's studio in Prague did some Popeyes and farmed others out to Halas and Batchelor in Great Britain. Deitch also did all but two Krazy Kats. H&B also did about half of the Beetle Bailey series.

For their part, Paramount did the balance of the Popeyes and Beetle Baileys, the two Krazy Kats that Deitch did not do ("Mouse Blanche" and "Keeping Up With Krazy") and all the Snuffy Smith cartoons - all the while maintaining a theatrical release schedule. And every single one of those cartoons was directed by Seymour Kneitel.

The whole project was finished by 1963.

The next year, Seymour Kneitel dropped dead of a heart attack.

Coincidence?

Myron Waldman 1908-2006

Myron Waldman was an animator of extreme durability throughout the classic era of cartoons and well into the television era. He has died in a Long Island hospital months short of his 98th birthday.

Waldman was one of the last living links to the Fleischer Studios, with many credits on Betty Boop and Color Classic cartoons. He was one of the few men who believed in that era that women could animate as well as men and promoted Lillian Friedman to an animator's position in his unit, at the parallel time that Walter Lantz was opening the same sort of door for La Verne Harding on the West Coast.

G. Michael Dobbs has more information on his blog.

Dave Tendlar, Master of Looney Tunes?

The IMDb entry for the 1955 Paramount cartoon "Kitty Cornered" has a very interesting video box attached to it.

It begs the question: how would Dave Tendlar have fared with the WB characters? Considering he was a terrific draftsman and an underrated cartoon director, I think he would have done well.

BTW, if you want to see some of these cartoons, you can rent them from Movielink, who has sixteen different programs of Paramount cartoons running about two hours each for you to overdose on. This is great stuff, and you'll have Winston Sharples music playing in your head for days afterward. (Which is, after all, a good thing.)

Jackson Beck 1912-2004

Mark Evanier notes the passing of Jackson Beck, aged 92 years, five days. If we had voice credits listed in our Paramount Cartoons filmography, Jackson Beck's name would be all over them. He was with the studio roughly from the beginning until about 1961. The voices he performed included Bluto, Buzzy The Crow, King Leonardo, and of course the narrator of the "Superman" radio series, where he may have been the first to ever intone the words "It's a bird - it's a plane - it's Superman!" Up until about five years ago, you could still hear Jackson Beck on dozens of national television commercials, including Little Caesar's Pizza Pizza and Thompson's Water Seal. I believe the last commercials he ever did were for Infusium shampoo, and if anyone had trouble believing an 87-year-old could sell shampoo to teeny boppers, they probably had no soul to begin with.

Cartoon Pages Update

We have made updates to some of the Cartoon Filmographies, specifically those of Fleischer, Famous, and DePatie-Freleng. In quite a few cases we have corrected credits and have added some cartoons that previously had only directors listed.

Now for even better news: we will soon be hosting a listing of Walter Lantz cartoons, in the style of our other filmographies.