Dead Men Walk

Halloween style movie.




http://www.archive.org/details/PhantasmagoriaTheater-DeadMenWalk1943127

BoxOffice, October 30, 1943

No text cache.

http://www.boxofficemagazine.com/the_vault/page_thumbnails?issue_id=1943-10-30

Yowp / Fibber Fox has provided the following:

Oct. 30, 1943

Pg 46

RKO Sets Deal to Reissue Disney’s “Snow White”

New York—RKO will reissue Walt Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” possibly during the Christmas holidays under the terms of a new five-year deal closed with Disney by Ned E. Depinet.

Distribution will be on a world-wide basis, with release in conquered territories as conditions permit. A new line of posters and advertising accessories is to be provided.

Pg 58

Animated Elects

The Animated Film Producers’ Ass’n has elected Leon Schlesinger as its permanent chairman, with George Pal to function as treasurer and Anthony O’Rourke as executive secretary.

Pg 60

Studio Personellities

Briefies

RKO Radio

WALT DISNEY has put How to Play Football, cartoon feature 22 Goofies, into production with Frank Bull, ace sports announcer, doing the narration. Studio hopes to complete the short in time for a first of the year release to coincide with New Year’s Day games.

Universal

Cartune Maker WALTER LANTZ has started production on “Barber of Seville,” a Woody Woodpecker Cartune based upon Rossini’s famed opera.

Pg 106

Signs Aurora Miranda

Walt Disney has signed Aurora Miranda for a featured spot in the “Bahia” sequence of “The Three Caballeros,” feature-length musical comedy currently in production, which will combine live-action and cartooning.

GAC forums ending

The Golden Age Cartoons forums are ending. This is a sad thing. Blogs are good for what they are, but they do not provide a forum for a community to rally around. It would be best if a single replacement might spring into existence, but there are currently multiple candidiates.
http://forum.bcdb.com/
http://www.animationshow.com/forums/index.php?showforum=8
http://www.intanibase.com/forum/
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.animation.warner-bros/topics
Hopefully one will gel. The creation of a community is ultimately important to something like this blog; random hits now and then don't let people know about it in the same way.
Good night and good luck.

NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month. As such, I won't have much time for the blog, as I'll be typing away at a likely awful novel. Which is fine, as I finished uploading all the main entries last weekend. Hopefully I've finished the BoxOffice entries by the time you read this (and thanks again to Yowp for providing text on the issues I don't have text caches for).

I'll be sure to work in the cartoons of 1943 into the novel in some way. Perhaps you will as well. Good luck.

The Phantom Chapter 9

http://www.archive.org/details/ThePhantom1943Serial-15Chapters

Go to chapter 9

The Fire Princess.

Like a cartoon, it kills time with credits. Like a tv cartoon, it kills time with footage that's already been used.
Slipping down dirt hill. That's probably a euphemism for something too.

It's a simple template; walk around, then be in some non-perilous peril, end. Maybe throw in some low level PTA cheesecake.

Adrienne Barbeau may be older than I thought.

108 Falling Hare

Title: Falling Hare
Studio: WB
Date: 10/30/43 (10/23 in OMAM)
Credits:
Supervision
Ribert Clampett
Story
Warren Foster
Animation
Rod Scribner
Musical Direction
Carl W. Stalling
Series: Merrie Melodies (Bugs Bunny)
Running time (of viewed version): 8:26
Commercial DVD Availability: LTGCv3d4

Synopsis: Bugs versus gremlin.




























Comments: Opens on a sign gag with all kinds of censorings on it. No cel animation until more than a minute into the cartoon. Military painitings look good. "Victory Through Hare Power", a reference to the book the Disney feature was based on, and an obvious reference to the Disney film as well, which they surely would have been aware of during production. I suppose there's a good chance it was probably in theaters before production started. And gremlins are of course mentioned (with a text painting that lasts for 14 seconds). This is more enjoyable cleaned up than in the faded tv prints I saw for so many years as a kid. I swear they showed this one every other day whe I was a kid, so I learned to hate it. I still say Bugs looks funny in this. I often dislike Scribner/Clampett visuals; I wonder if that's part of why I disliked the cartoon, or if the circumstances that made me hate the cartoon then made me dislike Scribner/Clampett. I assume the Wendell Wilkie reference with the eastern European v for w accent with it was a reference to a specific catch phrase on a radio show for a character with vs for ws. Bugs's tied ears a mammy reference? First WB "which way did he go George?" reference? "I'm only tree and a half years owd" a specific reference? Bugs's big British Clampett teeth. Who's a horses ass sting. I hate Bugs's woo-oooo-ooooing. Beating heart looks like a Don Martin joke. Great city backgrounds. The cartoon is chaotic and feels like it has no skeleton to me. Ends with a rationing joke that just feels like a self reflexive cop out. Bill Melendez's first cartoon animating with Clampett according to the commentary track. John K disagrees with my dislike of how Bugs looks in this according to the commentary track. (John K thinks the which way did he go George bit is a Mortimer Snerd reference, and he does look like that puppet; I would think the George part would be a Steinbeck reference tho.) Commentary has John K saying Clampett told him Bugs's "eeee ahhh ohhh ahhh eee" freak out is based on Rudy Ising.

I still don't like the cartoon, which isn't to say there aren't some good things about it.

107 Imagination

Title: Imagination
Studio: Columbia
Date: 10/29/43 (11/19 in BoxOffice?)
Credits: -
Series: Color Rhapsody
Running time (of viewed version): 7:59
Commercial DVD Availability: -

Synopsis: Girl imagines how her toys got broken (it involves a transfusion).






















Comments: Long opening title replaced for TV. Darkness with a window, then the darkness lights up. Design of the girl is like a mix between Disney and Famous, but cheaper than either. (There's even a jack in the box like the Noveltoons logo). Kind of a terrible song. And terrible idea to have the lines of the toys sung. Weird throwback. Hero ends up in drag, which attracts the villain more than the girl. Hero then ties up the villain. Car has almost a Superman feel to it (it has California plates; 9Y 6781; I wonder if it means anything). Guy and girl look an awful lot alike. Girl panics instead of steering and so crashes. Stuffing made of love hearts is kinda cheesy but still cool.

Blogger is still taking like 5 upload tries for each image. Which is a giant pain.

106 Meatless Tuesday

Title: Meatless Tuesday
Studio: Lantz
Date: 10/25/43 (12/20 in BoxOffice)
Credits:
Direction
James Culhane
Story
Ben Hardaway - Milt Schaffer
Music
Darrell Calker
Animation
Paul Smith - Pat Matthews
Series: (Andy Panda)
Running time (of viewed version): 6:54; 7:54 with Woody Woodpecker Show intro
Commercial DVD Availability: WWCE6 (Woody Woodpecker Columbia House v6)

Synopsis: Andy Panda can't eat meat due to rationing, so he decides to eat a rooster.
























Comments: Walter Lantz's blue eyes match his blue suit in the show opening. Shamus Culhane cartoon. Opens on a text based mailbox stuffed full of additional text. Andy looks a bit like Lionel Barrymore, grumpy and rumpled in the opening looking at his meatless cookbook. Meatless Tuesdays (along with other Wheatless Mondays and other less official things similarly named days) were implemented in World War I. Presumably it was part of WWII rationing, but a quick Google search comes up with better attestations to the WWI practice. Flipping through the book is a real world prop (and again I don't know if it is flipped in real time or as stop motion animation). Incidentally, "meat" in this context id not include fish or chicken. Fast timing on some chase gags; not perfected like the contemporary Tex Avery's, but not too bad. I wonder what makes tiptoeing funny. The rooster is somewhat evil. Gooey Andy. Murderous Andy. Rooster also looks a bit Barrymore at times. Axe neck. Andy is actually willing to kill the rooster when it comes down to it. Perhaps he does after the end title. Strangely unadorned opening title; retitle? It looks stylistically correct for the period tho, just really boring. The Lantz Encyclopedia has this title, and says it was retitled "Chicken Chaser" for tv (and that this was the last appearance of Charlie Chicken, which I didn't even know was a thing; I guess Andy did eat him). Andy has a mostly terrible look in this. Interestign shot of Charlie running into close up followed by axe spinning into closeup.

The last Lantz cartoon for the year, and the last for 5 months if the usually accepted date is correct. But as mentioned above, BoxOffice puts this cartoon as being released On December 20th (See, for example, BoxOffice 1/1/44 page Showmandiser 11
http://www.boxofficemagazine.com/the_vault/issue_page?issue_id=1944-1-1&page_no=145#page_start
or November 11, 1943
http://www.boxofficemagazine.com/the_vault/issue_page?issue_id=1943-11-13&page_no=205#page_start

Blogger was being a real bear about upoading photos when I was putting this up.