YouTube has had Portuguese versions of most of the Paul J. Smith Woody Woodpecker cartoons online for ages, but only recently did someone upload them in English, so you can now see them and experience the garbage in all its glory.
Mark Mayerson ranked Smith as the worst of all the theatrical-era directors eons ago. I’d personally give that title to someone like Al Rose at Columbia, but there’s certainly a case to be made for Smith. Walter Lantz seemed fine with Smith directing, constantly letting more and more talented people walk out his studio doors, something that does not speak well for his taste. But Smith was merely just poor for years. Once Sid Marcus left the studio in 1966, Smith was allowed to take Woody to hell in a hand basket.
The cartoons look almost as poor as their made-for-TV contemporaries (unsurprising as Lantz was the first theatrical studio to do TV style animation in the 1950s), making it odd that theaters actually rented them years after the studio closed its doors. David Gerstein just messaged me as I was writing this that the cartoons “blend together in my head into one big blur of western settings, inconsistent sizes and hatchet-faced harridans.” Perfect summary. The hackwork is at such an all-time high that nobody gave a damn that the remounted Woody opening titles stopped on an ugly inbetween rather than the final pose.
This isn’t one of those endless westerns (which probably stemmed from one Cal Howard springboard reused thirty times), but I had to single it out because it was one that escaped my attempt at acquiring every single Walter Lantz cartoon when I worked on The Walter Lantz Cartune Encyclopedia. The song makes it even more terrifying than you can imagine. And what’s the deal with these not-so-vaguely pornographic titles (never mind the character’s name)? I would have rather seen the cartoon take that sort of direction than this.
This might be a good time to add (and someone can add this to Wikipedia) that Paul J. Smith was more than likely not legally blind during his tenure at the Lantz studio, with his daughter doing his x-sheets, or however that urban legend goes. He was subsequently hired by Ralph Bakshi to work on his Lord of the Rings adaptation as a “key animator”, and it’s utterly ridiculous that he’d be able to work in that capacity if this was true. (Amended see bottom.)
But, just because you’re working at a studio with severe budget limitations and a boss who clearly doesn’t care about your work performance doesn’t mean you have to turn out a complete piece of crap.
Wow. Watching that Paul Smith short was such a stupid thing to do too, as the wolf in that Sid Marcus cartoon would say. I wasted five minutes watching that cartoon for almost nothing, except to see a bunch of poorly executed gag routines and sheer boredom plastered all over the screen for five minutes, and why did they feel the need to remove Woody’s green irises in the latter half of the 1950s anyway? That was one of his most distinguishing characteristics, and could have made this cartoon slightly more interesting than it already was.
The sad thing is that I get a much more pleasant experience watching this short alone than watching the majority of the vile garbage that somehow manages to play on television these days, like say those Disney BLAM! things that Amid posted the other day, and that isn’t saying too much either.
Now I know what I’m going to avoid if I ever want to watch more of the Lantz output, although the first few Paul Smith shorts, at least the few I’ve seen, are actually good, IMO. Thanks for alerting us, Thad, and I apologize for the overly long diatribe.
Hi Thad-Been checking your site out for a while and
i think you do a great job-keep up the good work!
As for this cartoon, i’m surprised you have posted it. I actually like this cartoon-i know its not the greatest but i still get a chuckle out of it. I always like the way Daws Butler would substitute no sense
jabber for curse words like he did at the 3:15 mark
just don’t chastise me too hard for liking this one :)
Paul did far worse cartoons than these. As for pornographic cartoon titles, it doesn’t get more graphic than “Billion Dollar Boner”.
“He was subsequently hired by Ralph Bakshi to work on his Lord of the Rings adaptation as a “key animator”, and it’s utterly ridiculous that he’d be able to work in that capacity if this was true.”
Actually, no. Somebody posted about it at Bakshi’s message board and it was confirmed by animator Steve Gordon that it’s some other guy.
http://www.ralphbakshi.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=346
Jesus christ, another false statement committed to the Internet. At least I have the balls to admit I was wrong, unlike some who I will not mention.
If you close your eyes while watching the first cartoon (Yes, folks, I’m handing all of you a straight line! Go for it!), we can finally realize what it would be like if Woody Woodpecker met Mr. Jinks!
How many Paul J Smiths were there??
IMDb used to claim that animator Paul J Smith worked on “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (in the middle of his Warner Bros. career!) — this has since been corrected (someone was confusing him with the Disney music composer of the same name). Also, Alberto’s Page (http://www.immaginariofiorentino.com/albertopage/amimatorsa-z/animatorss.htm) claims that he worked on the Disney short “the Nifty Nineties” (and it says the same of Claude Smith as well) — and that he’s the same Paul Smith who worked on Ralph Bakshi’s “Lord of the Rings”.
Odd enough the Woody Woopecker cartoons were(and still are) the most popular cartoons in Brasil(that’s explain all those in portuguese on YouTube),no matter if the show a nice and funny 40’s stuff(Like “The Beach nut” or “Wild n’Woody”) r the late crap Smith did,they ALLWAYS had good ratings.
The Woody Woodpecker bumpers I am currently seeing on a french TV channel (the name of which will not be mentioned) on a not-so-regular basis primarly have footage from “The Beach Nut” or “Ski for Two”, but none of these two effectively aired as far as I know.
Instead, the vast bulk of the airings consists of the garbage you mentioned (although the Pattersons DID make it on screen).
Regarding Paul Smith’s eyesight, I emailed Dale Hale (who worked as a writer for Lantz in its final years) about it and he said Paul was having eye troubles at the time, although he doesn’t know anything about his daughter helping him on the X sheets.
OMG. This was horrible. Even more horrible watching it after Clampett’s “Porky and Daffy”. This didn’t even look like a theatrical short. At least the Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry shorts have some “so bad it’s good” charm in them, and so the post-64 WB cartoons. Now I understand why PJS is ranked at the bottom.
Aside the 4 gems Tex Avery made for the studio, and a couple of good but not terribly great James Culhane Woody shorts, I never really cared for Lantz. In the late 40s they tried to replicate the WB anarchy, but most of their stuff are just plain mediocre.
Lantz was very lucky, even though most of his studios cartoons were terrible, He came up with some very good characters, and that helped keep the studios output from looking like the rudderless ship that Columbia appeared to be. Lantz was also smart enough to retain ownership of all his characters (something the gang at WB weren’t able to do)and he was able to make a living on merchandising his characters well into the 70s. I don’t know this for sure, but I’m guessing that Universal kept him under contract (after they fired –and hired him back– briefly around 1950)for so long because as lousy as his cartoons were, and as limited as the shorts market was in the 60s and 70s, they still made a pretty penny from owning a piece of the television and merchandising rights.
THREE LITTLE WOODPECKERS = One of the best LANTZ/Woody shorts of the 1960s!! One of my all-time favorites!!
Sid Marcus never did get any of the write-ups or glory like other animation directors of his time and that sucks!
And yet, guys like me were subjected to watching these cartoons as tots, not realizing how lame they were and yet going along with it until we knew better.