In his posting of John Stanley’s comics with the Famous Studios characters, Frank lamented that Cilly Goose, one of the studio’s “most accomplished and atmospheric one-shot” cartoons, isn’t available online anymore. So I’m reposting it.
This was one of the last Famous cartoons done in Miami, the credit for Abner Kneitel being indicative of this, since he didn’t return to New York. (I believe some of Kneitel’s animation can be seen when Cilly is showing her egg to the sow, and when she’s being tortured by the mob. The style is very similar to the animation Bob Jaques identified as Kneitel’s in the Jim Tyer-directed Popeye classic Too Weak to Work.) Though it’s obvious the boys were prepping for the move back, with the riff on NYC’s luxurious mayoral tours.
Cilly Goose is a cartoon that tries a lot of different stylistic approaches at once. The Fleischer studio perfected the idea of “appropriate length” with their Popeye two-reelers, in which they learned how long the characters and stories could be before the audience became disengaged. (Rank heresy it may be to say, the list of animated cartoons that warrant a length greater than thirty minutes is miniscule.) That quality is also present in this short. It’s certainly not worthy of a true two-reeler length, but it’s still material that can go on a bit longer than the average six minutes.
The Fleischer drawing style still hadn’t been discarded at this point, the bunny who looks like he stepped out of a 1930 Talkartoon being the prime example. There’s also a Chuck Jones influence here, with an emphasis on pantomime and strong, held character poses for acting. The staging and set-up is especially brilliant when Cilly enters the Square Garden to meet her fate, where she becomes a living, breathing being with her dreams about to be shattered and her fears realized. Ditto for the angry mob at the end, a nightmarish depiction of human greed and the shameless exploitation of animals.
The result is a cartoon that is as good as anybody’s, but it ended up swept under the rug due to years of guilt-by-association and garbage film prints.
Thanks for posting this, Thad! I’ll append my post and point people this-a-way. I agree that this is a truly fine cartoon. Its atmosphere is unlike any other cartoon I know of. I didn’t realize that it’s slightly longer than the average one-reel cartoon! That may explain why it’s able to cast such an atmospheric spell on the viewer: it can linger on certain things, and they stick in the audience’s collective craw!
Disney and Famous Studios both had an uncomfortable habit of making violent cartoon action look as painful as possible. I often wondered if some of the artists at Famous suffered from depression or they seriously hated their lives or their jobs because in most of their cartoons they showed absolutely no mercy when it came to beating the crap out of their characters.
This cartoon is a little different in that the main character is presented in a sympathetic manner which pushes her to literally dream up a hoax that grows into a horrible nightmare. The storyline is stronger than most Famous efforts, it almost reaches the level of something made at WB or UPA (the “granny” ruse goes on a little too long, but otherwise, everything else is just as good as something scripted by Foster, Pierce, or Maltese.)
I don’t see that quality at all in the Famous Studios cartoons. There was at least one verified alcoholic amongst the high-ranking animators (Steve Muffatti), but what I see in most of the bad cartoons of the lesser studios is simply ineptitude rather than disdain. A “hurt” gag in a lame Herman & Katnip cartoon simply comes off as people not knowing how to do something properly and simply imitating, whereas the same gag in a lame Tom & Jerry simply reeks of hackery since you know those guys knew the art of animation better.
Most of the studio’s shortcomings can be traced to stuffed-shirts Seymour Kneitel and Izzy Sparber, who together successfully robbed the studio of a distinctive identity. There are strong hints in many of their early 1940s cartoons that they could have continued making quirky, well-animated cartoons with a distinctive New York flavor. Most of the guys had laid down to die. Like it or not, there’s nothing like that in the Terrytoons story, whose staff, save Jim Tyer and the occasional gem like Carl Vinci, were always hacks and just fine with that.
‘m just saying that that’s the impression that I get when I watch a Paramount cartoon, and that includes the Modern Madcaps. Just judging by the often cynical tone of the average Famous studios cartoon, it feels like it was a pretty joyless place to work.
Now Terrytoons, on the other hand, created lots of garbage, but I always had the impression that they were having fun doing it.
As for Disney studios, I’ve heard stories about some artists that hated going to work. One artist was quoted as saying,”I couldn’t stand listening to that damned duck’s voice all day.”
That’s about right, actually. Howard Beckerman described it to me as pretty joyless when he was there in 1950-51 (when I think everyone will agree ‘art’ was just about dead at Famous). But I happen to enjoy the cynicism present in Famous cartoons, when it’s executed sensibly, as in many of the Irv Spector written shorts. At their best (and these are few and far between as the years wore on), Famous was able to deliver something between a contemporary B Jones and B Freleng at Warners. Terrytoons, while a much more fun place to work and apprentice at (just ask Howard), was never capable of anything of coherent merit until Gene Deitch came in. Beyond the 1930s, very little of Disney’s output engages me at all, even out of perversion.
This is one of the shining lights of Famous’ early filmography. A very well-told story with only the barest minimum of dialogue (I don’t think even Jones and Freleng had perfected it in 1944), and highly expressive, if sorta retrograde, animation.
I have no real big issue with Famous. In fact, I’d say that their short-lived Little Lulu series is my favorite Golden Age cartoons series, bar non (talk about old cartoons that need more attention). Their earlier 40’s Popeyes are something special, too.
I join the list of those who consider Famous Studios’ 1943-1946 cartoons consistently and surprisingly good, but actively dislike their later films. Find the studio’s last gasps under Shamus Culhane and Ralph Bakshi a lot more enjoyable than the sadistic, unfunny, and soulless Famous cartoons from the 50’s.
I think that the 50s cartoons from Famous Studios were brilliant. No one alive today is capable of making animated shorts like those any more. I’d much rather grow up watching How Green Is My Spinach, Insect to Injury and Parlez Vous-Woo (all 50s Famous cartoons) than vomit like Wall-E, Pooh’s Heffalump Movie and Family Guy.
Really, Famous’ one-shot cartoons throughout the years were consistently interesting, if not always as successful as some of the West Coast studios. It was when they took a character from the one-shots and made them into a series regular that they tended to repeat plots ad nausem and drive the series into the ground.
The angry mob at the end of “Cilly Goose” was really one of the last examples from the era of Paramount doing what was previously a Willard Bowsky specialty — scaring the bejeesus out of the little kids in the theater audience deliberately from an adult sensibility. Future scenes that would make the kiddies uncomfortable, like Myron Waldman’s happy ending from “There’s Good Boos Tonight” were simply due to miscalculation.
(Spector’s one-shots from the 50s and early 60s mark a return to adult stories with some uncomfortable situations, even if the animation isn’t there to back it up, while his matchmaker trilogy from 1957-60, like Jones with his mini-series from the late 40s-early 50s, is smart enough to take one idea, try a couple of variations and then drop it before the Casper/H&K/Huey/Audrey syndrome sets in.)
You’re right about the mob scene and the Bowsky unit’s talent for scary cartoons. They were the ones responsible for some of the darker Popeye episodes, and I believe the last Fleischer Superman short, “Terror on the Midway”, was a Bowsky creation. That cartoon absolutely scared the crap out of me when I was a kid. Even from an adult perspective, it’s frightening, and everything in the cartoon contributes to it — the smiling faces of people that suddenly are stricken with horror; the dark, sinister color tones; Sammy Timberg’s music and its pacing; and most of all the gorilla himself, who is horrific.
Fleischer/Famous knew that much of what constitutes terror is psychological — and they knew how to milk it.
Doug: How about that Famous Superman cartoon with the race of birdmen in it, in which an explorer had been killed by being immersed head-to-toe in a vat of boiling liquid metal?
Yup. Not a nice way to die. I remember that episode too — Superman is initially overcome by the flock of birdmen, and has to really struggle to fight them off. The birdmen were scary.
The title of the episode was “The Underground World.” The musical score for that was very evocative, too. Some of it, accompanying the scenes where Lois, Clark and the later explorer are rowing through the caves, is really beautiful. I understand Timberg and Sharples collaborated on it.
The script was written by Jay Morton, who created several of the darker Superman cartoons. Morton was a superbly trained artist and an intellectual (he had a doctorate), who after leaving Fleischer in the mid-’40s became a newspaper publisher, a sculptor of some note, and the inventor of the “pop-top” aluminum can. He had a wonderfully creative mind.
I’ve yet to see Jim Tyer Terrytoons that even border on disturbing, but there are definitely some dark moments in his Famous Studios work (She Sick Sailors and Cheese Burglar).
Along with Fleischer and Famous among those who slipped weird morbid moments into cartoons: Fleischer, Famous, Columbia (especially Sid Marcus) and 1934-1935 Leon Schlesinger studio cartoons – “A Cartoonist’s Nightmare,””Fish Tales”, “Buddy’s Bug Hunt” – many credited to Jack King.
Now I’m wondering if Willard Bowsky was specifically responsible for the many “scare the bejeesus out of the little kids in the theater audience deliberately from an adult sensibility” moments in the Talkartoons, Betty Boops and such classic early Popeyes as Can You Take It? and Shiver My Timbers.
Bowsky did the original “cave” set-up for “Minnie the Moocher”, copied for the final two Cab Calloway Bettys, and his ending for the Screen Song “Popular Melodies” had a bunch of weird come-to-life creatures surging forward and back towards the screen, ending with a laughing devil’s head saying “Good night kiddies. Pleasant dreams.” Even as late as 1939 in Miami, cartoons like “Small Fry” and “Wotta Nightmare” still could create a certain sense of unease with their surreal scenes.
He definitely knew what he was trying to do, which is also the likely reason why the Fleischers gave Bowsky the first two color Popeyes. His unit did a better job of conveying a sense of menace/drama than the Kneitel unit, which was needed to justify the length of the two-reeler shorts, and Willard’s Bluto was the psychotic one who was just as likely to choke Olive or throw her out of a car as he was to try and kiss her. It definitely would have been interesting if Bowsky had survived World War II to see what a collaboration between him and Bill Tytla would have looked like.