Just to break up the monotony of Looney Tunes, here’s a pseudo-Looney Tune…
These Blackie vs. Wolfie shorts are some of the rarer gems of 1940s cartoonery. The shorts are obviously inspired by Bugs Bunny, but they still manage to have their own identity – the characters are always trying to kill each other, but they’re almost suburbanites in being on first-name terms with each other. Lamb in a Jam and Sheep Shape are even better than this one, but I don’t have presentable copies of either now, unfortunately. I posted about the first, and best, of the cartoons, No Mutton fer Nuttin’, here.
The animation by Dave Tendlar’s crew (his star animator was powerhouse Marty Taras) is full of vigor, echoing some of Bob Clampett’s work in that every miniscule action has a mind of its own. The scenes with the ‘ear-drum’ and Wolfie inhaling the ‘mint julep’ are at least as good as any animation done at Warners at the time. There’s even some well-acted footage of Wolfie dying of sunstroke in the desert (this looks like it could be Morey Reden’s work, though it might not be).
What most people don’t understand about Famous Studios is that while there were several units operating with a lead animator, those leaders didn’t direct in the fashion that the Warner or MGM directors would (the ‘idealized’ director system, which almost never, ever happens in animation, anywhere). Rather, head hacks Seymour Kneitel and Izzy Sparber would have final approval over everything, and almost always water everything down to a meandering 1-2-3 pace (Tendlar and Tom Johnson still managed to get the best results possible out of this system). Animation veteran (and treasure) Howard Beckerman told me there was no shortage of talent at Famous and some of them could have become high-profile directors if it weren’t for these management politics. The Paramount suits sure didn’t get in the way – they just cared if the pictures were clean, not if they were any good.
Regardless, the best of the 1940s Famous Studios cartoons remain the most underrated and neglected of animation’s golden age (along with Shamus Culhane’s work at Lantz). There’s a lingering stigma to reject them because they require a bit more work to get into, but trust me, find the right ones, like this one, and you’ll be rewarded.
Much Ado About Mutton was the last of the Sheep-Wolf cartoons, and the Blackie character axed permanently. (Wolfie would live on to harass other small creatures and be occasionally scared shitless by Casper the Friendly Ghost.) Here is a Tendlar model sheet of the character done for this particular cartoon (courtesy of Bob Jaques).
I love this French copy!
Who were the uncredited animators on this one? Taras and George Germanetti?
Well said!
The comic timing in this short is wonderful. It’s obvious there was a lot of enthusiasm in Famous’ 40’s shorts.
Sparber, as a non-animator, basically gave his units their head during most of the 1940s, so that while he may have been in on the crafting of the story, the timing and character layouts of the head animator are closer in line with what west coast directors were doing. Dan Gordon worked the same way, but it was Kneitel, and later Bill Tytla, who were the most demanding that the animation have a certain look to it, both in the designs and (as the 40s wore on) in the pacing and the looks, walks and reaction shots. A Sparber or Gordon short with Jim Tyer from 1943-46 looks like a Jim Tyer short; the ones done out of the Kneitel unit look like Jim Tyer on Quaaludes.
The irony is while Kneitel was doing most of this as a way to cut the cartoons’ costs and keep the suits down the block in the Paramount Building happy, slowing down the pacing and doing more holds on the reaction shots, which Famous did to death (literally) in the 1950s meant you had more time to focus on the painful gags, which in turn made them hurt even more. In the 40s, Famous still had some really violent stuff, but the pacing is fast enough you just blow past those gags and onto the next one, which doesn’t give the audience time to really think about how much that, for example, blowing a guy’s eardrums up might hurt.
I’m a bit confused on how Famous was run.
So, Kneitel and Sparber were in charge of editing & cost-cutting the cartoons to suit the budget? That was their role as directors, essentially? (If so, that’s not too different than most TV directors today, to be brutally honest about it.)
Meanwhile the lead animators and their crew at Famous were trying to do the best they could with this method? Is that correct to assume?
Essentially, yes. Kneitel and Sparber weren’t creative directors in the least, though they directed the voice sessions and may have worked on the actual timing. Most of the head animators laid down and died over the course of the Famous run.
I love the animation of Wolfie playing the trumpet, particularly the walk cycle while leading the lambs back to his house. Same for Wolfie driving the busted up motorcycle. While not all the gags are that great, animation like that more than makes up for it. The earlier Famous shorts really are under appreciated.
From years of research, this is what I know about the structure of Fleischer and Famous – Dave Fleischer, Kneitel, Gordon, Sparber, and Tytla would technically be known as Supervising Directors. Simply put – they oversaw the production of the different crews of animators. I liken it to modern TV production where it would be physically impossible to direct every cartoon so a supervising director is put in charge of all the directors making sure that the product meets certain standards and the vision of the producer or production company. The actual Fleischer/Famous Directors, as we have come to learn, were the head animators of each crew – the guys that did the nuts and bolts directing chores that were done by credited directors in the other studios.
I plan to do a follow-up of this subject on my blog in the (tentatively) near future.
Thanks for posting that, Bob, so the Internet has that info forever. I greatly look forward to your blog post!
A very bizzare production structure; And they pulled it off without having to credit everyone, too!
Shamus Culhane also dwelled into the Fleischer/Famous “director” thing in his interviews and books. He didn’t like it, needless to say.
It’s probably safe to say that any ’60s Paramount cartoons with Culhane credited as “director” is actually accurate.
Culhane would give himself the supervising director credit when someone else actually helmed the cartoon at Paramount, which Howard Post also did on the Jack Mendelsohn shorts in 1965.
Also, while Kneitel laid the hammer down on Tyer’s off-model animation as early as 1944 and Tytla followed suit two years later, forcing Jim to flee the city for New Rochelle, both seemed to be more trusting of the Tendlar unit during that same time, giving it a little more leeway to actually do a little more animation that wasn’t stock looks, poses, reactions, etc. (and by the late 40s Sparber was pretty much just following whatever Seymour and Vlad were doing). But everything pretty much had stiffened up by 1951 and stayed that way until Al Eugster figured out using some UPA-tinted angular poses as reaction shots could at least provide a little bit of contrast to the standard movement and design. Hooking up with Irv Spector as his main writer on the one-shot Noveltoons at the same time also helped, and those are the best cartoons Paramount did in the 1950s.
Thad, I’m wondering if you have inadvertently stumbled upon the solution to the Holy Grail of animation title card mysteries. Look at that Tendlar model sheet and notice Blackie’s name. Don’t tell me that wasn’t done by the same person who did all those beautiful Fleischer/Famous title cards. The lettering is identical to that of the Superman short “Showdown.”
I have long held, despite all protestations to the contrary, that all that title card art work was done by a member of the animation team. I’m wondering now if it was Dave Tendlar.
Regarding Jim Tyer: I believe most of what has been said about his departure from Famous to be a myth. It doesn’t make any sense that Famous would employ him for such a long period of time had they been that unhappy with his work. And given his work, why would they hire him in the first place – and make him head of a crew of animators. The likelihood is nobody really cared.
It came to light during a conversation with Ben Solomon’s daughter Lois, why Tyer may have ended up at Terrytoons. As the animators returned from military service they resumed the positions they had held prior to leaving – that was a condition stipulated by the government. I asked Lois why her father quit Famous and she told me that he was laid off to make room for the men returning from the service. I believe the same happened with Tyer. As more men returned from the service there was a need to thin the herd and I believe of that, Tyer was a casualty.
Interesting that he would have been eased out, though it seems like his departure from the studio was pretty much about the same time Al Eugster was returning (though the Gordon/Sparber vs. Kneitel contrast still holds true, in that you get the unabashed Jim Tyer in the shorts the first two supervised, while Tyer’s work under Kneitel was far more restrained).
The fact that Kneitel hired Tyer to work on the Snuffy Smith cartoons supports my speculation that he was laid off. Tyer’s animation in those cartoons was essentially a limited animation version of his work at Terrytoons – complete with eye twitches and manic movement. Had Kneitel hated Tyer’s animation I doubt he would have hired him.
Just going on the stories by Culhane and others about Kneitel’s emphasis on budget-saving maneuvers – stock walks, looks, etc. – I think his main problem in the 40s with Tyer’s animation may have been as much the extra work involved to create such individualstic drawings as it was the aesthetics of the drawings (Kneitel did allow Tyer to use his square-bodied Bluto for “A Peep In the Deep” evem if he made sure it was more elegantly animated than “Shape Ahoy” or Tytla’s first Popeye, “Service With A Guile”).
On the other hand, with the Snuffy KFS cartoons, there’s certainly more of the Tyer style showing through. But at the time Kneitel was supervising some of those shorts, plus some of the Beetle Baileys, plus the Noveltoons, plus the Modern Madcaps, plus the new Casper episodes for ABC. That may have given Tyer more freedom simply because Kneitel had (literally, as it sadly turned out) more work than he could handle.
The gags, wild takes and slapstick in Blackie’s cartoons feel like something that Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Robert McKimson, Friz Freleng, Arthur Davis or Frank Tashlin would’ve come up !
No wonder why his cartoons act similar to MGM and Warner Bros. cartoons such as Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, Barney Bear and even the Tex Avery shorts ! Feels just like SpongeBob and Animaniacs for the Noveltoons fan !
I think the most outstanding thing about this and the linked Blackie cartoon are the backgrounds.
I would bet that the backgrounds are by the same person/people who did the gorgeous backgrounds for Mr. Bug Goes to Town.
The sheep are cute in a likable sort of way, but I never found this wolf design to be very funny – either here or in Warner’s cartoons.
I believe it was Dan Gordon who was the cartoon’s director, but by the time the cartoon was released in late 1943, he had been fired from Famous Studios, hence why no director is credited.