Here is another prime Dave Tendlar cartoon with Blackie the Lamb and Wolfie, the perverse Sheep Shape (1946). This is before Marty Taras joined Tendlar’s crew, but Johnny Gent more than adequately fills those shoes with some beautiful animation in this one. Unfortunately, all of my copies of this cartoon have faded to what Tom Stathes and I call “menstruavision”, so you can’t enjoy the eye candy that is Famous Studios color styling.
This has a lot in common with that very bizarre, but very wonderful, Bob Clampett Bugs Bunny cartoon, Hare Ribbin’ (1944). In both, the protagonist’s cross-dressing works so well, and they get so into it, that it gets a little uncomfortable to watch. Much more so in the Famous cartoon, where Blackie seems to have either shaved his wool or donned a flesh-colored body suit. Laughs are laughs, though, and this one has plenty of them. The adoption of suburban (or maybe rural?) rivalry over the prey-predator formula in this cartoon also gives this a unique Fleischer-like vibe to it.
I want to call your attention to a bit of animation by Gent from 2:17 to 2:37. This is a perfect instance of how great some of these guys were: that they’d do amazing work even if the material didn’t require it. Rather than just have him walk in and place the board in the door, Gent actually has Blackie stagger and struggle with the board, emphasizing its weight and what a struggle it is for a squirt like him to lift it. When Wolfie rams the revolver in the lamb’s face, every syllable of his dialog is reflected in the gun being jammed that many times in Blackie’s forehead. The scurry-in when Wolfie digs his way into the house is beautiful. In short, “that is some good shit.”
Also, enjoy a less disturbing (?) model of Blackie in drag by Tendlar.
Hey, a Blackie cartoon I hadn’t actually seen before!
Fleischer vibe? Look no further than 4:20, where Blackie-in-drag is startlingly reminiscent of the early Betty Boop. I don’t remember my Fleischer offhand; was Tendlar working on Betty as far back as the Natwick-era Talkartoons?
Yes indeed he was. And who the fuck is “Max and”?
Um… as in Max and Dave (Fleischer)… :facepalm:
Was this series created by Dan Gordon?
Blackie seems to have either shaved his wool or donned a flesh-colored body suit.
At 4:38 when he loses his wig, it looks like he’s wearing some sort of flesh-colored sweater.
Was this series created by Dan Gordon?
The first Blackie cartoon had no director credit, but was done in Miami with Tendlar as head animator, so there’s a good chance Gordon supervised it before leaving the studio when it relocated to New York.
It’s interesting to compare the timing and the story here to the series that would most mirror it a few year’s later, Herman & Katnip, especially since Tendlar was the one basically in charge of both series. This one’s still early enough in the game at Famous so that you can go from slow to rapid action for comic effect (as with Wolfie’s walk into the nightclub and his quick exit to the newspaper in the gutter). And while it’s obvious they were borrowing story and gag reactions from Tex Avery here, at least they were borrowing good stuff — the later H&K series was content to just borrow the basic story from “Naughty But Mice” over and over again for almost a decade.
Not sure why, but it’s only now that I realize that “The Wolf” is an obvious Bert Lahr based character, at least in the voice acting department.
Very fun and visually appealing cartoon–another reminder of the quality of the early years of Famous studio.
Drag gags in Famous cartoons are almost always, uh ,in questionable taste. (see Popeye camp it up in “Popeye and the the Pirates”–very strange) But even stranger is the wolf’s ruse around the three minute mark— what the hell is holding that cap up?