Category Archives: dead guys

by | March 22, 2014 · 5:08 pm

Mousekeeping

BookMouse-160Oh, yeah, hey.

I’d been meaning for some time to get around to reviewing Jim Korkis’s The Book of Mouse: A Celebration of Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse, but if you’re like me, you’ve probably already gotten it. As is always the case with Jim’s books, it’s yet another fantastic resource for Disney history that makes even the most mundane trivia readable and entertaining. (My only caveat is that Jim didn’t go into detail about the other reason Riley Thomson’s unit was called the “Drunk Mickey Unit”; namely that its star players Fred Moore, Walt Kelly, and Ken Muse were all famous for their drinking.)

It’s one of several Korkis books published by Bob McLain’s Theme Park Press, a small-time player specializing in Disney history. You won’t find these lushly illustrated like those of Chronicle or Disney Publishing, but I think you’ll overcome the lack of pretty pictures once you dig into the books. McLain is also printing new installments of Didier Ghez’s important series Walt’s People. If you haven’t read the earliest volumes (shame on you), you can pick them up from Theme Park, as it’s reprinting the entirety of the series.

lifeMouseHouse-260I personally was anticipating Ghez’s assemblage of Homer Brightman’s memoir Life in the Mouse House: Memoir of a Disney Story Artist, and can heartily recommend a purchase of this breezy read. Brightman was a storyman at Disney’s from 1935 to 1950, where his most memorable creation was Gus-Gus the mouse in Cinderella, then a mainstay of the Walter Lantz studio.

Brightman’s name doesn’t exactly evoke most fans and historians’ interest for good reason: most of the cartoons he wrote stink. It’s difficult to discern his involvement in the Disney films given the highly collaborative nature of that studio’s storytelling (as Brightman reveals in keen detail), but it’s probably fair to assume he came up with a fair share of funny moments. While his gag sense was far better than the corn peddled by Ben Hardaway in the ’40s, the animation in the Lantz cartoons got too stiff to make much of a difference when Brightman was a writer there in the ’50s and ’60s.

Still, any firsthand memories of the medium’s Golden Age are to be highly cherished, and Brightman’s accounting (while neither as insightful as Shamus Culhane’s or acidic as Jack Kinney’s) is engaging enough that you’ll probably plow through this 100-pager in one evening. I grew a little annoyed with Brightman’s inflated self-importance, but that’s to be expected in a memoir (as if Carl Barks was as inept a storyteller as Brightman made him out to be). Brightman used pseudonyms for all of his coworkers and they are left intact as he wanted. They get in the way, but thankfully Ghez has included a key to who’s who.

Walt Disney was one of those mercurial personalities you couldn’t help observe sharply, and Brightman’s anecdotes ring true and his commentary is generally spot-on. The book has been oversold as “scathing,” as if it’s tantamount to the bile regularly exhibited in strikers’ interviews of the past or the psychopath Walt Peregoy’s taped talks of the present day. It’s revealing that despite receiving ostensibly brutal treatment, Brightman is able to write about Disney with fair admiration. The book abruptly ends when he leaves after Cinderella, with no mention of Walter Lantz (who easily valued Brightman considerably more than Disney did).

I was surprised when I brought up the subject of the filmed Brightman board pitches for “The Woody Woodpecker Show”, Didier said he had never seen them. So here is one embedded below, in which Brightman shows off part of the storyboard for Alex Lovy’s To Catch a Woodpecker. One anecdote not in the book is Walt Disney having a fit of laughter during a story session, and remarking to Brightman, “I’m not laughing at the story. I’m laughing at you.” As was often the case, he was right.

1 Comment

Filed under classic animation, dead guys, people

by | May 16, 2013 · 6:57 pm

Belated Clampett Thoughts

Once again, this blog comes last as my disarrayed life settles. I’m laying the groundwork for a new book on a classic studio you all love, as well as an expanded, revised, hardback edition of Sick Little Monkeys. Those egregious typos will be eradicated, even more information will be added, and yes, a few errors will be corrected, thanks to Tom Minton and Stephen DeStefano for bringing them to my attention. (The most glaring, for the record: Ted Bakes One, the interstitial done by John Kricfalusi and Bill Wray for Channel Zero was made in 1981 and not 1979 as I state. And due to my mis-shuffling of sources and wording, I incorrectly stated that the Bakshi studio was located in Van Nuys during the first season of Mighty Mouse. It was in fact in North Hollywood. Bakshi, after he severed his partnership with John Hyde, relocated to Van Nuys for the second season.)

I also missed out, as did most of the online world it seems, on posting about the centennial of Bob Clampett’s birth, which fell on May 8th last week. Just as well, as I didn’t have much on my mind to say about him then, beyond what I commented on Mike Barrier’s site.

Mark Kausler, that great animator and historian whom I compared to Clampett as far as generosity and animation knowledge were concerned, further demonstrated his kindness by graciously pointing out, via e-mail, that I had flubbed one of my animator IDs years ago. In the Internet age, the single thing websites and blogs (authored by serious people anyway) have over print media is that misinformation can be corrected with the click of a button.

I’d been under the impression the animation of Porky Pig in the malt shop in Tex Avery’s important film The Blow Out, pictured above, had been by Chuck Jones and I stated so at least once without being corrected. Mark says the animation was actually done by Bob Clampett. He said he used the one piece of Clampett’s animation from the period that is verifiably his, the fat lady’s “Sally Rand” dance in (Page) Miss Glory, as reference. I value Mark’s opinion on these things more than anyone else, so I’m not going to second guess him or grandstand until he provides further evidence. If Mark Kausler says so, it’s true.

Clampett never had much to say about his actual work as a draftsman or an animator, be it in interviews or chitchat with those like Mark who knew him. Frankly, judging by the animation that’s verifiably his, he was a pretty damn good animator by 1936 standards, one who could illustrate real life in both the drawing and characterization, and on par with anything Jones was able to do at the time. (Well, from what Mark has told me is verifiably Jones’s anyway…) Certainly nothing to be ashamed of, so why would he write it off?

I can only guess that it’s because he clearly became increasingly disinterested in works that weren’t 100% attributable to his vision. That animation for Avery (and to a far lesser extent Jack King) was in response to another filmmaker’s direction. Certainly he’d acknowledge (as did the other guys) that he did important animation in Porky’s Duck Hunt, but that was an exception. Likewise, he became dismissive of his crew’s skills on the black-and-white Looney Tunes when he knew more money and artistic license was just across the lot. Whatever rough edges they have, a well-crafted entry like Porky & Daffy, Porky in Wackyland, or Porky in Egypt did not exist after the first year or two of Clampett’s tenure as a Warner director, when he clearly became exhausted with his surroundings.

To bring up another B.C. historical dilemma, where are the Clampett drawing from when he finally got his own “A” unit? I have seen plenty examples of Clampett’s draftsmanship from his black-and-white cartoons, and they are energetic and functional. But never a single one from his color cartoons, the “energy sketches” as described by Bob McKimson and Phil Monroe. Given Clampett took so much of his own (and other people’s) art with him to the grave, I can only suspect he was embarrassed by the haste and roughness of whatever drawings he did as a director in the ’40s. Again, they were probably nothing to be ashamed of. Friz Freleng’s own drawings exhibit similarities in their genuine, painstaking effort to get an emotion across. Both men also relied on other artists to pick up the drawing slack because their skills were better elsewhere – and both clearly knew what they were doing.

Given that level of personal investment, it’s therefore striking that so many Clampett cartoons really don’t hold up as wholes, yet I can’t bring myself to actively dislike them. Hare Ribbin’ and Draftee Daffy are two that come immediately to mind, to name two popular examples, that are so loaded with sloppy execution and mischaracterization that I really should be tearing them apart, but dammit, I can’t bring myself to do anything except adore them. (By the way, does anything go on in the latter beyond Daffy running around the house for four minutes?) Like Nick Ray, Clampett was a largely uneven filmmaker for a better part of his career, yet also charismatic and such a pure artist and entertainer that it’s easy to forgive any aesthetic blunders. Other directors may have been sturdier, but they were also more predictable. True, unpredictability doesn’t create greater art by default – but the heights of an artist’s peaks surely count for something.

I mean, what case can be made against the guy who gave the world this? Really?

4 Comments

Filed under classic animation, dead guys

by | April 22, 2013 · 10:49 am

Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary

Being one of the most original and influential visionaries of all-time has nothing to do with being a decent human being. A harsh truth anyone interested in the arts has to accept straightaway. And in the entire history of cartooning, no one quite illustrates this principle like Al Capp.

The short version: Li’l Abner had no equal in the medium of comic strips in its 1.5 decade prime (arbitrarily beginning any year in the latter half of the ’30s and ending in the early ’50s) and the man rose to the status of celebrity like no other cartoonist of that era. The strip’s biting narrative and rich draftsmanship had a major impact on Walt Kelly, Harvey Kurtzman, Charles Schulz, and any print cartooning visionary to emerge after its creation. Only Kelly’s Pogo managed to match (and, arguably, surpass) Capp’s Dickensian-like skill of enhancing the mundane, creating compelling characters out of even the incidentals. Whereas Kelly’s own sympathies were always with his characters, Capp held his characters in open contempt; the joy Capp got out of his self-aware style was exposing what unlikable, disdainful creatures every single one of his creations were.

Unfortunately, that cynical bile, as it so often is with the best talents, was inseparable from the work and the actual person. Capp’s gift for storytelling expanded to his personal and professional life, and he often spun fabricated stories that would be funnier if they weren’t at the personal expense of so many other people in a less than opportune position to defend themselves. His early losses, both physically (he lost his leg in a streetcar accident when he was nine) and creatively (he never finished art school and Joe Palooka’s Ham Fisher severly mistreated him), only fueled his abusive nature rather than enlighten him.

He was abusive to his friends, business partners, collaborators,and family; a misogynist who mistreated his wife and lovers with equal disdain; and, to borrow from Mark Evanier, a serial rapist whose third-leg antics (which victimized everyone from the nameless to Grace Kelly, Edie Adams, and Goldie Hawn) were defended by no less than Richard Nixon. If there is a positive side to this grisly story, it’s that Capp undoubtedly did feel remorse and disgust for the pain he caused. Suffice to say, it’s a dark, tragic, and, at times, humorous story worth telling with utmost delicacy.

Michael Schumacher is no stranger to chronicling the life of a widely influential cartoonist, and no one has done more to champion Al Capp’s Li’l Abner than Denis Kitchen has with his excellent reprint collections. As a team, they’re more than qualified to chronicle the life of the man behind Dogpatch, and Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary more than meets the goal of being a standard biography. If you are worried that aspects of the man Capp will be whitewashed, don’t be. This is the whole bitter story.

Some of the book’s chronology jumps around a bit much for a biography (the authors talk about the latter half of the ’40s in one section, and then discuss World War II in the next), and an analysis of why exactly Li’l Abner is the comic masterwork that it is, rather than simply stating that it is, would have been welcome. But given the scope of this book, and the gripping life story they have to tell in some 260 pages, they are admirably thorough and pull no punches. This is the biography David Michaelis wishes he wrote, one that doesn’t require penning a fantasy version as his atrocity Schulz and Peanuts did.

Do not base your opinion of Al Capp on that isolated YouTube clip of his encounter with John Lennon and Yoko Ono that is constantly making its rounds in social media. Schumacher and Kitchen have presented the real Al Capp here in their pageturner: admirably creative, but there’s not much to admire otherwise. Though in all fairness, that clip does rather accurately depict why anyone today can hear a Beatles song and know exactly what it is, but remain dumbfounded if they actually encounter a Li’l Abner strip. Sad, ain’t it?

1 Comment

Filed under comics, dead guys, people

by | February 21, 2013 · 12:10 pm

Marvel Comics: The Untold Story

Given everything that’s been going on with my own book (now available on Kindle!), it’s been hard to keep up on all the other great books that have come out, so I didn’t get around to this until now.

I have to make a confession upfront: I never liked superhero comics, and I still really don’t. Some might say that I developed my aversion to them because my father was (and still is) a devoted fan, but my attraction to guys like Carl Barks, John Stanley, Walt Kelly, and Sheldon Mayer just seemed a far more natural fit for my budding tastes, and they still do. In the last few years, though, I’ve relented, and now have utmost appreciation for the works of Jack Kirby and Jack Cole in particular. Truth be told, the ratio of gold to crap in funnybooks is about the same as superheroes (though on very different scales).

Having said that, Sean Howe’s book absolutely wowed me, and given the subject is largely about books I have zero interest in, that’s saying something. It’s the story of a company that took itself way too seriously, whose stories and characters became so convoluted and involved that the only way to save themselves was to make their universe even further convoluted. The backstabbing of its most important creators perfectly illustrates the grim fact that anyone in any business is expendable. The reasons for why Marvel, who have just as captivating a cast of characters as DC, couldn’t get any feature films off the ground until fairly recently are rife in typical Hollywood drama (is there any other kind?). The tale of the development of Stan Lee, from an eager kid whose dialogue was always sort of lackluster but was likable and talented enough to the resigned corporate mascot of today, is more engrossing than any other account I’ve read on the subject.

The biggest flaw is that the other creators (save Stan Lee) get far too little attention at the expense of the suits and editors. The most colorful pages are those discussing Jack Kirby’s work and his personal struggles with the company. Fewer people in American pop culture are as compelling figures as Kirby, and while going on too many tangents about him might prove detrimental to the general history of Marvel, there was still no other artist the company was as indebted to as Kirby. Glimmers of eccentric egomaniacs (Frank Miller, Todd McFarlane) are also extremely entertaining, and I would have preferred more coverage of them than the constant refrains of the internal struggles at the top of the company.

Anyone with even a passing interest in the entertainment world should pick up this highly charged tome of the ‘little company that could’ turned corporate behemoth. Dare I say it, it’s more engaging than any comic.

Comic and animation artist Bob Camp’s 1983 two-page spread of the Marvel Bullpen.

3 Comments

Filed under comics, dead guys, people