Cake Landing

We all know what’s going to happen in Bosko’s Party (1932).

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Serious Soupy

Other than they talked to the same age group, there wasn’t a lot in common between Captain Kangaroo and Soupy Sales.

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The Huck Birthday Express

Children loved it. Teenagers went nuts for it. Adults watched it. Even critics thought it was entertaining. And it began appearing on TV screens 63 years ago today.

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Headless Horse

I don’t know what the fascination was with wooden horses in cartoons of the late ‘20s and early ‘30s, but I think every studio had them. Van Beuren was among them.

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Let's Party With T.C.

What were Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera doing the night Top Cat debuted 60 years ago?

Watching TV, what else?

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Fudd Take

Huge eye takes were almost a thing of the past in the 1950s, and they’re something that Bob McKimson eschewed as his unit’s animation became more and more watered down.

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The Kid is Not My Son

Two people on the Jack Benny TV show appeared in Charley’s Aunt. One was Benny himself. Who was the other?

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Lantz, Columbia Studios, 1940

A while ago, we posted a list from 1940 of many of the male employees of Leon Schlesinger Productions based on U.S. military draft cards, most of them filled out in October 1940. Because of misspellings of poor Leon’s name, not all of them came up in a search.

We’re going to do the same thing for the Lantz, Screen Gems and Cartoon Films studios.

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Punching Out a Train

The train’s coming and Popeye doesn’t have time to rescue Olive Oyl tied to the tracks. Well, he’s got only one choice.

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Detouring America Backgrounds

Johnny Johnsen brings us cityscapes and nature-scapes (is that a word?) in Detouring America, a 1939 Tex Avery travelogue.

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He Didn't Want to be a Yokel

Buddy Ebsen really didn’t want the role that brought him everlasting fame.

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The Soundtrack Laughs But We Don't

UPA’s The Emperor’s New Clothes (1953) is smothered in overly busy settings, repetitious dialogue, at times non-existent animation and a non-melodic score that’s in some non-major key (before it lapses into a march cadence heard over and over).

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Challenging Sam to a Duel

Look at Bugs Bunny’s fingers in these scenes from Hare Trimmed (1953) and the little moustache twirl for added personality.

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Jack Benny Fans Unite

The internet has improved things so much for people who like to share common interests. Just log on and read or chat. En masse.

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The Enemy Bacteria

World War Two kept cartoon studios busy with work for the U.S. government. Perhaps Walter Lantz’s best known cartoon for military release is The Enemy Bacteria (1945).

Read how the film was made here.

Promoting Top Cat With Arnold Stang

Top Cat had a top cast.

Read what Arnold Stang had to say here.

Here's the Colonel

Before Hanna-Barbera came along with Ruff and Reddy in 1957, another studio was putting a half-hour of new animation on the air.

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Changing Flip

Flip turns into a familiar personality, then turns back, in The Soup Song, released by MGM on January 31, 1931. This is about the easiest way to do a transformation in animation. Just don't show the transformation.

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Rango Was Wrongo

Alright, put your hands up now if you liked Rango.

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Norm Macdonald

The head of the DPN Talent agency says “He defined American humor with honesty and blunt force.”

Leave to a Canadian to do that.

The Canadian was Norm Macdonald, who has died of cancer at age 61.

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You Know What? I Get the Girl at the End

Droopy started out in cartoons slow and morose. At the end, he was a little more up-tempo, but he was never like he was at the end of Wild and Woolfy (1945).

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Bat Overhead

Porky opens a door in an abandoned yacht club and out fly a number of bats. In fact, one with a moustache soars directly at the theatre audience.

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Eddie Anderson on his Boss

Perhaps next to Jack Benny, Rochester was the most popular character on the Benny radio show.

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The Search For Smith

This is a story of failure.

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B.S. (Bull Slingshot)

The confident bullfighting Tex Avery wolf is seemingly under control in Señor Droopy (1949). The bull charges at him over and over, but the wolf is prepared.

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Art Metrano

There are people who suddenly appear on TV with a routine that’s funny. That was the case with Art Metrano.

He has passed away at age 84.

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Dancing Teeth

A punching ball obeys the basic laws of physics in The Bull Fight, a 1935 Terrytoon.

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The Urchin With the Nose

Jimmy Durante was loved because he came across as a sincere guy, who rose from poverty through hard work to become someone.

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Throwing the Bull in the Silent Film Days

Terrible Tom from Toronto takes advantage of a beat-up old steer in a bullfight with a $10,000 prize—but the sorry-looking animal unexpectedly gets vicious when the cat tosses him into a cactus.

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Pull on a Bull

Daffy discovers he’s pulling on a bull, not a sickly calf, in Porky’s Last Stand, an early 1940 release from the Bob Clampett unit.

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The Perspiring Palm

To radio listeners in 1932, Jack Benny was a rising comedian who made fun of his sponsor on the air. Behind the scenes, things were a little more tumultuous.

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Afraid Not, Woody

Cartoon woodpeckers don’t usually milk cows, and there’s a reason.

The censor says they can’t.

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The Sound of Distant Laughter

One gag flows into another in Tex Avery’s Rock-a-Bye Bear.

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Miss Cud to the Rescue

Friz Freleng mined a bit of personality out of Miss Cud (played by Elvia Allman) in I Haven’t Got a Hat (1935).

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The Happy Professor

Once upon a time, Bob Hope had a radio show. It was a good radio show. My favourite part of the Bob Hope Show isn’t Hope. It’s a wonderfully eccentric man named Jerry Colonna.

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