Benny and the Beavers

Jack Benny put some classic Christmas shows on the air. Hallowe’en? Well, not so much.

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Toby

Toby the Pup gets lost in the history of animation. His cartoons were never seen on TV over and over like Bugs Bunny and Popeye way-back-when. In fact, his cartoons weren’t seen on TV at all.

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Wot a Bat

Put Van Beuren cartoon characters in surreal situations and you generally get a weird cartoon. Weird enough to be likeable.

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Shadow Monsters

Felix is frightened by strange shadows in Sure-Locked Homes (Released Apr. 15, 1928). There’s no plot in this scene, but lots of imagination.

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Is the Great Pumpkin All That Great?

55 years ago today, Charles Schulz didn’t put on the small screen a character he didn’t put in the Peanuts comic strip.

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The Time's Not Right For Murder

The victim has read the book “Who Killed Who?” (from the cartoon of the same name). There's bad news.

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Bewitched Bunny Backgrounds

Here’s Phil DeGuard’s work in Broomstick Bunny, the first of the Witch Hazel cartoons released by Warner Bros. Even though there are characters in front of some of them, they’re worth studying to see what DeGuard put on the walls.

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Mrs. Wilson

It took Jack Benny several tries before he found an announcer that would stick with him for years—Don Wilson. And it took Wilson several tries before he found a wife to share his life with.

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Portis, Portis, Everywhere

Bing Crosby appeared in Paramount features for years. Bingo Crosbyana appeared in one Warner Bros. cartoon.

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Krazy For Hawaii

It’s not George Herriman’s Krazy Kat in Honolulu Wiles, a 1930 Columbia cartoon, but it’s a fun cartoon.

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No Rags, But There's a Musical Cat

Bimbo plays a garbage man with a jazz-playing cat in his wagon in Any Rags, a 1932 Talkartoon.

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Whoa, Nelly

Dick Lane was likely the first big TV celebrity west of the Mississippi, making regular appearances before there were networks.

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Oreb-esque

Symphony in Slang is an interesting experiment. Tex Avery liked visual puns, so he accepted the challenge of turning them into a seven-minute narrative.

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The Enemy Alerted

Snafu bypasses the censor to get his secret information to girl-friend Sally Lou in Censored (1944). The artwork designs and camera angles are really good here.

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Television's Successes

What makes a TV show a success? In 1963, one columnist looked at three shows that had been on the air for quite some time.

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Running Butch

In Chips Off the Old Block (1942), Butch the cat gathers orphan kittens in a vase and runs away with it, trying to hide them from the mistress of the house.

See perspective drawings here.

That's Not a Dog

Babbitt hypnotises the Costello mouse into thinking he’s a dog in The Mouse-Merized Cat, then sics him on the housecat keeping watch over the kitchen.

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Mary is Flip

Ub Iwerks’ writing staff borrowed their own gag from the Flip the Frog cartoon School Days (1932) and put it in Mary’s Little Lamb (1935).

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The Satire That Blooms in the Fall, Tra-La

Fred Allen added an air of culture as he sliced and diced stupidity and banality. He’d set it to music.

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Puns of the Old South

Tex Avery made a whole cartoon of visual puns (1951’s Symphony in Slang) and did the same thing for a couple of scenes in an earlier cartoon (1950’s The Cuckoo Clock). But he gave it a go in the 1947 MGM short Uncle Tom’s Cabaña.

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Not Quite Gene Krupa

Porky in Wackyland is one of my favourite Warners cartoons of all time. So much is going on, one thing after another.

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Unmatched Pilgrim

Grim Pilgrim is, in a way, a Thanksgiving cartoon, as Huckleberry Hound makes peace with an American Indian stereotype—and the turkey they both want to eat—as they all sit down to dinner at the end.

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Fine New Book About Fine Old Cartoons

The Tralfaz blog isn’t designed as a destination for people who want paragraph upon paragraph of analysis about old cartoons. Read more here.

58 = 39

Today is not Jack Benny’s birthday, but it might as well be. He never changed from 39 any time it came around, so why not make every day a birthday?

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MGM Odds and Ends, Part 1

MGM made cartoons for 20 years before shutting down, telling Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera at the end that “cartoons for TV will never work.”

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The Swinging College Crowd

“Another in the appealing series of Leon Schlessinger [sic] animations. Motion Picture Daily is talking about Along Flirtation Walk.

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Light and Shadow

Walt Disney is going for mood through shadows near the start of the 1931 cartoon The Fox Hunt.

See some frames here.

Songbird of the Ozarks

Fans of Tex Avery’s wonderful cartoon Little Rural Riding Hood (1949) may not realise the title character owes an awful lot to a radio star. Read more here.

Rabbit Every Monday Background

Opening pan of a Friz Freleng cartoon featuring Bugs, Sam, Tedd Pierce's shadow and live action footage.

See it here.

Snatching a T-Bone

Tex Avery fills Crazy Mixed Up Pup with dog-acting-like-man and man-acting-like-dog gags. Here’s one. Expressions and reactions to expressions.

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Political Puns and Dollars

A couple of short newspaper pieces about Jack Benny from 1961.

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On Location With Mike Maltese and Warren Foster

If I had to analyse where I got my sense of humour, one of the influences would be Mike Maltese.

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The Dragon Slayer

The industrial cartoons from John Sutherland Productions were never nominated for Oscars, yet they did win honours at various festivals. An example is The Dragon Slayer.

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You Know What's Going to Happen Here

“And over here we have Hot Foot Hogan the Firewalker,” barks the circus barker in Tex Avery’s Circus Today (1940).

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