Con-Skunk or Not

Doctor Primrose Skunk enters the Hugh Harman cartoon The Little Mole (1941) with a little introductory song.

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Butt, Here Comes Popeye

Popeye’s known for using his fists a lot after chowing down on spinach, but in You Got To Be a Football Hero (1935), he uses his butt to help score the winning touchdown.

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The Rooster, I SAY, the Rooster is Crowin'

The ink and paint department at the Warner Bros. studio gets plenty of work to do in this scene in The Foghorn Leghorn (1948).

See it here.

We Interrupt This Blacksmith

The Village Smithy must have been a real unexpected treat for cartoon-lovers of 1936.

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Jack Benny Goes to a 7-11

What was it like hanging around Jack Benny in 1966?

Let’s find out.

Not Bert and Harry

Want to sell beer? In the 1950s and early 1960s, the combination that seemed to work was cartoons and comedy.

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A Streetcar He Didn't Desire

In the climax scene of Canary Row (1950), Sylvester tries to reach Tweety’s apartment building from his building across the street by walking gingerly across the power line connecting the two.

See some frames here.

Piano Slang

The guy at the piano played by ear.

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Time To Stump the Experts

Information Please was, in a way, the Jeopardy! of the network radio era. A 1946 review by John Crosby is here.

Annie Round the World

Chuck Jones very capably uses a variety of limited animation techniques in the Private Snafu short It's Murder She Says... (1945).

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Today's Obscure Pop Culture Reference

Pop culture references of the 1930s and ‘40s were, to a large degree by my experience, still common in the 1960s when I grew up. But there's one I've just sorted out now.

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Jack Benny Gets to the Story Behind the Story

Jack Benny “interviewing” Jack Benny was a gimmick used early in his radio career.

Read it here.

The Road to Linus' Jungle

Fortune didn’t smile on too many cartoon studios in the early 1960s that tried to break into television.

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No Talking Animals Allowed

UPA didn’t want slapstick or funny animals in its cartoons. Horrors! It was quite happy to inflict, jealous, vengeful or self-pitying children on theatre goers.

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Disney Doubles

Need a crowd scene? Just use the same drawings a second time.

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Batman vs Lost in Space

Don’t bother with the Riddler and King Tut to eliminate Batman. Try monsters instead.

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Pill Pushing Cat

Tex Avery didn’t rely on dialogue for many of his gags.

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Laugh With Buddy, If You Can

Who says everyone thinks Buddy stinks?

Find out here.

Philsie

Whether anyone at the time realised it or not, one of the biggest shots in the arm the Jack Benny radio show got was when Phil Harris was hired as the bandleader in 1936.

Read a feature story here.

From a Volkswagen to a Rolls-Royce

The role of the Hanna-Barbera studio in the history of animation has been debated to death for years and I doubt anything new could be propounded. My opinion is the studio put out some pleasant-to-funny cartoons at the beginning, then things got blander and repetitious through overwork, followed by interference by network executives and pressure groups.

Read more in this post.

Tex's Worm Take

Tex Avery’s first cartoon in production at MGM (and second released) doesn’t exactly have the wild takes he would soon be known for.

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Another Zooming Head

An outlaw has his eye on Minnie, um, Rita Mouse in the Van Beuren short Western Whoopee (1930).

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Stop Picking on Brooklyn

Who knowed dem tuff muggs in Brooklyn was sensitive?

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Waiting For Petey

Ultra close-ups, shadows, silhouettes and camera angles highlight Frank Tashlin’s Puss ‘N Booty (1943).

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A Girl!

It’s cartoon law. Men believe guys in drag are real women. That goes for walruses and woodpeckers in The Woody Woodpecker Polka (1951).

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Gagster, Not Gangster

Gangsters were big in the 1930. It, therefore, isn’t a surprise that a writer for Silver Screen magazine used an FBI metaphor to get into a feature story about Jack Benny.

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Think of the Children

Once upon a time, we had Felix the Cat getting drunk surrounded by kitten babes before staggering home and being hit with a rolling pin with his wife. We had Heeza Liar out-cheating cheaters at poker before a hail of gunfire in the darkness.

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Hand Sandwich

Woody Woodpecker, on one side of a fence, turns Wally Walrus’ hand, on the other side of the fence, into a sandwich in The Dippy Diplomat (1944).

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Stop The Noise Backgrounds

The 1930s Fleischer background paintings are enjoyable to look at, especially the warped cityscapes with boarded up buildings and twisted lampposts. Unfortunately, we don’t get that in Stop That Noise, a 1935 Betty Boop cartoon.

See a few here.

Cooking With Carl

How do you get a syndicated columnist to plug your book?

Simple. Make lunch for them.

Read more here.