On Your Mark! Get Set! Bang!

Bugs Bunny experiences a momentary setback when he’s dressed in Olympic runner drag in 14 Carrot Rabbit, a 1952 Warners cartoon from the Friz Freleng unit.

See more here.

Swingin' Bat

Bats in the Belfry (1942) is an unusual cartoon in that the rhyming dialogue is in verse.

See more here.

When He's 64

“The biggest show in town” debuted 64 years ago today.

Read about the Huckleberry Hound Show in this post.

Let Me Entertain You

Little did pre-teen me know she had not only appeared in movies, she was the subject of one.

Read more here.

Gallopin' All the Way Starting Tonight

63 years ago today saw the debut of The Quick Draw McGraw Show, as Hanna-Barbera satirised TV westerns.

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3-D Woodpecker

Walter Lantz’s Hyponotic Hick was part of the new 3-D craze in 1953, but it used techniques seen in cartoons years earlier.

Read more here.

Van Beuren Craziness

The early days of sound animation in New York were fun days. Stories sometimes didn’t really exist, gags were strange.

See examples from Van Beuren in this post.

Phil Harris: Not Thinking or Drinking

Phil Harris would stroll onto the stage and tell Jack Benny’s radio audience that now that he was here, things were going to liven up.

And he was right.

Read about Phil here.

Okay, I Won't Axe You

There’s nothing like a good Tralfaz sighting.

Find out more here.

The Fairest in the Land?

The wicked queen demands to know from her magic mirror who the fairest in the land is now that Betty Boop is enclosed in a cake of ice.

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What the Jetsons Means Today

The Jetsons turns 60 today, a 20th Century show set in the 21st Century that we now watch in the 21st Century.

Read more in this post.

Outline Cat

Tom is in such a hurry to give a diamond ring to his would-be girl-friend, his outline arrives before the rest of him in Blue Cat Blues.

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Promoting George and Jane

The Jetsons started life, according to Bill Hanna at a lunch at the Brown Derby, as a stand-by series just in case TV viewers didn’t warm to Arnold Stang playing a cat.

Read more here.

The Jumping Jack

Exercise programmes go back to the beginning of radio in the early 1920s. They were tailor made for television and slid into the new medium. Maybe the best-known TV exercise gurus was Jack LaLanne.

Read about him here.

A Horse's What?

Answer this quick! How many times did Carl Stalling put that five-note “You’re a horse’s rear end” music in a cartoon?

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Puzzled Fish

The lucky ducky (of the cartoon of the same name) beats it across the lake to escape from George and Junior.

See more frames here.

The Scoop on TV Benny

Television slowly but surely emerged in the U.S. after World War Two ended. The question kept being raised—“when are the big radio stars going to have their own TV shows?”

Read more here.

He's Ready to Animate Ruff and Reddy

This year (as of July 7th) marks the 65th birthday of H-B Enterprises. The studio only had one main accomplishment in 1957—it convinced Columbia Pictures’ Screen Gems division to put up the money for a TV cartoon series, which the studio then convinced NBC to broadcast on Saturday mornings.

See more here.

A Cat, A Greek God and a Robot

Felix the Cat was, as far as I’m concerned, the biggest cartoon star of the silent era. But sound animated shorts came in by late 1928 and some bonehead management decisions left Felix behind.

Read more here.

Hittin The Trail to Skeleton Land

Hittin’ the Trail to Hallelujah Land is a disjointed, lacklustre 1931 Warners release starring Piggy who is at the controls of a paddle wheeler like Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie.

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The Dog's Not Safe

The bulldog has possession of the whistle that’s been used to summon the cat that brings bad luck, and he’s going to use it to kill him.

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Nanette

She once had a situation comedy based loosely on her own life, but perhaps Nanette Fabray’s show should have been more of a dramatic one.

Read more here.

Brodie's Hands

Art Davis directed only one Bugs Bunny cartoon, Bowery Bugs (1949) and there are a few interesting things about it.

See more in this post.

Don't Simonize Your Car! Feminize It!

The censor appears to have been at work on the Willie Whopper cartoon Play Ball (1933).

Read more here.

Tex and Jinx and Jack

Tex McCrary and Jinx Falkenburg were a married couple with a pleasant little chat show on New York radio after the war. The pair also had a newspaper column in the Herald Tribune where they talked with celebrities and people in the news. Like Jack Benny.

Read the column in this post.

That Loafing Mighty Mouse

Terrytoons don’t exactly have a reputation as fine-grained cartoons, but a few people showed long-term dedication to the studio.

Read more here.

That Duck!

A Nazi comes across a limp-wristed mouse in the Snafu cartoon Fighting Tools (1943).

There's more in this post.

Musical Mickey

While the Fleischers were filling their cartoons with surreal gags in the early ‘30s, Walt Disney was still having cheerful Mickey Mouse playing various objects like musical instruments.

See more here.

A Squirrel is the Only Thing Screwy About This Book

The finest piece of news about the Golden Age of Animation this year is out.

Keith Scott’s long-promised book on cartoon voice actors is at the printer, and you can buy it starting September 20th.

Read about a voice actor from the '40s here.

Floating in Mid-Air

There’s not one, but two gags about things floating on their own in mid-air in the Tex Avery opus Thugs With Dirty Mugs (1939).

See them here.

Today's Lesson: Bashing the Cat

You know the old “I’ll chase him and you clobber him with this” gag.

See more here.

Photographer, Actor and Fake German Grocer

Everyone annoyed Jack Benny on the Jack Benny radio show in the 1940s. Everyone except one person.

Find out more here.

Oh, Dear. Oh, My. Another Birthday

The Jetsons wasn’t the only effort from the Hanna-Barbera studio to make its first appearance 60 years ago.

This post has the story.

Cartoon Commies

The McCarthy era destroyed people’s lives and drove some to suicide. The ridiculous hunt for Communists touched the animation business, too.

Read about it here.

"S" is For Selling With Animation

Clever animated morphing and a bouncy mixed chorus jingle. What better way to sell cereal?

See more here.

Want Some Candy, Little Fish?

A worm (or “woim” as the tin can it came from says) tries to entice a little fish with a stick of peppermint in Jolly Fish (1932).

See the gag here.