FIDDLESTICKS (1930 Ub Iwerks)
Flip the Frog

Ub Iwerks (1901-1971) was Walt Disney's top animator in the 1920s. The first several Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies cartoons produced by Disney in 1928 and 1929 were almost singlehandedly animated by Iwerks. In 1930 Iwerks left Disney to start his own studio, and Flip the Frog was the result of that. Not only is this film Flip's debut, but it is one of the very first animated films to be made in a crude early two-color version of the Technicolor process.

ONE MORE TIME
(1931 WB/Leon Schlesinger)

A black-and white Merrie Melodie cartoon starring Foxy, a rather ourageous Mickey Mouse rip-off, who only starred in three films in the MM series. Much of the reasons for the similarities was because the men who made this cartoon, Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising and Isadore "Friz" Freleng had worked for Disney for several years in the 1920s. The rather jazzy music for this cartoon was performed by Abe Lyman's Brunswick Recording Orchestra, one of the top big dance bands at the time.

THE MECHANICAL MONSTERS
(1941 Fleischer) Superman

Entry number two in Max and Dave Fleischer's animated series adaptation of the Man of Steel. These cartoons were some of the most expensive animated shorts made at the time, each costing very close to $100,000 USD, and the results on screen attest to it. In this film, Superman has to do battle with at least a dozen or so robots that are utilized by a mad scientist who's committing numerous robberies in the city of Metropolis.

THE STUPIDSTITIOUS CAT
(1947 Paramount) Noveltoon

In 1942 Max and Dave Fleischer lost control of their studio to Paramount Pictures, who distributed their films. To replace the expensive Superman cartoons in 1943, a new series was launched called Noveltoons, wich was a catch-all series used to test new cartoon characters. Casper the Friendly Ghost got his start in this series before he got a series of his own in 1950. The star of this 'toon is Buzzy the Crow, whose Eddie "Rochester" Anderson-type voice is supplied by long-time radio-TV-cartoon-film voice actor Jackson Beck (1912-2004), who also did the voice of Popeye's arch-nemesis Bluto in some 300-plus cartoons.

THE SPACE VARMINT
(1960 Terrytoons) Deputy Dawg

One of the early cartoons in this made-for-TV Terrytoons series set in the mountains of the Southern United States. The dim-witted Deputy Dawg is having more than enough trouble keeping the thievin' Muskie Muskrat out of the henhouse. Now he has to contend with an extraterrestrial being trying to get his mitts on some of those eggs! The little space varmint would appear in a few more of DD's cartoons before he would get his own cartoon series a few years later under the name Astronut.

See Classic Cartoon Page Updates for the Previous Eight Weeks

Monday, 19 February 2007 (5 Cartoons)
Monday, 12 February 2007 (4 Cartoons)