How To Spot Directors On Fleischer/Famous Studios Cartoons

You may have noticed while watching Fleischer's cartoons that all of the cartoons with a directors credit list Dave Fleischer, or Izzy Sparber/Seymour Kneitel on most Famous Studios cartoons. While they may be listed as directors, in actuality the real director is the top animator credited. The people listed as directors were more like production supervisors than directors. The top animator listed usually had much more to do with the making of the cartoon than the credited director. To show you this we'll look at two different Popeye cartoons. One from Fleischer's, and one from Famous Studios.

So for instance 1935's "Choose Your "Weppins"" Dave Tendlar is really the director.

1953's "Shaving Muggs" it's Tom Johnson. Tom Johnson directed many of the Famous Studios shorts from this period until the end of the series in 1957.

That's about it really just a tip, and fun fact for those who didn't know, and love these golden age cartoons like I do.

How To Ruin a Black and White Cartoon Pt.1

How do you ruin a perfectly good black and white cartoon? Colorize it of course! There's two ways to do this either do it with a computer or the old fashioned technique of having it redrawn. The problem with both of these is that ruins the of the cartoons. The redraws are always worse. The animation is always worse and the color choices are usually absolutely abhorrent. At least with the computer colorization the original animation is preserved. Both still crap on the artistic visions of the people that made them originally. The tones and shades of all the blacks, greys, and whites in the originals were chosen for a reason. 

Sadly many great classics were subject to this nonsense. Looney Tunes, Betty Boop, Merrie Melodies, Popeye, among others. All of varying quality and stink. The most infamous of them all has to be the Looney Tunes done in the late 60s mostly consisting of Porky Pig cartoons. There were 79 Looney Tunes cartoons in total redrawn in 1968 by Fred Ladd's Color Systems Inc. Warner Brothers had originally sold their black and white cartoons excluding the Harman and Ising Merrie Melodies to Sunset Productions/ Guild Films in 1955. 

In 1961 Guild Films was bought out by Seven Arts. Then in 1967 Seven Arts and Warner Brothers merged creating Warner Brothers Seven Arts. That's when the infamous Seven Arts era Looney Tunes shorts started appearing.

By this time color TV was becoming the norm and black and white cartoons were harder to sell to TV stations. Which posed a problem to companies trying to sell black and white cartoons to TV. Warners was apparently impressed with Fred Ladd's experiments with colorization and tasked his company Color Systems Inc. to redraw 79 black and white Looney Tunes cartoons in South Korea. Only problem was the first couple of tests were done with a much better team then the rest. The animation process was done by skipping every other frame of animation. Thereby lessening the animation in the process. This plus the poor quality of the animation in general ruined the cartoons. With many animation errors and mistakes. One infamous example being in the Porky Pig cartoon "Ali Baba Bound" where a fly got stuck on the animation cell. 

Plus due to the skipping frames process sometimes parts of the animation do not sync up to the audio. It didn't help also that the color choices stunk. Bright and garish colors were chosen most likely on purpose I would imagine to really make them pop. Well they couldn't even keep the colors of the main characters consistent. Clearly evident in the cartoon "The Impatient Patient" (1940) where Daffy Duck is brown! Also a pink neck wring. I kid you not. 

Guess what they did it twice! He's also brown in "Daffy's Southern Exposure". 

Pretty sad isn't it.

It's blue in "The Daffy Duckaroo"
By the way Warner's sent over some prints of the cartoons with the Sunset Productions logo causing it to be redrawn.

Here's some more general incompetence, and funny errors.

Well thankfully these redraws are mostly absent from TV now. In the early 90's these same cartoons plus some other previously not colorized cartoons were computer colorized. While not perfect or better than the original black and white presentation at least the original animation is there. The thing that irks me about them more then anything is that they were done under the assumption that kids won't enjoy a black and white cartoon. Which is just stupid. 

Next time we look at these redrawn atrocities we'll look at Popeye and Ted Turner's fetish for colorization.

Popeye Rundown #1 "How Green is My Spinach"

Welcome to what might become a regular appearance around here. Where I take a look at one cartoon in particular and analyze it. Looking at the animation, gags, story, and etc.

Today i'll be looking at a pretty good Popeye that came out when the series was taking a sharp nose dive down in quality.

Voices: Jack Mercer (Popeye) Jackson Beck (Bluto, Narrator, Newscaster) Cecil Roy (Live Action Boy)

Direction: Seymour Knietel

Animation: Tom Johnson, William Henning

Story: I Klein

Scenics: Lloyd Hallock Jr.

Music: Winston Sharples

"How Green is My Spinach" came out in 1950 not a very good year for the Popeye cartoons. The year started out with two good cartoons this one and "Gym Jam" but soon  things got stinky "Beach Peach" is just another Popeye vs Bluto love triangle cartoon. "Jitterbug Jive" is essentially the same love triangle sort of thing but with hip slang to appeal to the youth. "Popeye Makes a Movie" is another of the loose story wrapped around old footage cartoons with the nephews and isn't particularly funny. "Baby Wants Spinach" brings back Swee'Pea with a completely different design but doesn't do much. "Quick On the Vigor" is another love triangle cartoon and similar in some respects to "All's Fair at the Fair" released only a few years earlier in 1947. "Riot in Rhythm" is a poor remake of "Me Musical Nephews" a cartoon I really love. Basically take "Me Musical Nephews", and suck all the energy out of it. "The Farmer and the Belle" is another love triangle cartoon. Yep only two cartoons that are actually any good. I guess I should get to actually talking about the cartoon. 

The cartoon starts off with Popeye getting beat up by Bluto he then takes out his spinach and defeats Bluto. He does so again similarly in two fake cartoons then after wards Bluto then begins to lament how in every cartoon he gets beat up by Popeye after Popeye eats his spinach. Featuring some great perspective on his fist coming towards the screen.

(Idk Why Bluto Sports a Green Outfit)

Bluto then makes the observation that if Popeye didn't have his spinach it could be the end of Popeye.

 Bluto then proceeds to create a formula to spray over all of the spinach in the world to destroy it.

He then proceeds to destroy all of the worlds spinach. It then cuts to Popeye who helps put a spare tire on a spinach truck. Bluto then speeds by on his plane and sprays the spinach in the truck causing it to be sucked up by the cloud of spray from his formula. A shocked Popeye then hears a TV newscast about how the worlds spinach crop is being ruined. This pleases some children watching the TV. Popeye pulls out his can of spinach which Bluto promptly sprays. Which ruins it. Popeye then confronts Bluto about it to which Bluto slams Popeye to the ground with his chest. Popeye then runs into the store right beside him, and out of desperation tries broccoli in place of his spinach. The broccoli doesn't work and Bluto shows off his big muscle.

Popeye desperately tries other vegetables and produce. He attempts to punch Bluto on the chin but fails. Bluto then proceeds to pummel Popeye. A narrator then describes the beating Popeye is receiving. Popeye even gets the kitchen sink.

The narrator (Jackson Beck) then laments that it could be the end of Popeye. It then cuts to a live action crowd in a theater watching the cartoon. Then focusing on a young boy holding a bag.

 The narrator asks if there's possibly a can of spinach in the room. The boy pulls out a can of spinach from his bag and tosses it towards the screen.

Popeye grabs the can and defeats Bluto.

Sending him to a field where Popeye uses him to start planting seeds to grow spinach.

That's where the cartoon ends.

Overall I have to say this cartoon is quite a surprise. By this period Famous Studios had mostly ran out of steam and a lot of the inventiveness was gone. The fact that they did the live action bit or came up with a pretty original idea and story stands out in an era where most of the Popeye cartoons were formulaic and stale. The animation is good that's not really too surprising Famous Studios had pretty good animation up until the late 50's when they started making those UPA inspired cartoons and had a huge budget slash. It'll be great when this gets restored and released on disc. You can watch it on the Boomerang app though.

Next rundown will be "Rocket To Mars" or whatever I decide.