I Taut I Taw New Posts Coming

"You bet you sthaw new posthts coming!"

Er—thanks, Sylvester. As my close friends are well aware, I've been up to my eyeballs in work lately—but that's not to say it hasn't been a lot of fun. I've been editing Fantagraphics' Floyd Gottfredson Library of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse and writing for Tom Stathes' Bray Animation Project, and I'm looking forward to blogging about both.

But first it's time to welcome you back! As a preview of what's coming, here's a recent find that may not be in its most presentable form, but still answers a few old questions:



The original titles for Tweetie Pie (1947) still don't exist as a whole in any one place—but apart from color, now we know approximately what the viewing experience was like. After I located an unprojectable silent, black and white nitrate neg in a private collection, I fixed up a facsimile by mating still frames from it with the audio located by Larry Tremblay awhile ago (yes, some older TV prints included this track—completely out of sync with the new picture element).

A color element on these original titles has yet to surface. Thad Komorowski has already located other previously unseen color elements from this period, so Tweetie Pie can't be far away.

The credits for Tweetie Pie had been lost for a long time. I'm glad to share them.

The brick wall pictured at the bottom of the Merrie Melodies card was apparently Warners' 1940s method of concealing the "In Technicolor" credit on some black and white prints of color cartoons. I've seen it on a couple of other elements from this period. It fades in and out of view with the Merrie card; it is never (to my knowledge) on other parts of the title sequence.

Here's hoping I don't have to fade out for too long before blogging some more. Thanks for your patience, fellas. (And yours too, Sylvester. Some day you'll eat that darn canary. Weird foods rule.)

Update, August 24 (2011): Above, I said: "Thad Komorowski has already located other previously unseen color elements from this era, so Tweetie Pie can't be far away." Sufferin' succotash... the guy moves fast. Thad noticed that Bugs Bunny Superstar (1975) actually showed the title card Tweety image in color, identified there only as a random "Hays Office-approved" character design. Thhanks, Thad:


Update, June 9 (2012): Element located in a private collection, though discolored and in terrible shape. At least we can get the basic idea...

Not the Funniest Freleng: Krazy's Port Whines

Travel and intense research have me busy this week, so I haven't had much of a chance to post. But for your amusement (?) and edification, here now is Port Whines (1929), another of the earliest Columbia Krazy Kat shorts—and another that hasn't been seen with sound in decades.

See Jerry Beck's earlier post on Ratskin (1929) for the inside information on where the video element comes from (and why it looks the way it does). Thanks to Cole Johnson—and by extension, the Vitaphone Project—for supplying the audio. As before, I handled the editing, and while the two elements didn't always match, I did my best to stretch and splice and sync things up as they should be. The video element has British main titles, fascinating enough in and of themselves that I didn't want to put faux Columbia originals in their places.



Port Whines isn't the most exciting cartoon we'll ever see. Only a few moments of delightfully crude violence save us from a rather basic musicale. In fact, even as a song cartoon the film falls short; while Ratskin featured a lively mix of popular songs, the body of Port Whines is dominated by the public domain "Life on the Ocean Wave," "Sailing, Sailing," and "Pop Goes the Weasel."

Only the main title tune, "Me-Ow," is a licensed number—and even it would soon be replaced with Mintz's self-owned similar cue, "You Are the Kat's Meow" (first used in Kat's Meow, 1930).

Perhaps the most interesting moment comes at 3:45, where the rooster's smoke ring stunts look to be animated by none other than Friz Freleng. Freleng worked with Mintz's New York staff in 1929 while waiting for Harman and Ising to sell their Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid (1929) pilot; in Port Whines, Freleng's obviously West Coast, Oswald-inspired design style clashes with the other animators' work. By Farm Relief (1929), however—just two shorts later—the rest of the Krazy staff seems to be imitating Freleng, with various degrees of success. The trend would only continue when the studio moved west in early 1930, and more Los Angeles animators joined the relocated crew.

It's no mean tribute to Freleng, especially at this early stage of his career, that his brief sojourn at a foreign studio should have had such an influence. The formerly Fleischerian stock company of earlier Harrison and Gould, with its truly bizarre elephant and hippo characters, would never be quite the same.