Notswald: A Ramapith Public Service

How did you try to impress your childhood friends?

My best buddy in third grade was a cartoon fan, like me. We drooled over unaffordable cartoon collectibles that sat, just out of reach, at somber local antique shops. But even if I couldn't afford to own these pricey items, I reasoned, perhaps I could still fool my friend into thinking I owned one.
What was the earliest item of Disney merchandise? A 1929 Mickey Mouse school tablet. Right. What if I'd somehow found an even earlier tablet featuring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit? Of course! This would be easy.
At an art store, I bought the oldest, dingiest yellow construction paper I could find in a back room—so faded and smelly it had to be antique. Then I grabbed a pen and did my best to imitate Ub Iwerks. Wait till my friend saw this! In the words of Disney's later Brer Fox, "it sure gonna fool 'im..."


Except that in the words of Brer Bear, "it hain't gone fool nobody."
And here the story might have ended.

But for today, when we suddenly find similar fakes moving fast. Multiple Oswald the Lucky Rabbit "poster preliminaries" surfaced on eBay last year, where at least four sold and resold for what became small fortunes. Given my recent history of work with Oswald, several in the animation community have now approached me independently, asking for clarification—are these "preliminaries" authentic 1920s items? Aren't they?


I won't accuse any specific party of fakery here, because we can't be sure where the items really originated. Some have been rendered on cels, others on rice paper. All have the artwork rendered in elaborate, finished form with black areas (such as Oswald's fur) filled in very dark and solid. Most have extensive black shadowing under the characters. All also have elaborate, scattershot editorial notation added in red pencil. Some notes refer to approvals by Charles Mintz and/or Universal brass. Others indicate changes that were supposedly requested after this stage of the artwork.

It would be interesting to discover that early Disney posters were developed via a multi-step approval system. But all other surviving evidence suggests they weren't. Actual Oswald-era poster sketches were simpler, more lightly-penciled affairs, such as the example for The Fox Chase (1928) at right. The real poster sketches didn't carry copious verbiage: Disney-to-Mintz communication was handled by letters and telegrams at the time. They weren't lavishly finished or inked; at an early stage in which ideas could still be discarded wholesale, there was no need to add excess detail.

Beyond the historical reasons for why this doesn't add up, there are other means by which we can identify fabrications. Finished Oswald posters don't have extensive shadowing like these "preliminaries"; if huge shadows were never to be used in the end, why always include them at an earlier stage? Also, were the "preliminaries" really preliminaries, they would feature pencil construction lines—as seen, again, on Fox Chase—indicating how Oswald was built and the title lettering positioned. On the new "preliminaries," we don't usually see these lines; the art might as well have been traced from the poster reproductions in Russell Merritt and J. B. Kaufman's Walt in Wonderland (1993/2000).

And perhaps it was. Another central point about the newly-surfaced "preliminaries" is that while all 26 Disney Oswald cartoons had posters of their own, the new "preliminaries" all just happen to correspond to the specific handful reproduced in Wonderland. When the reproductions in Wonderland are damaged or incomplete in some way, the "preliminaries" mimic the effects of that damage on the image.

Here is the original one-sheet poster for Trolley Troubles (1927), as reproduced in a black-and-white photo from a major East Coast library collection. This is a rare version of the image, not reprinted anywhere to my knowledge. Gray linework represents elements that were originally outlined in color. Fanny (the girl rabbit) has a big smile. The sideboard containing the title is surrounded by a thin wooden border. The Bunny Kids (Oswald's swarm of children) crouched on top of the sideboard appear in full figure. The trolley bears a large number 13.


Now here is Trolley Troubles as reproduced in Wonderland, where it comes from Disney's long-held master image: a washed-out, highly faded copy of the earlier photo. This is the version we usually see. The color lines have disappeared, so we lose Fanny's mouth, the edge of the sideboard, the 13 on the trolley and most of the top Bunny Kid figures.


If a purported "preliminary" for an Oswald poster were genuine, it would include important design elements like mouths. But the newly-surfaced drawings always lack whatever their Wonderland equivalents lack. From Wonderland, for that matter, a forger could also have picked up some historical details for use in his/her red pencil notes.

Be on the lookout for animation art forgeries. They're not worth the high prices that a few of these unlucky rabbits have commanded. And fakery is a lot less endearing when you're a grown person than when you were in third grade.



Update, June 1: I've removed a photo of one Oswald drawing after receiving a complaint from its present owner. My goal here was merely to discuss the newly-surfaced images—not to embarrass anyone.

Lucky New Oswald Finds

As one of my favorite research topics, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is also the subject that my longtime friends expect me to blog about most. So I generally try to keep it to a minimum—because who wants to be predictable?

Of course, sometimes an unpredictable Oswald discovery is made. Then what? When it's unpredictable and Oswald-related—but David Gerstein is blogging about it—do the unpredictability and predictability cancel each other out? (And if something's not predictable or unpredictable, what is it?)



Predictable or unpredictable, you've just seen a very rare cartoon. In fact, a lot about Oswald is rare—or worse. Of the 26 Disney-made Oswald cartoons of 1927-28, Disney could locate only 13 in time for their 2007 DVD release (a fourteenth, Poor Papa, apparently exists but was inaccessible). Of the 26 Winkler Oswalds of 1928-29, only ten seem to have surfaced in modern times; and none in sound prints, though some were originally released with sound.

It's easy to guess that the all-sound Lantz Oswald package must survive in full, but you'd be wrong; Universal has master elements on most, but not all. On the other hand, collectors often assume that what's not in the general rotation must be lost; and that's wrong, too. For example, my fellow Oswald scholar, Pietro Shakarian, recently learned that our colleague Tom Klein possessed a few titles that others did not. With Tom's kind permission, we're now able to share Broadway Folly, the cartoon shown above—and Cold Feet (1930), another classic Bill Nolan-era straggler:



Thanks, Tom! (Tom, by the way, is the author of "Walt-to-Walt Oswald" [Griffithiana 71, 2001], a seminal paper on the character's early days—crucial reading.)

So which Lantz Oswald cartoons are still MIA? Here's what Pietro and I believe to be a definitive list—with summaries based on the original copyright synopses. Anyone want to help us find these?

Cold Turkey (released 10/15/29; production number 5043, © MP 728)

Synopsis: Taking time off the job to dance with his "best girl," waiter Oswald is interrupted by an irate customer who wants an order of duck for dinner. Oswald obliges, but the duck resists death by decapitation and hanging. Oswald finally solves the situation by shooting the duck with a cannon, leaving it "done to a turn—and well roasted." Oswald: "Want some?" Girl: "I bite!"
Note: If the synopsis is accurate regarding dialogue, this would seem to be the first Lantz cartoon with spoken words (during this period, Lantz and his crew otherwise largely relied on a slide whistle to perform Oswald's voice).

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Pussy Willie (released 10/28/29; production number 5063, © MP 758)

Synopsis: Oswald heads to his girlfriend's house and is faced with the problem of her "kid brother," who gives Oswald no end of trouble. Willie's misdeeds include putting pepper in the flowers that Oswald gives his girl. Fed up, Oswald throws "the imp off a dock." The kid returns and finds Oswald and his girl—desperate for privacy—locked in a safe. Willie uses TNT to blast them to Heaven—and comes along with them to slam the pearly gates in their faces.
Note: We're presuming "Pussy Willie" is the same bratty little cat who debuts in Disney's All Wet (1927)—then reappears as Homeless Homer in the eponymous Winkler title (1928), and once again as the girlfriend's kid brother in Lantz's The Fireman (1931). Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising reused him at Warner as Bosko's foil, renaming him "Wilbur"; you have to wonder if Oswald paid Bosko to take him.

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Nutty Notes (released 12/9/29; production number 5062, © MP 855)

Synopsis: When Oswald gets a new job at a music store, his "bruin" boss tasks him with hoisting a piano to "Ozzie's girl's" apartment—on the top floor of a skyscraper! After several efforts fail, Oswald tricks a goat into kicking the piano upward, but the kick is delivered with "too much English," and the hurtling piano rips the roof off the building. Upon Oswald's descent, he is united with his girl and the two kiss happily.
Note: The poster survives, as illustrated at right. While the copyright description calls Oswald's boss a bear, the poster pictures a cat.

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Ozzie of the Circus (released 12/23/29; production number 5024, © MP 938)

Synopsis: Oswald spends a day at the circus where he runs into a smart-aleck pup. The dog trips the barker, causes problems for the "two-headed sax player," and ties Oswald's tail to a strength-test indicator. After getting loose, Oswald chases the pup but soon finds himself pursued by an angry gorilla. The chase goes on and on; carrying over to the closing title, where "we leave them hotfooting it around the Universal universe—a dangerous triangle going around in circles!"
Note: Erroneously thought to be the first-released Lantz Oswald short until research in 2005 proved otherwise.

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Kisses and Kurses (released 2/17/30; production number 5127, © MP 1147)

Synopsis: Oswald is part of a showboat troupe, with his girlfriend Fanny as leading lady in a melodrama. "Little Blue Eyes, the heroine, live[s] with her aged father in a wee cabin down on the Swanee. Simon Hardheart [played by Pete] demand[s] her hand in marriage, but Blue Eyes spurn[s] him. In fury, Simon tie[s] her to a railroad track and vows to run over her with an old locomotive called The General." She is rescued by Oswald, who splits the track—and by extension, the train and villain—in half! The show is a success and Oswald and Fanny embrace for the closer.
Note: The General got its name compliments, no doubt, of Buster Keaton!

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Bowery Bimboes (released 3/18/30; production number 5154, © LP 1162)

Synopsis: Oswald is a cop on the beat in the Bowery. A girl catches his eye and the two engage in a rough Apache dance. But the girl is kidnapped by a tough-guy rat who spirits her to a skyscraper and hoists her to the top. Oswald comes to the rescue with an extension ladder; he saves her, but the ladder breaks. The two end up falling to the ground—but revive in time for a closing kiss.
Note: It seems likely to us that the tough-guy rat is the one who's also in The Prison Panic (1930). While the picture element for Bowery Bimboes is presently lost, an original soundtrack disc survives in my personal collection. Thanks to Ron Hutchinson's tech support, I'm honored to present it to you here:

Hey, that's not the end of the Ramapith audio selection for today. I'd be remiss if I didn't share Billy Murray's and Aileen Stanley's priceless performance of "Down By the Winegar Woiks" (1925), the song that you (appropriately) heard over Bowery Bimboes' opening titles:



And how about "Hi-Lee, Hi-Lo," as heard in Cold Feet? This one is all over 1930s cartoons—Donald Duck sings it in On Ice (1935), and it even survives as his theme in a couple of period comics (example at right from 1936 Sunday page: story by Ted Osborne, art by Al Taliaferro). Here's George P. Watson covering it in 1909:



Pietro, meanwhile, has caught studio musician David Broekman enlivening Broadway Folly with "Hittin' the Ceiling," a tune from Universal's rare part-Technicolor musical Broadway (1929). Carrying on in the same spirit, Broekman colleague Bert Fiske used the Broadway number "Sing a Little Love Song" for the marriage-proposal scene of Oswald's Oil's Well (1929; see sequence starting at 1:53).

I'd be remiss not to mention Pietro's contributions to Golden Age Cartoons' Walter Lantz Cartune Encyclopedia, where he informs me he's just now adding our new Oswald discoveries to the 1929 and 1930 pages. Hop on over, rabbit-style, to read more about them.

Update, September 3: I'd be remiss, too, not to link us to the first new Disney animation of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in 82 years. Nope, it's not what some of you would have expected...

Big Ramapith From the North

Another big blog entry coming soon, I promise; but I'd be remiss not to draw your attention to this update of my earlier Halloween post. Following on the challenge I gave you there, I've now got some in-depth analysis of 1920s production methods with—I hope—some interesting observations.
To the right we're seeing some of Vitaphone's original press material on Big Man From the North (1931), one of the relevant shorts. "Bosco" (sic) is spelled as such in most early Looney Tunes publicity materials I've seen, though the proper version of the character's name had in fact been formally registered as early as 1928.

An Oswald Trick (Or Treat)

Little time to blog today; big Halloween doings. But I couldn't let the holiday pass without a special Ramapith commemoration.

When Walt Disney's Oswald the Lucky Rabbit staff moved on in 1928, that wasn't the end of Disney's 26 Oswald cartoons. Some were reissued with sound by Universal in the 1930s. Others survived in a less direct way, as former Oswald staffers remade them—or remade elements of them—with other star characters. Oswald's Harem Scarem (1927) became Disney's later Mickey in Arabia (1932). Oswald's Rival Romeos (1928) became Ub Iwerks' Flip the Frog short Ragtime Romeo (1931).

But no one did remakes quite like Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising did remakes. Their early Looney Tunes boasted so much Oswald mimickry that Bosko himself might as well have been a lucky rabbit minus the ears. And Disney's Ozzie of the Mounted (1928), in particular, was a source of gags and story like none other.
Here's the silent Ozzie now with a rather suspicious... soundtrack (!). Can you use the plot elements to tell us where it comes from?



I'll update this blogpost later with the answer(s). Happy Halloween!

Update, November 18: As some of you guessed, Hugh and Rudy's Looney Tune Big Man From the North (1931) provided most of my score because it's the most direct Ozzie of the Mounted remake—in part, anyway. Let's have a look at it now; while the opening is virtually identical, the plots diverge some of the way through. Pete's sled dogs in Mounted become Bosko's dogs in Big Man. And lots of Big Man's action takes place inside the saloon, whereas Oswald and Pete stay outside. (My pet theory is that Honey already worked there, and Oswald didn't want Bosko to catch him with her. Stop looking at me like that.)



One Mounted element that didn't make it into Big Man was the robot horse, because Hugh and Rudy decided to give him a Looney Tune of his own. (Or rather "its" own? This four-legged Dalek is the least sentient cartoon robot I've ever seen...) Here's Ups 'n' Downs (1931), from which more of my soundtrack came:



Finally, I'd be remiss not to cite our friend Mark Newgarden, who noted that my Mounted revamp "syncs up too well." Doesn't it? But I won't take the credit. When researching these cartoons for this blogpost, I found that Mounted reflected a then-new trend at Disney: to animate repeating action in regulation 6-, 8-, 12-, or 24-drawing cycles, as evidenced also in Bright Lights and Rival Romeos (if not, oddly, the contemporary Sky Scrappers). These actions could thus conveniently be timed out by the second—and Harman-Ising continued the practice at Warner once the sound era began, extending it to house musician Frank Marsales in the form of a one-second beat. Adding Marsales' scoring to Ozzie of the Mounted meant the fast-action sequences had to match.

Additional pieces of my Mounted score came from H-I's Box Car Blues and Congo Jazz (both 1930); in the latter, even a triple-meter motif is built on that one-second beat.

Was Disney the first studio to effectively animate silents to a rhythm, however basic? Who initiated the practice there? (It's not in Harman-Ising's earlier Aladdin's Vamp [1926] or Disney's earlier Great Guns [1927], for instance.)

Oswald's Bright Lights, Big City

Uh-oh, it's here. A few of my friends have been awaiting and/or dreading the inevitable post on Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. I've spent quite awhile chasing rare cartoons from this early Disney (and then Winkler, and then Lantz) series, and the character's a personal favorite, too: a feisty, often frustrated little guy who finds trouble by trying to be smarter and slicker than he actually is. Not so different from Bosko or the early Mickey, sure—but Oswald, a creature of the silent era, didn't have to stop everything to play music on barrels and lily pads twice a minute. In retrospect, it means that the films are less repetitive and have more time to spend on gags and story.

At the start, the series also benefited from Disney's drive to innovate: I'd argue that at the time, no other studio had both personality animation and production values at the same high levels. From my perspective, many outfits (Sullivan, Fleischer) had one but not the other.

Of course, I'll never claim any era of Oswald is gold. As with many pre-Tex Avery cartoons, the pacing can be sluggish. Sound later led to the same tedious songs and dances that so many studios employed. And from about 1931, Oswald lost his puckish nature and became just another leading man—eventually cutesy and dull, too, with his remaining good cartoons being good for reasons other than Oswald's presence in them. Avery's Towne Hall Follies (1935) is a clever short in which the rabbit could be damn near anybody, and would have been funnier as Bimbo.

Here's a cartoon from when Oswald was still somebody. Bright Lights (1928), with its elaborate stage show and multiple-character action, looks like the kind of picture that won audiences to the series and gave Charles Mintz apoplectic fits: why couldn't this be done cheaper? The rubes will never know the difference!

On DVD, Bright Lights was mastered from a print with many scenes that weren't in other surviving copies—but that appeared to be a bit out of order. For this version I've used a studio draft (thanks, Mark Kausler) to approximate what I think the original intent may have been. The music you'll hear concludes with Charles Dornberger and his orchestra performing "Tiger Rag"—you'll have to ignore the fact that the animals on-screen are lions and a leopard. And what better 1920s tune for an ape bandleader to conduct than "The Monkey Doodle-Doo"?



A tip of the hat, by the way, to blogger colleague Ryan Kilpatrick, who's just now blogging about the Oswald shorts at his Disney Film Project blog. Ryan is relatively new to 1920s Disney cartoons, and is introducing himself to them by experiencing the vast majority in chronological order—an experience that wouldn't have been possible just five years ago. Thanks to Leonard Maltin's Walt Disney Treasures DVDs (with help from Tom's Vintage Film silents collections!), it can be done today, and I envy Ryan for having the opportunity.

You can go here to buy the Oswald Treasures DVD: a project I was honored to consult on—and for which I didn't want to suggest that scenes be given an iffy reshuffling at the last second (Bright Lights was acquired very late in the game). A blog, on the other hand, is just the place for such gnarly science experiments.