The late ‘60’s were not entirely devoid of characters knowledgeable of their existence in screen or print media, nor of interaction with offscreen narrators and animators – despite the relative shortage of studios offering product. Lantz, Terrytoons, and Paramount had largely dried up on creativity to call attention to the medium. Warner would contribute only one entry during this period, curiously set in its final theatrical production. But various sparks would continue to emerge in several Disney special featurettes, and within a select few of the productions from newcomer studios of ex-Warnerites Friz Freleng and Chuck Jones.
Pinkfinger (De Patie – Freleng/UA, Pink Panther, 5/13/65 – Friz Freleng/Hawley Pratt, dir.) – Pinky is reading a novel or magazine about secret agents in his living room. A British -accented narrator’s voice (Paul Frees, using the same voice he would concurrently use as the Chief in Hanna-Barbera’s “Secret Squirrel”), intrudes his way into Pinky’s quiet evening, advising him of the wonderful opportunities available for secret agents, and his chance to be a hero. Pinky waves off the narrator’s suggestion with his hand, as highly unlikely nonsense. But the narrator informs him that there is really a nest of spies within a stone’s throw of him – and to prove it, tells Pinky to throw a stone out the window. The pebble Pink throws quickly bops the head of an unseen stranger, who grumbles loudly in mock-Russian accented gibberish. Pink is convinced to volunteer, and the narrator adds, “With my help, it should be a clincher.”
Pink is soon attired appropriately for the assignment, in low hat and trench coat, smoking a traditional British pipe. He steps out on the street, and soon spots two suspicious characters conversing. Hiding in the shadows, Pink observes one of the two hand a written note to the other, which the second reads, crumples up, then tosses to the ground. The second suspect then knocks on a door, whispers something to a pair of eyes behind a sliding panel, and gains entry to the sinister-looking place. Pink and the narrator presume the note contains a password, but Pink doesn’t understand when he reads from the note the words, “TSALB MIH”. Nevertheless, Pink approaches the door, and when asked by a voice inside, “What’s the password”, displays the written note. A pistol emerges from the peephole, and fires a shot in Pinky’s face. The narrator apologizes for his oversight, now realizing that the note’s words were “Blast him” backwards.
Pink and the narrator detect a meeting taking place inside a tenth-story window, of the “top brass” in spies hatching a master plan. Pink pantomimes to the narrator that he has an idea on how to snap a photo of the gang in the act, and is soon inching his way across a narrow ledge outside the windows. However, he miscalculates how many windows are connected to the same room, and is seen passing past one of them. Out of the next window ahead, the spies toss a banana peel onto the ledge. Pinky “slips up”, and falls off the building, into a trash can below. Pink tries again, floating up to the window with a balloon fastened around his waist. He snaps a photo with an instant-developing camera, then pulls out the picture to check if he has the evidence he needs. The photo merely depicts a single agent, with a revolver pointed straight at him. Pink scrambles against the air in futile attempt to flee, as the spy shoots down his balloon.
Pink receives an anonymous phone tip on the whereabouts of the leader of the spies. The sequence reuses and slightly refashions a gag from Daffy Duck’s “Stork Naked”, with the informer, really the chief spy, setting up a crocodile pit behind the front door, concealed by a throw rug. As Pink enters, he walks along a board at one side of the open doorway, narrowly missing the rug and pit. The spy comes out of hiding, hustling Pinky back toward the pit, but falls himself by mis-stepping onto the rug. In a twist upon the old gag, one crocodile jumps out of the pit, and pushes Pink in too. Both Pink and the spy leap out of the pit, their outfits considerably worse for wear from the mauling.
A spy is seen boarding a taxi, heading for the train station. Pink pursues closely in a second cab. The two vehicles reach a tunnel, where the road is reduced to a single lane. They are traveling side-by-side at the time, so both cabs arrive at the station squashed into narrow shape at half their original width. Pink follows aboard a departing train, pursuing the spy into the next car. The spy pauses inside the doorway of the car to light a bomb, awaiting the panther’s entrance. But Pink slams the door open, flattening the spy against the wall behind it, and the bomb explodes after Pink passes, revealing the charred spy as flat as a pancake. Pink enters the next car, and to his shock finds all but one seat already occupied by an entire gang of spies. The narrator instructs Pink to play it cool, and Pink takes the remaining seat, pulling out a cigarette lighter to light his pipe. The lights in the car go out, and when they come on again, Pink’s pipe has been replaced by the lit fuse of another bomb, and all other seats in the car are entirely empty. Pink quickly opens a window, and tosses the bomb out – blowing up the station office of an unsuspecting telegraph operator along the side of the track. Finally, Pink corners one of the spies at his destination – a railroad bridge, one archway of which the spy enters, carrying an arm full of dynamite to plant inside. The sticks of TNT are wired to a detonator left outside the archway, and Pink casually approaches the detonator to push the plunger down. While the spy is blasted without having finished the installation so as to destroy the bridge, Pink too takes a blast of the explosion from within the arch, and brings the criminal to justice in his own blackened and frayed condition.
Pink returns to the city, his fur and trench coat still in disreputable shape. He hears screams of “Help! Let me out!” and violent roars coming from below what appear to be the latched metal doors of a street elevator. Pink unlatches the doors, and is greeted by the frantic voice of – the narrator. “Oh, thank goodness it’s you, old boy. They have me trapped down here with a ferocious lion.” This is all Pink needs to hear. He shuts and re-latches the metal doors again, then calmly walks away, leaving the screaming narrator to his fate.
Shocking Pink (De Patie – Freleng/UA. Pink Panther. 5/13/65 – Friz Freleng/Hawley Pratt, dir.) – Two Panther episodes made available on the same day! Punk again receives the verbal “assistance” of another narrator (this time, Larry Storch, in his English accent similar to Colonel Rimfire). Pink lounges in a hammock in the back yard, while Storch gives him the gentle but persistent nudge that other people use their free time to accomplish something, rather than merely frittering it away. Storch suggests various odd jobs to perform around the house in home improvement. First, obtain his tools from the basement. At the cellar doorway, Pink switches on a light bulb hanging in a fixture from the ceiling over the staircase. A few steps down the stairs, ad the bulb goes off without anyone at the switch. Pink climbs back to the doorway, and the light miraculously flicks on again of its own volition. But another few steps down, and it clicks off again. This happens repeatedly several times, until Pink decides to outrace it by hitting the staircase running. The light still beats him in shutting off, and Pink crashes headfirst into the darkened basement. As Pink finally ascends the stairs in the dark with his tools, and passes through the doorway, the light clicks on again.
Pink attempts several tasks. Constructing something from long planks of lumber, he first cuts through half of a chair he has balanced the board upon with his hand saw. Then, he tires of his efforts when he has only sawed halfway through the board. He produces a power saw, which the narrator inquires about. “Know how to operate it?” Pink nods, and merely presses an on-button to get it started. However, when he places blade to board, the saw runs away with him, dragging Pinky past the board, onto the floor, and up walls and ceiling around the perimeter of the room. Half of the room falls neatly off of the rest of the house. Pinky’s next project is to nail the room-half back upon the house, using wooden cross-ties. Exhausted, Pink plops into his easy chair, only to hear a buzzing sound. He stands up to find his tail severed by the power saw he left sitting upon the chair.
With tail bandaged, Pink is next talked by the narrator into attempting to fix a leaky shower head. Pinky unscrews the head, then turns on the faucet for water. A blast of water hits him from the loose shower head he holds in his hand. Pinky blows into the shower pipe to see if it’s clogged, and inhales a stomach full of emitting water, walking away with his lower torso massively bloated and sloshing.
Frustrated, Pink merely seals the shower door closed with masking tape. The leaking water collects behind the door, then the dripping sound stops. Pink investigates by opening the bathroom door – and is flooded out of the house. Attempting to retrieve a mop from the basement, Pink is tripped up by the light bulb going out once again.
The narrator finally suggests that all Pink should have to do to fix that light is change the bulb. Pink attempts to reach forward to grab it, but the light flicks off again, and Pinky again takes a dive into the basement. The light flicks back on with Pinky sprawled at the foot of the stairs. Pink stands up, and approaches an old trunk, rummaging through it. “You don’t expect to find a light bulb in there”, remarks the narrator, then is surprised when Pink removes from the trunk an old blunderbuss.
“You…collect firearms? Marvelous hobby”, remarks Storch nervously. “Going hunting? Squirrel, maybe…”, continues Storch, as Pink loads the weppon, packing the shot in. “You know, of course, it’s against the law to fire guns in the city. I’d better be moving, it’s getting late”, stammers Storch in hurried fashion, as Pink appears to position the gun as if aiming at the camera. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you”, Storch continues, then screams in near panic, “YOU’LL NEVER GET AWAY WITH IT!!” But Pink fools everyone, turning the weapon, and firing a blast at the light bulb. The gun’s retort blasts Pinky backwards into the trunk, just as the bulb’s light is extinguished, for a sudden and clever surprise black out.
Disney’s Winnie the Pooh trilogy of featurettes, Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (2/4/66), Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (12/20/68), and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (10/21/74), all directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, feature a cast of characters who, while they may not realize that they are in a film, are certainly cognizant that they are characters in a book. Not only is the entire telling of the stories frameworked within the covers of a replication of the original hardbound edition of “Winnie the Pooh” by A.A. Milne (fairly accurate to publisher’s cover design, except for the addition of a red sweater in the design of Pooh to make him look less naked), but the flipping of pages of the book, as well as printed text on the pages framing the illustrations, all play an active role in the telling of the stories. All stories are also narrated by Sebastian Cabot (known on television from “Checkmate”, “Family Affair”, and “Stump the Stars”), with whom the characters also from time to time inter-react.
In Honey Tree, Pooh displays an early consciousness of the narrator, introducung him to the title of one of his “hums” before performing it, and then, after falling out of the bee-filled honey tree, engaging in the following interaction. As Pooh begins to think again, the narrator relates, “And the first person he thought of was…” “Winnie the Pooh?” inquires Pooh. “No, Christpher Robin”, corrects Cabot. “Oh”, responds Pooh, disappointed that he didn’t guess right. As Pooh devises with Christopher a ruse to disguise himself as a little black rain cloud (by means of a mud bath, and flying up to the tree suspended by a sky-blue balloon), muddy Pooh walks over to Christopher (on the next page) by hopping over the page binding in the center of the book. In a later sequence, when Pooh becomes wedged in the entrance to Rabbit’s house by attempting to exit after gorging himself of Rabbit’s entire supply of honey, the narrator engages in visually-assisted word-play, showing us through flipping a page that, “While Pooh’s bottom was stuck at the top of page 28,…his top was stuck at the bottom of page 30.” Both ends wait to get thin again. In the meanwhile, we are introduced to the character of Gopher – a newcomer created by Disney (modified from a similar character with a whistling lisp first appearing in the form of a beaver in “Lady and the Tramp”), who was not in the A. A. Milne original. He claims to be an excavation expert, and offers to evaluate the situation of setting Pooh free. In the course of his sales pitch, he repeatedly makes reference to the fact that “I’m not in the book, but I’m at your service.” (A clever double-meaning joke, implying in normal parlance that he’s not in the telephone book, but here really pointing out that he’s not in Milne’s literary work either.) When the day arrives to extricate Pooh from the rabbit hole, his friends tug with too much might, causing Pooh to pop out of the hole like a flying cork from a champagne bottle. “Sufferin’ sassafras!”, remarks Gopher. “He’s sailin’ clean out of the book.
Quick, turn the page!” The book page is magically turned, extending Pooh’s trajectory, and revealing an illustration within the next pages of the top of the honey tree. Pooh sails right into the hole at the top of the tree, jarring the entire bee colony out of residence. The frightened bees make a bee-line for the farthest horizon, leaving their home deserted. At the foot of the tree, Eeyore the gloomy donkey observes that Pooh is “Stuck again”, and Christopher Robin calls to Pooh “Don’t worry. We’ll get you out.” The slightly muffled voice of Pooh, his top half stuck inside the tree, responds, “No hurry. Take your time.” Why? An inside view within the tree reveals the golden answer – as Pooh basks in a veritable river of luscious honey flowing directly below his chin, hungrily scooping up gooey gobs of it into his mouth with his paws. At this rate, Pooh is likely to remain stuck by his waistline for a long, long time. (I particularly remember this shot in a vivid 3-D model recreation produced for Sawyer’s View-Master reels released concurrent with the film, which made the honey appear even more glowingly golden than simple ‘60‘s Xerography could ever depict.) Below the illustration of this final scene in the film, the book text, which up to now has closely tracked the narration and dialogue heard in the film, includes the unspoken phrase, “Of all the happy endings to Pooh’s Adventures, this was one of the happiest endings of all…” And indeed it was – though it’s not in the book, you know.
• “Winnie The Pooh and the Honey Tree” is complete over at Archive.org
Blustery Day, the only one of the trilogy to win an Oscar, relies somewhat less upon book gags, though a few notable ones are prominent. The forceful winds that characterize the day begin by blowing printed words off the page in the middle of Pooh’s opening song, the letters passing Pooh overhead as he progresses through the woods. When the Hundred Acre Wood becomes flooded, the waters overflow the borders of a book illustration, and wash away the printed lettering below it in a tumbling manner as if lifted off the page by a waterfall. Also, during a lull in the middle of the story, Owl gets involved in telling a long-winded yarn to the others about his Uncle Clyde, who became enamored of a pussy cat and went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat. (Reference to the famous nonsense poem, “The Owl and the Pussycat”.) As the pages of the book flip, narrator Cabot points out just how long this discourse was. “Owl talked from page 41 to page 62!” In the final shot of the film, as both Pooh and Piglet receive the royal treatment in a “two-hero party”, the cover of the book closes on the action, as the cast sings. “Hip hip Pooh-ray for Winnie the Pooh!” From behind the still illustration of Pooh on the cover, Piglet momentarily pops out, to add the coda, “And Piglet, too!”
• “Blustery Day” can be seen at ARCHIVE.ORG
The Oscar-nominated Tigger Too features the most direct interaction with Cabot. The funal half of the film adapts Milne’s story “Tiggers Don’t Climb Trees”, but with an unusual new Disney twist. Tigger is in a predicament – having bragged to Roo that bouncing upon trees is one of the innumerable things that Tiggers do best. He selects a tall tree, and bounces upwards from one branch to another, then almost repeats Pooh’s trick when unplugged from Rabbit’s hole, as he jumps a little too high, passing the border edge of the upper cover of the volume. “I almost bounced clean out of the book.” However, once up, Tigger discovers he has no idea how to get down – and is afraid of heights. Roo starts playfully swinging on Tigger’s tail, and Tigger dizzily moans, “Stop that kid, please! You’re rockin’ the forest.” Christpher Robin and the rest of the Hundred Acre Wood gang arrive to attempt a rescue. Roo is able to jump into Christopher’s coat, stretched out by the others like a fireman’s safety net. But Tigger refuses to jump, insisting “Tiggers only bounce up”, but really scared to death, clinging to the tree trunk with his eyes shut. (This was a new wrinkle crafted by the Disney writers, as a simple jump brought Milne’s original version to an abrupt conclusion.) Sebastian Cabot thus addresses Tigger directly. “Well, Tigger, your bouncing really got you into trouble this time.” For the first time in the series, Tigger becomes aware of Cabot’s presence, asking “Say, who are you?” “I’m the narrator”, responds Cabot. “Oh, well, please, for goodness sakes, narrate me down from here”, begs Tigger. “Very well. Hang on tight”, complies Cabot. Magically, our whole camera view suddenly begins to pivot, as the book page containing the illustration of Tigger, with a small column of type appearing on one side, is turned sideways. Tigger continues to keep his eyes shut and his grip on the tree, bit then hears the off-screen voice of Christopher Robin telling him to let go. Tigger refuses, but Cabot tells him to look for himself. “You’re perfectly safe.” Tigger finally forces one eye open, and now sees that the edges of the lines of type alongside him are now under him, providing solid footfalls for Tigger to step upon within only a footstep’s reach. Tigger cautiously steps onto them, and takes a seat upon the sideways lettering. “Back we go”, instructs Cabot, as the book pivots again, in reverse direction. As the incline increases, Tigger bounces on his rear end from one line of type to the next, down and down, until he makes a soft landing in winter snow at the foot of the tree, back with the rest of the gang. “Good ol’ terra firma”, shouts the happy Tigger, grabbing up not dirt, but an armful of snow, and kissing it.
• “Tigger Too” is also at ARCHIVE.ORG
Matinee Mouse (MGM/Chuck Jones, Tom and Jerry, 7/14/66 – new footage: Tom Ray, dir.), is nearly a complete cheater/clipfest – so much so, that William Hanna and Joseph Barbera receive first direction credit at the opening, as well as animation credits to the likes of Kenneth Muse, Ed Barge, Irv Spence, and Ray Patterson – all of whom had long left the studio. Old footage includes clips from, among others, such disparate titles as “Love That Pup”, “The Flying Cat”. “Jerry and the Lion”, “Life With Tom”, “The Flying Sorceress”, and “The Truce Hurts”. Processing of the old footage has always seemed a bit off, as colors seem to be set to a darker gray scale than usual, though focus is mostly razor sharp with the exception of clips from “The Flying Sorceress”, which are soft in focus and reduced to 4.3 pan-and-scan ratio. Still, the transitions between old and new animation are decently handled without much of a jarring effect – excepting that the producers want us to forget the fact that Tom’s simplified design of the 1960’s did not include the patch of light gray fur between his eyes normally present in the H-B clips. Perhaps they set us up a little for the disappearing gray patch. by including the clips from “The Flying Sorceress”, which were also late enough to have the patch removed. One does also miss the memorable Scott Bradley scores, which are replaced with new orchestrations in typical ‘60’s style and predominantly minor keys by Jones’ current orchestra.
The new footage adds up to the following. After a series of vintage clips where each character takes some share of the licks, Jerry rummages in a small trunk in his mousehole, and comes up with a white flag to wave, intending to call for a truce. As he walks outsude his mousehole, he’s surprised to see the somewhat battered Tom, also waving a white flag, having the same idea. The next thing we know, the two are acting like close friends, with Jerry riding on Tom’s shoulder as the cat prances down a city street. They pass a local movie house, the marquee reading “Special Cartoons”. A poster outside advertises the stars as – themselves! Tom points over his shoulder to Jerry as if to knowingly say, “That’s us”, and purchases two tickets at the box office to enter. The two walk past additional posters, one of which surprisingly depicts Droopy in a Western outfit, starring in a non-existent title, “The Sand Pauper” (title pun on a recent picture, “The Sandpiper”). Another poster for Tom and Jerry displays another non-existent title spoofing a well-known Alfred Hitchcock piece – “Dial “M” For Mouser”. An usher takes their tickets, then does a double-take as he realizes the featured stars have just passed him, then shrugs his shoulders to the camera as if to say, “Can you imagine that?” Once inside the theater, the setup is basically the same as in Hanna-Barbera’s “Cruise Cat” – Tom laughs whenever something goes wrong for Jerry on screen, and Jerry likewise laughs at Tom’s on-screen pain. Each begins to take irritation at the other’s mirth and lack of empathy for them. Jerry crushes Tom’s toes resting on the back of the folding seat cushion of the chair in front of him. Tom gets Jerry tangled up in a spring from the cushion of Jerry’s seat, and Jerry retaliates with a similar trick that gets a spring stuck around Tom’s neck. Tom smacks Jerry into the cushion of his seat back. Jerry has had it, and snaps apart the stick of his flag of truce. Tom does likewise with his own flag. The two grab up whatever’s around, and start swatting at each other with the objects as weapons. Onscreen, the opening/closing clip from “The Truce Hurts” is playing, with Tom, Jerry, and Spike taking turns whacking each other with a lead pipe, frying pan, and baseball bat. In a reasonably well-done new shot of matching action (only marred by the absence again of Tom’s fur patch, and featuring one well-drawn shot of the only animation produced by the Jones studio of Spike), the onscreen Jerry pauses the trio’s fighting action, and points from the screen out into the audience, calling the attention of Spike and Tom to the brawl that is taking place in the theater seats. The onscreen three all pause and watch with approving smiles, as the silhouettes of the theater seats in the foreground continue to display the outlines of the real-life duo in mortal combat, for the iris out.
• MATINEE MOUSE is on Dailymotion – CLICK HERE.
Canadian Can Can (De Patie/Freleng/UA, The Inspector, 9/20/67 – Gerry Chiniquy, dir.) – The Inspector volunteers for an officer exchange program, placing him in the temporary role of a French-Canadian Mountie. He is assigned to bring in the notorious Two-Faced Harry. Unfortunately, the criminal’s wanted poster provides little to guide the Inspector on what he is about to face – as it depicts only one of Harry’s faces. What the Inspector doesn’t know is that this villain literally has two faces – one on each side of his head. While the evil face looks the criminal type and sports a black moustache, the other face appears handsome, honest, blonde and blue-eyed, and speaks with a Jim Nabors-Gomer Pule demeanor. The Inspector encounters Harry in a saloon, with the good face showing. Believing the stranger to have an “honest face”, the Inspector deputizes Harry to help him capture – Harry. He hands Harry a pistol, advising him to “Shoot first, ask questions later.” As the Inspector turns away, Harry fires a shot at him in the back. Then the good face asks, “I have a question. Which is the safety?” The Inspector begins to get frustrated, re-instructing the good Harry not to shoot until he hears the command, “Fire”. As the Inspector turns round to survey the terrain, Harry’s evil face also turns, and strikes a match, setting ablaze the Inspector’s coattails. “Fire, fire, FIRE!” shouts the Inspector – and promptly receives three blasts from good Harry’s firearm. As Good Harry explains that he only did what the Inspector said, a laugh is heard from the unseen face of evil Harry. “Are you laughing behind my back?” asks the Inspector, “No sir, I’m laughing behind my back” responds good Harry. The Inspector finally runs around to the other side of Harry, discovering his second face – but only receives another gun blast for his trouble.
The chase is on. A clever variant of an old gag is presented, as both Harry and the Inspector begin chasing each other down river, by rowing in respective ends of the same long canoe. (A gag which had been used at Warner Brothers at least as early as Porky Pig’s “Nothing But the Tooth”.) But something new is added. Harry insists he can row faster than the Inspector, and in doing so, stretches his end of the canoe forward, distancing himself from the Inspector considerably. The Inspector remarks that this is stretching a point – but also notes that two can play this game. He thus attaches an outboard motor to the tail end of the canoe, and zooms forward, condensing the canoe until his end fast approaches the front end of the craft. But Harry pulls another fast one. Planting the ends of his oars into the riverbed, Harry raises himself on the oar handles up and out of the canoe, letting the Inspector and the craft pass underneath him. The Inspector helplessly plunges alone over a waterfall.
The chase moves further North, where winter has set in. In an area prone to avalanches, Harry arrives first at the top of a high peak. Believing Harry to be cornered there, the Inspector calls upwards in a half-whisper, “Do you give up?” A message floats down on a piece of paper, reading “What?” With slightly more volume, the Inspector calls out his question again, only to receive another note, reading “Louder.” “DO YOU GIVE UP??” shouts the Inspector in full voice. CRASH!!, falls half the mountain. A cord and a telephone receiver drop down to the snowbank, where only the blue nose of the Inspector is visible, and the voice of Harry emits from the phone: “Would you mind talking a little louder?”
The final shots of the film show the Inspector in close pursuit of Harry, but against a stark white screen. Harry tells the Inspector to stop, and look around him. “We’ve come so far North, we’ve run out of scenery. This picture is over.” “Son of a gun…Well, we’ll just see about that”, says the Inspector, as he turns his gun to face the camera. “Hey you, cartoonist. I order you to cooperate with the law, and put this mangy cur behind bars where he belongs.” The unseen cartoonist complies, as his hand reaches into the shot with a pen, drawing a grid of lines around Harry to encage him in a simple cell. Harry angrily shouts for a lawyer, demanding his rights, but remains helpless within his personal prison. The Inspector sums things up with the old phrase, “The pen is mightier than the sword.” However, as he speaks, the end of a pencil eraser enters the frame, erasing the outline on the back side of the Inspector’s head. In its place, a pen and paintbrush enter, to draw on the back of the Inspector head a duplicate of the Inspector’s face. As the drawing is concluded, the Inspector remarks, “It’s a relief to know that I’ll never have to look at a two-faced freak like you again.” The Inspector’s new second face chimes in, “You said, it, buddy.” The Inspector whirls around, and, unable to see what has happened, shouts, “Who said that? Where are you, whoever you are?”. as we fade out.
Injun Trouble (Warner – Seven Arts, Cool Cat, 9/20/69 – Robert (as Bob) McKimson, dir.), might be best described as an array of entirely random jokes about Indians and/or the Wild West, trying to congeal itself into a story. Somehow, it manages to ultimately feel more plotless than many a no-story cartoon of the 1930’s – an especially-jarring feeling for a film produced this late. Maybe it was truly time for Warner to hang up the shield. Or maybe, as this was the last short to be produced by the studio for decades, the animators knew the end was coming, and rushed the matter through without much thought on the quick. Basically, Cool Cat is out on the desert for a drive in his dune buggy. He suddenly sees an Indian on horseback, pursuing him in his rear-view mirror. Cool drives across a log bridge spanning a canyon, and his wheels dislodge the log, causing it to fall away under Indian and horse.
The horse clings by his front hoofs to the forward cliff ledge, while the Indian hangs from his tail. The horse has no faithfulness to his master, and, not liking the clinging weight, delivers a rear-hoof stomp on the Indian’s head, causing the brave to fall into the canyon. As Cool walks back to determine what has happened, he finds the horse still clinging to the ledge. “Give me a hand”, speaks the talking horse. “Why not? That’s a crazy stunt, man”, says Cool, and gives the horse a round of applause. Eventually, Cool finally helps the horse up, and while the Indian below calls for someone to “Throw me rope”, Cool tosses him down one – unattached to anything from which to climb back up. Cool’s dune buggy begins to roll away, and the horse returns the favor, by giving Cool a swift kick in the rear to launch him by air back into the car’s driver’s seat. (An opportunity was either missed or at the last minute dodged here, as I was expecting a punch line about Hertz Rent-a-Car’s famous slogan and similar aerial placement of drivers behind the wheel to the phrase “Let Hertz put you in the driver’s seat.”)
This seems about as far as the scriptwriters got in constructing a story for the Indian portion of the film (and we’re only two minutes into the picture). The rest of the Indian gags are so random, one wonders if they were even committed to storyboard, or merely verbally bantered about in a story session. Cool is stopped on the road again and again by various Indians standing in his path. One gives him free an ugly squaw, who embraces Cool romantically from the passenger seat of the dune buggy. As the male Indian rides toward the horizon, Cool calls out angrily after him, “Indian giver!” An Indian princess stops Cool and asks if he wants to Indian-wrestle. Cool agrees, thinking wrestling with the babe to be desirable – but finds his opponent is be a burly male Indian hiding behind a rock. Another Indian asks Cool to hold his shirt, because he wants to ride his horse bareback. A fourth asks Cool the question, “Why?”. Cool remarks that he thought all Indians said “How?” “I already know how. Now I wanna know why”, says the Indian, in an impression of Groucho Marx. Further random gags don’t feature Cool at all, with a brave attempting to paint a stripe around a teepee but getting it crooked so ends don’t meet; another who paints face outlines upon a metal pail, then places it inverted atop his own head, calling himself a “pail-face”; and a third using an Indian blanket with stencil holes over a campfire, producing in the manner of a typewriter the smoke signal letters in the sky, “Cool Cat go home.” (We in the audience are already starting to wish we’d done the same thing.)
The Indians disappear, as the scene transfers to the site of a typical cliche Western town (Hotfoot – a real jumpin’ town). The town features the usual amenities, such as dueling gunslingers who shoot their opponent’s pants off, horses that play horseshoes with human footwear, and a horse doctor who is a real horse with an M.D. degree. In perhaps the most daring, and one of the only memorable, gags of the film, Cool finds a “Topless Saloon” (a play on then-current controversies of topless bars opening in several major cities). Cool eagerly enters to see the anticipated sights, but is served by a barkeep who is a huge burly man wearing no shirt, displaying a hairy bare chest. All Cool can do in reaction is shrug to the audience. We start to wonder if a plot will develop, as Cool meets a typical Western gunslinger, and is challenged to a game of poker. A pair of two’s and a loaded pistol beats Cool’s four aces any day. Just as we wonder where this is leading, we find it leads nowhere, as time runs out on the film. “I’ve done my thing, baby, so I’m cutting out of here” says Cool – and he means cutting out, producing a pair of scissors, and cutting the background of the scene around his own outline, releasing himself from the projected image, and walking out of the shot with the hole still visible in the background paper. Cool reappears through the hole, to utter his final line of the series – and the studio – to the camera. “So cool it now, y’hear?”
• INJUN TROUBLE (1969) is available to be seen on Dailymotion HERE.
It’s Tough to Be a Bird (Disney, 12/10/69 – Ward Kimball. dir,) receives honorable mention. It’s not that the lead character is necessarily aware of being a cartoon character, or his narration of the film in the first person to humans, that seems to qualify this film for reference here. It’s the sheer free-wheeling irreverence of the ending sequence, and a few cross-references to Disney icons, that seem to deserve a mention. This largely-educational mix of live action and animation about the trials and tribulations of birds, endangered by human activity, yet revered for their ability to do what humans can’t do naturally (fly), picked the studio up an unexpected Oscar. Perhaps what did it was its final three minutes. Fans of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” will potentially wonder which came first – chicken or egg – as the final sequence, presented entirely in cutout animation combining static drawn images with photographic ones, looks exactly like the kind of thing we’d see routinely on a Python episode.
And both seem to have been in production simultaneously! Who was spying upon whose techniques? I would frankly not be surprised if Kimball was the one who had the spies out, as the technique is so unlike anything normally associated with the Disney studio. Perhaps word of preparation for the British series was circulating through the industry, and a few promotional moments had leaked. It may have been enough for Kimball to graft on the sequence. Content-wise, it wasn’t too far distanced from the randomness of images presented in “Toot, Whistle, Plunk ad Boom” and the “I See the Moon” musical number included in one of Ludwig Von Drake’s specials about Space. It was just the incorporation of photographs into the drawn images that made the technique seem different. Qualifying the sequence for toon-referentialness, Kimball tosses in upon a montage of one-shot sight gags about eggs, feathers, etc., an outline image flashing upon the screen for about one second of Donald Duck (who had made a similar one-scene cameo pass-through among a gallery of space monsters in Kimball’s segment of a television episode, “Mars and Beyond”), and a final shot in which our bird host gives a look to the skies above that can only be interpreted as communicating the phrase, “Oh, no”, as a cutout image of Mary Poppins with her umbrella open gracefully soars around and past his head – proving that man can solve the problem of personal flight and enter the bird skyways after all.
Kimball would soon expand the episode for use in the running time of an hour-long “Wonderful World of Disney” broadcast, and use the cutout animation technique again in various sequences of another Disney hour, “Dad, Can I Borrow the Car?”
Some final notes on a mystery film, which I saw only once in professor Dan McLaughlin’s animation class at UCLA in the late-1970’s, and am unable to locate any information about on the Internet. I believe it to have been a foreign production, possibly from France or the National Film Board of Canada, and have no recollection of its title except as possibly including the word “Bird”. (No, it’s not “Moonbird” or “The Crunch Bird”.) Anyone who can provide information as to this film’s title, makers, and/or any link to a source print, is anxiously invited to contribute.
It involved grade schoolers who have art as one of their class subjects. The egghead of the class, a scholarly tall youth with glasses, is teacher’s pet and the pride of his fellow students, able to create drawn images with absolute photo-realism. Another student is laughed at and ridiculed as the failure of the class, with his latest effort being a picture of a strange bird that looks like nothing more than a doodle in childish scrawl. Saddened, he takes the rejected drawing home with him, and falls dejectedly to sleep that night in his room. As darkness envelops the scene, a miracle occurs. The boy’s drawing has the power to come to life, and rises from the paper, moving in strange unique ways to match its one-of-a-kind features, somehow making an escape out of the house. During the night, it is spotted by some bird watchers, who think it to be some new exotic rare species. A party is formed to trap the creature, and the weird avian leads its pursuers on a merry chase all through the night, but is finally caught. It is put on display the next day, in an enclosure at the local zoo. The school art class travels on a field trip to see the strange discovery. The egghead kid is among them, and upon arriving at the zoo, is immediately able to impress everybody by creating a stunningly-identical image of the new “bird” on paper – of course, an illustration that remains immobile and confined to the sheet of wood pulp it is drawn on. The boy who created the bird from his artwork has no real explanation for how the living bird came to be, and probably figures no one would believe it if he told them anyway, so again sulks at a distance from the class, off to one side, either doodling in chalk on the pavement or with his finger in the dust. He finds himself sketching even a bigger fanciful bird, seeming to combine features of a swan and an eagle. Suddenly, to his amazement, his new creation springs up from the ground, also comes to life, and picks up the boy on his back, then flaps its wings and soars high into the clouds, taking the boy on a magical flight. As the boy smiles at this turn of events in enchanted glee, the new bird makes a pass back over the zoo, and the boy points the bird’s attention to the art class assembled below them. Back at the enclosure of the first bird, the egghead boy is continuing to receive the plaudits of his fellow students and teacher, when he is hit squarely on the head by a large white drop of – guess what. He ends the film looking to the skies as if to ask “What was that?”, as the film abruptly irises out.
NEXT WEEK: We’ll move into the TV terrain.
