Novelty stop motion shorts from the 30s are some of the most fun things you come across while collecting films – and how the three sound shorts with the Kinex films-styled characters came to be will probably always be less-than-clear.
First — some Thunderbean news:
Next week is Spring Break at the school I teach at, and I’m still hoping to take a trip that involves gathering a lot of films and scanning them in upstate New York. There’s a good amount of films all ready to go already– now all I need is a mechanical fix on my faithful ol’ Ford Escape. Harder than it sounds. We’re trying to get the next four or five special discs out late this month, along with Mid Century Modern 3 if it comes back from replication in time. We’ve also just finished putting together a 2-disc special set with two and a half hours of animated trailers, and a whopping 6 hours of Live Action ones. It’s at the Thunderbean Shop for a limited time.
“Pepper the Pup” In Toodle-oo-o is one of the oddities produced by John Burton and other members of the former ‘Kinex’ studios, who produced silent ‘show at home’ shorts for Kodak’s Cinegraph 16mm and 8mm libraries. It’s an interesting and ambitious little film, only topped a handful of years later by Hector the Pup (1935).
Back in 2015 we wrote about Horse Laffs (1934) the one John Burton short that has surfaced in color.
Since we’re left to speculate what happened after the small Kinex Studio folded in 1930, it seems pretty clear that John Burton, one of the principals of the company and perhaps the main animator through a lot of the Kinex shorts, went on to try and sell a series of stop motion shorts. He did have some success in having the independent distributor Screen Attractions pick up at least three: “Pepper the Pup” in Toodle-oo-o (1931), Horse Laffs (1934) and Hector the Pup (1935). It’s safe to assume they didn’t lead to a bigger deal in turns of funding. Stewart McKissick, my co-producer on the Stop Motion Marvels set, did a wonderful job with liner notes on that set— but, even with some clues and research, we were never able to uncover the reasons John Burton’s small studio folded. Other members of the Kinex Studio went on to work on the classic feature King Kong along with other effects in features as well as shorts, including some for the 1939 World’s Fair.
Toodle-oo-o is pretty fun. The stop motion character animation looks right at home in its 1930s design sensibilities. Burton has adapted and improved a lot of things between the silent Kinex shorts and this film. The character designs, sets and animation qualities are all at a much higher level. The later Hector the Pup (35) is another huge leap in quality. One wonders if there were additional films that never were distributed, or if Burton redid a lot of animation along the way on both these films. The musical score in top notch (by Carl Stalling, under the pseudonym Arch B. Fritz.)
The technical aspects of the film are overall pretty good, but you can still see reflections of the glass used on pan shots (I’m guessing these shots were done with the puppets laying on the glass rather than upright). There are some wires visible here and there that Burton used to hold up puppets at times- and they’re scratched out in a few shots. So many other tricks are very well done throughout.
I find these few shorts fascinating and hope someday more information will surface on them, but as of now, it seems like the Stop Motion Marvels booklet is the only source of gathered information.
Of course, after Hector the Pup, Burton would take a job at Warner Brothers, eventually working his way to the top of the company. One wonders if he ever had any screenings of his early work there!
Have a good week all!
