By 1965, Terrytoons was nearing its final days. The studio would cease to exist a mere three years later. Creative director Gene Deitch’s last-ditch effort to reinvigorate its moribund cartoons led to deep animosity between him and Studio head William Weiss, who fired Deitch in 1958. Terrytoons continued to plod along under deteriorating conditions where cartoon production occurred without actual “directors.” Story departments ceased to function in any meaningful definition. Storyboard artists controlled the production of the cartoons.
Aging Terrytoons veterans like Eli Bauer, Art Bartch, Jim Tyer, and Connie Rasinski teamed with Dave Tendlar, whose credits date back to the days of black-and-white rubber-hose animation, to keep the studio alive. In 1956, young Ralph Bakshi, fresh out of the Manhattan School of Industrial Arts, joined the studio. An insane desire to animate drove Bakshi. When things didn’t move fast enough, the would-be animator (in defiance of established union rules) essentially promoted himself in 1959, taking up unauthorized residence in the animation department.
Two factors worked in Bakshi’s favor: the first was the protection accorded to Ralph by his “patron saint,” Connie Rasinski. Rasinski defended Bakshi from having his animator’s position questioned by Production Manager Frank Schudde and Studio Head Weiss. The indifference of the moribund Terry studio management, whose biggest concern was getting cartoons into the theaters as quickly as possible, worked in Bakshi’s favor. The second and most crucial factor was Bakshi’s undeniable talent.
Under the haphazard Terrytoons system, Bakshi “directed” a few cartoons (including a Deputy Dawg episode). However, he found an idea worth developing further—a cartoon character of his creation named Sad Cat. Sad Cat harkened to when Bakshi wanted to author a comic strip earlier. He created several, but the origins of Sad Cat arose in his abortive strip Bonefoot and Fudge. Bonefoot is a bipedal feline who is a recognizable predecessor to Sad Cat. Bakshi got the green light to begin animating and directing theatrical Sad Cat shorts for Terrytoons in 1965.
Sad Cat is a blue (appropriately) feline appearing perpetually depressed; in a Cinderella scenario, he is under the thumbs of his brothers, a green cat named Fenimore and an orange cat called Letimore (a.k.a. Mean Brother Number One and Mean Brother Number Two). There is no backstory as to how this came about. The trio lives in the quasi-medieval town of Imagination (depicted by background artist Bill Focht).
Also on hand was Gadmouse, an apprentice good fairy trying for the final good deed that will earn him a wand. All four suffer from ugly character designs and sketchy drawings resembling drafts for better cartoons.
Sad Cat’s facial ruff resembles bat wings, centering a bulbous pink nose and droopy eyes. His brothers, shorter than Sad Cat, rarely display facial expressions other than anger or contempt. Gadmouse sports an oversized head consisting of three triangular shapes topped by a conical hat. No female characters appeared in the Bakshi series.
The only glimmer of Bakshi’s strengths is evident in his character’s expressive poses. Fluid animation is rare in these cartoons until the next to last entry, and the characters tend to snap from pose to pose in a kinetic simulation of movement. Bob Mc Fadden provided the voices for every character in the shorts, including that of the narrator. His mealy-mouthed voice for Sad Cat was reflective of the dreary dialogue. Sad Cat’s very first line in his debut cartoon Gadmouse the Apprentice Good Fairy:
Limited merchandise was created to cash-in on Sad Cat – including this glass tumbler.
“Life to me is just one big drag.”
Other inspiring monologues from later cartoons included:
“Oh me, another day, another nothing. No hope indeed. I’ve hoped so much that my new hopes are old hopes. I’ll never be anything but a third-rate nobody. And I’m not even good at that.”
Chuckles for the kids? Perhaps Bakshi drew on his Jewish background and intended Sad Cat to be an incurable schlemiel, but even that comic appeal was lacking.
Bakshi ultimately directed five Sad Cat cartoons from 1965-66, all plagued by the same rough animation and singular lack of humor. Bakshi, even at his most proficient, was never a gagman. Except for brief slapstick gags, the ambitious director tended to focus on the downbeat, depressing aspects of life, and Sad Cat was no exception. Gadmouse’s tinkering resulted in backfires and failures for all involved, making the shorts even more heartbreaking. Although storymen Eli Bauer and Al Kouzel pitched in, the cartoons were not remotely upbeat until Art Bartch inherited the series in 1967 after Bakshi departed Terrytoons.
It’s difficult to reconcile the Sad Cat cartoons with Bakshi’s later work, except for the emphasis on the lawless cruelties of life and his characters’ general inability to deal with them. One is not surprised to learn that Bakshi is longtime friends with Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino (although Tarantino has a more developed sense of humor). Still, Bakshi owns rightful recognition as the grandfather of adult animation, and his audacity and fearlessness more than offset his crude impulses.
In his defense, Bakshi had little training and few paths to development at Terrytoons, so the deficits evident in Sad Cat are, to a degree, excusable. While Bakshi never had much to say about Sad Cat, when I interviewed him for TOON Magazine in 2001, he related that:
“At Terrytoons, it was the worst time in the world. All the shorts studios were closing, and all the quality animation studios were out in California. The West Coast people looked down on Terrytoons; it was seen as a hack studio.”
In retrospect, it is a testament to Bakshi’s talent that he overcame his early animation experiences. And he did it without an apprentice good fairy.
