• il y a 3 mois
Transcription
00:00Hello, this is Jerry Beck of CartoonBrew.com, and we are watching one of the best Looney
00:13Tunes from the Golden Age, and a very special significant Looney Tune.
00:19This one's called Puss and Booty, and it's directed by Frank Tashlin, who of course went
00:25on to great fame as a live-action writer and director.
00:33And this film has a story by Warren Foster, and the credited animation is Cal Dalton.
00:38But the star of this cartoon is really the animation by Arthur Davis.
00:43We'll get to that.
00:45Interesting first shots.
00:46The first shot is from the point of view of the cat, and from this point on, we're kind
00:51of watching things from the point of view of the Lady of the House in this opening
00:57scene.
00:58The Lady of the House is voiced, of course, by Bea Benederet, who did many of the women's
01:05voices in the early days, and I think Mel Blanc is doing a lot of the hiccups and sounds
01:11for Rudolph the Cat.
01:13Rudolph the Cat, in personality, is almost a prototype of Sylvester, and the Dickie Bird
01:19in this cartoon is sort of a forerunner for Tweety.
01:22They look nothing like those characters, but this whole plot, this premise, is very much
01:26like a future Tweety and Sylvester cartoon.
01:30In fact, there is a Tweety and Sylvester cartoon that's pretty much a remake of this cartoon.
01:35It's a cartoon called I Taw a Putty Tat, and it has the same plot, and for some reason
01:41they even use the same address that they use here, 1605 Maple Drive, which you'll see later
01:46in the cartoon.
01:48They pretty much picked up the storyboard from this cartoon and redid it for Tweety
01:52and Sylvester a few years later.
01:55This cartoon was released in December, and we have records from the studio that show
02:00that the story was finalized in February, and the recording was done in early February,
02:06February 6th of that year.
02:08It's very interesting to see what the production length for these cartoons were.
02:13They recorded this on February 6th.
02:17We've found that the music was recorded in September, and the film was released December 11th.
02:24Thanks to my friend Larry Tremblay, who's a cartoon researcher extraordinaire, I have
02:32the credits of who animated what scene.
02:36So when I have a chance, I'm going to point out the different animators who worked on
02:40this film.
02:41The credited animator is Cal Dalton, Don Williams, Izzy Ellis, Seamus Culhane, and
02:49Arthur Davis were the animators on this film.
03:01This animation, this wild animation of Rudolph is by Arthur Davis.
03:06He really does the funniest, cartooniest animation in the film.
03:10The wildest expressions, all that is Davis.
03:23Pacing back and forth again, Art Davis.
03:27Second to Davis, of course, is Izzy Ellis, who was one of Tashlin's animators at this time.
03:33He also does some very, very wild bits, like the scene with Rudolph pulling the sign off
03:38the wall to tell the pet shop truck to stop here.
03:42Those strong poses when the character got hit with the door, again, that's where you
03:46see Tashlin at work.
03:48Also, of course, the angles, the art direction.
03:53Sniffing the cage there was Cal Dalton.
04:05Petey shivering is Art Davis.
04:08Rudolph snoring is Don Williams.
04:11He was an ex-Walter Lance Oswald the Rabbit animator who joined the studio in the 30s
04:17doing Buddy cartoons and Beans cartoons and Porky cartoons and really worked for a lot
04:22of the different units, such as Jones and McKimpson and, of course, the Arthur Davis
04:29unit in his later part of his career in the 1960s and 70s.
04:33He did a lot of animation for DePatti Freeling.
04:37He stuck around with all of the Warner Brothers guys for many, many years.
04:44Also doing animation in this film, and just a little bit of animation, is Seamus Culhane,
04:50which was the scene of Rudolph at the very beginning of the film hiccuping with the feathers
04:55coming out of his mouth.
04:56That was Seamus.
05:07He was actually a director at the studio for a couple of cartoons in the late 30s,
05:12only a few, and then he went back to being an animator and stayed with Warner Brothers
05:16quite a ways.
05:18He also worked for Walter Lance and Disney in his later years.
05:21As I said, this cartoon reminds us today of the Tweedy and Sylvester cartoons, but
05:26this was ahead of those.
05:27It's funny, we had this cartoon, there's the cagey canary, there's a few of these
05:32cat-chasing-bird cartoons that predate Tweedy.
05:36Over at Columbia Pictures, they tried a small series of cartoons with the same theme called
05:42Flippy cartoons, and despite the fact that they were all of these predecessors, no cartoon
05:48really made it with the public until Tweedy and Sylvester teamed up and made that genre
05:54very, very popular.
05:56What's great about Tashlyn is that he is very, very cinematic in this cartoon, particularly
06:01in these later scenes in the film that take place at night.
06:05The black and white art direction couldn't be any better, and of course this is the
06:10last black and white cartoon that the studio did.
06:14From this point on, Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies were in color and ceased to have
06:19any difference between the two series.
06:22Up to this cartoon, Merry Melodies were in color, Looney Tunes were in black and white.
06:28Before 1935, when both series were in black and white, Looney Tunes featured a starring
06:34character like Bosco, and Merry Melodies were miscellaneous character cartoons.
06:40So this really is the end of an era.
06:43Art Davis did this scene with the fight inside the cage.
06:51Izzy Ellis did a lot of these scenes with the lady walking, and here he is doing her
06:56walking down the stairs.
06:57This scene here with Petey hiccuping, that's Davis again, to give us a great punchline
07:12to this cartoon.
07:18Goodbye Porky, we'll see you in color.