NEW YORK 1905 - 1955

That's Manhattan above, and the lit up area is old-time Broadway. Oh, to have been young and creative and in New York in the half century that spanned 1905 to 1955! And since I'm in the animation industry, I can't help wondering what would have happened if American animation had stayed there, and not moved to the West coast.

Hollywood was undergoing an amazing creative leap of its own during that time,  so animation wasn't exactly an orphaned child during that time, but imagine what might have come about if our kind of artists had been able to imbibe the air of New York City for an additional several decades.  It was a time when almost every creative craft in the city was experiencing a Golden Age.

Think of the girlage that abounded in New York in those days!!! What with Broadway, the Rockettes, vaudeville, dance joints, the night clubs...the city was teeming with dancing legs! Imagine how THAT would have inspired cartoonists!

Restaurants played a key role. Every creative trade in NY had its own place to dine, however humble. Animators would have done the same. Everybody needs a place to go after work, so you can try out new ideas and vent about how stupid the bosses are.

Above the Algonquin Round Table. Yes, even intellectuals of that era were moved to abandon their books and find a public place to rant and be witty. The Beats preferred to eat in diners.

That's (above) Tin Pan Alley, where composers pitched themselves to music publishers, and where songwriters and musicians hung out. 

Then there were the Harlem night clubs. Man, the music that must have gone down under those rooftops! Clampett got the idea for "Coal Black" while visiting LA's "Club Alabam." Imagine if he'd had gotten a taste of The Cotton Club!

New York was the capital of vaudville.

Vaudeville was important because acts were judged by audience response. If they didn't like you, they let you know.

When an audience failed to respond the chastened crew held a crisis meeting as soon as the curtain came down, and the act was modified. Immediate audience response keeps you sharp. Surely animation would have benefited from proximity to that. 

Then there was the Jewish Theater (above). Eventually it lost its best people to vaudeville and serious drama but it gave a lot of first rate people a venue to perform in while they were getting used to the New World. Live theater wasn't as big a deal in LA.

And burlesque! A lot of slapstick comedians got their start there. Imagine how much our industry could have learned from those people (and imagine how much fun the learning would have been if the lessons were punctuated by girls taking their clothes off).

New Yorkers were fanatically devoted to sports, and there were plenty of venues. The audiences were as fun to watch as the athletes. Famous boxers like Slapsy Maxie Rosenbloom (above) were regulars at the big bars and night spots. So were mobsters. 

New York press agents were a big deal in those days and some of them threw big parties. Everybody who was anybody then had friends who were press agents, even if they had no professional bond. That's because a lot of good writers got their start as press agents, and they were interesting conversationalists who always seemed to know what was going on around town. Hmmm....come to think of it, LA had its share of press agents too.

I left out a bunch of other creative types: actors, novelists and play writes, competitive newspaper reporters, fine artists, classical musicians, cartoonists, poets, politicians, photographers, radio and TV people...geez, it would be a long list. Like I said, almost every creative craft in New York experienced a Golden Age in the era that spanned 1905 to 1955. If animation people had had the opportunity to hobnob with all those people, what would have been the result? If animation had stayed in New York during that time, would our Golden Age have been... even more golden?

MY ZOMBIE DREAM (PART!)

Here's a dream about zombies that I had years ago, and still remember vividly. It was hard to find pictures for this, so I had to change some details, but the overall story is the same...well, sort of.

DREAMER (VO): "I dreamed I was hitchhiking and got picked up by a convertible.  

DREAMER (VO): "I turned to thank the guy who picked me up, but he wouldn't talk, or even acknowledge my presence. He just stared straight ahead while driving."

DREAMER (VO): " 'That's odd,' I thought."

DREAMER (VO): "I watched some of the other drivers as we passed them. They had the same glassy stare. 'What gives?', I thought."

DREAMER (VO): "One of the cars was driven by kids...." 

DREAMER (VO): "...Even they stared straight ahead, just like everybody else."

DREAMER (VO): "I couldn't believe my eyes. I turned away for just a moment, and when I looked back..."

DREAMER (VO): ".....the car was gone! No, wait a minute, it was there, but several feet above the ground, traveling alongside my car. What the....?"

DREAMER (VO): "Downtown the situation was even worse. People were out on the street like normal, but there was something odd about them, something I couldn't put my finger on."

DREAMER (VO): "Then I realized what it was...they were all walking in slow motion! It was subtle...you had to look hard to see it, but it was real. It was like watching a film slowed down.

And there was also a pervading feeling of malevolence, as if something was deeply, deeply wrong, and getting worse every minute. "

DREAMER (VO): "The car stopped and somehow I knew that if I stayed there something horrible would happen, so I got out and ran." 

DREAMER (VO): "But where to go?"

DREAMER (VO): "The rooftops were filled with people who looked like they were waiting for something."

DREAMER (VO): "It didn't take long to see what it was.  A giant airship churning out industrial sounds loomed overhead. It sucked the roof people up into itself, then spit them back onto the ground, where they scurried away like spiders."

  

DREAMER (VO): "Finally I found a rundown hotel tucked away in the shadows."

DREAMER (VO): "I was too tired to run any more so I ducked inside."

THE STORY CONTINUES IN PART II, BELOW.

MY ZOMBIE DREAM (PART 2)

IN THE HOTEL LOBBY: three old ladies, an old doctor, and a rude man.

RUDE MAN: "Hey, Bud! If we're not inconveniencing you, you might consider closing the door behind you."

DREAMER (VO): "Oh, Sorry!"

DREAMER (VO); "I ran back to the door and closed it, just in time to prevent one of the outsiders from getting in. He just looked though the glass and stared, as if he was in a trance."

DOCTOR: "He won't come in. The ones who look like that don't know how a door works."

DREAMER: "Don't count on it. Outside I saw somebody inside letting them in."

DREAMER: "They were climbing in the windows, too. They're probably all over the building now."

As if to punctuate what the dreamer said, the old ladies and rude man are sucked kicking and screaming through the window.

The doctor gasps in horror.

DOCTOR: "You say they're inside, too!!?? Are you sure!?

DREAMER(VO): "I told you, I saw them!"

DOCTOR: "Well, that's it then, isn't it?"

DOCTOR (VO): "I invite you to take some tea with me. I'll put a little something extra in it, and we'll both take a nice, long nap.''

DREAMER: "A long....!? You mean...no, you can't mean that! Life is a precious gift. You don't throw it away like that!"

DOCTOR: "No..... no, of course not. Well, I'll be going up to my room now."

He gathers up his tea cup.

DOCTOR: "Good luck, young man!"

All alone in the dark, and with the sound of the front door being pried open, I lost it.

DREAMER: "No, wait a minute! Wait for me!"

DREAMER: "WAIT! WAIT! Don't leave me here alone! Where are you? Where are you!!????

At the top of the stairs was a corridor with all windows open. There's no place else he could have gone. He must have...

Out on the ledge there was no sign of the doctor. 

I knew I couldn't go back in. 

RUINED CREPES AND THE SPIKED BLACK BALL

A few days ago I cooked Crepe Suzettes for friends. The verdict: "Awful. Soggy, sticky sweet, almost cloying in the sweetness and almost wet in their sogginess. This had to be user error somewhere along the way, but I can’t figure out where. I followed the recipe to the letter, so who knows. We ended up eating a few, then throwing the rest away." I used quotation marks because I got that description off the net and it was so apt that I simply had to steal it. The night was a disaster, what can I say?

It's horrible when you're the chef and you have to face a room full of disappointed people who are all trying to avoid looking at you. I watched them silently and lethargically nudge the creation around their plates while struggling to think of something nice to say. It was nice of everybody to try to spare my feelings, but I wish they'd just vented and released the frustration. As it was, a spiked black ball of anxiety hovered above the table for an hour and you can be sure some pets were kicked when people got home.

And there was another thing about that dinner...the crepes simply refused to cook, even on high heat. I mean it, they just sat there looking pale and wet, no matter what. Doesn't that violate some law of physics? Didn't Newton have something to say about that?

My analysis of the problem? I didn't use the right tools. To make Crepes Suzettes you have to use a crepe pan. That's a wide, circular iron pan with extremely low sides. The sides are low so you can slide your ridiculously long and flat crepe spatula under the crepe for the purpose of turning it over. It helps to have a crepe spreader, too. That's a "T' shaped wooden dohickey that you drag along the top of the crepe to give it a uniform thickness. Or...use an index card.

Well, live and learn.

THE BEST TARZAN PARODY EVER!

Mike Fontanelli turned me on to this: it's not only the best parody of Tarzan that I know of, but the character is one of Ernie Kovacs' all time best..."Leena: Queen of the Jungle." Sad to say, I think he only did Leena once. The show is on the bonus 7th disk on the new DVD set available from The Shout! Factory:

http://www.shoutfactorystore.com/prod.aspx?pfid=5257356&utm_source=redirect&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=kovacs#axzz1Mg2R3Ih9

Ernie's part starts close to the two minute mark.




Since we're on a jungle theme, I thought I'd throw in a little exotica.  Here's a terrific cheesecake jungle dance from "She Demons" (1958).

BOUCHER AND FRAGONARD (EXPANDED)

Francois Boucher was one of the great painters of 18th Century France, but he seems to have fallen out of favor in recent years.  If I had to guess about the reason I'd say that he's considered by critics to be shallow. Look at the picture above. The dress is exquisite but the artist doesn't seem to have anything  to say about the woman wearing it. Lots of his pictures are like that. Truth to tell, some of Boucher's work is a bit cold, there's no denying it. So why, you ask, am I writing about him?

The reason is that Boucher made a massive contribution to art in spite of his flaws. The critics were only half right.

Boucher's early heroes were Tiepolo and Rubens, except he didn't have their depth and insight. What we see in Boucher's first pictures is skill merely. They are kind of funny though. You can see the eroticism that characterized his later work (above) slowly creeping in, even though it seems out of place.

Boucher didn't really find his own voice til he got into soft core porn.  He became a favorite of the licentious French court, maybe because he somehow managed to connect eroticism with something deep and profound. The man who had difficulty drawing faces managed to articulate something important about sex and life that no other painter had before. He gave his subjects a light-hearted, delicate charm that came to exemplify the new French style.

Boucher's contemporary Chardin had that charm and so did his pupil Fragonard, but I think they got it from Boucher.

I digress to air this parody (above) of Boucher's picture.

Boucher also did some pictures (above) that were pretty extreme. They're well done, and even funny on some level, but they strike me as decadent and beneath Boucher's talent.

Poor Boucher got typecast and found himself stuck with doing endless paintings of nudes and cupids (above). His overtly sexual charm diminished over time, but never disappeared.  He just sublimated it into sumptuous lines and shapes and colors.

His pictures from this period are often juicy and erotic, even when the subjects aren't. The man who figured out how to put charm and delicacy into a nude, now figured out how to put it into abstract shapes. Pretty good for a guy who publishers deem unworthy of a book. 

To keep from going crazy all those years, he amused himself by simplifying his humans and letting the cupids steal the show. They became more and more vivid and grotesque. Look at them (above)!  One of these days I should do a whole blog about the man's surly cupids!

Boucher's star pupil was Fragonard (sample above), who took up a lot of Boucher's themes and pushed them farther in the direction of what we would call illustration. You can see a large part of the future of art in pictures like this. In this one I see Mary Blair and Freddy Moore as well as fine artists like Renoir, Lautrec and DeKooning.

BTW, many art critics consider Fragonard to be as shallow as Boucher, but the public likes him so he grudgingly gets the occasional book. 

Fragonard (example above) had his teacher's knack for lightness and grace. Sadly it all came to an end with The French Revolution. According to a comment by Thomas, David helped Fragonard get a job at the Louvre, which at least kept him safe for a while. In a sense you could say that Fragonard prevailed, because a hundred years later his techniques, along with those of Boucher and Chardin, had a big influence on the Impressionists. 

Interesting, huh?