COWBOY BOB ON YOUTUBE!!!!!

I just transferred it to YouTube but I'm too sleepy to wait till they process it, so I can put it up here. If you just can't wait, go to YouTube and you'll find it under "Uncle Eddie: Cowboy Commercial." In the more likely event that you can wait, just hang loose and I'll post it here as soon as I'm able.

EXOTICA FOR HOUSEWIVES

Here's (above) something Mike turned me on to: Christopher Walkin's sketches on Saturday Night Live where he plays "The Continental." What a terrific idea! A woman we never see knocks on the Continental's door and he takes her in and tries to seduce her. Where's this been all my life? I want to see every episode!





Here's (above) a parody of the Walkin sketches which is even more overt than Walkin's. Hard-to-please YouTube fans gave this 2 1/2 stars, but I'd give it a 5. It's hilarious!





Housewives in the 50s were treated to some real exotica on TV! After being stimulated to distraction by the original (unfortunately short-lived) Continental show, they got to watch the king of the exotics, Korla Pandit (above) play the organ. I love the mystical narration at the start.

SOUP SLURPERS

Please, please, please forgive me for wiping out 13 perfectly fine comments in order to put a slightly improved version of the video up. I just couldn't bear to watch the video run silent for the last 45 seconds! If I'm able to re-cut this sometime in the future I'll run the music throughout instead of dimming it for the SFX. That and 50 other changes should fix it!

A LESSON FROM JUDY GARLAND

Here in one video are two terrific songs from Judy Garland's first feature, "Pigskin Parade." How old is she here? 14? 15? 16? Something like that.

She does a great job on the first song,"Texas Tornado," and when you hear it you think, "Well, that's it. She's not going to do better; nobody can,"...then she proceeds to top herself with the second song, which is nothing less than masterful.

This second song (which I've just forgotten the name of) must have been especially hard to sing. The lyrics and melody are awkward in the extreme. You get the feeling that she decided to make a big splash and if she couldn't do it with a good song, she'd hunker down and do it with a bad song. Listening to this is like watching soldiers fight door-to-door. She broke down the song into parts and somehow found a way to beat life into each separate segment.

I learned something important from this performance: if you can't find the perfect project to show the world what you can do, take the godawful project you're stuck with and force it to be great, one scene at a time.

AYN RAND, BARBARA STANWYCK, AND WALLY WOOD

What do Ayn Rand (above), Barbara Stanwyck and Wally Wood have in common? They all lived 20 minutes or less from my house! Of course that was the era before the land was sub-divided into housing developments. Come to think of it, Jimmy Cagney lived around here too, in Porter Ranch, but I don't know exactly where. In LA no part of the city is more than a stone's throw from some kind of historical film landmark.

Yesterday Milt Grey and I decided to get in a car and look up the sites where the homes of these people used to be. I wish I'd thought to bring along extra batteries for the camera. I only managed to get a few pictures but you might still be interested to see what we came up with.



Barbara Stanwyck (above) and Ayn Rand were next-door neighbors in what is now called Northridge. That's right, Northridge, where the Earthquake was.



Here's (above) a picture of Ayn Rand's house, address: 10000 Tampa Blvd., taken in the 1940s when half the valley was still covered with orange groves. It was originally designed by Neutra for film director Erik Von Sternberg.


Today the house is gone and in it's place is a public junior high, Noble Middle School. I had to get this picture off the net because my camera froze.



10000 Tampa is a few blocks up from the local mall, The Northridge Fashion Center. It's funny to think of people at the mall's book store perusing Rand books that were written only a few blocks away.


After Northridge we headed in the opposite direction to Wally Wood's (portrait above) last apartment at 15150 Parthenia in Van Nuys.



We discovered a somewhat run-down neighborhood but I imagine it was OK when Wally was there. My camera started working again so I got this picture of the side of the building where Wood had a street-level entrance. That's his apartment behind the grey car.


To get to Wood's apartment (above) you turn right after opening the brown gate.


And that's his place, number 71. I met the occupant and she was delighted to learn that a famous artist lived here. I didn't have the heart to tell her that Wood shot himself there. It was three days before the body was found.

According to Milt, Wood came to LA to find work in animation because it was getting harder and harder to make a living doing comics in New York. He was desperate for money because he had kidney problems which required expensive dialysis treatments. He tried to sell projects to Hanna Barbera and others but nobody was buying. I think his final work was comics for a local porn publisher, a real come-down for someone of Wood's stature.

I'm tempted to say that a gloom hung over the apartment, but really it was just the opposite. In bright mid-day it was positively cheery. Thank God life carries on.

HITLER DRAWS DISNEY

A dealer in Norway claims to have found authentic watercolors of Disney characters drawn by Hitler, the "A.H." in the lower left of the Doc drawing. Since Hitler is known to have had his own copy of "Snow White," and since the pictures were found hidden inside a previously authenticated Hitler painting, some people are thinking they might be real.

Boy, there's no accounting for taste. Arafat was partial to Hanna Barbera, and Sadahm collected Boris-type fantasy art. Horowitz and Maria Callas liked Archie comics, and Einstein is said to have watched "Beany & Cecil." Maybe we shouldn't be surprised that Hitler liked Disney.


All this talk about Hitler made me curious to see his pictures again so I googled them, and here are a few of the better ones. This picture of the city street (above) is my favorite. I wonder if this is a copy of something someone else did. It's more imaginative and passionate than Hitler's average work.


Most of Hitler's pictures seem to lack passion. Take this one (above) of the dog. It's admirable but oddly aloof, and distanced from its subject. Hitler seems to be drawing an ideal dog rather than the one that was in front of him.


Hitler experimented with impressionism in this picture (above), but he didn't seem to get it. Impressionism isn't just unconventional color, it's a way of perceiving the world as being organized by light. Of course Picasso did a lot of faux impressionist pieces and he seldom got it right either, at least not in his early work.


If Hitler was foolish enough to show this (above) to the art school he was trying to get into then I can see why they rejected him. It's pure kitsch. Something about it even suggests mental disturbance. It's hard to imagine that the same artist did the nice city street near the top.

BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN: THE LOST FOOTAGE

TRANSLATION: "BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN"


The Potemkin (above) steams into the harbor.


The sailors (above) watch as a political demonstration on land is thwarted by the Czar's soldiers.


It doesn't look good (above) for the demonstrators.


SAILOR: "Comrades! Wait a minute! There's a baby carriage on the edge of the steps!"


SAILOR: "Merciful Heavens! The soldiers are coming and there's a baby on the edge of the steps!"



SAILOR: "Wait a minute! What am I worried about? Nobody would push a baby down the steps!"



CAPITALIST (on the steps): "Hey, there's a baby! Push it down the steps!"



Baby "Waaaaaaa!!!!!"


SAILOR: (Gasp!)




DEMONSTRATOR: (cry of anguish)



SAILOR: "Man, that was harsh!"


SAILOR: "Well, at least we have this cool lighting. How do you like it? It's all done with a flashlight! "

SKETCHING OUTDOORS

"Hi folks! Art Teacher Uncle Eddie here!"


"Today we're going to talk about sketching outdoors."



"Well, not really outdoors...I mean, the real outdoors is dirty and full of bugs and rain. I mean the civilized outdoors that you find inside malls."



"OK, let's see. What examples do we have here?"


"Yikes! This (above) is just what I was talking about! Never, ever, ever do sketches like this! Why? because nobody wants to see realistic depictions of boredom or drowsiness! Half of being a good sketcher is knowing what to sketch. Not every subject is equally worthy of your attention."


"What is worth drawing? Well, cute girls for one thing! Here's some by Katie Rice!"


But that's (above) not the only thing. Character types are worth drawing...anybody that suggests a story...anybody that's fun to think about, even if they're evil or silly.



"But a word of warning! Never draw people who are pulpy! Fat and skinny are OK, even ugly is OK, but not pulpy and shapeless. Most people who will see your drawings worry about their weight and reminding them of it depresses them."



"Resist the temptation to draw what you see. Empty tables (above) are boring. The perspective problem is an interesting one, but as a story-telling cartoonist your time is too valuable to spend on this.

If you must draw this scene, move the foreground person to a table in the distance and ask her to look forlorn, as if she's oppressed by all the emptiness around her. Imagine that she's waiting for a date who will never come."



"Was that helpful?"


"There's more but I reckon that'll do for a start. See ya next time!"

GIFTS FROM E.O.COSTELLO AND KEVIN!

Wow! Talk about eccentric walks...E.O. Costello found a great one (above) on YouTube: It's by Al "Rubberlegs" Norman from "Paramount on Parade."





Here's (above) some great eccentric dancing from Jackie Gleason...I mean, "Reggie Van Gleason III." Many thanks to Kevin for finding this!






Just to round out the program, I'll throw in some boogie woogie (above) from Meade Lux Lewis.

ART OF THE FUNNY WALK

Don't you just love a good walk? Walk acts were a whole genre in vaudeville. They were considered a type of "eccentric dancing." Cagney was good walker, so was Buddy Ebson, but I'll bet the best walkers were names nobody would recognize anymore. Here's a great one that Mike turned me on to (above): Dean Martin's uncle Leonard. Sheer bliss to watch!





Another great walk (above) by a guy named Wall. Holy Cow! It makes you want to burn your Preston Blair (well, sort of....)!

SORRY!

Sorry about the Shakespeare rant! I admit that I'm way too sensitive about this subject, and I sincerely apologize. Most Theory Corner people are artists or people who are interested in art. Of course they save their most intense passion for other artists, or for people in fields related to art, like film or music. That's perfectly natural and I was a jerk for making people feel guilty about it.

I still like this play, especially this version of it, but if I ever talk about it again I hope it's in the role of a friend sharing, rather than whatever I was here.

I'll be gone for a couple of days to take care of business but I'll be back before most people know I was away!

MAD

I got one response to the post about "Julius Caesar"...one! What's wrong with you guys!? I thought Theory corner readers were more together than that. Is Shakespeare not good enough? Not worth listening to? Would you care to tell me who's more worth listening to? Is there a better writer that I don't know about!?

The version I put up is, or at least is close to being, an excerpt from a best version. The best version of the best writer isn't worth your attention?

CATALYTIC PERSONALITIES IN ANIMATION

This is about the so-called "catalytic personality." In entertainment this would describe people who are lucky in the sense that great things just seem to happen when they're around. Everybody just seems to do their best work when this kind of person's near, even if they're not working on the same project. Lorne Michaels, the producer of Saturday Night Live, is reputed to have had that quality. Very often the catalyst gets overlooked on the screen credits, yet the project would have been much poorer without him.


Clampett (director of all the cartoons on this page, save the stiff Daffy cartoon above) strikes me as someone who was a catalytic personality. Did he create Bugs Bunny? I'm not aware that any single person did, Bugs appears to have had several fathers (especially Tex), but it's impossible to imagine Bugs arising without Bob's influence, at least indirectly. Things happened around Bob. Look at the vibrancy of the other pictures on this page. What does that tell you about someone like Bob?


But this isn't a piece about Clampett, it's about catalytic personalities in general. It's sad to realize that catalytic personalities are so often overlooked and under-rated. There's no screen credit that reads: "The person who goaded, provoked, planted seeds, and gave away gags to friends that he would like to have kept for himself." That credit doesn't exist.


In animation a catalytic personality does more than contribute gags. His gags lead to something. They suggest a vision and and an over-all structure.  You ask this kind of person for a gag, expecting to get something like, "How about if he steps on a rake?", and you instead get a gag that suggests a unique character doing something that only that character would do.  You get an action that suggests a new way of pacing the scene, maybe the whole cartoon.  The gag forces you to re-evaluate your whole way of looking at what you're doing.  Catalytic personalities like to wrap up their gags in something larger and more useful.

 

One of the reasons catalytics can be so helpful is that they're constantly running story ideas and character types through their minds. These people don't offer gags, they offer pre-thought out worlds.  The gag is often something deep that's been simmering in the pot for years. It may be a fragment of a structure they'd been painstakingly building for their own use. The risk they run is that you'll run away with the larger idea the gag implies,  and then they won't be able to use it themselves. These are generous people who take big risks for no credit. 

 

The person I know who best fits this description is John Kricfalusi. Things mysteriously happen around John. People get lucky around him. Ideas somehow improve. The man has contributed millions of dollars worth of ideas to projects all around town, but is probably officially credited mostly in the cartoons he's made himself. 

 
I wonder what other people this would apply to. The big names are obvious but I'm thinking of less well-known names like Bill (Bob?)Nolan who worked on the early Lantz Oswalds.