CARTOONS OF THE 1930S

John K is a big fan of the early Terrytoons, and of Bill Nolan's "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit" cartoons (sample, above).  He's always talking about this stuff, and his enthusiasm is infectious. Now I've got the bug. Have you seen any of these cartoons lately? if not, you're missing out.

A word of caution: If you're not used to these old cartoons you might be put off by the slow, deliberate way that people talk, and by the lack of story and character. There's a reason they're like that, but writing about it would take more space than I have, so I'll have to cover it in another post.



Boy, old cartoons (above) like the one above are really cartoony. The artwork is uneven, though. The artist who did the crude Red Riding Hood at the start is obviously not in the same league as the guy who did the hilarious marriage sequence at the end. My guess is that some artists were hired because they could draw, and others because they were funny, even if they weren't exactly terrific draughtsmen.

The skipping Red Riding Hood scene does have one thing going for it, though. It was obviously intended to be funny. Scripts in the modern animation industry very rarely intend to be funny. Clever, mildly humorous, wry, topical, hip, etc....but hardly ever  funny. The director gave the animator a chance to do a funny skip here and he blew it...but he did get a chance, and that's something few current animators get.



Take a look at the "Uncle Tom's Cabin"-type cartoon above. Right after the start Topsy comes in doing a funny bounce. We cut to her hippo sister doing a funny run, then the two sisters do a duet. The duet wasn't all that funny but, hey, two out of three isn't a bad score.

The point I want to make is that this cartoon is structured to provide plenty of opportunity for funny animation. When these cartoons were made, funny drawings moving in a funny way was almost universally regarded as the purpose of animation. What ever happened to that idea? When's the last time you saw anything like that in a current cartoon?



By the late 30s the animation industry seemed to have grown smug. The backgrounds got more realistic, the characters acquired personality, every cartoon told a clear story, and animators could confidently draw almost whatever they could imagine. That's all great, but what happened to funny? Cartoons increasingly became humorous and professional rather than funny. Thank God for Clampett and Avery, who bucked the trend and insisted on funny at any cost.

That's a Clampett black and white above: "Porky's Surprise Party." Clampett believed in character AND funny. He refused to choose between the two, reasoning that you could have both. And you can.