WELCOME TO "THEORYLAND!"

"Greetings viewers and welcome to "Theoryland," the thinkingest place of them all!"

"Every week we'll take you to one of several exciting lands. This week come with us to 'Fromteerland,' where young people can relive the thrilling days of yesterday when our pioneer ancestors hunted down polecats like predatory animation writers."

"Here to tell you more about it is our host, Uncle Eddie..."

"Hello folks and welcome to the show. Here at Theory Corner we always strive to top ourselves and 'Theoryland' is our latest effort. We've chosen to begin the show here in Fromteerland but I thought you might like to get an overview of the whole series. Follow me and I'll see what I can do."

"Of course the cornerstone of our show is good, solid family entertainment...art, history and science combined, something for the mind as well as the eye. Here for example is an organ derived from a male T-Rex. What organ we don't know but our staff is consulting with paleontologists about it right now and when we find out we'll do a show about it."

"Occasionally we'll have visits from Theoryland regulars like Darnold Mallard. Here you see the reaction of Darnold's doctor when he discovers a human face in Darnold's throat. Click to enlarge."

"Expect lots of hair-raising adventures in Fromteerland episodes. Those wily animation writers are always up to no good and it's up to the stars of our historical adventures to ferret them out and bring them to justice."

"Well here's my transportation now! It looks like that's all we have time for this week!"

" Bye for now and remember... KEEP THEORISING!"




Note: Except for the first two drawings all pictures are copyrighted by the Disney company.

"SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT" RECONSIDERED

According to a recent book about EC comics Frederic Wertham (above) , author of "Seduction of the Innocent," spent his declining years denying that he was responsible for the decline of comic books. Well, you can't deny that comics were less interesting after his crusade.

I do wonder sometimes if comics really were as horrific as he said they were. I don't really know because it's so hard to get hold of the old comics. EC comics are still out there in reprints but other titles are harder to find. For the curious here's a few excerpts from old comics. I don't know how typical they are.

Here (above) is comics reformer Judge Charles Murphy with before and after pictures of an offending comic character.

MORE DAUMIER

I can't resist putting more of this up. Daumier was a genius!

STILL MORE ABOUT THE BARRIER BOOK

Mike Barrier's book continues to amaze.

For a while after Harman and Ising (third and sixth from the left in the group shot below) left, Iwerks (with Disney, above) was the only first string animator in the studio. To maximize Iwerks' impact Walt forced a system of assistants and inbetweeners on him, which he apparently resented.

I'm not surprised. It must be hard to come up with something good when a bunch of newcomers are let loose to redraw your scenes. I imagine Iwerks had to lose a lot of time supervising the new guys even though the new system was presented to him as a "time saver." Eventually Iwerks quit.

It didn't matter, Disney continued to tinker with improvements to the system until he came up with the collaborative way of doing things that we have today: the one where animators work from exposure sheets done by someone else, on a story they may have had no part in making, where someone else takes the guts out of their drawing and acting, where every drawing is supposed to be "on model," and their scenes are expected to fit seamlessly into the next guy's scenes.

Compare this to the early days of animation where an animator might be told simply to have his character fight with a turkey for half a minute. The new system might tell the animator exactly what frame the character should lift his leg during the fight. Some animators probably thrived under this kind of control but others like Iwerks must have been disheartened. You get the feeling that a kind of innocence and fun was removed from animation around 1930.

Was Disney's a bad system? No, of course not. It has obvious assets. If an animator works with assistants of his own choosing he really can go faster and sometimes the assistant is a better draughtsman than the animator. Not only that but animators like Scribner and Sibley managed to find sympathetic directors who would give them wider creative latitude. It's hard to imagine that animation's golden age could have occurred under the old system...even so.... did we lose something in exchange for what we gained? Is there a way to get that freshness back?

Just for the heck of it here's a picture of Disney's very first studio in Kansas City. That's the Laugh-O-Gram office on the second floor above the parked car on the right.

MORE ON BARRIER'S "THE ANIMATED MAN"

I'm only 20% through the book but I can report that what I've read so far is pretty amazing. If Mike is right then a lot of the character of the later studio was formed in the late twenties when Disney was struggling to keep his head above water amid betrayals by artists and predatory competitors.

A lot of his problems stemmed from location. He was trying to get an animation studio started in L.A. when all the good and experienced animators were in New York. He had to rely a lot on the few experienced people he was able to lure to Los Angeles and each one in their turn betrayed him, some at the worst possible time when his whole career hung in the balance.


He didn't have the experienced animators to compete with the East Coast so he had to rely on a technical innovation, sound, to stay in the race. The New York animators were funnier, gutsier, and were better at acting, but the people they were working for were slow to adapt to sound, which proved to be their undoing. Against great odds Disney (along with Carl Stalling who may also have betrayed him) made sound work.

The book doesn't say so but it's hard to resist the conclusion that Disney began to believe that technology and advances in technique were more reliable allies than people. You could hire a funny guy and, sure the films would be funnier, but then he'd leave you. But if you had a patent or a unique organizational technique...well, that's something you can cling to. Disney had a lot of people problems in the late 20s and the accounts are heartbreaking to read. In the absense of star animators Disney made a big effort to educate the artists he did have. He'd even drive them to the art classes he arranged. Sadly a lot of them didn't take it seriously and most tried to get out of it. The animators who left Disney tried to make a go of it in set-ups of their own but were too mild mannered to survive in the business world. You wonder what would have become of animation if these mild people had been its only champions.

Now I know some fans of the Fleischers would say, "So what if Walt had gone under? New York was turning out gutsier animation and they'd have gone to sound eventually. Walt was stressing out because he was trying to start a studio on the wrong coast. His effort to get it started on uncongenial ground (the West Coast) ended up warping and twisting the medium and we've never recovered." I'm dying to see what answer the book makes to this.

My own suspicion is that New York animation was dying for reasons that had nothing to do with Disney but that's a guess and I could be completely wrong. After all, Popeye was popular enough to get an Oscar one year.

BTW, the terrific Disney caricatures on this page were done by Fred Osmond. They're ripped off from his blog: http://cartoonsandcaricatures.blogspot.com/2005_07_01_archive.html

WHO IS MORE BEAUTIFUL?

Sorry, I got busy and now I'm sleepy and don't have the stamina to put up a normal post. I don't think I'll disappoint anyone though. What do you think of these pictures from my archive? Beautiful women all but my question to the readers is, who is the most beautiful? I vote for Ingrid Bergman. She's sexy but also kind and intelligent, at least in the picture. No offence to fans of sexy, mean and stupid, which has its appeal.

Anyway, here's Bridget Bardot (above).



How about Gina Lollobrigida ?

Lauren Bacall?

Ingrid Bergman?



Audry Hepburn?

Bridget Bardot? I happened to have another picture!

MY FAVORITE BOOK

I'm embarrassed to say that my all-time favorite book is one that I still haven't finished, Homer's "Odyssey." I first encountered it in an old-fashioned literature anthology that we used in 3rd or 4th grade. I was impressed by the earnestness with which the stories were told. The author really seemed to believe that reading about Ulysses was the most important thing you could do, and of course he was right.


My favorite character was the cyclops. He seemed oddly human and appealing but these qualities didn't prevent him from being single-minded about eating the Greeks. I remember thinking how strange it was that the cyclops could think and speak but still have no mercy on his fellow creatures (sounds like animation writers, doesn't it?). It was the first inkling I had that the world contains some puzzling characters whose motives can never be understood but who must nevertheless be resisted.


Years went by without any thought of The Odyssey then I saw "The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad" in a theater. Wow! My kid heart almost jumped out of my chest! I instantly recognized my old friend the cyclops, made even more terrifying by Harryhausen and Bernard Herriman...Sinbad was from Iraq but the feel of the story was unmistakably Homeric...minus the cheesy Hollywood touches. I began to think of the Greeks as the storytellers who delivered the goods, who could explain life to me better than anyone else.

Still later I saw "Jason and the Argonauts" and that firmed it up. There again was the Homeric sensibility even though the story was written by someone else. I loved the ideal that permeated the film: manliness, intellect, courage and a thirst for adventure. Isn't that what we all crave? I don't claim to possess any of these Homeric qualities but having them in front of me as distant ideals changed the course of my life.

I don't think the picture above is of Homer but it's the way I like to think of him so it gets a place here. I mentioned earlier that I never finished The Odyssey (I listened to an unabridged tape set of it a couple of times but maybe that doesn't count). Maybe I never will finish it. I have a taste for modern stories now and the Odyssey's way of telling a story seems too old-fashioned to me. The really odd thing is that I can still say with complete sincerity that it was and is the most influential book I've ever read. It's amazing how even a small dose of Homer goes a very long way.