Harry-Go-Round

I’ve never been a big fan of shills, but I loved Tony the Tiger even though I also didn’t care for the cereal he hawked. And I was probably responding mostly to Thurl Ravenscroft’s voice–so deep, so kind, so trustworthy-sounding. He not only sang with a group called the Mellomen; he was, himself, a mellow man. Or so he always sounded.

Over the past thirty years, I’ve kept discovering that voice in new places–on TV, in movies, on records, and even in amusement parks. And since it showed up so often, over something like seventy years, I expect to keep being pleasantly surprised by it for a long time to come.

Side note: Is Thurl Ravenscroft the single best name of all time? And does anyone know if his given name was, in fact, Thurl Ravenscroft?

In the very, very early days of David Letterman’s NBC Late Night show, I watched it nearly every night. Letterman’s choices of guests were far more ideosyncratic than they’d later become, and he repeatedly had on a middle-aged woman named Alba Ballad, who dressed her pet parrots in themed, hand-made costumes. Alba was charming, the parrots didn’t seem to mind, and it was, all in all, one of the most peculiar things I’d ever seen.

I haven’t spent all that much time thinking about Alba Ballard and her parrots in the last two decades, but they’ve always been in lodged in my consciousness somewhere. And today, I was unexpectly reunited with them–thanks to Arne Svenson’s new book Mrs. Ballard and Her Parrots, which collects Mr. Ballard’s vintage photographs of his wife’s pets. (Just to make this strange tale a little stranger still, the photos were discovered in Elizabeth Taylor’s Swiss home.)

Mrs. Ballard (who also contributed garbed birds to a memorable Saturday Night Live film) liked to dress the parrots as celebrities and place them in pop-culture tableaus–the book includes tributes to Dean Martin (with Barbie-type dolls serving as the Golddiggers), Red Skelton (as Freddie the Freeloader), Easy Rider, and numerorous other entertainments circa the late 1960s/early 1970s. You can get a free online taste of all this courtesy of this New York Times slideshow.

Until now, you could have convinced me that I was the only one who found Alba Ballard’s work fascinating, and I felt a little guilty that I did, since I suspected it had something to do with the fact that birds creep me out; if dressing them was a form of cruelty to animals, I could live with it. (Conversely, I like dogs but dislike William Wegman’s vaguely Ballardesque staged photos of them.) It’s nice to know that someone else remembers her (she died in 1994),and that her work will live on…at least as long as this book is in print.

Well, what can I say? Jerry Beck’s ASIFA-Hollywood Scrappyland event at the AFI in Hollywood, which took place last Saturday afternoon, was a joy. We may not have had a full house, but the attendees (which included animation-history notables such as Mark Kausler, Milton Gray, Will Ryan, David Gerstein, Ray Poynter, Jere Guildin, Earl Kress, Art Binninger, Larry Loc, and others) packed the room with cartoon knowledge. Dr. Richard Huemer was there to give a warm and funny talk about his dad, Scrappy, George Winkler, and other matters. Our costume contest had only one entrant, but she was a doozy (see below). And after a few words about Scrappy animator Ed Friedman, who had died the day before, Jerry showed us a historic program of Scrappy cartoons.

The lineup of cartoons wadn’t a truly definitive Scrappy retrospective–which would have to include shorts like Let’s Ring Doorbells and The Puppet Murder Case–but it was a splendid selection that included some astonishingly rare examples. I’d only seen two of them before myself. And most of the 35mm restored prints were razor-sharp. (Surprised to hear that Columbia has been restoring Scrappy cartoons? So were we–we have David Gerstein to thank for discovering this fact.)

Here’s what we saw, courtesy of Columbia Pictures (thanks, Mike Schlesinger!) and UCLA:

Sunday Clothes (1931–the third Scrappy cartoon): Scrappy, in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit, tries to get to Sunday school. A gag involving a bully building a battering ram by gluing small children together seems weird and disturbing until it’s outdone by a later sequence involving dogs forming themselves into a daisychained canine bridge by sucking on each others’ tails.

The Dog Snatcher (1931): Scrappy, in trying to spring Yippy from prison, kills a dog and dons his skin as a disguise.

Showing Off (1931): Most notable–as far as I’m concerned, anyhow–as the film that David Gerstein analyzed on his pop music page, this short is one of the relatively few in the series to feature Margie. She snubs Scrappy, and eventually pays the price by having her panties set accidentally on fire.

Railroad Wretch (1932): Some misguided soul has allowed Scrappy and Oopy to operate a railroad train. This film’s Peckinpah-like violence–Scrappy spends much of it punching Oopy in the face–provoked audible gasps from the audience.

Fare-Play (1932): An Oopy solo short, unseen in 73 years! Oopy sells lemonade at a fair; when a drunk spikes it, everyone gets sozzled–including Oopy.

The Flop House (1932): One of the most 1930s-ish films to come out of the 1930s. Scrappy operates a home for transient animals. Appalling and funny.

Scrappy’s Party (1933): Scrappy and Oopy throw a party for Scrappy’s birthday. After setting the table and lighting the cake, they invite their friends–including seemingly every 1930s celebrity from Gandhi to Garbo.

The Beer Parade (1933): Unseen in 72 years! Scrappy and Oopy get elves drunk and battle Old Man Prohibition. Probably the greatest cartoon ever made about beer and children.

Scrappy’s Puppet Theater (1936): A short animated/live-action promotional film for the Scrappy Puppet Theater giveaway, which must have been the best-promoted giveaway of its time. Scrappy, in creepily limited and exaggerated animation, introduces child star Edith Fellows (who couldn’t attend Scrappyland, but sent her regards). Edith shows how the puppet Scrappy can fight with the puppet Chinaman. This short was preserved thanks to a donation by Jerry Beck himself.

In My Gondola (1936): A sumptuous but not-very-entertaining Color Rhapsody. The better the production values in a Scrappy cartoon, the less entertaining it tends to be.

Merry Mutineers (1936): Another so-so Color Rhapsody with an inexplicable conceit: Scrappy and Oopy operate toy pirate ships manned by Lilliputian versions of 1930s celebrities.

Is Scrappy funny? Are his films worth rediscovering? The crowd at the show may have been biased, but they seemed to think so: Laughter was plentiful, and I got the feeling that the crowd was frequently surprised by the sheer visual imagination of these cartoons. And they seemed to want more–I heard more than one attendee ask Jerry about a Scrappyland II event.

Finally, some photos from the bash…

This way to Scrappyland:

I’d say that the array of Scrappy items on display was impressive, except most of it came from my collection, so that would be bragging. I was startled to find not one but two Scrappy lamps in operation (one of mine, one belonging to David Bastian); I’d never had the courage to plug mine in.

Dr. Richard Huemer:

Jerry Beck interviews Dr. Huemer:

The crowd for the panel was an impressive assemblage of animation notables, brought together by their love (or at least grudging tolerance) of Scrappy. From left, Larry Loc, Ray Pointer, Raven Loc (who won multiple prizes for her amazing monochromatic Margie costume), Milton Gray, and David Gerstein.

Me and a Scrappy movie strip, drawn by Dick Huemer and beautifully colored by a former owner:

Dr. Huemer with animator/historian Mark Kausler:

I’m still working on my recap of Saturday’s bizarre and unforgettable Scrappyland event in Hollywood. I should have a report with photos up tomorrow, but in the meantime, please check out Larry Loc’s excellent blog posting.

When I founded Scrappyland, I never thought it would soon inspire an actual live event in Hollywood, produced with some help from Columbia and featuring restored Scrappy cartoons–including some shorts that nobody’s seen since the 1930s. But thanks to Jerry Beck and ASIFA-Hollywood, it’s happening, and the whole thing will take place in a little over a week.

I’ll be there, of course–along with some collectibles from my Scrappy archives. It should be…well, an event unlike anything that Hollywood has ever seen. Hope to see some of you there.

Princess Grace (nee Grace Kelly) and Walt Kelly were both born in Philadelphia. Were they kin to each other?

Probably not, but it’s an entertaining notion…

Many obituaries of Dale Messick have mentioned that Brenda Starr, her long-lived creation, was one of twenty classic strip characters who appeared on postage stamps in 1995. (In these overcommercialized days when even the cotton-pickin’ Lion King has his own stamp, it’s easy to forget how big a deal those stamps were at the time–it was remarkable to see the post office acknowledge comic art with such fanfare.)

What I haven’t seen discussed is how Brenda Starr ended up on a stamp in the first place. The other 19 characters had two things in common: They were created before 1950, and their creators were deceased as of the time the stamps were conceived. That was a sort of counterpart to the rule that only dead people can appear on stamps, and it explains why Peanuts, for instance, didn’t make the cut. But Dale Messick was alive and well. So why did Brenda rate a stamp?

Well, late in the planning stage, it occurred to someone that all the cartoonists whose characters were being honored were…men. So it was decided that one stamp should feature a character devised by a woman. Now, there were certainly some wonderful female cartoonists who were no longer with us in 1995. (Edwina and Marge come to mind; I would have been delighted to see the post office pay tribute to either or both of them.) But if you narrowed the field to deceased female cartoonists who created enduringly popular characters who appeared primarily in newspaper comics, the pickings became slim. Maybe nonexistent.

So the post office broke its own rule and gave a stamp to Brenda Starr, even though Dale was still very much with us. And I certainly don’t begrudge Brenda her stamp, since she is, inarguably, a classic comic-strip character.

Oh, one other thing–this decision came so late in the process that a stamp that had already been picked (and honored with a handsome stamp design) had to be bumped from the lineup. I’m sure it was a difficult decision. If I’d made it, I might have canceled the Toonerville Folks stamp, even though I’m a big Fontaine Fox fan. Or maybe the Flash Gordon one, though that strip was undeniably a classic.

But the post office kept the Toonerville and Flash Gordon stamps. Instead, it nixed one devoted to a strip that many consider the best work of comic art there ever was.

That’s why our country managed to honor twenty classic comic strips without honoring Pogo.

Now you know…the rest of the story. And hey, wouldn’t it be nice if the post office made amends by commemorating Walt Kelly and his immortal possum with a stamp now? They surely deserve one just as much as Tweety and Donald Duck.

Postscript: The stamp at the top of this entry isn’t the Brenda Starr stamp we all bought in 1995. It’s an alternative design, and I have to say I like it better, although I understand why they chose something a bit more cheery. This excellent article by Rick Marschall, written before the stamps appeared, shows the Brenda design that got picked, the other stamps, and some additional discarded ideas. (I particularly like the unused Nancy art.) It also mentions the possibility of a Pogo stamp…but doesn’t, unfortunately, show it.

This should probably remain my little secret, but for years, one of the top three search terms that has led visitors to this site from Google and other search engines has been “Chilly Willy.” (It points people to this image in my gallery of home-movie boxes.) In a typical month, hundreds of Netizens arrive at my site in search of Chilly. (Or is it Willy?)

Anyhow, when reading a Jerry Beck post on Cartoon Brew, I was moved to surf over to Breathed’s site…where I ended up reading this Opus strip. I was appropriately amused, and about to move on to other matters, when I noticed that the last panel had a tiny image of…a Castle Films Chilly Willy box. A rather familiar looking one.

Breathed panel:

My Chilly image:

Mind you, I can’t say that that’s my image for sure, though it certainly looks like it. And even if it is the picture that’s on this site, I don’t feel proprietary about it. (In fact, it’s darned presumptuous of me to call it “my image,” given that I scanned and posted it without asking the folks who own Chilly.)

Actually, I’m such a fan of Breathed’s work that I’d be tickled if he–like so many other folks–happened to find the image of Chilly Willy he needed on my site. It sure beats fielding questions about stretch pants.

Oh, and what’s usually the top search term that gets people to Harry-Go-Round? I’m not saying, but it’s even less obvious…

Voom–the high-definition TV satellite service–is shutting down as of April 30th. It has only 40,000 customers, and has been on the verge of death for at least a couple of months now. But even with this news, Cablevision, the service’s parent company, says that it’s going to try to convince other TV systems to provide the Voom HDTV stations.

I’m bringing all this up because Voom’s Animania channel showed some rare Columbia cartoons, including Fox and Crows, early UPAs, and, best of all, the occasional Scrappy.

Coincidentally, April 30th is also the date of ASIFA-Hollywood’s Scrappyland event. So if you’re a cartoon-loving Voom subscriber, get yourself to Hollywood on that day, and we’ll show you some Scrappy cartoons and commiserate.

Snohomish, Washington–a little town I visited yesterday–is home to maybe the best selection of antique shops I’ve ever seen. And its largest store is home to an astonishing array of old cartoon-related toys. With a lot of this stuff, it feels like the manufacturer just wasn’t trying to depict the characters in question in anything like an accurate fashion, I took pictures of just a few of the oddball items I stumbled across–from a red Huck Hound to portly Lady and the Tramp dolls wearing human clothing to a multitude of Soakies: