Collector/ Historian Ira Gallen sent me a bunch of reels, and among these were a bunch of this pencil test and a demo reel from Don Oriolo Productions. A small scrap of paper was attached to one of the prints with the words ‘Pencil Test- Sturm/ Waldman. A complete spliced together 16mm print was labeled ‘Myron’ and another ‘Sturm’. I wonder if these were meant to be given back to these two animators.

And if that movie isn’t for you, there’s a more “traditional” Scooby-Doo series going on via Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? A recreation of the Scooby adventures where he and the gang would meet all sorts of celebrities. It’s been a big hit and they’ve gotten a LOT of unique guest stars.

This film will be the most difficult to assemble for sure, but I’m excited to finally have all the material laying on the table ready to make the finished Flip cloth.

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Cartoon Design Backpack

Put On Your Old Grey Bonnet (11/22/29) – A village orchestra gets ready to rehearse, including a flautist who cuts off a piece of his flute and converts it to a piccolo, and a saxophonist having trouble with one of the holes on his instrument, which doesn’t want to stay in place. He somehow winds up playing a “Jew’s” harp. Recorded versions included the Haydn Quartet on Victor, Arthur Cliugh on Columbia (a high counter-tenor), Helen Clark and Joseph A. Phillips on Edison Diamond Disc, Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra on both Okeh and Brunswick, the Mills Brothers on Brunswick, the Dixie Ramblers on Bluebird (a Cajun string band performing for non-Cajun audiences), Milton Brown and his Brownies on Decca, Jimmie Lunceford on Decca, Ozzie Nelson (below) on Vocalion, the Sweet Violet Boys (aka the Prairie Ramblers) on Vocalion (with some parody lyrics about wearing a red bonnet in the vicinity of a bull), and much later, the Mulcays (harmonica duo) on MGM.backpack

Don’t Hustle an Ant With Muscle (DePatie-Freleng/UA, The Ant and the Aardvark, 12/27/70 – Art Davis, dir.) A bit routine for the series, with less than the usual number of expected surprises. In his never-ending race to escape becomins an aardvark’s lunch, Ant enter the bathroom window of a residential home, where he encounters a bottle of vitamin pills. Tuckered out from all the running, he tries one to see if they work on ants. The pill makes him feel so good, he decides to see if 10 will make him ten times as strong. Within moments, Ant has the physique of a miniature body-builder. He leaps outside right past Aardvark. Aardvark turns on his patented vacuum-suction nose, and gets Ant inside. But the buffed insect takes control of the situation, dragging Aardvark around bodily by his nose, pulling it through a hole in the base of a tree truck, then jumping out of the elongated schnozzola, allowing ot to snap back at Aardvark like a rubber band, compressing as if retractable into the features of Aardvark’s face. Aardvark tries to deliver a crushing fist blow on Ant, only to find it has no effect, reverberating with a clang as if Aardvark had struck an object of solid steel, leaving Aardvark in significant pain. Aardvark determines to make Ant “a member of the club” by swinging at him with one, but the club again is stopped cold and vibrates from the collision with the immovable object, the vibrations carrying Aardvark himself off a cliff. Aardvark crawls his way back to the summit, and threatens Ant at his anthill that he’s coming in. No need to, as Ant comes out, burrowing under Aardvark to pick him up and dropping him off the cliff again.

Bedelia (1/3/30) – A character goes in his car to visit his girlfriend, but finds her asleep. The date doesn’t go as planned, and he winds up with a flower pot on his head. Underscore inclides “Do I Know What I’m Doing?” (recorded by Ethel Waters for Columbia); “Please Let Me Sleep” (an oldie from 1902, used quite frequently in cartoons, such as in the stork sequence from Mickey Mouse’s “Clock Cleaners” – no recording seems to turn up except a modern-day web performance by “Sheet Music Singer”); “Oh, How I Hate To Get Up In the Morning”; “Comin’ Thru the Rye”; “Old Black Joe”; and “What Wouldn’t I Do For That Man” (performed by the Charleston Chasers with Benny Goodman on Columbia, and as a vocal record by Helen Morgan on Victor – a torch singer familiar in parody to anyone who’s seen the ending of Warner’s “The Coo Coo Nut Grove”). “Bedelia” was from 1903, recorded by Billy Murray for Edison cylinder, the Haydn Quartet for Victor, and Arthur Collins for Monarch. Sousa’s Band would record a sort of “theme and variation” spoof in multiple tempos as “A Musical Joke on Bedelia” for Victor. Jan Garber recorded it on Okeh in the early 1940’s. James Moody later dredged it up for Blue Note as a sax instrumental. The song’s lyric also makes a reference to singer/composer Chauncy Olcott, who recorded a number of Irish standards during 1913-1920, and was the composer of “My Wild Irish Rose.”

I’ve barely been over to the Thunderbean office over the past two weeks, instead working on editing, color correction and getting final details on various sets. In the next few days, I’m working hard to get masters done for a bunch of the “special” sets. I’ll be over there to get a few things out myself to friends and things I’ve promised tomorrow, finally.