Scrapped Cartoons

[Jack]

I noticed at Dave Mackey's site that Fast and Furry-ous was given two production numbers, one for a version with different designs that was scrapped, and a second one for the version we have today.

I'm guessing these other designs are the ones featured in "That's All Folks!: The Art of WB Cartoons." They do look VERY different than the designs used in finished the cartoon, but why did they give it another production number just because the character designs were changed? Did they actually record a soundtract and animate some of this alternate version? I mean, wouldn't it have to be fairly far into production for them to assign a new production number to the version we have now?

How often did WB scrap cartoons? I know Disney did it, but he could actually afford it. The only other one I've heard of is Clampett's "For He's A Jolly Good Falla." Scrapped because Roosevelt, whom the cartoon was about, had died.


Jack :D

[PorkyandDaffy]

I never heard of FOR HE'S A JOLLY GOOD FALLA before. What was that cartoon going to be about?

[Jack]

Originally posted by PorkyandDaffy
I never heard of FOR HE'S A JOLLY GOOD FALLA before. What was that cartoon going to be about?
I heard about it here: P.O.V. Online (http://povonline.com/News060901.htm)

It doesn't go into what the cartoon was about, but it'd be interesting if they ever found that voice recording.

Fala was Roosevelt's dog, BTW.

Also, I heard the "No. 1 Dog" from Fresh Airedale was supposed to be Fala (sorry, I put two L's in Fala as a typo, it only has one). The only remnant of that idea is seen when they snap pictures of Shep holding the No. 1 Dog in his mouth. The actual scene only has some bushes in the background, but the animated newspaper photo shows what looks like the white house.


Jack :D

[laugh4me]

I think it was in "Fifty Years and Only One Grey Hare" that I read that the first three Earl Duvall-directed cartoons featuring Buddy were rejected by Warner Bros. Then Schlesinger begged Friz to help him and Freleng reworked the three cartoons into two acceptable ones. So I suppose you could consider these original Duvall creations to be scrapped cartoons...

[Sogturtle]

Originally posted by laugh4me
I think it was in "Fifty Years and Only One Grey Hare" that I read that the first three Earl Duvall-directed cartoons featuring Buddy were rejected by Warner Bros. Then Schlesinger begged Friz to help him and Freleng reworked the three cartoons into two acceptable ones. So I suppose you could consider these original Duvall creations to be scrapped cartoons...

Welllll you're close... According to Friz Freleng's authoritative but unpublished interview of the late 1960's, the 3 cartoons in question were directed by Tom Palmer. Palmer was immediately bounced headlong into the street and headed for Van Buren's, home of his his bosom pal, Burt Gillett. Palmer's writer there Jim Tyer, formerly a V-B director confided that Tom Palmer was incredibly UNFUNNY, confirming the tales from Schlesinger...

For scrapped Hollywood cartoons though Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising almost tied for the title with Walt. Starting with the theatrically unreleased "Bosko And Honey" (rejected for release by Warners), on through their all-but-finished yet unreleased Van Buren Cubby Bear "Mischievous Mice", then to their half-finished two-reeler "The Nutcracker". In their final years at MGM they started and stopped some of the most intriguing cartoons...

Schlesinger and directors DID NOT believe in scrapping cartoons for anything (excepting "For He's A Jolly Good Fala" due to presidential death) or ANYBODY. Walter Elias leaned EXTREMELY heavily on Leon to stop Clampett on production of Falling Hare and Russian Rhapsody due to their gremlin content. Schlesinger hung tight and backed Clampett up and refused, claiming to Walt that they were too far in production and too much loot expended already. Leon threw Walt a sop and agreed not to have the word "gremlin" in the titles, or release any other gremlin cartoons.

[Vdubdavid]

And they say that Schlesinger was a creep! I guess that's why they made the title "Falling Hare" instead of "Bugs Bunny and the Gremlin"

[Brandon Pierce]

Wasn't Bob Clampett going to do a Tweety Vs. Sylvester cartoon? I remember hearing his cartoon was scrapped, because he left the studio before it was in production.
http://a136.g.akamai.net/7/600/1392/1dcf6501c8f9fc/images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/1999/ga991209.gif

[Jack]

Originally posted by Brandon Pierce
Wasn't Bob Clampett going to do a Tweety Vs. Sylvester cartoon? I remember hearing his cartoon was scrapped, because he left the studio before it was in production.

I heard Freleng suposedly took over that cartoon, though it must not have been very far into production since "Tweetie Pie" is far more Frelengesque than it is Clampettish, IMO. I've heard arguments against that theory, though.


Jack :D

[Bobby B]

An early Famous Studios Popeye cartoon with Bluto as the devil ("I am the King of Hades/I want the prettiest of ladies/To be my queen") and Popeye going to you-know-where to rescue Olive never made it past the storyboard stage. The storyboard turned up in an animator's basement, but unfortunately it was split up and sold off. I found some of them on the web erroneously credited as being from 1947's "I'll Be Skiing Ya".http://www,thegremlin.com/flfsdraw.html (www.thegremlin.com/flfsdraw.html)

[Dave Mackey]

Joe Adamson lists a whole bunch of abandoned Tex Avery M-G-M cartoons in his book on Avery. Had common sense and logic not prevailed, you would have seen cartoons like The Big Bad Baby Sitter, Hark Hark The Bark, Droopy's Dog License and Holland Story.

[Sogturtle]

Originally posted by Dave Mackey
Joe Adamson lists a whole bunch of abandoned Tex Avery M-G-M cartoons in his book on Avery. Had common sense and logic not prevailed, you would have seen cartoons like The Big Bad Baby Sitter, Hark Hark The Bark, Droopy's Dog License and Holland Story.

Dave is exactly right on these titles (I started to write an identical post yesterday). Buuuut some of the abandoned MGM Tex titles were 86ed because of pressure from Mr. NON-TALENT Fred Quimby (before Tex figured out a surefire way of tricking him into okaying his stuff!!). It's no great surprise that Avery suffered from a nervous breakdown while at Metro.

And to this list would be added the completed but unfilmed MGM Snafu Hanna & Barbera cartoon... And one Warners cartoon that was sent to the circular file because of THREAT OF LEGAL ACTION in the early 1960's!!!

[Thad Komorowski]

Well, there are rumors that there were supposed to be more Andy Panda cartunes, but since Dick Lundy left Lantz, they had no one to draw the character well. They should've pulled in some of the comic book artists to draw these cartoons, they didn't draw bad.


-Thad

[BobChief]

Originally posted by Sogturtle
And to this list would be added the completed but unfilmed MGM Snafu Hanna & Barbera cartoon... And one Warners cartoon that was sent to the circular file because of THREAT OF LEGAL ACTION in the early 1960's!!!

Of course I want to know about that second one...:)

[Dave Mackey]

Well, there are rumors that there were supposed to be more Andy Panda cartunes, but since Dick Lundy left Lantz, they had no one to draw the character well. They should've pulled in some of the comic book artists to draw these cartoons, they didn't draw bad.

What was the complication there was that the Lantz studio actually closed for about a year with no cartoon production going on. The studio lost some of its top animators such as Ken O'Brien, Fred Moore, and Les Kline (who returned in the mid-50's and stayed until the 1970's). And even though a lot of the core staff including LaVerne Harding, Paul Smith and Fred Brunish returned right away, somehow it wasn't the same. The shutdown stopped the momentum of those final United Artists releases and Lantz was never able to have that level of quality again.

The first several projects of the "new" studio were based on some of the storyboards that were prepared before the closure, explaining the Ben Hardaway/Heck Allen story credits on the first few. I doubt that Lantz would have thrown those away, but as the previous poster noted there surely would have been some Andy Pandas in development that never got made.

As for Dick Lundy, he was on his way to M-G-M and eventually Hanna-Barbera. (Heck Allen went back to Tex as well.)

[Larry T]

At the risk of sounding too dense here, was this during the 1949 release season? If the cartoons that came out in the next few years were written from old storyboards, that would explain why there are some pretty good ones in that time. I read somewhere that due to the lack of staff Walter Lantz directed all those cartoons in 1950 himself, which is why there are never any directorial credits on them. I guess that since he is the "creator" of Woody, those cartoons must be Woody in the closest sense of what Walter wanted him to be. :confused:

But there are also some pretty hilarious cartoons as far as 1955, dwindling as time passed- maybe since the storyboards got used up, what little bit of real talent was exhausted by then, and that's probably why we were stuck with those crappy and repetitive Mrs. Meany, Prof. Dingledorf, and Wally Gator cartoons until the end. :wakko:

[chuckamuck43]

Originally posted by Sogturtle
And one Warners cartoon that was sent to the circular file because of THREAT OF LEGAL ACTION in the early 1960's!!!

C'mon, Tim, don't keep us in suspense - what's the 411?

[Thad Komorowski]

Yes, Larry, we are reffering to the 1949 closure. There were actually only about a dozen Walter Lantz cartunes produced under United Artists any way. It's very clear to see that there were obviously more Woody and Andy cartunes for the 1949 season, since only two were released ("Scrappy Birthday" and "Drooler's Delight"). Lantz directed almost all of the Woodys in the 1951-1952 season, except for "Termites from Mars". As I said in my first post, with the great animators gone, Andy Panda was very hard for the small Lantz staff to draw. If I'm not mistaken, NONE of them (well, except for Lantz, of course) ever worked on an Andy Panda cartune. Of course, Lantz HAD to revive Woody.

Perhaps the absence of shorts in 1950 could also be because the studio was working with George Pal on his newest live-action movie, in which Woody makes an appearance in. I forget the title of the movie at the moment.


-Thad

[SloppyMoe]

Perhaps the absence of shorts in 1950 could also be because the studio was working with George Pal on his newest live-action movie, in which Woody makes an appearance in. I forget the title of the movie at the moment.

That movie would be DESTINATION MOON. Don Patterson was the one who directed TERMITES FROM MARS, and followed that up with several more excellent Lantz cartoons. My "behind-the-scenes-at-Lantz" knowledge is lacking, however... does anyone here know why Don Patterson left the director's chair after CONVICT CONCERTO?