ATTN Popeye fans: View "You're A Sap Mr. Jap" In Black And White!

[Dub]

WOW. BIG WOW.

No wonder its banned from TV @___@ You couldnt air this sucker in ANY way shape or form....

you can find it here: http://www.ifilm.com/ifilm/product/film_info/0,3699,2416886,00.html

The print is pretty clear as well. i could tell everything that was going on.

The Japanese stereotypes are one thing, but when the guy (whom I assumes is Hirohito) drinks a cooler of gasoline, willingly, then eats firecrackers, lights them with the fuse hanging out of his mouth, and then proceeds to..."die" afterwards, its no wonder this one is talked about so much...I mean..after he does that he really doesnt move at all except for the motion of the crackers. Its really the most disturbing scene I've ever seen in a cartoon modern or classic. And thats not saying it lightly @___@

I think I've found the first Popeye cartoon I dont like :P

The japanese stereotypes are rampant, but stereotyping is prevelant in almost all cartoons of that age from black to japanese to whatever - but even if it was wartime (and keeping in mind that the thought patterns WERE VERY different back then) this was a bit much...even for a propoganda cartoon such as this.

Comments?

[J Lee]

I was pretty amazed the first time I saw the ending of that cartoon -- the suicide try comes after you think you've already reached the cartoon's climax when Popeye collapses the ship -- but from an animation/historical perspective, it's pretty key to examining the hand of the different "directors" at the new Famous Studio and how their relationships with the "head animator" varied.

In this case, the head animoator was Jim Tyer, who also received story credit on "You're A Sap, Mr. Jap." Dan Gordon got directorial credit, but the cartoon is really Tyer's -- not only in the story, but in the miles-over-the-top animation at the end of the film. It is pretty shocking to see today, and there's nothing subtile about the cartoon, which pretty much sums up all of Tyer's work under either Dan Gordon or Izzy Sparber at Famous (and under Gordon and Sparber, Tyer always animated the climactic scenes in the Popeye cartoons).

Both came out of the Fleischer studio's story department, and were more willing to let the head animator decide the look and pacing of the cartoons. In Tyer's case that meant his cartoons, like "You're A Sap...", "Seein Red, White & Blue," "To Weak to Work" or later color cartoons like "His Honor, the Mare," "Shape Ahoy" and "We're On Our Way To Rio" were as frantic as possbile, featuring a lot of his "crush, mangle and stretch" animation. Seymour Kneitel, being one of the four main head animators for years under Dave Flesicher, kept Tyer's animation under a much tighter leash -- there's nothing as wild in cartoons like "Puppet Love," "A Peep in the Deep" and "She-Sick Sailors" -- as did Bill Tytla when he came aboard, after letting Tyer run amuck at the end of "Service With a Guile". "Rocket To Mars" is a good cartoon, but Tyer's animation is so polished up it obviously had to have offended Tytla's Disney sensabilities.

The end of "Your A Sap Mr. Jap" is about as subtile as Norm McCabe's "Tokio Jokio," which makes it pretty rough to get through today. But there's no denying that the cartoon has a ton of energy and where it was coming from, and energy was what Famous Studios sorely lacked after Tyer left for Terrytoons at the end of 1945.

[Mibbitmaker]

In a way, Tyer can be compared with Rod Scribner, who was in his element under Bob Clampett but reined in, ultimately, by Bob McKimsom(though Scribner was in top form as late as the Pete Puma cartoon).

Service with a Guile and Too Weak To Work are two of my favorite Popeyes, the former would be right at home in mid-'40s WB, the latter's keyhole scene remarkably like the one in Kitty Cornered(my favorite Clampett, btw).

[J Lee]

The late B&W Fleischer/Famous cartoons, esepcially those with Tyer as head animator and/or Dan Gordon as director come the closest of any of the Paramount cartoons to mimicking the Warner Bros. house style. The arrival of WWII and of the Hollywood animators (Grim Natwick, Shamus Culhane, Al Eugster, Bill Nolan, Bob Wickersham) and storymen (Gordon, Cal Howard, Tedd Pierce and George Manuel) in the late Fleischer also combined to speed up the Popeye series from its previous pacing, which continued for the first couple of years of Famous Studios.

Tyer kept up the wildness when the studio moved back to New York and most of the Hollywood people left, but he was swimming against the tide when Kneitel was directing (and later Tytla), which is why the animation in Seymour's mid-1940s cartoons is a lot more standardized, with or without Tyer, while an Izzy Sparber-directed cartoon can look either extremely polished (Eugster's animation and redesign of Bluto for 1942's "Hull of a Mess" that was the character's standard look from 1946 on) or it can look incredibly sloppy (Tyer's ending for "Too Weak to Work" or his fight scene in the middle of "Cheese Burglar," where the Bluto in the former and the dog, cat and Herman in the latter are distorted wildly) depending on who the head animator is.

But in the mid-40s either way Famous was still able to do good cartoons. After Tyer decamped Times Square for New Rochelle, the studio's cartoons may have looked better, but their humor was almost solely dependant on the gags from the story department, because the directors/head animators added fewer and fewer "funny" personality touches to the cartoons anymore.

[Sogturtle]

The 'Tyer at Paramount' story is always a fascinating one (I'll be the first to admit that John is an expert on the Fleischer and Famous Popeyes)... Seldom mentioned is that for whatever reasons the Fleischer's refused to give Jim Tyer any screen credit!! (Of course when he had previously left New York and gone to Disney, he'd been promptly demoted down to the effects department!! That may have made the Fleischer's think that just hiring him as a full animator was ample).

The thing that has never (to my knowledge) been brought up here before is Jim Tyer's previous animating, writing and brief directorial experience at Van Buren , both before Burt Gillett arrived and after. Any takers...???

[J Lee]

Tim --

Tyer did get head animator credit on at least one of the late "ship door" Popeyes, during the time when Kneitel, Bowsky, Tendlar and the Hollywood animators were busy with "Mr. Bug Goes to Town." The exact title escapes me at the moment, but the animation was pretty much on part with the other 1940-41 entries in the Popeye series (that is, nothing really really outlandish made it into the theaters).

[Sogturtle]

Originally posted by J Lee
Tim --

Tyer did get head animator credit on at least one of the late "ship door" Popeyes, during the time when Kneitel, Bowsky, Tendlar and the Hollywood animators were busy with "Mr. Bug Goes to Town." The exact title escapes me at the moment, but the animation was pretty much on part with the other 1940-41 entries in the Popeye series (that is, nothing really really outlandish made it into the theaters).

John~

I have no doubt that you're right (will have to dig through my papers to see if I have the proof for this). My real point was that Tyer worked at Fleischer for an extended time without receiving any credit. During all this uncredited period he was assigned to one of the crews as just an animator, but a full animator just the same. I can understand Fleischer hired Natwick, Culhane, and Eugster back as head animators, since that's what they'd been there before (and full directors at Iwerks). And that Tyer was an unknown quantity to the studio, but he'd been in animation forever by the time he got to Max's. I find it puzzling that since both Shamus Culhane and Al Eugster had been put through the humiliating "hazing" at Disney (much like Tyer had) that they didn't stick up for him to receive credit at Max's. I'm even more puzzled since Culhane had worked beside him back at Van Buren under crazy Burt Gillett, and you'd think there'd be some residual shared comraderie from that...


Now how about my earlier point, about anybody analyzing his previous work at VAN BUREN. Hmmmm???

[J Lee]

Tim --

Culhane certainly treats Tyer as one of the good guys in his discussion of Van Buren and the manic/depressive actions of Burt Gillett, so it is strange that there's no mention of him when they were both back together at Fleischer in Miami, though it could be the Tyer was considered part of the "shorts only" group at the studio at the time and didn't intermingle with the feature film units (making him the Jack King of the studio, so to speak).

From the start of the Popeye series through 1939s "Wotta Nightmare" there are virtually only three head animators/directors who worked on the Popeye shorts -- Bowsky Kneitel and Tendlar. They were also doing some Betty Boops, Color Classics and Screen Songs, while Waldman was doing the Pudgy cartoons :mad: and some of the bouncing ball ones. Others, like Tom Johnson, would get a directing assignment once in a blue moon.

After work on Gulliver got underway and through the completion of "Mr. Bug" in 1941, there was literally a revolving door of head animators on the Popeye series, and on the other shorts, like Gabby and Hunky & Spunky. Some, like Culhane and Eugster and the longtime Fleischer regulars, also headed up their own units on the features and/or did the "Superman" series, while others may have gotten their jobs because the main units were too busy elsewhere. Also, Culhane talks about how he was trying to introduce Disney-style animation to the Fleischer studio, but was met with great resistance; it sounds like he's mainly talking about Bowsky and Kneitel here, but obviously Tyer was in no way interested in doing animaton Walt's way (nor, for that matter, were Avery or Clampett over at Warners). So he and Shamus may have been running in different circles at the time, with Culhane trying to teach "some of that space and volume s**t" (Nick Tafuri's quote, not mine), while Tyer was more focused on pulling his characters in any which way possible to get a laugh, hence the Clampett/Rod Scribner comparisons.

The overflow of work is probably how Tyer finally got his first head animator credit under Max and Dave (if I remember right now, it was on "Olive's Boitday Presink" but don't hold me to that), though his really wild side wasn't revealed until Dave Fleischer was gone and the Sparber/Gordon/Kneitel set-up began at Famous Studios and the introduction of West Coast animation techniques (and the arrival of World War II) forced the Paramount cartoons to speed things up to a more frantic pace.

[Sogturtle]

John~

Have searched through my own Fleischer sound filmography (compiled years and years ago), which is ALMOST complete credit-wise except for a very few "Animated Antics" of 1940-41. Regrettably still haven't turned up a Tyer credit...

One thing that's puzzled me always though is how a talented veteran like Roland "Doc" Crandall ended up as the underling to young Seymour Kneitel... Especially weird since "Doc" Crandall was the only credited animator on several Betty Boops, and the story is that he made at least the Fleischer "Snow White" all by himself!!! (He may have also been the surviving senior animator on these after others quit and their names removed). (In a related vein Shamus Culhane's name was replaced by Seymour Kneitels' on "Betty Boop's Bamboo Isle", though Culhane maintained his authorship of it till his dying day).

It grows stranger yet when we realize that VIRTUALLY (but not quite) every Kneitel helmed cartoon from mid-1933 until mid-1936 only ever bears the name of Roland Crandall beside that of Seymour Kneitel!!! Does this imply Crandall HAD to be given screen credit?? Or does it imply that Kneitel was actually co-directing these cartoons with "Doc" Crandall??

The final oddity is that Crandall suddenly starts turning up as the ONLY ANIMATOR (i.e. the HEAD ANIMATOR) on a number of cartoons seven months after disappearing out of the Kneitel unit!! And he remained as the only credited animator on these cartoons for exactly two years (till March 1939) before another name shows up after his!! Then in 1940 he receives a final credit UNDER Grim Natwick, and then vanishes from the Fleischer's forever...

As such Jim Tyer's exclusion from credits at Max's place doesn't seem quite as strange!! But then it get's more peculiar as several ex-MGM (Arnold Gillespie) and ex-Schlesinger-ites (Jim Davis) started receiving screen credit!!! As a matter of fact ex-MGM animator Arnold Gillespie even directed a few cartoons in 1940-41, and to my knowledge he had NO previous directing experience. Whereas of course Jim Tyer did have some experience as director...

[J Lee]

UM&M's credit shredding on many of the Betty Boops and Screen Songs makes accurate IDs of the head animator and chief assistant tougher, but Kenitel seemed to change from having Crandall as his partner to having William Henning as his No. 2 man on the 1937-38 Popeyes (who came in at the same time as Seymour, but was about 15 years older and not as good an artist, according to Culhane). Crandall may have done some work over on the late Betty Boops -- I think he is head animator on either "So Does An Automoble" or "Musical Mountaineers" from 1939 -- amd he does head animator credit on 1940's "Shaksperian Spinach," which also IMHO marks the start of the "Warnerization" of the Popeye series. But after that as you mentioned, he disappears from the credit list a short time later.

Nolan, Gillespie. Tom Johnson, Stanley Quackenbrush and even Henning are among the many others who got head animator credits between mid-1939 and the end of 1941, and there really doesn't seem to be much of a rhyme or reason why it was done, in terms of drawing style, story or animation (Culhane's work on "Popeye Meets William Tell" does look a little more polished than youre average 1939-41 Popeye animation, but Natwick's "Popeye Presents Eugene the Jeep" doesn't look any more Disneyesque than the cartoons that Avery's mentor, Bill Nolan was doing with his straght-ahead style. Go figure.).

Tyer is in the mix as head animator somewhere before mid-1941, and IIRC, he's credited as "James Tyer." But for whatever reason, his work doesn't look much different from all the other Popeyes that were rolling out of Miami at the time.

[Sogturtle]

Originally posted by J Lee
UM&M's credit shredding on many of the Betty Boops and Screen Songs makes accurate IDs of the head animator and chief assistant tougher, but Kenitel seemed to change from having Crandall as his partner to having William Henning as his No. 2 man on the 1937-38 Popeyes (who came in at the same time as Seymour, but was about 15 years older and not as good an artist, according to Culhane). Crandall may have done some work over on the late Betty Boops -- I think he is head animator on either "So Does An Automoble" or "Musical Mountaineers" from 1939 -- and he does get head animator credit on 1940's "Shaksperian Spinach," which also IMHO marks the start of the "Warnerization" of the Popeye series. But after that as you mentioned, he disappears from the credit list a short time later.

Nolan, Gillespie. Tom Johnson, Stanley Quackenbrush and even Henning are among the many others who got head animator credits between mid-1939 and the end of 1941, and there really doesn't seem to be much of a rhyme or reason why it was done, in terms of drawing style, story or animation (Culhane's work on "Popeye Meets William Tell" does look a little more polished than your average 1939-41 Popeye animation, but Natwick's "Popeye Presents Eugene the Jeep" doesn't look any more Disneyesque than the cartoons that Avery's mentor, Bill Nolan was doing with his straght-ahead style. Go figure.).

Tyer is in the mix as head animator somewhere before mid-1941, and IIRC, he's credited as "James Tyer." But for whatever reason, his work doesn't look much different from all the other Popeyes that were rolling out of Miami at the time.

John~

Actually my credits for the Fleischer sound filmography are not based solely on the surviving film credits... Long years ago I actually did go and look them all up and copy them all down from the Catalog of Copyright entries (anybody wanna talk eye-strain??? :):)). So these are the credits that were on the paperwork submitted by the Fleischers to the U.S. government and thus not subject to the much later whims of U.M.M.

Crandall (b. in 1892) was an experienced animator from the silent days, and thus like William Henning was substantially older than Culhane or Kneitel. As I inferred before, are we to take his being virtually the only animator credited beside Kneitel as just something done out of respect for his being the only survivor at Fleischer's of the first generation of animators?? Orrrrr can we wonder whether he was co-directing with Kneitel (not a likely theory but intriguing to muse upon).

Any-who, what is divulged is that on at least 8 out of the final 10 Screen Songs made, Roland "Doc" Crandall was the sole credited animator (read "head animator"). Two of them had no credits recorded, but we can guess that they were Crandall exercises also (for the previous 16 months Thomas Johnson had been the sole captain of the SS's). In 1939 Crandall also functioned as a director on "Gulliver's Travels" . As for the Bettys', Crandall does get to Boop away on "So Does An Automoble" , and regrettably on (yechhhh) "Pudgy In Thrills And Chills" and the Boop cartoon that Betty forgot to show up for... "Yip Yip Yippy" (subtitled "Somebody Kill That Dog!!" ;) ;) ). Not wanting to have those two Pudgy entries as his last directorial entries, Crandall then made "Shakespearian Spinach" almost certainly to scour and cleanse the memory of the infernal canine from his own mind as well as that of the innocent movie-going audience. His final known credit is indeed as a mere animator on Grim Natwick's Stone Age cartoon "The Fulla Bluff Man" (though undoubtedly he worked on several other cartoons earlier that year (1940) very likely under Grim Natwick, but tricky to prove as several credits are missing).

As for Br'er Jim Tyer... still haven't found a Fleischer screen credit, have been trying... Buuuuuut Warner alumnus Jim Davis does show up as "JAMES Davis" in the Bowsky unit in 1940... Maybe that is the JAMES you remember?? :confused: Regardless, the induction of Willard Bowsky, and the fact that Grim Natwick, Shamus Culhane, and Bill Nolan all quit about the same time, opened the door wide for Jim Tyer to come flying through as a long-awaited new head-animator, that is behind Steve Muffati. Hey!!! That would have been something... A Jim Tyer directed Superman!!!

[J Lee]

A Tyer Superman under Sparber's (very lax) supervision -- now that would be something to see, especially the action scene when Superman and the bad guys would start popping on and off the screen every time a ray was blasted or a punch was thrown.

BTW -- There's one other Famous Studio's Jim Tyer cartoon that deserves special mention on its own -- 1944's "Moving Aweigh" which was the last appearance of Shorty (voice tracked in New York with Arnold Stang handling the job) and has No director's credit! This had the potential to be an "The inmates have taken control of the asylum" type of thing, but since it wasn't a big action cartoon, Tyer couldn't go completely crazy, although the scenes of Olive's furniture continuiosly dropping on the cop and his nightstick solo with Popeye and the trash can lid are memorable.

As far as that elusive Flesicher credit, I wish I had access to all of the 1940-41 ship door Popeyes, because I'm positive Tyer did sneak in as head animator on one of the late ones (the "James" is the main point I remember, and I'm sure it wasn't James (Jim) Davis). But unless it happens to show up on one of the last two episodes of "The Popeye Show" coming up, I'll have to wait for the redrawns (yuck) to start reappearing on The Acme Hour, since Late Night Black & White is going on hiatus and AFAIK, there's no full animaton credit filmography for Paramount the way Beck and Friedwald did for the WB `toons.

[Sogturtle]

Originally posted by J Lee
A Tyer Superman under Sparber's (very lax) supervision -- now that would be something to see, especially the action scene when Superman and the bad guys would start popping on and off the screen every time a ray was blasted or a punch was thrown.

BTW -- There's one other Famous Studio's Jim Tyer cartoon that deserves special mention on its own -- 1944's "Moving Aweigh" which was the last appearance of Shorty (voice tracked in New York with Arnold Stang handling the job) and has No director's credit! This had the potential to be an "The inmates have taken control of the asylum" type of thing, but since it wasn't a big action cartoon, Tyer couldn't go completely crazy, although the scenes of Olive's furniture continuiosly dropping on the cop and his nightstick solo with Popeye and the trash can lid are memorable.
....

John~

We might be able to discuss 1944's "Moving Aweigh" for a wee while... Your description of the cartoon is very good (from my memory of the toon). But after checking through my Famous credits I've come to a sneaking hunch about this film... And that is that it probably did have a "DIRECTOR" but that his name was removed from the film before its initial release. When we take a look back at 1943 we find that Kneitel was credited with some 6 cartoons, Sparber with 5, and Dan Gordon with 5. But in addition to these it appears that the cartoon "No Mutton For Nuttin'" also was released without a director's credit in Nov. 1943. It is almost certain that "No Mutton For Nuttin'" was "directed" by Dan Gordon, but that his name was removed after he left the studio... If we can agree that that was likely the case, then it is only a small step to realizing that oft-times a studio would keep a director's very last film "in the can" (for whatever reasons) for months at a time (Columbia did it with Gould and Harrison's last toon). As such I would tend to suspect that "Moving Aweigh" is more sedate because Dan Gordon was the "director" and did exercise some control over Jim Tyer... But then again maybe there really was no official "director"...

NOW if there was a similar logical reason for the lack of a director credit on 1944's "A Self-Made Mongrel" which starred "Dogface" and was animated by Dave Tendlar and John Walworth... The common belief has been that Tendlar functioned without a"director" on it, which is most likely the case. Although since it came out only a few days after Bill Tytla's first "Snap Happy" (with Little Lulu) maybe we can postulate that it was either really made just by Tendlar, or was a tryout toon by Tytla...

[Thad Komorowski]

Originally posted by Sogturtle
NOW if there was a similar logical reason for the lack of a director credit on 1944's "A Self-Made Mongrel" which starred "Dogface" and was animated by Dave Tendlar and John Walworth... The common belief has been that Tendlar functioned without a"director" on it, which is most likely the case. Although since it came out only a few days after Bill Tytla's first "Snap Happy" (with Little Lulu) maybe we can postulate that it was either really made just by Tendlar, or was a tryout toon by Tytla...


Wasn't Dave Tendlar's first "official" directing of a cartoon 1953's "Drinks on the Mouse" (Herman & Katnip)?





-Thad

[J Lee]

Tim --

I thought about the possibility that Famous had followed the Schlesinger model and simplay made their ex-directors "non-persons" in the mode of Avery (and later Clampett and Jones). But, the problem I have with that is the voice artists.

When Paramount returned to New York, they gained access to new voice talent, or in the case of Mae Questel re-newed voice talent. Arnold Stang was one of those who was recruited by the studio for some early voice work, as Herman the Mouse, Tubby in the Little Lulu series and, in "Moving Awegh" as the voice of Shorty, which he didn't do in the first two cartoons with the character "Happy Birthdaze" and "Marry-Go-Round" which indicate to me both those cartoons were made in Miami.

AFAIK, Dan Gordon never made the trip back to New York when Paramount relocated the studio there. If that's the case, than unless Stang made a trip down to Miami to do voice work, the two wouldn't have met.

Mitigating circumstances -- On the other hand, Oilve doesn't speak in the cartoon, which may be either by design or due to the fact that they hadn't yet re-signed Ms. Questel to handle the role (the cartoon was released four months after "The Anvil Chorus Girl" which was the first Famous/Popeye to feature both she and Jackson Beck in the Olive and Bluto roles, but as you said, the release date could have been held up). And since Famous still went with the system of post-animation voice recording, the cartoon could have been done in Miami and then voice-tracked in New York (as I think the reverse was true for two 1939 Popeyes, "Customers Wanted" and "Leave Well Enough Alone" that were probably animated in New York with voice and music done in Miami). That would allow Gordon to have had a hand in the cartoon's animation but not in the recording session.

As for the Thad's question about Tendlar and direction, the answer is "Yes, but..." Going by the 'Tyer-testing' method (sorry for the pun) on the 1942-46 Popeyes, it's pretty clear that the head animator (Tyer, Tendlar, Waldman, Johnson, Eugster, etc.) was given far more leeway in designing the cartoon and timing it by Spaber (and Gordon) who did not come from the animation department than by Kneitel (and Tytla) who did.

As the 40s wore on and Tyer left for Terrytoons, it became harder to definitely spot a particular head animator's style -- Tyer's so far out there it's easy to tell his work on screen, even when muffled and shackled by Kneitel and Tytla -- so it's possible that Sparber may have played a stronger role in the look of his cartoons by the end of the decade and into the 1950s. But in general it seems that if a Tendlar or a Tyer was head animator on a Sparber cartoon, the cartoon is a lot more theirs than it was with Kneitel or Tytla, who seem to have played bigger roles in determiniing how the final prodcut would look, even if they didn't help the story along any. So "Drinks on the Mouse" was Tendlar's first official director's credit, but give Sparber's loose control, "Alona on the Sarong Seas" from 1942 or one of the last Fleischer cartoons after Dave Fleischer had bolted for California was probably his first real director's role (or more fully than the role he and the other head animators played under Dave Flesicher's supervisory role).

[Thad Komorowski]

That's what I wanted to know, thanks John!





-Thad

[Dub]

Wow @________________@




Thats pretty much all I can say ^^

I had no idea that all that was behind it. It sorta puts a whole new perspective on itand a few other toons. I never knew a lot of that stuff. Coolness :) I'm sorta interested in seeing Tokio Jokio now ^^

Here's a q (thats off topic from all the Tyer and Tytla talk) - why did Norman McCabe leave the WB Studios? Did he leave or was he let go? What were the circumstances? And since I'm talking about it - the same goes for Frank Tashlin.

[J Lee]

McCabe was drafted, which is why, like Sgt. Dave Monahan, his rank appears on "Tokio Jokio."

Of couse, if you go by Clampett's statement that Schlesinger "worked hard" to protect his key personnel from the draft, it sounds like Leon may have tossed a bone to the military by giving them McCabe, knowing that he not only had one of his ex-directors, Tashlin, back on staff, but also Art Davis just over from Columbia, either one of whom could be popped into that spot not only with no loss in quality, but with a likely increase (as turned out to be the case). This could be called addition by subtraction, and is pretty cynical if true, but Tashlin said Schlesinger never let personalities get in the way of his wallet...

[Sogturtle]

Originally posted by J Lee
McCabe was drafted, which is why, like Sgt. Dave Monahan, his rank appears on "Tokio Jokio."

Of couse, if you go by Clampett's statement that Schlesinger "worked hard" to protect his key personnel from the draft, it sounds like Leon may have tossed a bone to the military by giving them McCabe, knowing that he not only had one of his ex-directors, Tashlin, back on staff, but also Art Davis just over from Columbia, either one of whom could be popped into that spot not only with no loss in quality, but with a likely increase (as turned out to be the case). This could be called addition by subtraction, and is pretty cynical if true, but Tashlin said Schlesinger never let personalities get in the way of his wallet...

Annnnnd John, besides having Frank Tashlin and Art Davis, Leon had two more experienced directors yet for backup... Namely Manny Gould and Shamus Culhane (until he walked out), and if we get picky there was another yet, Lou Lilly, and then there was former director Cal Dalton. So with SIX experienced directors waiting in the wings, the still relatively inexperienced Norm McCabe may indeed have been viewed as "surplus" to the studio's needs... Though Leon would NEVER have fired him per se, as he had been with the studio forever by that point in time... His storyman Don Christensen was also drafted...

And Jon "W.B." Gray ... As for Frank Tashlin (and I hope I don't step on toooooo many toes here) was not dedicated to animation to nearly the degree of any of the other major (or even minor) directors. He had come to see it purely as a means to an end... His desire in life had come to be a director and writer of features. His start in features was slow though, so much so that he actually took a job briefly as a... cartoon director... at John Sutherland's... (Definitely a come-down from Warners!!!)

[Sogturtle]

John~

Should have had this on the last post...OOPS!
Your points on the voice track are good ones, and I think you fully answered the possibilities of Dan Gordon having "Directed" "Moving Aweigh" except for the vocal track.
Buuuuuut, Schlesinger/Warners was not alone in erasing the names of "directors" off of cartoons. MGM did the exact same thing on Hugh Harman's last cartoon "The Hungry Wolf" and even on Rudy Ising's final film "The Uninvited Pest" . And as on the post on Art Davis, Frank Tashlin took credit on the last two cartoons by Davis and/or Sid Marcus... The trend was definitely towards vaporizing the names of former employees.

And good ol' uncle W*lt made an art out of it by yanking the animation credit of Shamus Culhane from "Pinocchio", and that of Grim Natwick from the Sorcerer's Apprentice of "Fantasia". It appears he went almost nuts with the name removals on "Bambi" ... Bob Ogle, Preston Blair , Cornett Wood, Don Towsley, Robert Youngquist, Russ Dyson, James Escalante and many, many more.

Would Paramount/Famous do the same thing as Warners, MGM, Disney and Columbia...??? Nah of course not ;) ;)

[Sogturtle]

Since this thread started with the mention of the severe caricaturing of our WWII foes, the Japanese, then these three industrial posters would be appropriate about now (they were most likely designed by animators, were from an animator's estate).

http://images.andale.com/f2/119/112/7679233/1012481924761_21japa1aa.jpg

http://images.andale.com/f2/119/112/7679233/1012481923656_23tokioaa.jpg

http://images.andale.com/f2/119/112/7679233/1012481500773_20bluea1aa.jpg

[Do-Do]

Whoa...and I though "Tokio Jokio" was bad :eek: !

[Mibbitmaker]

Note how, in the 3rd one, Hitler and Mussolini look almost friendly, in contrast to the utterly dehumanized Japanese caricature. Yeeeesh!

Shows how racism did color(pun not intended!) that portrayal more than the others.

[Jack]

Originally posted by Mibbitmaker
Note how, in the 3rd one, Hitler and Mussolini look almost friendly, in contrast to the utterly dehumanized Japanese caricature. Yeeeesh!
Yeah, Hitler and Mussolini look funny, friendly, and even a tad dopey, but the Japanese guy (Tojo?) has pointy ears and fangs. I wonder if these posters gave little kids nightmares.



Jack :D

[Thad Komorowski]

Maybe cartoonists felt the Japanese needed to be caricatured the most, since they blew up Pearl Harbor and all. The third one looks like WB cartoonists made it.




-Thad

[J Lee]

The Dolper does look a might too happy in that third one for somebody who's supposed to be the Allies' mortal enemy.

There are a couple of ways to look at those charactures, as far as how Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo/Hirohito/Whatever are portrayed:

1.) Thad's theory that since Japan actually attacked the U.S. more hostility was directed towards them;

2.) The fact that Hitler and Mussolin's images were already well known to the people in the U.S. (if Harman and Ising could use them in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies they had to be newsreell perrenials by 1933), while Americans weren't as familiar with what the Japanese emporer or their military leader looked like;

3.) The fact that Mr. H and Il Duce looked more like us (at least "us" in 1941 terms) while Hirohito and Tojo looked foreign and therefore were safe to characture as nastily as possible.

There's probably a little bit of all three in there, especially No. 1 if the drawings were done in the months immediately following Pearl Harbor. After all, not too many Americans would have drawn good-looking picture of Osama in the past four months, either.

[Sogturtle]

These posters (and a bunch of very bland others) were VERY likely (as Thad wondered) all made by an animator-storyman who was (or had been) in the employ of Schlesinger/Warners during the earlier part of WWII . This same gentleman had also worked for Harman-Ising/MGM, Mintz/Columbia, and a long time at Disney, probably also a while for Iwerks. This gentleman evidently was one of the uncredited storymen for Schlesinger during the early part of WWII...