Check Out Jerry Beck's Paramount Titles Site!

[Thad Komorowski]

He's added some nifty titles, including the original Casper and Noveltoon (from the mid-1950s) title cards! Check it out!

http://www.cartoonresearch.com/paramount.html


-Thad

[Jack]

Yeah, it is great!

Paramount had some nice looking titles. I can't wait for more, he said he'd bring back some of the sections he had gotten rid of.



Jack :D

[Thad Komorowski]

What I'd like to see is what logo Herman originally pulled across the screen in the early 1950s Herman & Katnip cartoons. I think the cartoons might have opened like this:

1. Screen fades in to Herman, than Katnip tries to pounce him, with Herman jumping from his reach

2. Herman pulls across the Paramount mountain logo

3. Screen dissolves to HERMAN & KATNIP logo

4. Screen dissolves to the Famous Studios logo

5. Screen dissolves to animation credits, with a drawing of Herman in a tuxedo

6. Screen dissolves to scenics and music credits, with drawings of Herman and Katnip

7. Screen dissolves to director credit, with a drawing of when "Katnip, the cat, packs his bag and leaves the house"

8. Screen dissolves to title card


I'm pretty sure this is how they originally began, since the theme song is long enough to fit all of these. #1, 5-7 are still intact in Harvey prints. When Jerry updates his site, I'd really appreciate seeing these titles!



-Thad

[Jon Cooke]

Originally posted by Thad K
He's added some nifty titles, including the original Casper and Noveltoon (from the mid-1950s) title cards! Check it out!

http://www.cartoonresearch.com/paramount.html


That was a great update. Can't wait to see more!


-Jon

[J Lee]

Jerry can answer the question for sure, but it looks like the title card for the 1952-55 cartoons (with the "Skiddle Diddle Dee" lyrics) was done minus the character images. The one Harveytoons put on all of the Herman and Katnips apparently came from the version Paramount used for the 1956-59 period, when the opening theme music was shortened, shorn of it lyrics, and the Famous Studios logo was removed.

The new opening titles were a good 15-20 seconds shorter than the early 1950s ones for H&K (and for Casper, too), so there may have been some quick cuts in there instead of slow fades from one title to the next, which is the case with the early 1960s Noveltoons and Modern Madcaps that still have their orinigial titles.

(Also it was nice to see Jerry post the title card for the Modern Madcap "Nearsighted and Far Out," since that was the cartoon I was mentioning in another thread we got to see cells of during a first grade class trip to the Paramount cartoon studio, and one I didn't see again until Nick aired it 30 years later. A real blast from the past...)

[Argus Sventon]

Seems the Paramount font wasn't always uniform in the opening titles. Anyone know why they had different fonts for various series?

[Thad Komorowski]

Jerry Beck also told me that he's working on posting frame grabs from a 35mm print of a 1951 Casper cartoon, since he's helping me a lot with my under construction Harvey site.


-Thad

[Dave Mackey]

Originally posted by Thad K
He's added some nifty titles, including the original Casper and Noveltoon (from the mid-1950s) title cards! Check it out!

http://www.cartoonresearch.com/paramount.html


-Thad

Jerry has got a ton of stuff. I'm glad to be at least getting frame grabs from some of the Par originals. I doubt anyone's gonna be showing the films again.

[Dave Mackey]

Originally posted by J Lee
Jerry can answer the question for sure, but it looks like the title card for the 1952-55 cartoons (with the "Skiddle Diddle Dee" lyrics) was done minus the character images. The one Harveytoons put on all of the Herman and Katnips apparently came from the version Paramount used for the 1956-59 period, when the opening theme music was shortened, shorn of it lyrics, and the Famous Studios logo was removed.

"Mouse Trapeze" (Sparber) was the last with the old theme music, and "Mousieur Herman" (Tendlar) was the first with the new. Both are 1955 cartoons.

Casper's titles underwent a makeover at the same time. "Boo Kind To Animals" may have been the first Casper with the new shorter theme music. So did the Noveltoons, with "Little Audrey Riding Hood" being the first with newer music. (There's a weird cut in the Harvey print of this one. After the Harvey Films signature, there's a "Little Audrey" title card, then a jump cut to a different "Featuring Little Audrey" title, and then a fade into the credits! Then a jump cut to the title card with masked-out Paramount copyright.)

Ironically, this time period also seems to have been the cutoff point for AAP cuts of Popeye cartoons as well! "Car-azy Drivers" was the last Popeye to have AAP titles retrofitted, and the first one to be seen only as a Paramount was "Cops Is Tops".

[Thad Komorowski]

Originally posted by Dave Mackey
"Mouse Trapeze" (Sparber) was the last with the old theme music, and "Mousieur Herman" (Tendlar) was the first with the new. Both are 1955 cartoons. Casper's titles underwent a makeover at the same time. "Boo Kind To Animals" may have been the first Casper with the new shorter theme music.

Hey thanks, Dave! I needed that information!


-Thad

[J Lee]

"Boo Kind to Animals" was the first with the new music, and "Red, White and Boo" was the last Casper with the title lyric opening. For the first year of the "new openings" the logo for "A Famous Studios Production" was still part of the opening titles, but at least on the original title print of "Swab the Duck" I saw, it was reduced down from the standard graphic Famous began using in late 1945 to a small white-on-black logo towards the upper left hand corner of the screen.

"Nearly Weds" is the last Popeye cartoon to carry the Famous Studios logo, from early 1957 (and the first to lose the "Color By Technicolor" graphic, BTW), so I would guess the other Paramount cartoons lost the logo about the same time. Considering how short Sharples' new themes for Casper and Herman and Katnip were, it must have been tough to squeeze it into the titles during the late 1955-1956 releases ("Swab the Duck" uses the new, but longer, Noveltoons theme).

[Jerry Beck]

Thanks for the comments!

I just added some new images on the page for PARAMOUNT IN THE 1960s - due to readers requests! THE CAT, ABNER THE BASEBALL and NUDNICK have rightfully joined the group.

Glad you guys share my fondness - and insanity - for original titles!

[Matt Yorston]

Hey, Jerry, do you think you could post some images from one of the 5 theatrical Beetle Bailey cartoons Paramount made (all others were strictly television fare)? I'm kind of a Beetle Bailey nut so I'd like to see what the animated treatment would look like on the character.

How about "Hero's Reward"?

[Argus Sventon]

Hopefully he'll post some Color Classic openings too.

[Pietro]

It was very interesting to finally being able to see the original Nudnik title cards.:)

-Pietro:D

[Jerry Beck]

The BEETLE BAILY theatricals (as well as the SNUFFY SMITH & KRAZY KAT Comic Kings) are exactly like the TV cartoons - in fact they are all part of the King Features package.

I may post some COLOR CLASSICS titles in a month or two - to tie in with the DVD release...

The only 1960s original title I can't find is JEEPERS & CREEPERS - I have the Harvey prints (New Casper Cartoon Show versions - retitled as a Modern Madcap).

[BobChief]

Originally posted by Thad K
What I'd like to see is what logo Herman originally pulled across the screen in the early 1950s Herman & Katnip cartoons. I think the cartoons might have opened like this:
[etc.]

A rarity for Paramount toons (unless you throw in the ones they did for KFS's Popeye TV package...), having the director (usually Kneitel) all by his lonesome on a page...

[J Lee]

The director -- and storymen (!) -- got their own title card during the opening credits for the Little Lulu series, which continued on into the Little Audrey, Herman & Katnip and Casper series. Apparently, Paramount wasn't so budget concious about their opening titles in the 1940s and early 1950s, and were willing to use up some extra Techincolor processing in exchange for a catchy lyric (though for some reason they hacked a big three seconds off the opening Popeye and Noveltoon themes in 1948 -- someone must have been ticked off because they lost that theater block booking case before the Supreme Court that year or something...)

[Bobby B]

Originally posted by Jerry Beck
I just added some new images on the page for PARAMOUNT IN THE 1960s - due to readers requests! THE CAT, ABNER THE BASEBALL and NUDNICK have rightfully joined the group.



What exactly is "Abner the Baseball"? All I know about it is that it's a 2-reeler.