How did you get interested?

[Pilmedium]

How did you become interested in the theatrical cartoons you like now?

In the 1990s, I watched some Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, and then later decided to try other "classic" cartoons.

[Thad Komorowski]

Well for me, first I got hooked on Looney Tunes, then MGM, then Popeye, then Disney, then Walter Lantz, then Harveytoons, then the Pink Panther.


-Thad

[Do-Do]

When I was about 3 I started watching the WB, MGM, and Popeye cartoons on TNT, then as I got older I got interested in other classic cartoons and wanted to know more about them, got a bunch of books, found Jon's LT & MM site, and that takes me up to right now. :D

[Matt Yorston]

Oh, I dunno... it just "happened" in my case. I've always loved cartoons. I started watching them in 1984 (when I was two or three) and, well, you can pretty much guess my impression of them. I used to get a big kick out of the Disney, Lantz, and (but of course) Warner Bros. cartoons in my preschool years. I didn't get interested in the MGM cartoons until later in life (they were NEVER on TV where I lived and there were only a handful of MGM videos available). I think it was around circa 1990 when MGM took its toll in my lasting interest. I started out as a Tom & Jerry nut renting all four of their videos (the three volumes from 1982; plus their Cartoon Moviestars tape) and a year later, Tex Avery started getting my interest (I began renting TA's Screwball Classics Vols. 1 and 2).

The Paramount cartoons also didn't interest me until much later. They too were NEVER on TV and, well, they AREN'T any Paramount videos except the occasional Famous cartoon on a cheap public domain tape (which, thankfully, I didn't rent that often). In 1991, I started watching the syndicated "Casper & Friends" TV show and I wasn't entirely won over. It wasn't until 1996 when I started taking an interest in Famous Studios shorts (my interest in them growing largely due to Dave Mackey's filmography).

UPA was the most foreign to me for the largest time. Their shorts were never on TV (notice a trend here?), not even Mr. Magoo. In fact, I was first exposed to Mr. Magoo via his 1960's comic strip in book form. Finally, in 1996, YTV started airing the Mr. Magoo cartoons and I was really excited. As far as I was concerned, UPA was the ONLY classic cartoon studio I had not been familair with at all and gave Mr. Magoo a try. I didn't regret it. Mr. Magoo was a funny cartoon character to me. I don't think his cartoons are as repetitive as some claim. It's like the Road Runner series; same basic premise every time but new gags are always formed from that premise.

Last but not least, I should give a mention to the DePatie-Freleng cartoons which were on TV when I was five. The Pink Panther was by far my favorite with the Inspector a close second. Also shown were the Ant & Aardvark and Crazylegs Crane.

[Billy]

I grew up watching The 1970s Popeye Show,Tom and Jerry,'Meow Meows' (Couldn't say Merrie Melodies when I was little)Looney Tunes and the 1990s Pink Panthers.
I used to get very excited whenever the copyright date on a WB cartoon had 'MCMXXX<whatever>' in it!
I remember seeing a 1950s Popeye once-I was really surprised, considering I grew up on the later ones!

I got interested in cartoons in
late December,2001.I stumbled across the Censored Cartoons page,and was Interested about all the cuts. So when I decided to watch my first 'Toonheads' the next day,every quick fade out/fluid movement/strange ending I saw instantly made me think 'Edit!!!' :D

On New Years Day I thought I'd turn over to the Tom and Jerry New Years Day Marathon. I then took an interest in Tom and Jerry. Then Looney tunes. Then Popeye. By January 30th I knew that Merrie Melodies didn't change their name to Looney Tunes in c.1950,aap DIDN'T make the Popeye cartoons and Tex Avery didn't create Terrytoons!

[Gossamer]

I grew up in the 1960s, when afternoons and weekends were packed solid with cartoons and Bozo the Clown. No Phil, no Oprah, no Geraldo, even before I saw Sesame Street (we didn't get a PBS affiliate until the early 1970s). So I saw WB on Saturday mornings and Terrytoons, Lantz. MGM, Paramount, just about everything. Disney on Sunday nights. I graduated to other stuff when the station my mom worked for syndicated a package of independent shorts and I saw things like Is It Always Right To Be Right? (narrated by Orson Welles, no less), Legend of John Henry and Legend of Paul Bunyan. I've found two of the three. If I can just find Is It Always Right...! *sigh*

I like international animation too. In fact, if any of our Canadian members cn tell me where I can find most of Frederic Back's shorts (I only have Crac), I'd be most grateful.

[J Lee]

I was lucky enough to just come of age to remember things when ABC went on it's prime-time animation kick in the early 1960s, with the best being, of course, 7:30 p.m. EST on Tuesday nights, when "The Bugs Bunny Show" came on. That was (at the time) the only place to see the post-1948 Warners cartoons, until the syndication package went out in September 1964, so I can still remember when much of the 1948-1960s cartoons made there television debuts (in New York, on WNEW - Ch. 5)

Before that, WNEW had the rights to the pre-1948 WB color cartoons and the rights to the UM&M Fleischer/Famous cartoons, which aired in the afternoons, either on their own or as part of "The Sandy Becker Show" weekdays and "Wonderama" and "Just for Fun" on weekends. (They also picked up the Harveytoons package about the same time, since I never remember seeing it on ABC).

WPIX had the Popeye cartoons (hosted by Captian Jack McCarthy) and the Lantz shorts, though Ch. 11 was where most of the syndicated Hanna-Barbera stuff ended up dominating the afternoon schedule, along with the KFS cartoons and Officer Joe Bolton and "The Three Stooges". They occassionally aired the theatrical cartoons before Rocky & His Friends at lunchtime, on the Merry Mailman show (hosted by Ray Heatherton, who had a very nice looking daughter named Joey, but she wasn't on the show and I would have been way too young to appreciate her, anyway). They also ran the Superman cartoons on Sunday mornings (over and over and over -- there just weren't that many, so they tended to get pretty old after a while).

WOR (Ch. 9) had the pre-1944 B&W Looney Tunes and non-H&I Merrie Melodies (and, no, even in 1963 in New York, they didn't play Bosko), which aired weekday and Saturday mornings, while WABC (Ch. 7) had the pre-1948 non-Tom & Jerry MGM cartoons) which aired weekday mornings on the Tommy Seven Show opposite Captain Kangaroo (Tex Avery or Mr. Green Jeans -- not a real tough choice there. Unfortunately, they dumped the MGM package later in favor of Coragous Cat cartoons...)

In these days where everyone in the country pretty much gets the same channels, it doesn't really matter where you grow up, you're going to see just about the same thing in New York as you will in California, as you will in Illinois, as you will in Texas, etc. But back then growing up anyplace outside of New York or one of the big metro areas would have deprived you of a lot of classic animation, even if WNEW and WOR did give birth to all of today's censorship problems.

(WPIX was owned by the very conservative Republicans over at the Chicago Tribune. They never PCed-out anything of the Paramount/Lantz stuff, since their main censorship bugaboos were sex and religion not violence and racial sensativity, and the first two were already taken care of by the Hayes Office censors when the cartoons orignially came out. However, for some reason Ch. 11 had a bizarre fear of breaking the 'fourth wall' of a black & white cartoon and showing its theatrical roots. So "I Yam Love Sick," "Goonland," "Me Musical Nephews" and "The Hungry Goat" were never shown, but "Riot in Rhythm" and "How Green Was My Spinach" were. Go figure.)

[Geezil]

Four ways: (a) the original Woody Woodpecker Show (1957-58), which at age 3 - 3 1/2 gave me my first glorious memory of anything on TV ... and I thank you forever, Channel 10 in Rochester, NY, for placing the early Woody and Andy Panda in my line of sight at that very fateful early evening moment!

And apres Woody, le deluge, :D all on that same Channel 10:

(b) the daily B&W "Mousekartoons" on Mickey Mouse Club (and what other reason was there to keep watching faithfully, I ask you?), including "The Skeleton Dance" and "Steamboat Willie";

(c) the 1959(?) premiere of the AAP Popeye package five days a week, then including all the WWII shorts, as mind-boggling as that must seem nowadays; :eek:

and (d) -- found anywhere and everywhere on the Channel 10 schedule from 1960 onward (rained-out baseball games and movies that ran short were a special blessing this way) -- Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies!

[Mibbitmaker]

Whoa, we finally got to the "old timers" here like me ;)
I just watched lots of cartoons from childhood, and never stopped, really, due to my late '60s discovery that I had drawing ability and major interest (I dicovered the latter slightly earlier, drawing the stick figure from The Saint. I loved just looking at the opening/closing of that show!).

The WB stuff was a given. My favorite show was the Flintstones, and soon enough Popeye as well. I got to see others that I don't remember as clearly (Thus my major discovery here of the identity of Finegan's Flea). I originally got exposed mainly to the color Popeyes, mostly '50s it seems. Then (as I've said here before), I got a signal from further away, seeing b&w Popeyes for the first time. Not long after, all the theatrical Popeyes were airing locally.

I stayed in touch with WB cartoons and Popeyes into the 1980s (the b&w cartoons fading into nonexistance until the (&#$%@!!*&!) colorized ones showed up.

But it was cable TV and my first exposure to pre-1948 non-bw/colorized WB cartoons from that, coupled with, in a few months, the release of Roger Rabbit, that made me a real officionado of the LT/MMs. I still remember seeing Draftee Daffy for the 1st time (I'd read about it previously) on my birthday in December, 1988!