Old Cartoon Classics tape

[Tom41]

I recently picked up an old 'Cartoon Classics' VHS tape at a yard sale, and am not sure what to make of it! That's why I decided to post here. It looks like it has some of the earliest Felix the Cat cartoons, along with a couple of Lantz Woody Woodpecker cartoons and some others which I can't make sense of.
Below is a list of the cartoons on the tape, the names in brackets are the production companies appearing in the titles.

Felix: Bold King Cole (Gillett's Rainbow Parade)
Untitled B/W Felix (Unknown)
Felix: Neptune Nonsense (Gillett's Rainbow Parade)
Felix: The goose that laid the golden egg (Gillett's Rainbow Parade)
Woody: Woody plays Santa Claus (Castle Films)
Woody: Pantry Panic (Lantz)
???: The Wee Men (Famous Studios)
???: Leprachauns' Gold (Famous Studios)

The prints on this tape are faded and blurry, and it's often impossible to read the direction and animation credits! I also have no idea if the cartoons have censor cuts or not, but there's certainly some bad editing of the beginnings and endings!

The B/W Felix cartoon has no title, credits or ending card.

The Woody cartoons appear to have their original titles cut off and replaced with television version titles. Woody Plays Santa Claus has an unusual ending card. At the top it says "A WALT LANTZ CARTUNE" (notice the space between T and L). My guess is it originally said "WALTER LANTZ" but they blacked out the ER!
And they still can't spell Cartoon :D

The final cartoon (Leprachauns' Gold) is very odd - the first thing you see is "A NovelToon" (which seems to have something blacked out at the top), which pans to the Famous Studios title. It also seems to have its ending missing! The cartoon abrubtly cuts to black just as the gold is turning into bees!

Can anyone shed some light onto what's on this tape?
If you like I'll post some screen grabs from this tape. I can't do AVI files though, mainly due to the fact my capture card is too slow to capture motion video! I also don't have the space necessary to upload AVI files.

[Jack]

Originally posted by Tom41
The Woody cartoons appear to have their original titles cut off and replaced with television version titles. Woody Plays Santa Claus has an unusual ending card. At the top it says "A WALT LANTZ CARTUNE" (notice the space between T and L). My guess is it originally said "WALTER LANTZ" but they blacked out the ER!
And they still can't spell Cartoon :D
That cartoon is actually called "Ski For Two" from 1944. When Castle Films got the rights to distribute the Lantz cartunes to the home movie market, they inexplicably retitled most of them. Also, most 40s Lantz cartunes billed Walter Lantz as "Walt Lantz."


Originally posted by Tom41
The final cartoon (Leprachauns' Gold) is very odd - the first thing you see is "A NovelToon" (which seems to have something blacked out at the top), which pans to the Famous Studios title. It also seems to have its ending missing! The cartoon abrubtly cuts to black just as the gold is turning into bees!
It would have said "Paramount Presents" over the Noveltoon name. When the pre 1950 non-Popeye Paramount cartoons were sold to UM&M/NTA in the mid 1950s, Paramount demanded that thier name be removed from the cartoons. At the time, movie studios were ashamed of having thier logos appear on the TV screen. The end was probably chopped off because it would have featured the Paramount logo.

Leprachauns' Gold was released in 1949 and was directed by Bill Tytla, and The Wee Men came out in 1947 and was also directed by Bill Tytla. Both are Paramount Noveltoons.

P.S. the Rainbow Parade cartoons were all made by the Van Beuren Studios. All three of the ones on your tape came out in 1936, which, going by "Of Mice and Magic's" filmography of the studio, seems to be the last year Van Beuren released any cartoons. Bold King Cole was directed by Burt Gillett, and the other two were directed by Tom Palmer.


Jack :D

[Tom41]

Originally posted by Jack
The end was probably chopped off because it would have featured the Paramount logo.

Maybe, but it still seems odd to me. There's no iris-out or even a fade to black, its as if the master VT just stopped suddenly before the end of the cartoon! We don't get to see what happened to the villian after the gold turned into bees.

[Jack]

Originally posted by Tom41
Maybe, but it still seems odd to me. There's no iris-out or even a fade to black, its as if the master VT just stopped suddenly before the end of the cartoon! Actually, that could be what happened. Public domain tapes are renowned for thier shoddyness sometimes, and I have one or two where cartoons actually end half way through. I have a PD tape with Leprachauns' Gold somewhere in my closet. I'll try looking for it a little later and check it out to see how it ends.


Jack:bosko:

[David Gerstein]

BTW, if the untitled Felix cartoon involves him running for president of the nation's cats, then traveling to Saturn and Mars, it's 1928's ASTRONOMEOWS. For some reason, this particular BW Felix was frequently paired with the three color Van Beurens on 1980s public domain tapes.

[Billy]

Yes, this is all very similar to a 4 tape PD set I managed to buy once. A redrawn 'The Impatient Patient' is suddenly hijacked 1 minute early by a 'That's All Folks!' end card (From a 1942 Merrie Melodie). When I found another PD tape later on (Eww, was THIS one bad. The sound seriously sounded like someone was speaking through a tin can, in a cave, with a reverse echo on it. It had Scrap Happy Daffy on, but it's a useless copy thanks to the awful, awful sound) I finally managed to see what happened after that big explosion. They don't know me very well, do they?

[Tom41]

Here are a few screen caps of the titles. I hope you can see at least how bad the prints are!
http://www.suneet.com/soniczone/sonic_underground/temp/tz/NOVEL.JPG
http://www.suneet.com/soniczone/sonic_underground/temp/tz/FAMOUS.JPG
http://www.suneet.com/soniczone/sonic_underground/temp/tz/WALT.JPG
http://www.suneet.com/soniczone/sonic_underground/temp/tz/RAINBOW.JPG
PS. If these are taking up too much space in the topic, PM me and I'll convert them to hyperlinks

Oh, and the B/W Felix cartoon IS the one where he runs for president then goes to Mars and Saturn. Furthermore, the 'Wee Men' Noveltoon doesn't even have its Noveltoon title, it just cuts straight from an NTA card into the Famous Studios mountain.

[absolutpaul]

I have an old Kids Klassics tape that has those Felix cartoons on it. Astronomeows is tinted a bright red. It has its titles, but the red tint is so overwheming that you can hardly see the picture.

In reality, Ski for Two was never in the public domain. Technically, neither was "Woody Plays Santa", but someone figured that no one would notice this - and apparently no one has.