A Feud There Was: "A Body Can Get Away With Anything"

Release date: 9/24/1938 (according to BCDb)

DVD-Blu-Ray Availability: none

You may view this cartoon HERE.

Another sharp, smart and forward-reaching cartoon from the Fred Avery unit, A Feud There Was stresses speed, wit and barrier-breaking. On the heels of the superb Cinderella Meets Fella, this accentuates the positive in Avery's formal, rooted in past and future sensibility.

By this time, Avery knows how to follow the rules in order to best thwart and maim them. The immediacy he and his staff achieve makes this 77-year old cartoon still fresh and relevant.

"No Squat, No Stoop, No Squint"--Cinderella Meets Fella

Release date: 7/23/1938 (according to BCDb)

DVD-Blu-Ray Availability: as a bonus feature on the Warner Home Video boxed set, The Busby Berkeley Collection, Vol. 2)
You may view this cartoon HERE.

With this cartoon, the Fred Avery unit enters a strong period. Accomplished film-making technique, coupled with improving animation and a tight core group of voice, music and graphic talent gives Avery's cartoons a sudden authority.

Avery the cartoon director seems assured and in control of his comedic notions. This assurance is cloaked in a self-effacing nonchalance. Not for Avery was the zany grandstanding of a Bob Clampett, nor the stylistic indulgence of a Chuck Jones.

Compare Cinderella Meets Fella to the previous year's Little Red Walking Hood, and Avery's pronounced and expanding skill is strongly felt. He is humbly in control of a comedic universe that bends to his whims, and delights in surprising and amusing its audience.

Like Walking Hood, this film uses the title card-as-storybook motif, and wastes no time getting down to business:

Avery is still a bit trigger-happy, and rushes to debunk the simulation of sincerity with a cheerfully corny post-script...

By 1938, there had been a few cartoon versions of the Cinderella story, so audiences knew what to expect--which gives Avery and his team a familiar world to subvert and wring out.

Cinderella, who at times resembles "Cookie" from the pre-Avery "Buddy" cartoon series, is seen doing exactly what her story demands--cleaning house for her trio of entitled step-sisters. They make one brief appearance to taunt our heroine:

 The trio leans back in to invoke the radio-derived catchline "And I do... mean... YOU!"

 Cinderella is typically crestfallen.

The Isle of Pingo Pongo: Avery Creates Cartoon Tsunami; Inspires Countless Imitations

RELEASE DATE: May 28, 1938 (according to BCDb)
DVD-BluRay AVAILABILITY: none
You can download and view an uncut reissue version of this cartoon HERE.

Fred Avery marked his 25th cartoon 'anniversary' at Leon Schlesinger's studio with a short that sent shock waves through the film industry--and not just the animation world.

It also led to a depressing low point in his early career, as almost a dozen sequels to this innovative film bring his creativity to a screeching halt at the close of the 1930s.

Neither Avery or his audience could have foreseen this grim result in the late spring of 1938. At that time, this cartoon had more shock value and carpet-yanking surprise than any film in his career to date. Avery and credited storyman George Manuell (according to this recently-unearthed original title card) struck a raw nerve in live-action cliches--one that floored its first audiences.

By this time, Lowell Thomas' Going Places shorts had offered filmgoers three years' worth of oft-patronizing mini-tours of far away locales, anchored in the news commentator's relentless narration. Alas, none of these shorts are currently available for viewing on the web, to make a study of Avery's satire more complete. Suffice to say that the films' purple-prose narration and condescending examination of other cultures were an established film trope, by 1938, and thus ripe for savaging.

As with many of the Avery unit's early triumphs at Schlesinger, this cartoon suffers from over-familiarity. Its gently sarcastic tone was wholly absorbed into Hollywood film-making, and cast a large shadow over much film comedy to come.

This cartoon has been off the air since at least 1968, as one of the infamous "Censored 11." It contains a great deal of iffy racist humor, for which more sensitive readers and viewers are hereby advised. No Leonard Maltin apology here; this is just the way it was in late 1930s America. The cartoon was unaltered for a 1944 reissue--late in the game for such insensitive portrayals of non-Caucasian peoples.

That the cartoon is still funny and somewhat fresh is a pleasant surprise. Perhaps this is because it hasn't had the chance to be played to death on TV or home video (although versions exist on various VHS tapes and digital discs).