Don't Look Now: Half-Strength Avery Better Than None, Alleged Expert Sez

RELEASE DATE:
the unreliable IMDb gives a release date of 12/30/1936 for this film. BCDb says 11/7/1936 is the release date. They give 4/10/1948 for its Blue Ribbon re-issue, which is the version that survives today.

DVD/BLU-RAY AVAILABILITY:
NONE AT PRESENT

You can watch a decent color print of this cartoon HERE. Thanks to Devon Baxter for his help with this. If you're not familiar with this cartoon, please watch before you read--thanks!

Like the earlier I'd Love To Take Orders From You, this film is Avery at half-strength. It's another attempt to make an appealing mass-market Technicolor cartoon. That it's done with greater humor and film-making attests to Avery's constant ambition to grow as a creator and show his colleagues and rivals what he could do.

Unlike the earlier cartoon, Don't Look Now has a more pointed, direct narrative, and takes advantage of every attempt to cram something funny into its footage. In retrospect, knowing what lays ahead for the Avery unit in their 1937 films, this cartoon seems less impressive than it ought to.

Milk And Money: Lightning Strikes Twice--To The Keester

RELEASE DATE:
shown at the Strand Theatre in New York on 9/28/36.

Other dates given are 10/3/36 or 12/28/1936 (according to IMDb, which has proven itself, ahem, a mite unreliable)

DVD/BLU-RAY AVAILABILITY:
Looney Tunes Golden Collection,
Vol. 5 (Warner Brothers DVD 112172)

You can watch a nice black-and-white print of this cartoon HERE. If you're not familiar with this cartoon, please watch before you read--thanks!

In popular entertainment, lightning always attempts to restrike. If Movie A, Song A, or TV Series A proves a success, a rehash is always urged by the highers-up. Apparently, thus was the case with Avery's earlier picture, Porky the Rainmaker. In this case, it was willingly done, and the results show a strong step forward in Avery's skillset as a cartoon film-maker.

The Village Smithy: Consider That Fourth Wall Busted, Folks! And...Introducing Carl W. Stalling*

RELEASE DATE:
12/5/1936 (according to the unreliable IMDb, and most other Internet sources)

DVD/BLU-RAY AVAILABILITY:
Porky Pig 101 (WHV 5-DVD set)

A crappy-quality 1990s colorized version of this cartoon can be seen HERE, as part of a collection on archive.org. Thanks to reader "clark" for spotting this version. Due to WB's recent pogroms of their classic cartoons from YouTube, it's newly hard to see many of these early pieces.

This brings up an unavoidable pre-essay thought. It seems ridiculous to me that so many corporate copyright holders (a) have no interest in preserving or making available their archives and (b) strive so hard to keep people from seeing their holdings. This goes for the major music moguls, all movie studios, and book publishers. They seem stubbornly resistant to the fact that there IS interest in this stuff, and that, if they made even the feeblest attempt to offer it publicly, it would be greeted with positive response, which would, in turn, make the greedy gits look good (or as close to good as they might ever appear).

It seems to me that a win-win situation for these monoliths is to let this stuff stay up on YouTube, etc., in the belief that it will create a new market for these vintage pieces. If/when a legal, official version is commercially released, they'd have every right to crack down on poachers. If they only want to hoard these gems, and keep people from seeing them, then they're going to look like selfish, arrogant jerks.

End of soapbox sermon. Now, on with the show...

Porky The Rainmaker: Cause-and-effect Comedy in Stark Black and White

RELEASE DATE:
8/1/1936

DVD/BLU-RAY AVAILABILITY:
Porky Pig 101 (WHV 5-dvd set)

You can watch a 1990s-era colorized print of this cartoon HERE. If you're not familiar with this cartoon, please watch before you read--thanks!

After the status symbol of having directed three color cartoons in a row, the Fred Avery unit went back to black-and-white for the Avery unit.

This is not one of Avery's greatest cartoons. It does introduce a couple of important comedic tools to its maker's belt.

I Love To Singa: A Merrier Melodie, Much Beloved

RELEASE DATE:
7/18/1936

DVD/BLU-RAY AVAILABILITY:
Looney Tunes Golden Collection,
Vol. 2 (Warner Brothers DVD 31284)

You can watch a decent color print of this cartoon HERE. If you're not familiar with this cartoon, please watch before you read--thanks!

         <><><>

This is the earliest cartoon of Tex Avery's that everyone knows. It has  an underground reputation, and resultant street-cred, in the rap and hip-hop community. Rap "remixes" of the musical scenes can be found on YouTube. In the media mainstream, the cartoon was memorably parodied on the hyper-popular, button-pushing South Park TV series.

Its inclusion on the high-selling second volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection series introduced it to a new generation, while us older fogies fondly recall it from blurry, scratchy, salmon-red TV prints of the 1970s and '80s.

I Love To Singa revisits the basic narrative of Avery's first color cartoon, I'd Love To Take Orders From You, but with an important change. Amidst the very funny and sharply timed actions of this musical cartoon is the eternal conflict between father and child, old guard and new wave.

This was one of Avery's pet themes, and he returns to it several times in his animation career. This cartoon is, I believe, his finest version of this scenario.

(Page) Miss Glory: A Reluctant Excursion Into Style

RELEASE DATE:
6/9/1936

DVD/BLU-RAY AVAILABILITY:
Looney Tunes Golden Collection,
Vol. VI (Warner Brothers DVD 115871)

You can watch a nice color print of this cartoon, with commentary by Will Friedwald, HERE. If you're not familiar with this cartoon, please watch before you read--thanks!

As I anticipated (and dreaded) when I began this blog, it has proven difficult to look beyond the mere trainspotting of facts, figures and rumors that seem to obsess many fans of classic animation.

That is not what this blog is about. I hate to repeat myself, but I guess I must. My sole intention with this blog is to examine the development of Fred "Tex" Avery as a humorist, movie-maker and pop-culture influence. It is not to determine who did what, when, where, or why.

Yes, animation is a team effort. Yes, some talented and very significant animation figures worked on these cartoons. Yes, there was behind-the-scenes intrigue. You can find that information readily elsewhere on the Internet. What you'll find here is MY personal look at the developmental efforts of a great film-maker. Please respect what I'm trying to do here. Thank you.

I'd Love To Take Orders From You: Avery's First Technicolor Cartoon, If Nothing Else...

RELEASE DATE:
5/25/1936

DVD/BLU-RAY AVAILABILITY:
none at present

An on-line color version can be viewed HERE.

If you're not familiar with this cartoon, please watch it now before reading my analysis. Thanks!

Avery's sudden promotion to the Technicolor Merrie Melodies series shows that he had impressed Leon Schlesinger with his first three black-and-white cartoons. I'd Love To Take Orders From You completely suppresses the creative urges that shine through those first efforts.

Perhaps this was by choice. The stakes were higher for these larger-budgeted Technicolor cartoons. They typically flogged a recent song from the Warner Brothers popular music catalog. More attention was paid to the Merrie Melodies by the front office, and expectations for more crowd-pleasing (i.e., bland) content were perhaps encouraged.