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Director: Earl Hurd
Release Date: January 24, 1919
Stars: Bobby Bumps & Fido
Rating: ★★★
Review:
‘Bobby Bumps’ Last Smoke’ starts with Earl Hurd’s hand drawing Bobby Bumps, tickling him on the way. Then finished he gives the boy a cigarette, and immediately the scenery sets in.
Bobby starts smoking enthusiastically, but soon gets dizzy and throws the cigarette away. The cigarette smoke transfers him and Fido to a sultan’s palace in a 1001 Arabian night version of Turkey. The duo rescue a lady from the Sultan’s dungeons, with Bobby knocking out all the guards, and some lions, with the lady’s former ball and chain. He earns the damsel’s kiss in reward, which turns out to be Fido licking him.
Now, one would suspect that ‘Bobby Bumps’ Last Smoke’ is a typical anti-smoking cartoon, with Bobby giving up smoking after this trippy experience. But no, the one thing he’ll never do again isn’t smoking, but “insulting a sultan”. And so, with this pun, the short ends.
‘Bobby Bumps’ Last Smoke’ boasts elaborate human designs and intricate background art, but as with most animated cartoons from the 1910s, the animation is limited and jumpy.
‘Bobby Bumps’ Last Smoke’ is available on the Blu-Ray/DVD-combo ‘Cartoon Roots: Bobby Bumps and Fido’
Directors: Max & Dave Fleischer
Release Date: July 6, 1920
Stars: Ko-Ko the Clown
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
‘The Clown’s Little Brother’ is one of the Fleischer brothers’ earliest films, when they were still working at Bray Studio.
The film stars Max Fleischer as the artist drawing Ko-Ko the clown, who’s only known as ‘the inkwell clown’ in this cartoon. Interestingly, as soon as Max tries to draw the character, his pen fails and Ko-Ko jumps out of the glass in which Max washes his pen. Immediately thereafter Max gets his mail, which strangely enough contains a live kitten. The Inkwell Clown gets a letter, too, stating that his kid brother arrives in another mail package. But Ko-Ko’s kid brother turns out to be a cheeky brat and Max leaves.
Undeterred, Ko-Ko tries to entertain the little kid with his antics, but the boy easily outperforms the clown, not in the least because he’s 100% animated, while Ko-Ko is partly rotoscoped. Thus the kid’s movements are wilder, less realistic and more impossible than Ko-Ko’s. At one point Ko-Ko falls off the piece of paper, and on the kitten, who plays with the poor cartoon character. At that point the kid brother shows his kinder side, and rescues Ko-Ko from the clutches of the feline foe. Yet, their antics end when Max returns, and the bottle of ink falls on the floor.
‘The Clown’s Little Brother’ is by all means an action rich and entertaining short, and shows that the Fleischers brothers were very competent players in the field. Fleischer’s inkwell clown was a sensation back then because of his fluid movements, based on Max Fleischer’s rotoscope invention. But in this cartoon Max Fleischer shows to be a competent animator without the aid of rotoscope, as well. For example, when the kid brother tries to pull Ko-Ko out of the inkwell, one can sense some pulling force.
Watch ‘The Clown’s Little Brother’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘The Clown’s Little Brother’ is available on the DVD-set ‘Popeye the Sailor 1941-1943’
Director: Max Fleischer
Release Date: 1920
Rating: ★★★★½
Review:
‘All Aboard for a Trip to the Moon’ is a very early educational animation short. The short was animated by Max Fleischer at the Bray Studios, and apparently part of a series called ‘Goldwyn Bray Pictograph – The Magazine on the Screen’. For this short Fleischer got assistance of the Popular Science Monthly for the scientific details.
In less than 8 minutes ‘All Aboard for a Trip to the Moon’ tells about a hypothetical trip to the moon, telling us how far the moon is, and how to overcome the Earth’s gravity by using a radium-propelled rocket. Fleischer depicts quite a hard, bouncing landing of the rocket on the moon, and it’s never revealed how the vessel would be able to return to Earth, but we get some nice and convincing shots of the moon’s landscape and earth from the moon itself.
Fleischer’s drawings and animations are combined with live action footage, e.g. of a man handling radium, and another one getting dressed for the trip. Apparently in 1920 the scientists deemed a thick fur coat and a gas mask enough protection in outer space…
The short also states that radium alone can create the force to overcome the Earth’s gravity, while the Saturn V rockets that eventually would put man on the moon were fueled by a modified form of kerosene, and in 1920 kerosene itself was already well-known…
Anyhow, scientific errors aside, ‘All Aboard for a Trip to the Moon’ is an entertaining piece of infotainment. It not only predates Disney’s similar futurist television specials, like ‘Man and the Moon‘ (1955) with a staggering 35 years, it also gives an insight look in how space travel was perceived in the 1920s.
‘All Aboard for a Trip to the Moon’ is available on the Thunderbean Blu-Ray ‘Fleischer Rarities’
Director: Walter Lantz
Release Date: February 27, 1920
Stars: Jerry on the Job
Rating: ★★★★
Review
‘The Wrong Track’ is a short gag cartoon featuring ‘Jerry on the Job’, apparently a little kid doing all kinds of jobs.
In this short he’s a train engineer, who’s scolded by his boss of killing too many animals on the train track. And indeed, only a few seconds after leaving the train station Jerry encounters a cow, which after some action is killed.
The short features quite some funny gags and ends with a great punchline. The designs are simple, but pleasant and Walter Lantz’s animation is fair and effective. ‘The Wrong Track’ may not be a masterpiece, it’s a fun bit of early animation, and certainly one of the better shorts from this era.
The Wrong Track’ is available on the Thunderbean Blu-Ray/DVD-combo ‘Technicolor Dreams an Black & White Nightmares’
Director: Wallace Carlson
Release Date: January 9, 1919
Stars: Us Fellers
Rating: ★★★
Wallace Carlson (1894-1967) was a comic strip artist, who had a brief career as an animator from 1914 to 1921. Carlson joined the Bray studio in 1917, for which he created the ‘Us Fellers’ series. The series stars a boy character called Dreamy Dud, whom Carlson had conceived earlier.
Dud is a boy who breaks his bank (and unfortunately the one coin therein) to buy his girlfriend Mamie some ice cream. But instead he’s punished and sent to bed without supper. At night Dud sneaks out and first imagines how his mother gets filled with remorse, while he finds a treasure. But then the figments of his imagination turn into scary monsters, and he runs home, only to get spanked.
‘Dud Leaves Home’ is a well-told film, with great attention to the child’s world and imagination. The night scenes show some pretty background art. The animation, on the other hand, is rather stiff and robotic, especially when compared to Earl Hurd’s or Raoul Barré’s animation from the same era.
Carlson left animation in 1921 to concentrate on comic strips again, creating the highly successful comic strip series ‘The Nebbs’ in 1923.
Watch ‘Dud Leaves Home’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Dud Leaves Home’ is available on the DVD ‘Before Walt’
Director: Earl Hurd
Release Date: November 20, 1918
Stars: Bobby Bumps
Rating: ★★★★
In ‘Before and After’ Bobby Bumps tricks his father into buying a hair restoring lotion, with the help of his pooch Fido and two other dogs.
Bobby spends his father’s dollar on ice cream, but gets spanked in the end by father’s scalp massage machine.
This is a charming short cartoon, full of elegant designs and fine animation, even if it remains as stiff and repetitive as that of contemporary cartoons. But at least the poses look lifelike.
‘Before and After’ is available on the DVD ‘Before Walt’
Director: Paul Terry
Release Date: August 25, 1916
Stars: Farmer Al Falfa
Rating: ★
In this very short animated cartoon a near-sighted British hunter called Sir Henry Bonehead comes poaching at farmer Al Falfa’s game reserve.
The hunter even shoots at Al Falfa, thinking the bearded man is a goat. In the end the farmer disposes of both hunter and his black servant.
This short shows that quality never has been in Paul Terry’s vocabulary. The story makes no sense, there’s no plot to speak of, the gags are lame, and the animation stiff as hell. Others at the Bray studio could do better, much better.
Watch ‘Farmer Al Falfa’s Revenge’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Farmer Al Falfa’s Revenge’ is available on the DVD ‘Before Walt’
Director: Earl Hurd
Release Date: September 17, 1917
Stars: Bobby Bumps
Rating: ★★½
The Bobby Bumps series was conceived and drawn by Earl Hurd, the inventor of cel animation, and his series is the first to employ this new technique.
‘Bobby Bumps starts for School’ is the 23rd entry in the series, and this film transcends the tiresome dullness of the limited animation dominating the cartoons of the 1910s with the charm of the drawings.
Bobby Bumps has to go to school. First he’s washed by his ma, then we watch him walking to school, carrying ridiculously large books on his back. At school he imagines himself playing ball with his dog Fido (visualized on his desk). The body of the film involves some antics with the school bell and the headmaster. The film ends with a little mouse writing ‘Earl Hurd’.
‘Bobby Bumps Starts for School’ is full of clever ideas and elegant, if very limited animation. Especially the animation on Fido’s walk is very well done. Throughout it’s clear that Earl Hurd knows how to draw and his perspective drawing is excellent.
Watch ‘Bobby Bumps Starts for School’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Bobby Bumps Starts for School’ is available on the Blu-Ray-DVD-combo ‘Cartoon Roots’
Director: Leon Searl
Release Date: February 29, 1916
Stars: Krazy Kat
Rating: ★★★
‘Krazy Kat’ was the very first animal cartoon star featured in a cartoon series of her own.
‘Krazy Kat’, of course, was taken from George Herriman’s celebrated comic strip, which had started in 1913. The film series started three years later, and lasted until 1940. By then the character had become a far cry from Herriman’s creation.
But the earliest Krazy Kat cartoons still had a lot in common with George Herriman’s comic strip, on which they were based. ‘Krazy Kat Goes a-Wooing’, the fourth Krazy Kat cartoon, is a good example. This short animation film lasts only three minutes and seemingly re-tells one Sunday Page, using a lot of text balloons. Both the designs, backgrounds and characters are still in tune with Herriman’s creations.
Krazy Kat goes serenading her love Ignatz Mouse, but he rushes off to fetch some bricks to throw at her. Leon Searl’s drawings are appealing, but his animation is very stiff. For example, when we watch Krazy serenading, only two drawings are used.
Watch ‘Krazy Kat Goes a-Wooing’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Krazy Kat Goes a-Wooing’ is available on the DVD-set ‘Popeye the Sailor 1933-1938’
Director: George Vernon Stallings
Release Date: September 4, 1915
Stars: Colonel Heeza Liar
Rating: ★★★
‘Colonel Heeza Liar at the Bat’ is a Colonel Heeza Liar cartoon directed by George Vernon Stallings, who would later join Van Beuren and Disney.
Stallings’s approach to animation is very comic strip-like in this short: the scenes are very flat, and although the drawing and posing are very good, the animation is extremely limited and stiff, relying heavily on repeated drawings and on poses instead of movement.
In this short the colonel joins a ball game, winning it with ease, e.g. by pitching curve balls that defy all laws of nature, and by running a home-run three times in a row. The film uses titles in rhyme, but text balloons are reserved for the umpire only.
Watch ‘Colonel Heeza Liar at the Bat’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Colonel Heeza Liar at the Bat’ is available on the DVD-set ‘Popeye the Sailor 1933-1938’ and on the DVD ‘Before Walt’
Director: Paul Terry
Release Date: October 18, 1916
Stars: Farmer Al Falfa
Rating: ★★
In 1915 Paul Terry joined the Bray studio and introduced a character of his own called farmer Al Falfa.
Farmer Al Falfa never amounted to something of an interesting character, like for example a Bobby Bumps or Felix the Cat, and I doubt whether he ever had many fans. Yet, the animated farmer lasted until 1937, and even didn’t completely disappear after that.
‘Farmer Al Falfa Sees New York’ is Farmer Al Falfa’s ninth film, and has the farmer visiting the big city, where he’s seduced by a remarkably realistically drawn woman. Later he plays cards with some cheating criminals, only to win after all.
Unlike J.R. Bray, Paul Terry was a rather poor draftsman, as this film clearly shows. The animation is weak and formulaic, and the farmer and the woman don’t inhabit the same cartoon universe. The result is a rather inferior cartoon that nevertheless foreshadows the quality of most animation of the silent era, unlike Bray’s own early high quality films.
Indeed, most of the secret of Terry’s success did not lie in the quality of his work, but in his working speed. Yet, his stay at Bray’s studio was not a happy one, and at the end of 1916 he left, only to get inducted in the army. A few years after World War I, in 1921, Terry would return to the animation business, co-founding a studio with Amedee J. van Beuren, reviving his character Al Falfa, and becoming one of the biggest players in the field.
Watch ‘Farmer Al Falfa Sees New York’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Farmer Al Falfa Sees New York’ is available on the DVD & Blu-Ray-set ‘Cartoon Roots: The Bray Studios Animation Pioneers’
Director: Carl Anderson
Release Date: January 27, 1916
Stars: Police Dog
Rating: ★
Soon the Bray studio employed more and more animators, becoming the most important studio of the 1910s, greatly helped by some patents, most importantly the Bray-Hurd patent for cel animation, which copyrighted an animation technique that would be the major technique in drawn animation until the late 1980s.
In the 1910s the young studio kept attracting some names that would become some of the most important animators and producers of the future, like Max Fleischer, Walter Lantz and Paul Terry. These new animators were allowed to start their own series, thus the Bray studio produced such diverse series as Earl Hurd’s Bobby Bumps, Paul Terry’s Farmer Al Falfa, and Max Fleischer’s Out of the Inkwell.
One of J.R. Bray’s new animators was Carl Anderson, who made ca. a dozen ‘Police Dog’ films between 1914 and 1918, of which ‘The Police Dog on the Wire’ is one. When judged by this film Anderson emerges as one of the less inspired artists of the Bray studio. The film is remarkably plotless, with a female dog phoning ‘police dog’, while a cop called Piffles gets drunk. The animation, too, is poor and formulaic, never reaching the heights of that of J.R. Bray himself, let alone a Winsor McCay. Moreover, the frames are cramped with objects, giving the characters scarcely space to move in. Many scenes are appallingly slow and static, resulting in a film that is best forgotten.
Watch ‘The Police Dog on the Wire’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘The Police Dog on the Wire’ is available on the DVD & Blu-Ray-set ‘Cartoon Roots: The Bray Studios Animation Pioneers’
Director: J.R. Bray
Release Date: 1915
Rating: ★★★½
‘Diplodocus’ is J.R. Bray’s own version of Winsor McCay’s ‘Gertie the Dinosaur‘ (1914), being so similar to the McCay’s success film that it’s plain plagiarism.
The film stars a Diplodocus instead of a Brontosaur and shows the differences between Bray’s and McCay’s drawing styles, with McCay showing more art nouveau elegance, and Bray displaying more comic strip like clarity.
Bray’s film reuses much of McCay’s material: like Gertie the Diplodocus lifts one foot, shifts from side to side, he gets startled by a flying dragon, interacts with a mastodon, eats a pumpkin etc. Like McCay’s film it’s clear that the film had to be shown together with a live narrator, who interacts with the drawn prehistoric animal.
The only new elements are the Diplodocus tying its neck in a knot, the arrival of a small monkey, and a sea serpent pulling at the mastodon’s trunk.
Bray’s animation is of a high quality, but his Diplodocus lacks Gertie’s personality. Thus this weak rip off only manages to show what great film ‘Gertie the Dinosaur’ was, and still is.
Watch ‘Diplodocus’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Diplodocus’ is available on the DVD & Blu-Ray-set ‘Cartoon Roots: The Bray Studios Animation Pioneers’
Director: J.R. Bray
Release Date: January 10, 1914
Stars: Col. Heeza Liar
Rating: ★★★★
Col. Heeza Liar was the first animated series, and the character was the first specially designed for animation.
Col. Heeza Liar was the first star of J.R. Bray’s fledgling studio, only founded in 1913. The character was apparently based on Theodore Roosevelt, but he looks very different. Col. Heeza Liar’s African Hunt’ is only the second film featuring the character.
Drawn by J.R. Bray, the cartoon is filled with loose gags, in which the colonel unwillingly hatches an ostrich egg, has to climb into a palm to flee from a bear, shooting six animals within one shot, and planting a seed which grows into a palm tree instantly.
The looseness of the cartoon betrays the short’s origin as a cheater, for it shares no less than sixty percent with the preceding Col. Heeza Liar cartoon ‘Col. Heeza Liar in Africa’. In this respect, Col. Heeza Liar’s African Hunt’ is a ‘milestone’ of animation, being the first cheater in the business.
Despite being a cheater, the short is well animated. There’s some excellent perspective animation, when a kangaroo hops towards the camera, with the colonel inside, casually defying the African setting. The scene with the bear contains some great comedy. The animation over all is fair, ranging from fast to slow, and cleverly reusing animation cycles.
Col. Heeza Liar is not an immediately engaging character. And worse, as time progressed, his antics became less and less well animated. Nevertheless he would star more than fifty cartoons, lasting until 1924.
‘Col. Heeza Liar’s African Hunt’ is available on the DVD & Blu-Ray-set ‘Cartoon Roots: The Bray Studios Animation Pioneers’
Director: J.R. Bray
Release Date: June 12, 1913
Stars: J.R. Bray
Rating: ★★★★
J.R. Bray is the father of the cartoon industry, but this short is from a period in which J.R. Bray was still a lone artist, like other animation pioneers as J. Stuart Blackton, Émile Cohl and Winsor McCay.
In fact, ‘The Artist’s Dream’ is only J.R. Bray’s second attempt at animation, and the film is still rooted in the drawings come to life tradition of the earliest animated films.
Bray plays an artist drawing a dachshund and a sausage. While he’s away the dachshund eats the sausage, and later another till he explodes. Of course, all has been a dream, which clearly shows the strong influence of Winsor McCay’s dreams of the rarebit fiend.
‘The Artist’s Dream’ shows Bray’s extraordinary drawing skills, as his drawings are very clear and contain elegant shading. His handling of perspective is perfect and no less than McCay’s. The animation, on the other hand, is less fluent than McCay’s, if still of a remarkably high quality. Unfortunately, he would not transfer this level of art to his later studio films.
Watch ‘The Artist’s Dream’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘The Artist’s Dream’ is available on the DVD & Blu-Ray-set ‘Cartoon Roots: The Bray Studios Animation Pioneers’
Director: Frank Moser
Release Date: 1919
Stars: Bud and Susie
Rating: ★
Review:
‘Down the Mississippi’ is a cartoon created by Frank Moser, who would later co-found Terrytoons with Paul Terry.
Like, Ub Iwerks, Moser is known as a very fast animator. However, unlike Iwerks, Moser wasn’t either innovative or funny. It may be unfair to use such an early cartoon as ‘Down the Mississippi’ as an example, but the ‘Bud and Susie’ series was Moser’s own creation, so it could have been inspired. This is not the case.
In ‘Down the Mississippi’ Bud, Susie and their cat read ‘Huckleberry Finn’. When the sandman puts them to sleep, they dream they’re on the Mississippi. The cat catches an electric eel and Bud a crocodile. They camp at the river bank, where they’re eaten by a bear(?, the animal isn’t very distinguished). The animation is crude and the animal design typical of the twenties. Nothing is particularly outstanding in this cartoon, which isn’t funny either.
Watch ‘Down the Mississippi’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 