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Directors: Harry Bailey, John Foster, Frank Moser & Jerry Shields
Release Date: June 2, 1929
Rating: ★★★
Review:
Long before ‘Mickey’s Polo Team’ (1936) or Walt Disney took on playing polo himself, the Van Beuren studio visited the game in the silent short ‘Polo Match’.
The cartoon stars a couple of mice, with the hero being indistinguishable from the others. The mouse plays a polo game with the others on mechanical horses, and most of the gags (even the final one) stem from the horses falling apart. Meanwhile the hero’s sweetheart is harassed and later kidnapped by a mean old cat. Our hero pursuits the cat and saves his sweetheart.
The cartoon is pretty fast and full of action, but none of the gags are interesting enough to keep the viewer’s attention. Nevertheless, the short was re-released in 1932 as ‘Happy Polo’, with an added soundtrack.
It’s pretty likely that the inspiration for the mechanical horses stems from the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon ‘Ozzie of the Mounted‘ (1928) in which Oswald rides a mechanical horse himself. In any case, mechanical horses were clearly much easier to animate than real ones, and one was reused in ‘Hot Tamale’ (1930).
Watch ‘Polo Match’ (or ‘Happy Polo’) yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Polo Match/Happy Polo’ is available on the DVD ‘Aesop’s Fables – Cartoon Classics from the Van Beuren Studio’
Director: Frank Moser
Release Date: 1930
Rating: ★★
Review:
‘Family Album’ is a commercial by Charles W. Barrell for the Western Electric Company, glorifying the telephone, and its ‘offspring’: other inventions that are derived from telephone technology, including the microphone and the speaker.
The film reuses the character Talkie from Fleischer’s earlier film ‘Finding his voice‘ (1929), but its star is an anthropomorphized telephone, talking about his family. Although quite educational, the film is less interesting than Fleischer’s film. The animation, by veterans Paul Terry and Frank Moser, is rather poor and limited. There’s no rubbery animation whatsoever, and the designs are still in 1920s style.
‘Family Album’ is available on the DVD ‘Cultoons! Rare, Lost and Strange Cartoons! Volume 2: Animated Education’
Director: Frank Moser
Release date: July 25, 1920
Stars: Bud and Susie
Rating: ★★
Review:
‘Bud and Susie’ was an animation series created by Frank Moser that consisted of at least twenty cartoons and run from 1920 to 1921. ‘Down the Mississippi’ does little to advertise the series as something outstanding, when compared to contemporary series like Earl Hurd’s Bobby Bumps’ or Otto Messmer’s Felix the Cat.
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 this film Bud, Susie and their cat read ‘Huckleberry Finn’. When the sandman puts Bud to sleep, he dreams he’s on a raft on the Mississippi with his sister and the cat. The cat catches an electric eel and Bud catches a crocodile. They camp at the river bank, where they’re about to be eaten by a bear, which looks like an oversized mouse. The print on the ‘Presenting Felix the Cat’ DVD unfortunately stops here.
‘Down the Mississippi’ is clearly rooted in the comic strip tradition, although there are only two text balloons. Like, Ub Iwerks, Moser is known as a very fast animator, in fact he famed himself as being the fastet animator in the world. However, unlike Iwerks, Moser wasn’t either innovative or funny. His animation is certainly very readable but crude, and the animal designs are anything but original. Most interesting are his animation of the waves and the background art of the camping site. Notice that the cat’s tail changes into a question mark at one point, a feature normally attributed to Felix the Cat.
Nothing is particularly outstanding in this cartoon, which isn’t funny either. Indeed, Art Babbitt was unimpressed with Moser’s art. As he relates to Charles Solomon in his book ‘Enchanted Drawings’: “Moser was a man devoid of humor. He worked very rapidly, but his work was crude and without feeling. Of course, everybody’s work was crude in those days, but he constantly told you he was the fastest animator in the world. I undiplomatically told him that was like being the fastest violinist in the world. You can play very fast, but you can’t play worth a damn!” (Enchanted Drawings – The History of Animation p. 95).
Frank Moser would later co-found Terrytoons with Paul Terry. The two were likely kindred spirits, more interested in efficiency than in art.
Watch ‘Down the Mississippi’ Yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Down the Mississippi’ is available on the DVD ‘Presenting Felix the Cat – The Otto Messmer Classics 1919-24’
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