Animation on TCM

Turner Classic Movies will be featuring animation in the immediate and near future.

On Tuesday, Aug 5 at 4:30 a.m Eastern Time, they'll run Gay Purr-ee, a feature made by UPA in 1962, starring the voices of Judy Garland and Robert Goulet.  The songs are by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, the team behind the songs in The Wizard of Oz, though these songs are not as memorable.

The crew is a polyglot of Hollywood animation veterans from many studios.  It was directed by Abe Levitow and written by Chuck and Dorothy Jones.  Designers and art directors include Corny Cole, Ernie Nordli and Victor Haboush.  Animators include Ken Harris, Irv Spence, Ben Washam, Ray Patterson, Grant Simmons, Volus Jones, Harvey Toombs, Don Lusk and Hal Ambro.  The studios that those animators worked at include Warner Bros, MGM, Lantz and Disney.

On October 6 (and I'll post a reminder closer to the date), TCM will run 10 hours of continuous animation.  Starting at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, the films of Winsor McCay, with eminent animation historian and McCay biographer John Canemaker as guest.  At 9:45, it's the 100th anniversary of the Bray studio, with guest Tom Stathes, who has emerged as a leading historian of silent animation.  At 11, cartoons from the Van Beuren studio, with guest Steve Stanchfield.

Stanchfield has become one of the premiere home video producers for animation.  While companies like Warner Bros. are retreating from home video formats, Stanchfield is upping the output of his company Thunderbean Animation.  His latest release is Technicolor Dreams and Black and White Nightmares, which includes a color copy of the first three strip Technicolor cartoon, Ted Eshbaugh's The Wizard of Oz.

The balance of TCM's night consists of four animated features.   Lotte Reineger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed is on at 12:15 a.m, Max and Dave Fleischer's Gulliver's Travels is on at 1:30, Toei Animation's Magic Boy is on at 3 and Chuck Jones' The Phantom Tollbooth is on at 4:30.

Fleischer Gag Cartoons

Check these out.  Gag cartoons from various Fleischer artists: Willard Bowsky (pictured), Tom Golden, Gordon Sheehan, Orestes Calpini, Tom Moore, George Germanetti, and Jack Ozark.  All seem to revolve around Dugan's cake, so there must have been a party where this cake was served.

Animation on TCM Reminder

If you receive Turner Classic Movies, remember that this Sunday, October 21, they will be screening an evening of animation co-hosted by Jerry Beck of Cartoon Brew.  Films include the two Fleischer features Gulliver's Travels and Mr. Bug Goes to Town; a selection of UPA Jolly Frolic cartoons; a selection of silent animation provided by historian Tom Stathes; and The Adventures of Prince Achmed, which is the oldest surviving animated feature as well as the first animated feature directed by a woman, Lotte Reineger.  You can find the complete schedule here and Beck has posted artwork associated with Gulliver and Mr. Bug on his site.

If you are interested in hearing about how Beck connected up with TCM and learning more about the early days of film collecting, you can hear him on a podcast called The Commentary Track.

Upcoming Animation on TCM

 Update: Jerry Beck, who will be co-hosting with TCM's Robert Osborne, has more details at Cartoon Brew.

Sunday, October 21 is still a distance away, but Turner Classic Movies will be devoting their evening block to animation.  It starts with the two Fleischer features, Gulliver's Travels and Mr. Bug Goes to Town.  That's followed by six UPA cartoons (all available on the Jolly Frolics DVD set).  Sundays at midnight, TCM regularly schedules silent films, and for this day they're showing 11 silent cartoons, including The Artist's Dream (an early J.R. Bray), Trip to Mars (with Koko the Clown), Bobby Bumps Goes to School, and Fireman Save My Child (with Mutt and Jeff).  The next slot is for foreign films, and their animated example is Lotte Reineger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed.

The schedule can be accessed here, and I'll be reminding everyone as the date approaches.

Mini History Lesson

Profiles in History is having an auction entitled Icons of Animation on December 17. While the majority of items are out of my price range (maybe all of them actually), you can download a catalog of the auction for free.

Even if you're not in the market to buy, the catalog is a mini history lesson by itself. It contains art from Disney, MGM, Warner Bros, Fleischer and Hanna Barbera. There is work by Bill Tytla, Fred Moore, Carl Barks, Bob Clampett, Virgil Ross, Irv Wyner, Mary Blair, Preston Blair, Gustav Tenggren, Charles Schulz, etc. There are worse ways to spend time than by paging through the download and admiring so much beautiful stuff.

(link via Disney History)

Gordan Sheehan Part 4

(This is the conclusion of an interview with Gordon Sheehan conducted by Harry Arnold and Dave Daruszka and printed around 1976 in Zoetrope, a trade publication. You can read part 1 here, part 2 here and part 3 here.)

Zoetrope: What brought you to Chicago?

Sheehan: Wilding's studio on Argyle Streeet, which was one of the oldest studios in the industry. They used to produce the old Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson, Wallace Beery and William S. Hart films. Wildings had a sizeable animation staff in those days. They made me a very lucrative offer to come out and join their staff, and that's what brought me to Chicago. Wildings did mostly technical animation. They made films for many large companies like Ford and General Motors.

After a while I decided to start my own studio, and found a little place down at State and Grand, in the old Graphic Arts Building. I did all types of animation. An animator had to take about anything that came along in those days to make a living. This was in the early fifties.

Zoetrope: How active was the animation community in Chicago at the time?

Sheehan: There were only four or five places doing animation in the city at that time, and this was mostly commercial stuff. The trouble was, and I think it still is the trouble, ad agencies were taking the lush television spots either to New York or to Hollywood, usually to Hollywood. When they had a big budget to spend for a spot, the account executive would take it out to Hollywood where he would be wined and dined and enjoy a wonderful junket even though it was costing quite a bit more money. Not much ad-money was being spent in Chicago. About the only things I got were films with a rush deadline or ones that couldn't afford Hollywood prices.

Zoetrope: Then there was more talent located in Hollywood or New York than in Chicago?

Sheehan: Most of the animation talent was in California or New York. Animation was a very limited field; a character animator had to work for one of the five or six studios that furnished animated cartoons for a major company like Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount, MGM, or Warner Brothers. If you didn't work for them, there wasn't much work available, that is, until television came into its own. Then of course small animation studios sprung up all over the country.

Zoetrope: How long did you keep your own studio in Chicago?

Sheehan: For five or six years. I realized that it was a difficult business here in Chicago. There was a lot of work originating in Chicago in television cartoons but it was going to New York or Hollywood. I got an opportunity to go out to California. It was a very lucrative offer; a year's guaranty of work plus moving expenses. I always wanted to get out to the West Coast, so I accepted. I as out in California for about ten years. I had my own studio there for a while too. I did quite a bit of animation work, mostly television spots. After about ten years of California, I had the opportunity to come back to Chicago with Coronet Films, an educational film producer.

I had done freelance work for Coronet while I was in Chicago, before I went to California. A lot of things were happening in those days; President Kennedy was elected, and started a tremendous educational program throughout the country. There were very generous government grants given for educational material. The educational film business really boomed along with other ranches of the educational profession. That was when Coronet came into its own. Coronet decided to start their own animation department, instead of giving out freelance as they had been doing. So I came back to Chicago to organize a small staff for them, and I stayed with this company up until the time I retired.

Zoetrope: Have you done anything since retirement?

Sheehan: I've done a few little projects, but I like plenty of free time, because my wife and I enjoy traveling. Also I get quite a bit of pleasure out of painting. I've always been fond of painting watercolors, and now I have the time to do it.

Zoetrope: What do you think about animation today?

Sheehan: My opinion of animation today is not a very high one. I don't want to run the business down, because I know the reasons why it is not what I would like it to be. Animation is an expensive process, it always has been. Producers just can't pay the kind of money it takes to put out the kind of animation that was done twenty or thirty years ago. The salaries then were lower, the equipment was much lower...everything seems to be so much more expensive these days. Naturally animation is suffering because of that. Producers have had to find limited ways of making things move on the screen and they just limit animation too much in my opinion.

Gordan Sheehan Part 3

(This is the continuation of an interview with Gordon Sheehan conducted by Harry Arnold and Dave Daruszka and printed around 1976 in Zoetrope, a trade publication. You can read part 1 here and part 2 here.)

Zoetrope: Another unique element in Fleischer films was the three-dimensional backgrounds behind the cels. How was was this done?

Sheehan: Max was a prolific inventor, and quite scientifically and mechanically-minded. He invented the three-dimensional type of background. It was comprised of a big revolving aluminum cylinder about six feet in diameter, with a flat table top, and holes drilled in it about every inch or so, so tiny props could be inserted in the holds. Miniature background settings would be placed on this table; such as a city scene with buildings and telephone poles and that sort of thing. The table would be situated behind the cels, and the camera would shoot the cartoon characters on the cels and pick up the background on the table behind them. As the cels were changed, the table would be revolved one frame at a time to give the illusion of panorama, plus a marvelous third-dimensional effect.

Zoetrope: What type of animation stand was used in this setup?

Sheehan: Max used lathe beds for his animation stands, in other words it wasn't a vertical setup, it was horizontal. The camera was situated on one end, and on the other end the upright platen. The cels were held in place by vacuum air pressure. I don't think Max ever used a vertical animation stand.

(You can see the Fleischer camera systems, including the 3D setups, starting at 2:50 in this documentary film.)

Zoetrope: How long did you work for the Fleischers?

Sheehan: As I said, I started with the Fleischers in early 1933. I believe it was 1942 when the Fleischer brothers lost their studio to Paramount, who sort of ousted them out. I had been with them all of that time, which was the good part of ten years. Then I continued with Paramount, after they renamed the studio "Famous Studios" and moved us from Miami back to New York. They kept the same staff, but the Fleischers and their relatives were out, all except Max's son-in-law, Seymour Kneitel. Paramount gave control of Famous Studios to the ex-production manager of Fleischer, Sam Buchwald, Seymour, and another fellow named Izzy Sparber.

I as never particularly happy with Paramount and New York City after we moved back there. The war was on at the time. It was about a year after Pearl Harbor. We started doing a few films for the government. I did some technical animation for companies like Westinghouse that was aimed towards the war effort. I remember Paramount News put out an animated version of the Allied invasion of Europe six months before it happened, and it was almost identical to the actual battle. I began doing freelance animation in New York. There was a lot of freelance available as many of the animators were in the armed services. I became connected with a firm on Broadway and 46th Street that produced training films for the U.S. Navy. They offered me a good spot to come over and set up an animation department. So I left Famous Studios and went to Soundmasters. The people at Paramount didn't like that too much as they were having a difficult time finding experienced help. But I liked it much better, and I got a chance to direct and organize my own department. The productions were much more interesting, even though it was mostly technical animation. It was more exciting than working at a desk drawing the same character day in and day out.

Zoetrope: How long did you stay there?

Sheehan: I stayed at Soundmasters all through the war. The firm I worked for also produced a great number of commercial motion pictures. We had been experimenting with television animation even when the war was on -- before the television market came into its own. Television had been invented and pretty much perfected for home use, but it wasn't being marketed because the materials needed to produce it were not available. But after the war television came into its own, manufacturers started making sets, networks started to form, and we began to produce some of the first television commercials. I did a series of thirteen films for Pepsi-Cola, one of the first animated-commercial series.

Zoetrope: What year was that?

Sheehan: That was about 1946 or 47. I worked with Rube Goldberg, who was a senior citizen then. Rube wrote the gags for Pepsi and Pete, the Pepsi-Cola Cops. It was the sort of a situation where there always would be somebody in trouble, then Pepsi and Pete, like Popeye eating his spinach, would reinforce themselves with Pepsi-Cola and go to the rescue. They had to do it all in one minute. All animation was shot on ones, and every frame counted. They took about ten seconds of the sixty to sing their jingle: "Pepsi-Cola hits the spot, twelve full ounces, that's a lot." We produced several commercials of this sort plus many inudstrial films. I left this company to start my own studio in New York, and was quite successful there, doing a number of television spots and other types of animation.

(To be continued.)

Gordan Sheehan Part 2

(This is the continuation of an interview with Gordon Sheehan conducted by Harry Arnold and Dave Daruszka and printed around 1976 in Zoetrope, a trade publication. You can read part 1 here.)

Zoetrope: What was the atmosphere like?

Sheehan: It was a very grueling job you might say. Doing these things over and over again; painting, inking, inbetweening, that sort of thing. Fortunately, there was a lot of good companionship. There were a lot of nice young people in the company. Almost everyone in the business at that time was quite young. The heads of the company, Max Fleischer couldn't have been more than fifty years old and Dave, perhaps around forty. To me, at the time, they were old men. They were about the oldest in the company, with the exception of one other person, the janitor, Mr. Cheeseman. He was probably about sixty and the only person in the company, by the way, who was called "Mister." Everyone else was on a first name basis, even Max and Dave Fleischer. Mr. Cheeseman, I guess because of this age, always rated that title.

Zoetrope: How old were you when you started?

Sheehan: I was twenty-three when I started in the animation business. I was twenty-five or twenty-six before I was put under contract as an animator, and got to move the characters around. I began by painting cels, and fortunately, this was only a two week experience for me. I was promoted to tracing almost immediately. I did spend a great deal of time in the tracing department, mostly because I wasn't too keen about staying in animation. At that time, the lower jobs didn't pay well. If it wasn't for another job I had moonlighting, I wouldn't have been able to live on that amount of money. I painted posters for a YMCA in Brooklyn for my room.

Zoetrope: How did they go about training you at things such as inbetweening?

Sheehan: You had to practice inbetweening on your own time, bring in samples, and show them to the head of the inbetweening department. It happened that it was a woman [Edith Vernick] in charge of the department in those days. Once she felt that you were acquiring a certain amount of skill in inbetweening, you would be promoted to that department when the next vacancy occurred. Once in the inbetween department you couldn't help but learn, because you were handling experienced animators' extremes all the time. You were flipping drawings constantly. We hardly ever used moviolas in those days, in fact I don't believe we used moviolas until we did our first feature, Gulliver's Travels. An animator judged his timing and the effect of his action, by flipping the drawings. Holding them in one hand, and flipping with the other; like a flip-book. By flipping the scenes that came into the department from the animators one couldn't help but learn something about animation techniques. Most of us would try to animate something of the same type of action for practice. In inbetweening you learned to work from exposure sheets. You didn't fill them out, but you studied them to learn how drawings were combined and timed.

Every Friday afternoon the Fleischers would screen a picture that was just finished. This could be a Screen Song or Betty Boop or Popeye; whatever happened to be coming through that week, and the whole studio would get to see it. Not all at one time, because I think there were one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five people working in the studio at that time. The first in would be the executives and the head animators, then the animators and inbetweeners, finally the opaquers and inkers. But you would get to view the films, and observe scenes you had worked on.

Zoetrope: You spoke earlier of flipping the drawings to get a feeling for the action. Where there any type of pencil tests done?

Sheehan: Pencil tests just weren't heard of in those days except in a few extreme cases. There were a few pencil tests for certain types of scenes. I remember Max did a film of Betty Boop as Cinderella [Poor Cinderella] and I believe there were scenes taken from rotoscope which were pencil tested. By the way Max Fleischer invented the rotoscope, and used it with Koko the Clown, back in the silent days. The rotoscope process was simply photographing human motion, and projecting this film up onto frosted glass. The outline and key details of the character were traced off onto paper. We didn't use much rotoscoping in the animated shorts, but when Gulliver's Travels came along several years later all of the Gulliver character was rotoscoped. In Mr. Bug Goes to Town, another feature that we produced in Miami, Florida back in the late 1930's the human characters were rotoscoped. The cartoon characters were very seldom rotoscoped, unless in a special case such as a dance scene in which the rhythm and movement were important.

(To be continued.)

Gordan Sheehan Part 1

(This interview appeared in a trade publication called Zoetrope around 1976. Zoetrope was published in Chicago by Larry Janiak. Because the pages are oversized and won't fit on my scanner, I'm transcribing this interview and it will appear in several parts. Here we go:)

Gordon Sheehan has spent his professional life in the field of animation, which is not bad considering he never intended it to be that way. Beginning with the Fleischer Studios, Gordon has worked his way around the country including some pioneer commercial work for Pepsi Cola, recently retiring from Coronet Films where he had started an animation department a number of years earlier. In this interview with Harry Arnold and Dave Daruszka, Mr. Sheehan talks about his hears with the Fleischers and his impressions of the animation industry.

Zoetrope: When did you get started in the field of animation?

Sheehan: I started working for Max Fleischer in New York in 1933. Max Fleischer and Dave Fleischer had been very successful in producing Betty Boop and Koko the Clown along with several other cartoons, and their experience dated back into the 1920's. When sound came along, Betty Boop became a popular singing cartoon star. Shortly after that, when I got into the business, they were just trying out a comic strip character; Popeye the Sailor who became quite a sensation in the cartoon world.

Zoetrope: What brought you to Fleischer and why did you choose animation as a career?

Sheehan: Well, it was kind of a fluke. I had attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn for three years, graduated and got out during the Depression. I had studied magazine illustration. I didn't consider myself much of a cartoonist, in fact I didn't care much for this line. But in the Depression days, you couldn't pick your career. There were too many people out of jobs and too many looking for jobs, especially in the art line. After pounding the sidewalks of Manhattan for a good nine or ten months, I finally got a connection with the Fleischer Studios on Broadway. They were just starting to expand then. The motion picture business, by the way, was one of the few industries that prospered during the Great Depression era. Magazines, newspapers, and advertising agencies were folding. The movie business was booming because people had to go to the movies, I suppose, to get away from their troubles and worries. So I got into the animation business sort of as a tie-over job. I had no intention whatsoever of making a career of it. It was a new business, nobody knew much about it , and very few people had much confidence in animated cartoons as an entertainment media.

Fleischers had a very unique system of apprenticeship. They started you off painting on acetate cels, in black and white of course; everything was done in black and white in those days. Then after you became proficient at painting, you were promoted to the tracing department where you traced with ink on acetates, then eventually you would be promoted to the inbetweening department. That is, if you practiced and were accepted; this was the very lowest stage of assistant animation. Then eventually you got into assistant animation, and then full animation. Of course you could go higher, and become a director or start your own company, I suppose.

The common theory was that one could become an animator through this apprenticeship system within two years. There was one fellow who made it into animation in one year, but it turned out he was a relative of one of the employers. A bit of nepotism. It took me the best part of two-and-a-half years to get into the animation department.

The pay was very meager in those days, to say the least. We worked forty three-and-a-half hours a week, but instead of working a half day on Saturday as many companies did, we would work on Friday nights for three-and-a-half hours. We could then have two full days off for the weekend. I started at the tremendous salary of twelve dollars a week. I think there was a labor law at the time which said if anyone worked over a certain number of hours a day, he would receive supper money. So on Friday, the day we worked through till ten thirty in the evening, the accountant would come around with a big bag of silver half dollars, and give each worker a half dollar for supper. This made my salary $12.50 a week.

It was a very exacting routine, and it took a lot of practice to get promoted. Once a person got into the animation department, they were signed to a three year contract. Written into the contract was a raise every six months. You started at thirty dollars a week, then in six months you would get a five dollar raise. Eventually, when your contract was up, you would be getting sixty dollars a week. This was pretty fair pay in those days.

(To be continued.)

Bob Jaques

In this 1982 photo, that's Bob Jaques in the center. Behind him on the left is Dan Haskett and to the right is Chris Armstrong.

I'm late mentioning this, but I wanted to dig up a visual to go with talking about Bob's new blog. I met Bob at Nelvana in Toronto in 1980 or '81. While I had come from New York and had worked in the New York animation industry, I was far more enamored of animation that had been made in L.A. To be honest, I looked down my nose at a lot of the people working in N.Y. animation.

My only excuse is that I was young and stupid. I came to realize that the difference between N.Y. and L.A. had more to do with opportunity than with talent. One of the people who wised me up was Bob.

Bob had stared at the Fleischer and Famous cartoons long and hard. Comparing what he saw on the screen with the sparse animator credits on those cartoons, he had methodically figured out how to recognize the styles of just about every animator. Bob was the one who opened my eyes to the brilliance of John Gentilella, an animator whose work was as good as anybody in California and done under much less friendly conditions.

Bob now has a blog dedicated to identifying the animators on the Popeye cartoons. As these cartoons are finally becoming available on DVD, his timing couldn't be better. (Bob has also done some audio commentaries for future Popeye DVD releases). New York animators never received the attention of their L.A. counterparts and were rarely interviewed. It's great that Bob is sharing his knowledge, filling in gaps in our understanding of the Fleischer/Famous animators.

The Simpsons Meet The Fleischers...

...or Barney meets Bluto, if you prefer.

While looking at The Simpsons Handbook, I was struck how the construction of the characters resembled the construction used at the Fleischer studio. The Fleischers never really outgrew this approach to construction. You can see it as late as the Stone Age cartoons, which were some of the last things they did before losing the studio.

You know how in It's a Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart gets to see what the world was like if he was never born? Looking at The Simpsons model sheets, it's like looking at a world where Fred Moore was never born.

These characters are created out of separate, static shapes. The lines that define the shapes are completely lacking in rhythm and there's no attempt to use line to tie the shapes together.

None of the Fox primetime animated series seem to be interested in flexible shapes, which really is a shame. I've heard that Fox considered stretch and squash old fashioned, but as you can see, The Simpsons approach isn't exactly new.

Willard Bowsky

Willard Bowsky was a Fleischer animator whose Popeye cartoons were among the most attractive and entertaining of that series. He was also one of the animators most sympathetic to the jazz used on the Fleischer cartoon soundtracks in the early '30's.

Until now, the only real information I've found on Bowsky was in Shamus Culhane's autobiography, Talking Animals and Other People. Joe Campana has written a Memorial Day blog entry on Bowsky with lots of new information, including details of Bowsky's death in France during World War II.

Below is the Popeye cartoon A Date to Skate, animated by Bowsky and Orestes Calpini. There's no Bluto in this cartoon and no conflict with other characters. It's just two people who enjoy each other's company trying to have some fun. I love the warm relationship that Popeye and Olive have in this film and wish that there was more of it in animated shorts.

Lantz and Fleischer DVDs

Jerry Beck of Cartoon Brew has announced a collection of Walter Lantz cartoons that will appear on DVD this July. I'm assuming that readers of this blog are already aware of this, but they may not realize the importance of the cartoons on this set as the Lantz studio has been very poorly represented on video and DVD.

This set contains cartoons directed by Shamus Culhane, a very underrated director who never got the opportunities he deserved. In the '30's, Culhane worked just about everywhere, including a stint at Disney where he was something of a Pluto specialist. He worked on Snow White, Pinocchio (though there's confusion as to how much of his work is in the finished film), Gulliver's Travels and Mr. Bug Goes to Town.

At Lantz, Culhane took a studio that was turning out weak cartoons and jump started them with his interest in experimenting and his aggressive sense of timing. Culhane's best work at the studio was possibly the Swing Symphonies. While he admitted to having no feeling for jazz, he worked well with it and his musical cartoons are really vigorous. Abou Ben Boogie and The Greatest Man in Siam are excellent cartoons and worth seeing.

The set will also contain cartoons by Dick Lundy and Tex Avery. I admire Lundy's craftsmanship but not his directorial personality. He was a good animator and his cartoons are always slick, but I find his point of view to be pretty pedestrian. However, his cartoons contain the some of the best animation in the history of the Lantz studio and are worth watching for the animation alone.

Tex Avery's affect on the Lantz studio was much the same as Culhane. At the time Avery rejoined the Lantz studio, it was out of creative energy. Avery was able to bootstrap the studio with his posing, gags and timing. His four cartoons are a textbook case of how much impact one person can have on the output of a studio.

The animators who worked on these cartoons include Fred Moore, Ed Love, Emery Hawkins, Pat Matthews, Grim Natwick, Dick Lundy and LaVerne Harding. If you are interested in this style of character animation, this set is a bonanza of material.

There are other studios whose cartoons are not available on DVD, such as Famous Studios and Terrytoons, but the Lantz cartoons are probably the most interesting of this bunch and this release is long overdue. If you have any interest in 1940's style animation, I guarantee you that there will be cartoons and moments in this set that will entertain you and show you the high standards that were once commonplace in animation.

If it wasn't for the release of the Popeye cartoons, also in July, I'd say that the Lantz DVD was the animation history release of the year. The Popeye cartoons have had even less presence in home video than the Lantz cartoons, due to some rights issues that have finally been settled.

The Fleischer cartoons of the 1930s are worth watching for different reasons than the Lantz cartoons. The animation is not as slick, but the stories, characterizations and layouts are all of a high standard. In the 1930s, there were many different streams of animation all running in parallel. The Fleischer cartoons were urban, gritty, and focused on adult concerns like sexual competition. In the early '30s Fleischer cartoons, the world is a surreal place where anything could be alive and nothing could be taken for granted.

There's no question that Popeye, especially when voiced by Jack Mercer, was the most complex animated personality of the 1930's, far more complex than anything Disney, MGM or Warner Bros. offered up in short cartoons. It's only when Disney expanded to features that he began to approach the level of character depth that Popeye routinely displayed. Ironically, it's when the Fleischers expanded to features that Popeye began his decline, but that's not until volume 2 of the Popeye set.

At any given moment, there are dominant styles in animation. Right now, we've got the Pixar style, the Cartoon Network/Nickelodeon style and the anime style. While we're immersed in a style, we take it for granted as the way things have to be, but the thing about styles is that they eventually change. The best thing about these historical DVD collections is that they show approaches to animation that we don't take for granted. It's stimulating to see films from different places and different times and I hope that the release of these DVDs will shake things up a little and get people thinking in new (or old) directions.