I've known Steve for several years and have nothing but admiration for him. Besides working as an animator and animation teacher, he also puts out fabulous DVD and Blu-ray sets of vintage animation, lavishing far more care on restoration and extras than higher profile companies do. In addition, he writes a regular Thursday column for Jerry Beck's Cartoon Research site, where he showcases historical treasures and updates Thunderbean's release plans.
I look forward to finally seeing this show on TCM.
On Monday, October 6, starting at 8 p.m. Eastern time, TCM will be running three specials featuring animation historians John Canemaker, Steve Stanchfield and Tom Stathes. Canemaker will be talking about Winsor McCay, Stanchfield will be talking about the Van Beuren studio and Stathes will be talking about the Bray studio. All three programs focus on animation done in New York and contain many examples.
This is the 100th anniversary of McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur as well as the 100th anniversary of the start of the Bray studio.
You can read about the Van Beuren cartoons that will be screened here and read about the Bray cartoons here.
If you have any interest in animation history or just want to see cartoons that you've never seen before, I highly recommend these programs. Each of these people is an expert in the field. John Canemaker is an Oscar-winning animator and author of many animation related books. His most recent are The Lost Notebook: Herman Schultheiss & the Secrets of Walt Disney's Movie Magic and Magic, Color, Flair: The World of Mary Blair. Steve Stanchfield is the proprietor of Thunderbean Animation, a production company that also produces restored DVDs and Blu-rays of classic animation. Tom Stathes runs film screenings in the New York area.
Later the same night, TCM will screen Lotte Reineger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed, Max and Dave Fleischer's Gulliver's Travels, Akira Daikubara's Magic Boy, and Chuck Jones' The Phantom Tollbooth. That's ten solid hours of animation.
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.
Steve Stanchfield, proprietor of Thunderbean Animation, is already held in the highest regard for his historical animation DVD releases. Stanchfield works on a shoestring, yet the quality of the prints he uses, the commentaries and extras he includes, rival DVDs from multinational corporations. The simple fact is that he cares more for the contents of his DVDs than they do.
Steve has outdone himself with his latest release, the Private Snafu Golden Classics. These cartoon shorts were made for the American military during World War II and were humorous tales of the many ways a soldier could screw up, risking his own life and the lives of others.
What makes this release so special is that Steve has located the original 35mm negatives to use as his video masters and these cartoons, which represent the Warner Bros. studio at the height of its skills, have never looked better. Cartoons directed by Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Frank Tashlin and Friz Freleng, with animation by Ken Harris, Bob Cannon, Bob McKimson, Rod Scribner, Art Davis, Izzy Ellis, Virgil Ross, and Gerry Chiniquy, look as good as the cartoons restored by Warner Bros. The stills included here are from the DVD. Besides great looking films full of wonderful gags and animation, Steve has recruited John Kricfalusi, Eric Goldberg, Jerry Beck, Mike Kazaleh and yours truly to provide audio commentaries. In addition, there are storyboard panels, magazine covers of Snafu by Ray Harryhausen(!) and a maquette of Snafu from the collection of Tony Eastman.
Whether you're interested in animation history, Warner Bros, great animation or you just want to laugh -- because these cartoons were for soldiers, they're a lot more risque than any Looney Tune -- you will find this collection highly satisfying.
A guilty pleasure is something that's not good (or good for you) but that you like anyway. I have to admit that early Van Beuren sound cartoons are a guilty pleasure of mine. No one would compare them to the animation produced by the best of American studios, but they are the definition of the word "quirky." While occasionally, there are well drawn or animated scenes, the majority of them are clumsy, but they are clumsy in a way that provokes amazement, disbelief and most of all, laughter.
Steve Stanchfield's Thunderbean Animation has now collected the complete Van Beuren Tom and Jerry. These are not the cat and mouse cartoons that most associate with the character names, they are a human, Mutt and Jeff-like pair who starred in cartoons from 1931 to 1933. Because of the name confusion, when the cartoons were released to the home movie market, they were renamed Dick and Larry. The Van Beuren studio went out of business in 1936, so the cartoons became orphans and slipped into the public domain. They have suffered from endless duping, editing and retitling until Stanchfield began restoring them.
What makes these crude cartoons entertaining is their randomness. There is little logic in the cartoons from 1931 and '32 especially. Characters do things without reason, so you never know what's going to happen next. Tom and Jerry are barely developed. They seem to have different voices in every cartoon and their personalities and relationships are perfunctory at best. Often, they seem to be bystanders in their own cartoons, watching other characters carry the story and action.
However, the cartoons are driven by Gene Rodemich's jazz soundtracks and the animation, though weightless, is funny. These characters and cartoons are not believable in any sense of the word, but they amuse me. Animation is one of the least spontaneous art forms, requiring enormous planning. These cartoons come closer to being spontaneous than any others I can think of; many appear to be made up drawing by drawing, with no thought to what comes next.
Why, in Barnyard Bunk (embedded below) is there a skeleton in the outhouse? Why do ducks hatch from chicken eggs? What strange compulsion drives the mouse with the "Danger" sign? Does it matter? The walk cycles and dancing in this cartoon are ludicrous, but they make me laugh. These days, animation is either overly refined (see just about any recent feature) or barely expressive (see any recent TV animation). Funny movement seems to be a forgotten art. (Wait a minute. I'm sounding like John K. here...) When Grim Natwick said that many a cartoon was saved by a funny walk, he could have been talking about these.
And these cartoons may have been more influential than they are credited for. The cartoon Rabid Hunters looks like a warm-up for Porky's Hare Hunt, the first proto-Bugs Bunny cartoon. The Haunted Ship (one of four Waffles and Don cartoons on the set as a bonus) contains a quartet of drunk turtles singing "Sweet Adeline," and I have to wonder if that influenced Tex Avery's drunken fish singing "Moonlight Bay" in Porky's Duck Hunt.
Steve Stanchfield has searched for years to find the best prints of these cartoons, going to great lengths to restore original titles and missing footage. The gem on this set is a beautiful copy of A Swiss Trick, transferred from a 35mm original. This two disk collection contains every Tom and Jerry cartoon, liner notes and rare publicity artwork. No one but Stanchfield would have gone to the lengths he has to show off these cartoons.
This is not the first time he's laboured to revive the Van Beuren cartoons. He's also compiled the complete Cubby Bear, the complete Little King and a set of Toddle Tales and Rainbow Parade cartoons from that studio. Stanchfield has also put together sets of TV commercials, World War II propaganda films and various other collections. You can order Thunderbean collections here. I recommend them all.
If you're not familiar with Tom and Jerry, enjoy Barnyard Bunk below. The copy on the DVD set is better than this version I took from YouTube.
Steve Stanchfield of Thunderbean Animation is profiled at Greenbriar Picture Shows. Steve has lovingly put together a series of DVDs of public domain material from various studios. Where most public domain releases are done on the cheap, Steve puts enormous effort into finding the best materials and creating extras. I heartily endorse his products.
Spline Doctors has posted a podcast with Pete Docter and Bob Peterson of Pixar.
Brad Bird is interviewed by Nancy Cartwright at AWN.com.
The ASIFA Hollywood Archive presents artwork from Ray Patterson's time at the Mintz studio in the 1930's.
I've been remiss in not talking about this sooner. Steve Stanchfield's Thunderbean Animation has released a DVD of the complete series of The Little King cartoons based on the comic strip by Otto Soglow. The DVD includes the cartoons made by the Van Beuren studio as well as The Little King's one guest appearance in a Betty Boop cartoon. The DVD also includes two cartoons starring Sentinel Louey, another Soglow character as well as essays by Chris Buchman, Steve Stanchfield and Milton Knight which provide background on Soglow, the character and the making of the films.
The king is a childish character; typically he ducks official duties or protocol in order to pursue some fun. Soglow's style is very geometric, linear and flat. I have no idea if Soglow saw Emile Cohl's early animated films, but there's a resemblance in their design approaches and I'd guess that Soglow may have influenced Crockett Johnson's comic strip Barnaby.
The Van Beuren animation studio isn't one that attracts a lot of attention, but the cartoons have a quirky charm at times. The studio did not have a strong artistic direction in the early '30's, and while that resulted in cartoons that rarely hold together, it did allow for individuals to do some interesting work. Jim Tyer worked on this series, though you'll only occasionally catch glimpses of his mature style. Watching a Van Beuren cartoon, you're never sure what's going to happen or how characters will be drawn from scene to scene. Occasionally, the odd gags and the shifting designs add up to an interesting experience.
In some ways, Soglow's approach predicts UPA and it's surprising that the Van Beuren artists, not known for consistency, kept the design as consistent with Soglow as they did. The cartoons are also interesting from a content standpoint, reflecting the depression, the political unrest of the time, and the ethnic stereotyping typical of films in the 1930's.
I would never pretend that these films are essential viewing or even that there's a hidden masterpiece on this DVD, but there's a fair amount of interesting work here for anybody interested in animation history.
Where this DVD shines is in the presentation. Steve Stanchfield has produced many DVDs of public domain material and has done a better job of restoring films and creating special features than many studios that do official releases. It's clear that Stanchfield loves the films that he's releasing and he goes to great lengths to create a package that provides the best possible image quality, historical background and rare supplementary material.
So far, Steve has been restricted to public domain cartoons but he told me at the last Ottawa festival that he's tried to license cartoons from studios without any luck. It's a shame that a company like Viacom, which controls the Terrytoon library, hasn't had the foresight to license those films to Steve as he would provide an excellent product. I wish that every animation DVD was put together with as much care and respect for the material as those done by Steve.
I've worked as an animator, writer, producer and director in TV animation for 29 years. I created the cgi series Monster By Mistake.
I hold a Masters degree from York University in Cinema and Media Studies.
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