Okay you Paramount junkies, which cartoon is the above stray model sheet from?: 1960, production number N-18-10. Gee, another smoking character by my dad. Looks to be a ratty cigar. I think I'm beginning to see a pattern here.Below, we have another dobie model sheet drawn on Oct. 3, 1961 (not only a year, but day and month too) by the legendary Iwao Takamoto (at least the initialed signature constitutes a consensus of three people who say it probably is Takamoto's, but add the disclaimer, "Don't quote me on it.") Touche and his sidekick Dum Dum were part of the The New Hanna-Barbera Cartoon Series (1962-63).
I now give you a model sheet from Tubby The Tuba, OK-ed by Sam Singer and brought to you by the New York Institute of Technology. Why would I be in possession of it? Michael Sporn speculates that Johnny Gentilella farmed some work out to my dad (Johnny G. and my dad knew each other from way back, at least to the Paramount/Famous days.) Michael himself worked on this production, and when I read about his utter disgust with it, it makes me fall-on-the-floor laugh. Have you ever been witness to that in person? When someone hates something so much they can go on and on, practically cussing it in all sorts of venomously creative ways? I'm laughing right now! It only endears him to me more. Here is but one post of several where he's commented upon it. I always read between the lines.
Finally, here are two model sheets of Porky and Granny from my dad's singular directorialship when DePatie-Freleng were producing the Warner Bros cartoon characters: this one titled Corn On The Cop. Granny and Porky, an odd pairing for sure.
Years ago, on a cartoon forum, I'd read a comment on a hit-or-miss poll about it. The commenter stated that, to loosely paraphrase, "...the cartoon came out so miserable that Friz must have yanked Spector from the directorial ranks then and there and forbade him to ever direct again."
Well, everyone is entitled to their opinion, so I didn't then necessarily feel the need to comment. But I guess it must still be sticking in my craw these years later. All I would like to say now is, "And you my friend, what wonderful piece of animation have you produced lately?"Damn! That felt great!
7 comments:
I believe the elephant is from 1960's "Mike the Masquerader", the first cartoon released after the cutoff on the original Harveytoons package (later using on the ABC Casper show) and IIRC, Syd Raymond's last theatrical voice work for Paramount (the elephant basically had Katnip's voice).
"Corn on the Cop" wasn't that bad a cartoon for the D-FE era. My main problem is when Porky yanks the nails from the board on the skyscraper, it goes against the normal framework for the "egotistical Daffy" shorts,in that like Wile E. Coyote, he's supposed to do himself in while Porky's the audience surrogate (and since Friz wrote the cartoon he should have known better). At least your dad didn't have to deal with directing a Daffy-Speedy short.
Hey J, thanks for the great info! I've never heard of/seen "Mike The Masquerader".
Thanks to Bob Jaques, I -- not too long ago -- finally had the opportunity to see COTC. Not all that bad, but I thinks it's odd that my dad only directed one cartoon in the DFE era. No telling how/why that came about. "Here Spec. We got one left. Go for it."
Yeh, I would say that elephant is from "Mike The Masquerader". The story revolves around the fact that the elephant witnesses Mike robbing a bank.
RE: your dad's directing opportunities: most of the old shorts directors (Friz included) got into directing young and early. They got to make plenty of lousy cartoons and bad mistakes, but basically on stuff no one was paying much attention to.
Ironically, your dad's hyphenated abilities and loads of experience may have worked against him in the expectations department.
I always tell kids if they want to direct, set your sights on it early and don't use up too much time mastering other disciplines.
CORN ON THE COP is pretty bad, but it's not much worse than the other DFE shorts with the Warner characters. Friz originally was directing, timing, etc. his studio's cartoons himself, but the place expanded and he selected his most "trusted" employees to direct long-term: Bob McKimson of course, long time animator Gerry Chiniquy (who had been vying to direct since the mid-40s), and his long time collaborator Hawley Pratt. I think that the workload suddenly went up in the 1965 to such a great quantity that Spector was given the cartoon to direct as a one-shot assignment.
Oh, and I was the one who sent the video to Bob Jaques initially. Some service eh?
That Porky model looks strangely like the 40's McKimsonian model. Yet I don't think it was used for the actual cartoon.
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