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Les Elton (1932)

It would be impossible to describe in words Monkey Doodle. It’s one of those things you have to see to believe. This oddest of oddities features unique designs and bizarre, detailed animation. The Thunderbean version of this film was restored using 4 prints from 4 different sources.

By the age of 17 Les Elton was billed as a “Comedy Cartoonist” doing popular lightning sketches on the vaudeville circuit. He eventually drew for both the Philadelphia Record, Public Ledger, and the St. Louis Globe Democrat. He also developed his own comic strip. In 1916 he joined the Bray animation studio where he primarily illustrated comic strips based on animated cartoons produced by the studio. Elton left Bray Studios in 1917.

In 1917 he patented a way to combine live action and animation. His 1931 animated cartoon Monkey Doodle featuring “Simon the Monk” was produced by former Bray staffer Jaques Kopfstein with the help of his stepson and animator Robert Bentley. The Eltons then went to California, where in 1935 Les produced another animated cartoon The Hobo Hero.

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Pathé (1907)

Le Cochon Danseur (The Dancing Pig) is a silent, 4 minute long, black-and-white burlesque film released in 1907 by French company PathĂ©, apparently based on a Vaudeville act. In the film, a giant anthropomorphic pig, dressed in fancy clothes, dances with a girl, who later embarrasses him by tearing his clothes off. The two start to dance together, then walk into the curtains behind them. In the infamous final scene, the pig moves his tongue and eyes around and then bare his teeth, possibly in an attempt to show the puppet’s mechanical abilities.

The film had fallen into obscurity for over a century, but gained more notoriety around 2007. It has now become an Internet meme and creepypasta, with Clarisse Loughrey stating that the film “will definitely be entering into your nightmares tonight.”

The Dancing Pig is the titular main antagonist of Le cochon danseur. He is an anthropomorphic pig with sharp, predatory fangs.

The pig has been used as a popular Internet meme villain and has become popular on the Internet since 2007.

At first, the pig acts as a rude, greedy, but voracious, gentleman to the woman, who takes his jacket off and reveals his body, thus embarrassing him. Pretty soon, they make up and dance together. Afterwards, they take a bow and go backstage.

At the end of the short film, the pig shows his true, evil nature when he is seen laughing evilly whilst flailing his tongue, rolling his eyes around, and showing his sharp teeth, suggesting that he killed the woman and ate her.

The Dancing Pig is an obese anthropomorphic pig. He wears a black jacket, a white shirt, a small top hat and no pants. His mouth is filled with sharp teeth.

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by Irving Berlin (1912)

Fleischer Studios (1926)

You can sing along with the bouncing ball and Fleischer animation depicting passengers boarding a train, including one late arrival who, magically, opens the conductor as if he were a door! Learn more about Max and Dave Fleischer, Fleischer Studios, and the early days of animation at http://www.fleischerstudios.com/

“Irving Berlin has no place in American music – he is American music”

— Jerome Kern

in 1911, Berlin hit upon the musical composition that catapulted him into legend:  “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.”  A jaunty tip of the hat to the ragtime craze (although not technically of the ragtime genre) the song reached the larger public in several stages: first as a vaudeville number premiered in Chicago by Emma Carus; then as a performance by Berlin at the Friars Frolic of 1911; then increasingly “covered” by performers in vaudeville and early gramophone recordings. It set a new record by becoming the fastest selling song of its time, moving a million copies of sheet music within four months; by 1912, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” had sold over two million copies of sheet music and subsequently a million more.   It was the most ubiquitous song of its era and had become a cornerstone of the music publishing industry.

Read more about Irving Berlin here: https://www.irvingberlin.com/early-career-and-tin-pan-alley

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Ben Sharpsteen (1935)

The Cookie Carnival is an animated Silly Symphony produced by Walt Disney Productions and originally released May 25, 1935. It’s a Cinderella story involving a cookie girl who wishes to be queen at the cookie carnival, and an homage to the Atlantic City boardwalk parade and bathing beauty contest of the 1920s and 1930s.

Pinto Colvig, most known as the voice of Goofy, provides the voice of the gingerbread man. Vaudeville was dying out by the time The Cookie Carnival made its debut, but audiences would have been familiar with each of the acts represented by the different cookies.

When Miss Bonbon is being outfitted, she transitions from her cookie-like shape into a more humanoid-appearance. This might make her another early example of visually realistic human characters in Disney shorts, and even a precursor to the Snow White look in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

According to Film Superlist: 1894-1939, this cartoon entered the Public Domain in 1963 as its copyright was not renewed.

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Winsor McCay (1921)

After eating a cheese cake, a hobo falls asleep and dreams of a strange vaudeville show performed by bugs.

Winsor McCay was an American cartoonist and animator. He is best known for the comic strip Little Nemo and the animated film Gertie the Dinosaur. For contractual reasons, he worked under the pen name Silas on the comic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend.

From a young age, McCay was a quick, prolific, and technically dextrous artist. He started his professional career making posters and performing for dime museums, and in 1898 began illustrating newspapers and magazines. In 1903 he joined the New York Herald, where he created popular comic strips such as Little Sammy Sneeze and Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. In 1905 his signature strip Little Nemo in Slumberland debuted—a fantasy strip in an Art Nouveau style about a young boy and his adventurous dreams. The strip demonstrated McCay’s strong graphic sense and mastery of color and linear perspective. McCay experimented with the formal elements of the comic strip page, arranging and sizing panels to increase impact and enhance the narrative. McCay also produced numerous detailed editorial cartoons and was a popular performer of chalk talks on the vaudeville circuit.

McCay was an early animation pioneer; between 1911 and 1921 he self-financed and animated ten films, some of which survive only as fragments. The first three served in his vaudeville act; Gertie the Dinosaur was an interactive routine in which McCay appeared to give orders to a trained dinosaur. McCay and his assistants worked for twenty-two months on his most ambitious film, The Sinking of the Lusitania, a patriotic recreation of the German torpedoing in 1915 of the RMS Lusitania. Lusitania did not enjoy as much commercial success as the earlier films, and McCay’s later movies attracted little attention. His animation, vaudeville, and comic strip work was gradually curtailed as newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, his employer since 1911, expected McCay to devote his energies to editorial illustrations.

In his drawing, McCay made bold, prodigious use of linear perspective, particularly in detailed architecture and cityscapes. He textured his editorial cartoons with copious fine hatching, and made color a central element in Little Nemo. His comic strip work has influenced generations of cartoonists and illustrators. The technical level of McCay’s animation—its naturalism, smoothness, and scale—was unmatched until the work of Fleischer Studios in the late 1920s, followed by Walt Disney’s feature films in the 1930s. He pioneered inbetweening, the use of registration marks, cycling, and other animation techniques that were to become standard.

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Winsor McCay (1914)

Gertie is the earliest animated film to feature a dinosaur. McCay first used the film before live audiences as an interactive part of his vaudeville act; the frisky, childlike Gertie did tricks at the command of her master. McCay’s employer William Randolph Hearst curtailed McCay’s vaudeville activities, so McCay added a live-action introductory sequence to the film for its theatrical release. McCay abandoned a sequel, Gertie on Tour in 1921, after producing about a minute of footage.

Winsor McCay was an American cartoonist and animator. He is best known for the comic strip Little Nemo and the animated film Gertie the Dinosaur. For contractual reasons, he worked under the pen name Silas on the comic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend.

From a young age, McCay was a quick, prolific, and technically dextrous artist. He started his professional career making posters and performing for dime museums, and in 1898 began illustrating newspapers and magazines. In 1903 he joined the New York Herald, where he created popular comic strips such as Little Sammy Sneeze and Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. In 1905 his signature strip Little Nemo in Slumberland debuted—a fantasy strip in an Art Nouveau style about a young boy and his adventurous dreams. The strip demonstrated McCay’s strong graphic sense and mastery of color and linear perspective. McCay experimented with the formal elements of the comic strip page, arranging and sizing panels to increase impact and enhance the narrative. McCay also produced numerous detailed editorial cartoons and was a popular performer of chalk talks on the vaudeville circuit.

McCay was an early animation pioneer; between 1911 and 1921 he self-financed and animated ten films, some of which survive only as fragments. The first three served in his vaudeville act; Gertie the Dinosaur was an interactive routine in which McCay appeared to give orders to a trained dinosaur. McCay and his assistants worked for twenty-two months on his most ambitious film, The Sinking of the Lusitania, a patriotic recreation of the German torpedoing in 1915 of the RMS Lusitania. Lusitania did not enjoy as much commercial success as the earlier films, and McCay’s later movies attracted little attention. His animation, vaudeville, and comic strip work was gradually curtailed as newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, his employer since 1911, expected McCay to devote his energies to editorial illustrations.

In his drawing, McCay made bold, prodigious use of linear perspective, particularly in detailed architecture and cityscapes. He textured his editorial cartoons with copious fine hatching, and made color a central element in Little Nemo. His comic strip work has influenced generations of cartoonists and illustrators. The technical level of McCay’s animation—its naturalism, smoothness, and scale—was unmatched until the work of Fleischer Studios in the late 1920s, followed by Walt Disney’s feature films in the 1930s. He pioneered inbetweening, the use of registration marks, cycling, and other animation techniques that were to become standard.