Cagney Day

It's August, which means it's time again for TCM's Summer Under the Stars. To celebrate, Jill at Sittin' on a Backyard Fence and Michael at ScribeHard on Film are hosting a blogathon. This is my contribution for James Cagney Day (Tuesday, August 14).

As I mentioned up there in italics, it's James Cagney Day on TCM. But this isn't the Cagney Day I want to discuss. Instead, I want to talk about the original Cagney Day (at least in my heart) - Saturday, July 26, 2003, two months after I graduated from high school.

During high school, Cagney had become one of my favorite actors. I'd never seen a performer who could mix intensity and exuberance, joy and wrath like he could. I watched films like The Public Enemy, Angels with Dirty Faces, and Yankee Doodle Dandy repeatedly, and I discovered new facets of his charisma with every viewing.

Over the course of that summer, I videotaped six Cagney movies from TCM - all of them new to me - and I decided that I would watch them all in a single day. I dubbed the occasion Cagney Day, and I couldn't wait to sit around alone in my room like a dork. The six movies in question spanned thirty years (and, incidentally, three of them aired on TCM today):

Smart Money (1931), which isn't really a Cagney movie at all. It's Edward G. Robinson's show all the way, with Cagney cast as a lowly henchmen, but it was still a fine start to the day.

Footlight Parade (1933), one of Cagney's many delightful pairings with Joan Blondell, the closest thing to a female James Cagney that has ever existed.

The Roaring Twenties (1939), a movie that's kind of like Angels with Dirty Faces, but isn't as quite as good. Still a lot of fun though. I later rewatched it during my Prohibition-themed 21st-birthday party.

White Heat (1949), one of the most satisfying movie-watching experiences a person can have.

Love Me or Leave Me (1955), a Ruth Etting biopic where Cagney plays Marty "The Gimp" Snyder, a small-time gangster who's essentially the natural end point of the cocky, charming criminals he played in The Roaring Twenties and so many other 1930s movies. If those guys hadn't died, they'd have grown up to be just as sleazy, horrible, and pathetic as Snyder.

One, Two, Three (1961), Billy Wilder's fast-as-lightning comedy about Communism and Coca-Cola. Cagney didn't make a movie for twenty years after this one, and brother, what a way to say good night!

Like I mentioned, I hadn't seen any of those movies before Cagney Day, and there isn't a stinker in the bunch. Additionally, they offer a nice variety of genres. Four of them are mob movies, sure, but one of those is secretly a musical biopic, and the other two are hilarious comedies. Executed properly, Cagney Day would have been an amazing education in the career of one of our finest actors.

But Cagney Day was not executed properly. Not properly at all!

For the first four-and-a-half movies, everything went exactly as planned. I thrilled to Chester Kent's effortless dancing. I cried at Eddie Bartlett's untimely end. I swooned over Cody Jarrett's love for his mother. But then, halfway through Love Me or Leave Me, tragedy struck -

My mom decided it was time for me to go buy a car.

To be fair to her, we had looked at the car (a $1200 Ford Taurus in an off-putting forest green) a few day earlier, but still, can you believe the nerve of her? A CAR! On Cagney Day! What kind of 18-year-old boy wants to go buy a car when he could watch James Cagney emotionally manipulate Doris Day instead?!

Not this one, that's for sure!

Well, I watched the rest of Love Me or Leave Me and all of One, Two, Three the next day, but it just wasn't the same.

Thanks a whole lot, MOM!

Rains is Regent!

It's August, which means it's time again for TCM's Summer Under the Stars. To celebrate, Jill at Sittin' on a Backyard Fence and Michael at ScribeHard on Film are hosting a blogathon. I'm honored to make this contribution for Claude Rains Day (Sunday, August 5).

The first time I ever saw Claude Rains must have been in his final movie, George Stevens' The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). It's one of my grandmother's all-time favorite movies, and she insisted on watching it every year at Easter. That film has more cameos than The Muppet Movie, but as a child I didn't recognize very many of them. (Exceptions: John Wayne because everyone knows John Wayne, Angela Lansbury and Charlton Heston also thanks to my grandma, and Telly Savalas because of, well, The Muppet Movie.)

I certainly didn't know Claude Rains, but his King Herod left a huge impression on me. He appears at the very beginning of the movie, and his bizarre, fey intensity was like nothing I'd ever seen. In church I'd been taught that King Herod hated Jesus, but Rains seems more like he welcomes the challenge. He plays the role with a constant half-smile plastered on his face, as though he's excited that there's some baby out there will someday stand up to him - after all these years, he has an upstart to destroy, and he can't even wait to do it.

What I didn't realize at the time was that Herod was essentially a reprise of a character Rains had played twenty-seven years earlier in a much better film - Prince John in William Keighley and Michael Curtiz's The Adventures of Robin Hood. Like Herod, John is a petulant little man who craves power. He sees hero as a threat to his power and decides to devote all of his resources to killing that hero. And Rains plays them in a very similar manner.

In all of classic film, Prince John is the closest thing we have to the more recent tradition of Classy Actors Slumming It In Comic Book Movies. I don't mean that as insult; quite the opposite. It's not necessarily Rains's best work - and it sure isn't very subtle - but he seems to be having the time of his life.

And Rains is tremendous fun for the viewer as well. Prince John doesn't actually do very much in the movie. Mostly he just instructs his minions to do things for him. But the way Rains plays him, that never gets old for him. He's on a constant, delighted power trip, and every order is like his first.

Throughout the film, Rains displays Prince John's joy in a number of sublime moments - grinning haughtily at the archery contest, eagerly ordering his men to bring Robin Hood something to eat when Robin invades the throne, gleefully telling the arrested Robin Hood that Sir Guy's treatment of him will be "Something special, I'm sure!"

Perhaps my favorite moment of his occurs about fifteen minutes into the movie, when he explains that he's seized regency power away from his brother's appointed steward, a fellow named Longchamps. "I've kicked Longchamps out!," he exclaims. Rains's voice jumps up about a half-octave on the verb 'kicked' - Prince John's been living in his brother's shadow all of his life, and now that he's finally in power he can barely contain his excitement.

Claude Rains had tremendous range - befuddled father Adam Lemp in Four Daughters couldn't be farther removed from the unsettling Dr. Jack Griffin in The Invisible Man - but many of his best roles were charming, cultured rogues. That's true of Louis Renault in Casablanca, it's true of Alex Sebastian in Notorious, and it's certainly true of Prince John in his own mind. He isn't charming at all, of course, but you can always tell that he so badly wants to be.

Animated Short of the Day: "The Bear That Wasn't" (Chuck Jones, 1967)

Animated Short of the Day is an ongoing series showcasing short cartoons from every possible genre, era, and format. For an archive of the films previously featured, click here. To suggest cartoons for future installments, email me or contact me on Twitter.

If you're reading a blog post about short cartoons, you almost certainly know who Chuck Jones is. He directed dozens of the funniest and most famous Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, not to mention a couple of very well-regarded Dr. Seuss adaptations.

It's also quite likely that you know who Frank Tashlin is. He too was an animation director at Warner Brothers, for two separate stints in the late 1930s and early 1940s. After he left he moved into live-action, where he had a long and successful career directing films starring the likes of Tony Randall, Jerry Lewis, and Bob Hope.

The two were co-workers at Warner Brothers for years, where they were both heading their own units. They both made a whole bunch of hilarious cartoons with Daffy Duck in them. But "The Bear That Wasn't" is the only time the two of them ever collaborated in the production of a film. It was made at MGM in 1967, twenty-three years after Tashlin left WB to begin his live-action career.

And it really was a true collaboration. The short is adapted from Tashlin's 1946 children's book of the same name, and it follows the book's story almost exactly. If a viewer didn't know better, he or she could easily mistake Paul Frees' narration for a segment from Reading Rainbow. This is a good thing, because it means that the cartoon retains the book's sharp satire of those who lets others to define their identity.

But the visual style is pure Jones - it hardly resembles the book. Jones's figures grew most distinct over the course of his career. By 1967, they had become instantly recognizable. One look at the bear and you know instantly that this is from the same man who, just the previous year, had reshaped Dr. Seuss's Grinch in his own image.

Jones is aided immensely by his frequent production designer Maurice Noble, whose backgrounds are so striking that he receives a co-director credit on the cartoon. I've always been especially impressed with the way that Noble makes the corporation settings seem just as vast as the outdoor ones. This really seems like a place where the bear could get lost and never escape.

The cartoon is also hilarious, albeit in a very different way from the fast-and-frantic cartoons the two gentlemen had made at WB. This is a very low-key, almost wistful cartoon, with most of the laughs coming from details (the image of a cigarette hanging out of the bear's mouth) or the repetition of the phrase "You are not a bear. You are a silly man who needs a shave and wears a fur coat," which gets funnier to me every single time it's said. It's a far cry from "Duck Amuck" or "Porky Pig's Feat."

"The Bear That Wasn't" is available on DVD and Blu-Ray, both of which are a lot prettier than this YouTube video.

Animated Short of the Day: "Baby Bottleneck" (Bob Clampett, 1946)

Animated Short of the Day is an ongoing series showcasing short cartoons from every possible genre, era, and format. For an archive of the films previously featured, click here. To suggest cartoons for future installments, email me or contact me on Twitter.

So far, I've held off on featuring a Bob Clampett cartoon in this series. Not because it's hard to choose just one, although that's certainly true. Mostly I just don't know if I have anything original to say about his work. He was one of the most talented and most idiosyncratic directors ever to work for a major studio, but everyone already knows that about him.

In any case, I'm going to try my best. It's always a pleasure to watch the work he did at Warner Bros. in the 1930s and 1940s. "Baby Bottleneck" is one of my favorite films he ever made, and I chose it for today's post because it offers such a perfect example of his style.

 

More than any of his contemporaries at WB (Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Frank Tashlin, or even Tex Avery), Clampett never seemed overly concerned with staying on-model. They have a certain amount of consistency - the lead character is always recognizable as being Daffy Duck, but he stretches and squashes into a vast array of entertaining shapes.

We see this from the very first shot of Daffy. He is, simply, talking on the phone, but his face mutates with every word. This adds so much energy to what would otherwise only be a series of jokes about now-dead celebrities and news stories. The character isn't even doing anything physical, but Clampett still makes sure that the action is being driven by the animation.

(I'm no huge fan of Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi - who I think mostly imitates Clampett's outrageousness with none of his wit or storytelling ability - but he wrote a couple of great blog posts about the animation of this cartoon.)

Later, Daffy's hat changes size and shape depending on who's animating him, (I want to believe that this is a reference to Groucho's shifting costumes in the climax of Duck Soup, but I've seen no evidence that that's actually the case), his tail end bounces around like a super ball, and his leg accidentally gets stretched to twenty feet for a while. All of these effects contribute to the cartoon's feeling of utter chaos - nothing going right at the stork factory, including the stability of Daffy's body.

But what makes "Baby Bottleneck" a true masterpiece is how well-organized it is as a story, despite seeming like random silliness for most of its runtime. It spends its first two minutes pretending to be a spot-gag cartoon about all of the different ways babies can be delivered, and all of the hilarious ways that baby animals can be sent to the wrong parents. 

After meeting Daffy and Porky, we transition into another sequence of gags, this time the conveyor belt changing-table (accompanied by Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse," a staple of Carl Stalling's Looney Tunes music). Third, Clampett lets Porky and Daffy run around for a while as they each attempt to trick the other into sitting on an egg.

Finally, in the cartoon's last ninety seconds, he works backward through all three set-pieces, drawing the various threads together into a satisfying conclusion. Porky and Daffy end up on the conveyor belt, where they're stuffed into a single diaper and then delivered to a gorilla. In that final shot, Clampett reveals that every previous sequence served to set up that last joke. But it's so funny and ridiculous that the viewer doesn't even notice unless they're watching for the fourth or fifth or seventy-third time.

And it even concludes with another reference that's incomprehensible to most modern ears. But I will admit that as a kid I found it pretty neat that the gorilla was calling me for help.

Animated Short of the Day: "Pigs is Pigs" (Friz Freleng, 1937)

Animated Short of the Day is an ongoing series showcasing short cartoons from every possible genre, era, and format. For an archive of the films previously featured, click here. To suggest cartoons for future installments, email me or contact me on Twitter.

"Pigs is Pigs" is notable for two reasons - First, it marks the final appearance of the short-lived Merrie Melodies star Piggy Hamhock. In 1931, Freleng had introduced Piggy, an ink-black character in the Mickey Mouse/Felix the Cat vein. He starred in two shorts (the jazz farce "You Don't Know What You're Doin'!" and "Hittin' the Trail for Hallelujah Land," one of the infamous Censored Eleven) before being dropped.

In 1936, Freleng brought back Piggy, who now had a last name. Rather than a free-spirited, alcohol-swigging adult, this Piggy is a little kid who lives with his parents and his many sibling. He's pink-skinned, obese, and obsessed with eating. It really is a completely different character, but it's easy to see why Freleng reused the first name - "Piggy Hamhock" is truly delightful to say or hear.

Once again, Piggy only got to star in two shorts - "At Your Service Madame" and today's feature. Porky was on the rise at the time, and Merrie Melodies certainly didn't need two pig stars. So this cartoon is Piggy's final bow.

But brother, what a way to go out!

The other reason "Pigs is Pigs" is notable is that it's one of director Friz Freleng's first non-musical cartoons. I don't know for sure that it's his very first, but most of his cartoons throughout the early 30s featured the characters breaking out into song at some point (He would continue that thread throughout his career, but never to quite the same degree.)

This cartoon is still a comedy, but the entire second half - set in the home of a mad scientist played by deep-voiced Disney veteran Billy Bletcher - has a pervasive feeling of foreboding. It's this section that the cartoon is best remembered for, with the mad scientist force-feeding Piggy in a darker version of the food machine from Chaplin's Modern Times (released the year before). It would also be reflected later in films like A Clockwork Orange and Se7en.

Those comparisons might be a bit extreme, but I think they're valid. Nothing in the film is scary, exactly - because it's too light-hearted for that - but it puts the viewer inside Piggy's mind during an experience that he clearly isn't enjoying. In addition to the content itself, everything about the sequence is just a little bit off. It has so many dream-like touches - the pie filling around Piggy's face disappears magically when he moves on to a new dish, he doesn't gain any weight until he becomes instantly obese at the end, and most of all, the strange way that the scientist says "Have some nice pies, cakes, ice cream and pickles!" (Pickles!)

And it pays off wonderfully in the final moment. That ending! Not only is it a hilarious gag, it rings completely true. I think it's exactly how I would have acted in that situation as a kid.

Speaking of which, the whole cartoon hits me pretty close to home. As an overweight child I adored this cartoon, focusing as it does on the inner life of a fat kid who eats as often as possible, and thinks about food the rest of the time. I wasn't quite as much of a glutton as Piggy (not that anyone could be, outside of a cartoon), but I definitely spent much of my time wondering when I would next be able to eat.

The first half of the cartoon captures that feeling better than just about anything else I've seen. The scene featured in the screenshot above - where Piggy ties together the spaghetti from everyone's plate so he can eat it - is a masterpiece of extending a gag for maximum effect.

"Pigs is Pigs" is only one of two excellent cartoons by that title. Come back tomorrow for the other one.

Animated Short of the Day: "Plastic Man in Puddle Trouble" (Andy Suriano, 2006)

Animated Short of the Day is a series showcasing short cartoons from every possible genre, era, and format. For an archive of the films previously featured, click here. To suggest cartoons for future installments, email me or contact me on Twitter.

For the most part, this series will focus on cartoons that were released theatrically. In many cases, TV episodes don't stand alone as well as theatrical shorts do. I love Phineas and Ferb a lot, for example, but the show follows such a strict formula that it's hard to select one episode as a stand-out. Other shows do individual episodes very well, but including them would completely altar the tone of this series. I could easily write about a dozen different Hey Arnold! or Gargoyles episodes, but those shows bear so little resemblance to what we think of as "animated shorts" that such a post would require far more set-up and explanation than I have planned for this series.

But today I'm going to make an exception. Kind of.

"Plastic Man in Puddle Trouble" was commissioned by Cartoon Network in 2006 and never aired on TV, so its status as a "TV episode" is debatable. It was released online later that year, where it became a big hit among the nerds.

Whether one considers it to be a TV show or not, one thing that's clear is that it's very much in the spirit of Looney Tunes, its corporate sibling. The animation is loose and free (a stark contrast from the stiff 1970s Ruby-Spears series), with Suriano wisely pitting his hero against a villain just as pliable as himself - water-based criminal The Human Puddle, created just for this cartoon. The visual gags make good use of Plastic Man's powers, and there are plenty of solid verbal jokes as well (particularly a punny montage of other foes Plastic Man has defeated).

The designs and storyboards were done by Stephen DeStefano, a long-time comics artist who drew one of my all-time favorite Captain Marvel stories, among many other wonderful things. He doesn't stray too far from the original Jack Cole design (below). Instead he keeps what had been working for decades, simply streamlining the design to allow for more fluid animation.

Plastic Man is voiced by Tom Kenny, best known by his alias Tom "Spongebob" Kenny. His version of the character was so well-received that he went on to reprise the role in several episodes of Cartoon Network's Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

Even more recently, the team behind this cartoon has reunited to make several more Plastic Man shorts for that same network's DC Nation block. I haven't seen those shorts yet (I'm really hoping a DVD release of all of the DC Nation cartoons so I don't have to click around online for them), but if they're as much fun as this cartoon, that's good news indeed.