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Paramount/Famous Studios Cartoons

T

The King Bee

Over the years, hundreds of stations used the Paramount Pictures-distributed Famous Studios cartoon series for television. Characters included the updated Popeye series (as opposed to the earlier Fleischer ones that looked more like the E.C. Segar newspaper characters), Baby Huey, Herman and Katnip, and of course Casper The Friendly Ghost. I fondly remember Jackson Beck as the voice of Bluto/Brutus.

They were all beautifully drawn, animated, voiced and orchestrated...on a par with MGM and Warner Bros. in every respect. I believe they were in production from 1947-1965. Who distributes these cartoons (or, at least, who holds the copyrights)?

And here's a kicker...do any stations still subscribe to and use the above-mentioned studios' animated work, or have all been retired from syndication? Here in Louisville during the '40s through the mid '70s, stations used all the Big Three studios' series, as well as UPA, Terrytoons, and later, Hanna-Barbera of course.
 
Some of the Harvey Cartoon characters such as Casper, Baby Huey, Herman & Katnip, etc. may have fallen into Public Domain. Showing these cartoons could be problematic, unless legal eagles have somehow straightened out all of the entanglements.

Personally, I couldn't stand the color Popeye tunes. Putting Popeye in a regular sailor suit (yes, I realize he's supposed to be a sailor, but come on), and trying to "doll up" Olive Oyl, not to mention having Swee'Pea talking even though he's supposed to be a baby was a little too much. Those cartoons were not in the same league as the earlier Fleischer black & whites.
 
Sadly, the same thing has happened to Mighty Mouse as those cartoons have fallen into the public domain with only a few cartoons to be seen on either VHS or DVD. I haven't seen a Heckle and Jeckle cartoon in years and I have a feeling that these have fallen into the public domain as well. Also Deputy Dawg hasn't been seen in years and I haven't seen these cartoons being circulated on VHS and/or DVD if at all as far as I know.

As for the Popeye cartoons, the 1930's version of Popeye in black and white are now on DVD and have been for about a year or so now. I wish that they would put out the early 1940's Popeye where he had a friend who was a short guy and in one of these cartoons, they were moving Olive Oyl out of her apartment and then they get in trouble with a policeman who was bothering them and everything went wrong (the piano fell on the policeman, the police car wrecked, etc.) I think that the Paramount/Famous Studios cartoons from the mid 1940's to the late 1950's were the best as they showed various sides of Popeye, like his nephews and his battles with Bluto/Brutus over Olive Oyl and his various scrapes with other things like termites eating into his new house and making his house into metal, etc.
 
Braves, good to see a new post from you! :)

Popeye's short, bespecled (sp) friend was named Shorty, supposedly inspired by a Paramount executive.

I'm willing to bet that there's some Political Correctness issues regarding Heckle & Jeckle. Blogger Anne Alogy wrote several years ago that Heckle & Jeckle were anti-establishment long before anyone knew what The Establishment was. She theorized that unbeknown to CBS or anyone else who ran H & J, those iconoclastic cartoons were the seed that eventually gave birth to the various protest movements of the 60s. The Talking Magpies were especially disrespectful to law enforcement. Perhaps today's TV stations would be afraid of planting dissenting ideas into the heads of youngsters again.

Notice that you also don't see Rocky & Bullwinkle on TV these days. That was another case of social commentary in animated form. It should be noted that R & B creator Jay Ward was an alumni of the University of California, Berkeley, and was quite proud of that.

I don't think that the networks' Standards & Practices would let that kind of humor get past them today.
 
The Paramount cartoons were excellent (especially the early Popeyes and pre-code Betty Boops) but once Famous Studios took over, there was a vast decline in quality. In that era, Disney was still the gold standard for cartoons, Warner and MGM were close behind, and Famous Studios and Terrytoons were kind of the "minor leagues." (As Paul Terry once candidly admitted: "Disney is the Tiffany's in this business, and I am the Woolworth's.") The Famous Popeyes became less creative (although there were a few gems here and there) and more formulaic. And, to my mind, the conversion of those cartoons to the standard pre-recording of the audio track (as opposed to the post-sync process they originally used, voicing the lines to the final already edited print) destroyed much of the character of those early Popeyes, where half the fun was the constant ad-libbed mutterings and asides of Popeye and Bluto. (When I was very young, before I knew about the recording process, I used to think Popeye was a ventriloquist because he could speak so well without moving his lips!) ;D
 
Agreed about the split between Fleischer and Famous - The Fleischers' work is still amazing.

That said, one bit of history that I'd like to hear more about is Columbia/Screen Gems, if only because there's so little readily available (especially outside the UPA-produced cartoons.)

I just stumbled across one short, "Up 'N' Atom", that (if you excuse the Sylvester The Cat lookalike) wasn't half bad - and legend has it Bob Clampett did some of the gags. It aired on the Voom Animania channel (which appears to have a lot of Columbia, as well as DePatie/Freling and those fifties-era Felix The Cat cartoons, for which the nostalgia outstrips the execution.)

There was another from earlier, animated by Ub Iwerks, that essentially reworked The Skeleton Dance (which he animated at Disney) in full color, and was mesmerizing.

Much of their stuff outside of that appears to have been crud, mind you, but are there any other gems in there I might be missing?
 
I remember that Terrytoons in the mid 1960's had a Japanese character named Hashimoto-San who was a mouse and he had a wife and several kids as I recall. Also there was a flying horse named Luno where a boy had a play horse in his room and the horse came to life when the boy was happy or sad and the horse talked and they had adventures together and then they had a cartoon with all sorts of super heroes and the one I remember the most was Diaper Man. I remember that the cartoons were a part of a Saturday morning show on CBS around the mid 1960's time period which also featured Mighty Mouse. I remember when they syndicated those cartoons back in the late 1970's because I watched them as a kid and I haven't really seen them since WGN's Bozo the Clown used these as cartoons that they were showing during the mid 1980's.
 
A while back, I found a number of 1960's Terrytoons VHS tapes in a local Dollar Store (Deal's/Save a Lot), This included:

2 Astronut
3 Hector Heathcote
1 James Hound
2 Sidney The Elephant
1 Mighty Heroes (Diaper Man, etc.)
1 Deputy Dawg (which I had bought earlier)

All these were part of a Terrytoons "Good Guys" Series"..

The Save a Lot Franchise is in several parts of the country, so if there's one near you you might find some of these. Luno and Hashimoto were also on the shelf at the store where I was..
 
One reason for the demise of the B& W Max Fleischer Popeye cartoons: Color TV. WSTM (then WSYR) in Syracuse ran them late afternoon, hosted by Denny Sullivan. I remember him answering viewer's mail on the air, and when asked why they weren't playing the old B & W ones anymore, he replied that the station had gone full color (this was 1966/67, an NBC affiliate), and the cartoons were in B & W. That simple. At least, for that station.
 
oldschooler1 said:
One reason for the demise of the B& W Max Fleischer Popeye cartoons: Color TV. WSTM (then WSYR) in Syracuse ran them late afternoon, hosted by Denny Sullivan. I remember him answering viewer's mail on the air, and when asked why they weren't playing the old B & W ones anymore, he replied that the station had gone full color (this was 1966/67, an NBC affiliate), and the cartoons were in B & W. That simple. At least, for that station.
Click to expand...

NBC was big on being the "Full Color Network" in 1965-66-67. WKYC TV 3 in Cleveland was running pretty much just the King Features Popeyes from 1960-62 on their Barnaby and Woodrow shows.
 
That show with Diaper Man was called "Mighty Mouse
and the Mighty Heroes," and I think Ralph Bakshi created
the Mighty Heroes.
 
Someone stated elsewhere on R-I that Bluto became Brutus (by the time of the King Features Popeyes [in Philadelphia, seen on Sally Starr's "Popeye Theatre" on WFIL-6, before it became WPVI c. 1971]) because Disney threatened to litigate over the similarity of "Bluto" to "Pluto".

Well, judging by copyright dates, to my memory, the first b/w Popeye (I saw *those* on WPHL-17 during the '70s) was released in 1933. When did Pluto first go into circulation? And why did Uncle Walt wait so long to sue King Features?

ixnay
 
Pluto made his cartoon debut in 1930. The then-planet Pluto was discovered the same year, hence how he got his name.

Popeye was a comic strip before it became an animated feature.

Another of Disney's talking points in the lawsuit: Disney felt that the Bluto character had too close of a resemblence (sp) to his Black Pete, aka Pegleg Pete character.
 
ixnay said:
Someone stated elsewhere on R-I that Bluto became Brutus (by the time of the King Features Popeyes [in Philadelphia, seen on Sally Starr's "Popeye Theatre" on WFIL-6, before it became WPVI c. 1971]) because Disney threatened to litigate over the similarity of "Bluto" to "Pluto".
Click to expand...

Did a little checking, considering I'd never heard of Disney being mixed up in the Bluto/Brutus mess...and I think this summarizes the actual situation (it's close - still the product of legal foofahrah.)

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1548/is-popeyes-nemesis-named-bluto-or-brutus

-Sean
 
hubcity said:
ixnay said:
Someone stated elsewhere on R-I that Bluto became Brutus (by the time of the King Features Popeyes [in Philadelphia, seen on Sally Starr's "Popeye Theatre" on WFIL-6, before it became WPVI c. 1971]) because Disney threatened to litigate over the similarity of "Bluto" to "Pluto".
Click to expand...

Did a little checking, considering I'd never heard of Disney being mixed up in the Bluto/Brutus mess...and I think this summarizes the actual situation (it's close - still the product of legal foofahrah.)

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1548/is-popeyes-nemesis-named-bluto-or-brutus

-Sean
Click to expand...

Disney may not have been involved in the Bluto/Brutus mess, but Disney studios was known for being very protective of their copyrights. They threatened to sue often.

In the late 60s, Jay Ward decided to get into merchandising their cartoon characters, and the first product was a Bullwinkle wrist watch. They put up a huge billboard on the Sunset Strip with a picture of Bullwinkle - except instead of antlers, he had huge round black Mickey Mouse ears. The billboard read: "Mickey Moose wears a Bullwinkle watch."

I believe the issue was not so much the name Mickey Moose, which after all is not the same as Mickey Mouse, but the big round ears, which Disney felt was copyright infringement.

Disney's lawyers were all over Jay Ward within a matter of days with a cease and desist order. After all these years, I can't remember the outcome for sure, but I believe Ward took the billboard down.
 
A while back,Cartoon Network aired "The Popeye Show" on Sunday evenings. Amazingly,most (if not all) of the Popeye cartoons were restored to the original intro and outro mention of Paramount Pictures...for many years the lower case A.A.P. (Associated Artists Productions) logo was seen on TV.

I'm a bit surprised about Casper,Baby Huey,Little Audrey and Herman and Katnip is in the public domain. Didn't Harvey Comics and Harvey Films end up being part of Sunland Entertainment?

Republic Pictures (NTA) owned the rest of the Fleischer and Famous Studios cartoon library didin't they? Since Viacom owns Paramount with Republic reduced to a brand name doesn't that mean it is once again a Paramount property?

Popeye and Casper were the best characters from the Famous Studios era. The remaining cartoons including Baby Huey and the Screen Song series I found terminally cheezy and unappealing as a child. What really bugged me about Famous is that they continually re-hashed scenes in their latter cartoons used previously in the original Fleisher cartoons....especially Popeye.

Max Fleisher tried to sue Paramount but lost since he didn't own the rights to the films. Max Fleisher in my opinion produced more original films especially with the Superman series and then when he was canned by Paramount...the films became less quality and less creative as they tried to imitate Warner Bros' fast paced elements to a certain degree. ...but I must give a little credit here. Isidore Sparber was briliant with the Casper series as Seymour Kneitel was with Popeye....but that's about it. Warner Bros blew Famous Studios away in the 1940s and 50s.

I read in the library back in the 80s that Max Fleischer was left with nearly nothing before his death except for his original Out of The Inkwell character Koko The Clown..which is needless to say all too sad. Max along with Dave competed head on with Walt Disney and his crew...they were both creative in their early films...some of their "Color Classics" cartoons were especially charming,touching and innocently childlike. Disney re-released that series on VHS in the 1980s as "The Fabulous Fleischer Folio." The termination of the Fleischers should be considered a dark chapter in Paramount's history.
 
kirkiefan said:
The termination of the Fleischers should be considered a dark chapter in Paramount's history.
Click to expand...

Then there was always the Sherry Lansing Era in the Movie Division, but that's another story...
 
Disney's lawyers were all over Jay Ward within a matter of days with a cease and desist order.

Jay Ward loved to be sued. He enjoyed the publicity. It was the type of guy he was. Remember all the Fractured Fairy Tales that the handsome prince just happene to resemble Walt Disney? And then there was the Kirwood Derby situation!
 
therealjm12 said:
Disney's lawyers were all over Jay Ward within a matter of days with a cease and desist order.

Jay Ward loved to be sued. He enjoyed the publicity. It was the type of guy he was. Remember all the Fractured Fairy Tales that the handsome prince just happene to resemble Walt Disney? And then there was the Kirwood Derby situation!
Click to expand...

...and the voice of Captain Peter Peachfuzz bearing more than a passing resemblance to Ed Wynn's, and there was also something or other that Red Skelton was ticked at Ward over...
 
Thanks, Sean, for the Straight Dope link. 234 Paramount/Famous Popeyes? No wonder Fleischer's staff's creativity was exhausted. ;D

ixnay
(whose reluctance to eat spinach ranks somewhere between Peepeye's and Poopeye's - but hamburgers are another story entirely...)
 
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