Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

– Finishing off my short series on sheet music, for now, I have a non-Disney cover. It’s the sheet music for the 2nd feature film from the Fleischer’s, Mr. Bug Goes To Town.

This was a feature that really got me going when I was young. I think it was the first original story done in animation; not an adapted fairy tale or novel. The story still works for me, though it comes off as a bit episodic. (Actually, I think most animated features are too episodic.) They’ve created a complete world for these insects, and it works.

Technically the film is a bit limited. The opening title shot is a stunning shot panning down the Empire State Building and across NYC ending on the vacant lot where the bugs live. The animation is adequate for the period; it has a charm that I find delightful and sometimes exciting. The voices are good, and the music is excellent.
(Click images to enlarge.)

This was the hit song, written by the brilliant Hoagy Carmichael (who wrote Stardust, Heart and Soul, and Skylark) and the just-as-brilliant Frank Loesser (who wrote Guys and Dolls, Hans Christian Andersen, and How To Succeed In Business). The score for the film was co-written by Leigh Harline (who scored Pinocchio, a lot of Disney shorts, and The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, among others).
As we’ve seen with the last two postings, most sheet music was printed with one or two colors )red for Der Fuehrer’s Face, brown & green for Song of the South) as opposed to full color. However, this Fleischer song has a full color cover (although they use one color on the rear cover). It shows that Paramount felt they had a hit song here, and they did have a modest hit. Glenn Miller’s recording of it didn’t hurt.

The rear cover is little more than an ad for other Paramount songs. However, in among the group is Gulliver’s Travels. I’m posting just this small section of the back cover, printed in blue.

– This is a camera layout for Gulliver’s Travels. It gives a good indication of how small the artwork was at times. The field guides look all off proportion. This layout was certainly just an indicator for the final layout, however it’s obvious that the guide they’re using is not the traditional Acme proportions but the ones Disney used at the time.
(Click on image to enlarge.)

(Hans perk on an earlier posting gave a field guide comparison chart – Acme to “Disney”. Check that out here.)

Also interesting is how thin the paper is: not the best quality and very transparent. The peg holes, of course, are those that were unique to the Fleischer studio.

– If there was one injustice in this year’s Oscar nominations, it was the absence of Werner Herzog‘s film, Grizzly Man in the Documentary Feature category. Herzog has been, for me, the finest documaentary film maker in the past thirty years. This was not only the best documentary last year, it was one of the best films.

Herzog has completely changed and challenged the form, and the Academy continues to ignore him. Despite the success of this latest film, it somehow didn’t even make the shortlist for Oscar’s documentary contenders, but the cartoonish, March of the Penguins, will probably win! It’s confusing when art is ignored.

Grizzly Man is about a confused man who lives with bears. He photographed most of this documentary himself, before being killed, and Herzog assembles it. This continues Herzog‘s fascination with people on the fringe who are dedicated to their visions.

The film premieres tonight on the Discovery Channel at 8pm. Set your vcr’s.

After you watch that, go out and rent LA SOUFRIÈRE. It’s a longish short film, and will change what you think about documentaries.

– Here’s another posting from the Fleischer Animated News, - the in-house organ of the Fleischer studio. (Sorry, but this paper is entertaining me just now!) It’s from 1939.*

This is a notice that Max Fleischer is teaching classes in the studio. (I like that it indicates that there is no charge.)

It’s accompanied, here, by a Hal Seeger cartoon about the classes. The same cartoon comments on a parking ticket Dave must’ve received. Presumably, Hal Seeger was close enough with the brothers that he felt it was ok to jibe them.

click on these images to enlarge them.

*Corrected by Jerry Beck (see comments) as Oct 1935.