The Emerald Isle

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Semi-OT: An MGM short with the studio's orchestra playing a certian firefighting piece

The tune that the MGM Orchestra is playing is the same tune played throughout GABBY's "Fire Cheese" and the Famous Studios Screen Song sequel, "The Big Flame-Up" (minus the sing-along number), plus cartoons from various other studios as well. But to PD video fans, it's those two Paramount cartoons that the tune is well-known.

This tune is "The Merry Wives of Windsor Overture", not an execrpt of "The Merry Widow", as Fleischer/Disney historian Ray Pointer said it was an execrpt of "The Merry Widow". But it's not.

And oh, if you want to see the two- this post was going to be devoted to the MGM live-action short posted above but however....

Non-orginial prints of easily found orginials.....

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330277163840&indexURL=1&photoDisplayType=2#ebayphotohosting


UM&M, NTA and AAP altered EVERYTHING, execpt several Betty Boop cartoons.

So don't be mislead when finding a bunch of orginials that UM&M didn't alter that cartoon!

Finding incentives to get Paramount/Viacom to release classic cartoon library...

My blog's been kinda slow since good prints of Paramount cartoons stopped being posted on YouTube and traffic is gone, but I've still got it, Eddie! Boop-Boop-A-Doop, Boop!

Ok, so I made my own version of a Betty Boop quote from the Roger Rabbit movie, but still...

Anyways, I've been trying to help Viacom find incentives via letters.

I've heard there's a new direct-to-video Alvin and the Chimpmunks animated feature put out by

Paramount, and that would be a nice incentive to release "The Alvin Show", if the 2007 live-action feature didn't work out as another incentive.

A nice financial incentive would be to put out the color cartoons first. Sorry to upset Betty Boop fans, but I've heard that the UCLA masters with original titles are mostly the Technicolor, Cinecolor, and Polacolor cartoons. It would be cheaper to restore if most of the black-and-white UCLA material is altered by UM&M/NTA.

What could be good marketing techniques?

1. Partner with the Ad Council to use the restored clips for PSA's. Make 'em far fetched with pointless random clip selection, just....like....Disney!

2. Put a commercial for a DVD release on Nicktoons Network. Play 'em once or twice in a row during each break, and get an annoyance.

3. Make an official website devoted to these cartoons that isn't Harvey. First, get people to pay $1.99 a month to watch these cartoons on the website to make a profit. If you want to make it free, get ad support from the animation industry.

4. Re-release them in theaters! People will see the Harveytoon library with original Paramount titles. Plus it would encourage sing-alongs for the "Screen Song" cartoons. I remember going to a museum theater and in the end there was a sing-along to the jingle of the company the musuem was devoted to.

5. Put 'em on the new movie channel partnership with two certian "lion" studios , like Jerry Beck's open letter stated.

6. Slogan: "Your favorite vauge memories are back!"

Who's with me???

Off-Topic: "Oh, Mickey- Nabisco!"

It's been hard to find good prints of Fleischer films lately, although I will probably post "Play Safe" when I'm up to it. Even though it's off topic, I am going to post something from Max Fleischer's rival when the namesake person of the company was still alive and when the vise versa rival's founders were still working for Paramount. This is one of my favorites, although it looks kinda in terrible shape. It is a Disney Mickey Mouse cartoon selling Nabsico cookies and crackers, long before a certain dairy products (of mostly cheese) company acquired them and much longer before that company bought rights to General Foods products. Mickey's Surprise Party, released as part of the World's Fair.

There's no production credits in the opening titles, no Mickey Mouse head card (if there was, it may have been cut off in this YouTube post), no MPAA number (since it was advertising) and no reference to Disney in the end title. For the actual cartoon, it was probably a VHS or older DVD copy, so the color isn't that great, it looks much similar to the quality in the edited "Spirit of Mickey" VHS version.


Alongside from that, it was a fun way to sell cookies after what it seems like Great Depression victims having enough of elves and dwarves and all of those robust plots incorporated in advertising cartoons.


I'm not sure who animated this but it is one of my favorite Nabisco commercials (even though it was cinema) alongside with the old Ritz Bitz claymation commercials, and the Chips Ahoy commercial with Benny Goodman's "Sing Sing Sing (With a Swing)".

I like this because I normally associate Kraft/Nabisco with Nickelodeon characters such as Spongebob and Timmy Turner when it comes to merchandising and partnerships.

Disney Magic Selections and Keebler got Mickey away those Fig Newtons that he said he "liked" in the end, at least in my time!

And one more thing, it has a similar end title cue that the Paramount cartoons use for end title fanfares, and if I'm not mistaken, it sounds like the "Hunky and Spunky" end title piece.

Jerry Beck and I would be proud.....

The reason some Popeyes had to be recreated for the DVD is because some of the material is lost due to altering by AAP. And that's why we both like seeing the orginial Popeye titles. While AAP didn't mess with the soundtrack during the B&W era and left all of the orginial themes, this is still an orginial title fan pleaser. This is the opening title Popeye theme used during the ship-door era of the titles.



Done on a keyboard, is a synth version of a Popeye fan playing this version of "The Sailor's Hornpipe/I'm Popeye the Sailor Man", with the standard anchor cap and early Popeye end title music.

Off-Topic: WALL-E Review

I know, this is a Disney movie. But I did not want to post this to "Random Research", because posting this here on Classic Paramount Cartoons would probably get more animation buff attention.



I just saw WALL-E, and here is my review:


Sorry, Jerry Beck, even though I think you're a great Paramount cartoon fan, I would have liked "Kung Fu Panda" if I saw, but I'm with the nitpickers. And no offense, I'm not much into that type of setting for a movie.

I was used to the less surreal animated features where characters talked a lot, plus such formulaic plot (doesn't mean I hate Famous Studios) and unoriginal plots. I even liked movies that is purely "based on" something. Even though there's that controversy over it being based on a real robot, it is nearly original because it is surreal with a pinch of plot as the storyline progresses.

The score was not your typical Toy Story vibe, and there weren't very many freckeled characters. You could almost forget who made this because it was different than all of the previous Pixar features combined.

The film starts with an MGM-era Tex Avery-style Pixar short called "Presto". It was a cartoony short trying their best to recreate a typical Tex Avery cartoon. The bunny's speed resembled the character movement of bunny characters from the real Mcoy (execpt Bugs Bunny, of course).

Then we begin the actual feature with the opening logos and titles. Wall-E is trying to clean up a mess affecting Earth left behind due to an outer space trip promotion by a world-dominating Wal-Mart like chain named Buy-N-Large. At first, we see Eve being an evilesque robot until she befriends Wall-E. Wall-E gives an important gift- a plant. Wall-E finds this huge ship landing after a small lava disaster and Eve is kidnapped. Later, we see how lazy and bored the humans are in the new spaceship Buy-N-Large area. They've decided to go back to Earth, but the robots and computers push them not to go.

I'll just say this- Pixar decided to go a different direction for plot after what happened with how "Finding Nemo" began.

One of the running ingredients to the jokes/plot is a less popular to kids Fox musical named Hello Dolly. I like it because it makes it different film when you're picking a pop culture reference that people don't always know as more well-known classics.

If you're concerned about the future and don't think Meet The Robinsons is good enough of a future predictor (after all, life isn't perfect), see this movie.

Well, that's my review and I hope you enjoyed listening to my opinion.

See you,

ParamountCartoons.