Oh The Places You'll Go
Yes, those immortal words first spoken by former Looney Tunes writer Dr. Seuss apply to a storied series that is now 86 years old this week. Who would have thought back then that the series would still be around today? No one, because the artists who worked on these cartoons were simply tying to make a living during their job. They honestly had no time to think that far ahead into the future. So if you were to tell them during their time just how much their cartoons would be loved by all today, they would be both truly surprised and moved. So what better way to celebrate their day than by taking a walk through the series' most ancient days. I chose to shone the spot light on an obscure cartoon called "Smile Darn Ya Smile" (1931) because of all the early Looney Tunes shorts made from that period this one perhaps has the most fascinating history given its production, its rebirth, colorful history, and legacy afterwards. After that, we will take a spin on the wonderful "Wheel of Morality" to discover what we learned from our trip down into the vault.
The cartoon was created by pioneer animators Hugh Harmon & Rudolph Ising, or as Chuck Jones once described them wittily as "Harmonising". I enjoyed the film for its wonderful use of rubbery character animation. Its a type of character animation that fell by the wayside as the art form gradually evolved throughout the decade. There's also some really great visual set pieces in this cartoon. Foxy's interactions with the Hippo are funny. The film has an exciting climax involving Foxy and Roxy going downhill on their Trolley. My favorite scene is when the group of hobos are singing the song from which the cartoon is based on. I just find it poignant when they sing together in spite of their dire circumstances.
If you're wondering whether or not you have seen this story-line or even this type of animation before, than you are not alone. The cartoon is actually a remake of the very first Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon, "Trolley Troubles" (1927), which Harmon Ising worked on as animators under Walt Disney's supervision. I guess it was funnily an open secret back then that animators from outside or even within the studio would use another artist's film as a template for their own story to follow on. While Harmon Ising use the basic gist of "Trolley Troubles" for their short, they alter it from the Disney version by using a creative loop hole in which the entire episode is a dream of Foxy's in the end. The duo were not the only ones who understood the Disney formula as Fritz Freleng and Carman Maxwell, the main animators on the picture, also worked with Walt alongside Ub Iwerks back then. That is why the film has the look and feel of a Disney cartoon of the day as the animators were well versed in the Disney aesthetic and in the type of crazy perspective animation inspired from Iwerks. The most memorable thing that came from the cartoon was the very uplifting score by Frank Marsals and Abe Lyman's Brunswick Orchestra. Their hopeful music is accompanied by a song from which the story actually takes its name from by the popular British band writer Billy Cotton. His optimistic lyrics reflected a time in which artists sought out to lift the spirits of the common man during the crushing blows of the Great Depression. "Smile Darn Ya Smile" perfectly attunes to that yearning for a better tomorrow. If you looked up the lyrics to the song online you will be surprised to find the tune itself to be short. Yet in that brief time it is quite poignant in the attitude it passionately espouses, which is where it finds itself in the company of the truly great songs of all time. I personally find it to be moving the way Cotton expresses how we should react when life does not go our way. And he does it not by big words or anything like that, but by simply going straight to the heart. This is why I think the song stays buzzing in your head long after the short is finished.
As one can expect, Foxy and Roxy didn’t do too well with audiences. The character’s lone three films sadly became lost to the ages and aside from animation historians were largely forgotten by the public. That was until five decades later when the short was brought back to the spotlight through its signature song as the iconic conclusion to "Who Framed Roger Rabbit” in 1988. As a result, the cartoon was forever immortalized due to its connection with the successful movie and thus could never be forgotten. It is the rare cartoon that found new life after being lost for soo long. The film's animators must have been smiling from yonder.
The film's life then took a very colorful turn when it unfortunately found itself in the middle of the controversial colorization debate during the 1980’s and 90’s. Studios were using colorization in order to make their black & white films "popular" again. At the time live action black & white films were being filtered through a very cheap method of digital colorization which always washed out the look and feel of the film. In the case of animated films, black & white cartoons were being redrawn via tracing and were repainted by cheap labor Korean animators. As you can imagine, the results were not pretty. The crudely drawn version pales in comparison to the original version in all aspects. Contrary to colorization advocates, it left an unflattering impression of the cartoon to contemporary audiences. While the original moves very fluidly like a rubbery cartoon of 1931, the 1995 remake moves like that of a poorly made TV cartoon of the 80's. The new animation moves slowly in contrast to the original because the Koreans only traced half of the frames used in the latter to finish it in the quickest and cheapest way possible. And the garnish colors of the 90's version reek of over saturation as if someone was playing with their crayons for far too long. (Thank God someone went through the trouble of doing a side by side comparison.) If any good came from that, it showed what was wrong with the colorization process. And as quickly as that trend arose, so too did it fall back into that night. Ultimately the process itself did not redefine the cartoon, for the film's greatest legacy came through the newly revived Warner Brothers Animation. During the third season of the awesome "Tiny Toon Adventures", the animators made an episode called "Two Tone Town". The story revolved around black & white toons being segregated from the colorized toons. The main characters of the plot-line happen to be Foxy and Roxy, who were redesigned to not look like Mickey Mouse knockoffs as initially intended. The episode served as a backdoor pilot to the show's spiritual successor, the amazing "Animanaics", in which the main characters of that show (Yakko, Wacko, and Dot) were visually inspired by that episode. So all things come full circle from that point, as you had an animated series whose episodes were well versed in the history of animation. And on that note, we will go back to the "Wheel of Morality" where we will end our journey with a spin. And the morale of today's journey reads, "Life is really only what you make it. Stand right up and show them you can take it. Make life worthwhile. Come on and smile, darn ya, smile." Looney Tunes, and all cartoons for that matter, have been doing that ever since.
