Is it any wonder that early alternative comic artists like R. Crumb and Kim Deitch tipped their hats to Max Fleischer? Fleischer’s animation universe was never quite stable. Rubber limbs stretched beyond physics. Backgrounds pulsed and warped. Characters slipped between innocence and mischief in the span of a single frame. In Betty Boop and the […]
MORE ...You know you’ve made the Big Time when you’re leading a band that’s accompanied with a chorus line of perky flappers. But then again, if you’re Ted Weems in the early 1930’s, this is the life of a famous radio bandleader. Just another day at the beach on the Eastern Seaboard during the Jazz Age, […]
MORE ...So They Tell Me, circa 1919, skewers the top headlines of its day, the World War I era. Crude animation attempts to punctuate the sardonic and off-color humor supplied by political raconteur Warren W. Brown. Though the jokes are somewhat arcane by today’s standards, the tone tries to balance between being bombastic and nativist. Targets include labor […]
MORE ...Stage, radio and film star Eddie Cantor puts on a classic vaudeville routine including a few jokes in between breaking into song. One of the biggest entertainers of the early 20th century, the type self-deprecating humor he helped define can still has influence today with comedians such as Letterman, Conan, and Jon Stewart. Lately, Cantor […]
MORE ...For an Oldsmobile commercial, the Fleischer Bros. created this extremely bawdy cartoon. No, they don’t make ’em like they used to.
MORE ...In this re-discovered clip, the classically trained Bill Powers sings an operatic rendition of the song Caroline. A performer with with few if any informative references online, he is accompanied by the similarly under-appreciated member of the Brown Sisters on piano.
MORE ...In this serendipitously surreal short “A Jazz Etude,” tap dance extraordinaire Billy Burt dances up a storm in top hat, tuxedo tail and cane. Is he floating? And that screwy soundtrack … a mishmash of ‘Flight of the Bumblebee,’ ragtime fills, and 1930’s jazz cliches, is remeniscent of Carl Stalling or Raymond Scott. Still, I […]
MORE ...If you were taking a sea cruise from the Eastern Seaboard to the West Coast via the Panama Canal, this might be the film you’d see before disembarking in San Diego, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. An exquisite travel film documenting the magnificent landscape and locales of pre-WWII California, this film showcases classic school California, […]
MORE ...Can you think of a more timely song? Jimmy Durante captures the mood of the nation as perfectly now as he does then. Of course, the National Recovery Administration, which as part of FDR’s New Deal, encouraged employment, a minimum wage and a maximum of weekly hours: You and you and you and you You’ve […]
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