Recently, some lovely person found an old recording of Tex Avery giving an interview about his life and career. Apparently, at Chapman College back in 1974, somebody was doing a retrospective showing of animated films and Tex was an invited guest who spoke at it. That's the year I was born so if I had been there I wouldn't have gotten so much out of that interview. It would've been great if I was there at the age I am now or even 25 years ago. Oh well, the best I can do for myself is embed this interview clip on my own blog for what would've been Tex's 117 birthday had modern science managed to avert death in any way.
What perked my ear the most about Tex's speech is what he thought of "modern" cartoons, those being made at about that time. He's right about how the tight television deadlines as well as the sponsor's imposing opinions put a huge damper on the animation industry as a whole. There was not nearly as much room for creativity as there was for Tex at WB and MGM in the 1930's and 40's. Things weren't 100% perfect of course, but they were marginally better than the Saturday morning era of the 70's and 80's.
Tex did express a small bit of hope that the industry could improve in the future. Whether it has improved at all since 1974 is certainly a matter of opinion. However, I think one thing that Tex might've overlooked in lamenting about the future of animation is the technology. One big reason animation studios couldn't afford full animation at the time was because they were using the same method of animating on paper followed by inking and painting onto cels. The late 80's and all of the 90's had the rise of computers being used which caused animation projects to be completed that much quicker. That's why at Disney they could finish one fully animated every year instead of every 12 years or so. And, of course, we saw the rise of a small fledgling studio called Pixar which would soon be purchased by Disney and become huge.
People at Pixar are just as nostalgic for short cartoons in theatres as Tex was. To that end, whenever they released a feature film in theatres they would make room to attach a short animated film before it. Below, I've embedded one such Pixar short. It won an Oscar as I recall. It's also highly comedic and full of gags that Tex Avery may have enjoyed. Maybe some future Pixar employees were at that Chapman film festival back in 1974 and were inspired by Tex's words when they heard them? Mmmmmmmm.......... could be. At any rate, for your viewing pleasure, here is For the Birds. Maybe Tex is looking down on this and smiling? Here's hoping.
This is the first Tex Avery's birthday post I've done since my son was born. Like I mentioned before, my son's name is Avery taken after the great master Tex Avery so I feel it's fitting to involve he little guy in this post. Throughout this post we will all answer the question put forth in the title: "What is my son's assessment of Tex Avery's work?"
What's that? Why, yes, my boy Avery has indeed been watching many many selections from my DVD/Bluray collection pretty much since the day his eyes were fully open. Why do you ask? It's a good way to keep him quiet and happy.............. some of the time. If he's genuinely enjoying what he sees, then it works quite well. If not, well then you've got a loud cranky baby on your hands and you'd better do what you can to alleviate that situation fast.
One big selection from Tex's filmography that my son has seen is the "magnumest opus that ever magnumed an opus", that seminal masterpiece: Red Hot Riding Hood.
The verdict: I am sad to report that this cartoon made my son Avery cry. He wasn't crying at first, which is good. However, when it got to the part where the Wolf was going crazy at the table looking at Red dancing on the stage, that's when he showed his displeasure. Ah well. He's only 5 months old as of right now. Cultural works have ways of growing on people once they mature and become more worldly, which I'm sure my son is destined to do.
Here are some other shows that have given him displeasure in the first few months of his life:
Sesame Street - he's scared of The Count
Fraggle Rock - he's scared of the Gorgs, especially in the openning theme song when Jr grabs Gobo
Dumbo - Avery does NOT care for those lady elephants that pick on and exclude Dumbo. Well' y'know, he's not wrong. If you watch the movie you can easily see that those elephants are pieces of shit in general throughout the entire movie. That's the point of their characters of course, but it's understandable that he would not enjoy watching them.
I'll give a special mention to Sylvester & Tweety right here, because he has a kind of love/hate opinion of them. Li'l Avery loves anything with music in it, you see.
As many of you reading this now are aware, most S&T cartoons start off with Tweety singing a song. My son is thoroughly entertained by this. But he is quickly taken aback the moment Sylvester makes any kind of grab for him. Avery lets out a shriek that seems to be saying "NOOOOOOOOO! DON'T KILL THE SINGING BIRD!!!!" That grief is short lived the moment Sylvester fails with either a long fall, dog punch, or explosion. That is then followed by a feeling of relief. But, the grief begins anew when that "puddy tat" recovers and makes another attempt. It is of course then followed by another sense of relief. Grief --> Relief Grief --> Relief Grief --> Relief over and over again. So, to him, the Sylvester & Tweety series is more of a heavy drama than a slapstick comedy. Well, again, he's 5 months. He will eventually notice a pattern within this cartoon series and hopefully experience joy or what have you.
There is one thing in this world that he does fully enjoy. It lights his face up every time he watches it. Anybody with small children already know who it is. But, for everyone else, I will embed his very favourite show right below:
Yep! This video has been playing much more than once a day every day for several months. And now that I'm showing you this video, now YOU have every one of her songs stuck in your head with no chance of escape. HA!!!
Although, I have heard that the above figure Ms Rachel is being hailed as the new Mister Rogers and for good reason. She does a tremendous job of reaching, teaching, and educating children I'm sure all over the world. She helps keep my son happy and that's great. More power to her.
He's not ONLY entertained by Ms Rachel though. His horizons are a bit more broad than that. Here are some things I've seen him enjoy:
Robin Hood Daffy - I saw him smile al through the scene where Daffy and Porky are laughing with each other. He found their laughter to be infectious and it got to him.
Louvre Come Back To Me - Well, for pretty much the entire cartoon he had no idea what was going on. He saw Pepe Le Pew pursuing the black & white cat throughout the art museum while her naturally jealous boyfriend was trying to step between them (only to be overpowered by Pepe's stench). However, I saw him smile at the very very end of the cartoon. There's a "montage" of sorts showing many of the paintings reacting to Pepe Le Pew's odour all through the establishment. The very last painting to react is the Mona Lisa who simply says "I can tell you chaps one thing. It's not always easy to hold this smile." Whether you think that joke is strong, weak or whatever is immaterial. Avery found it amusing that a painting suddenly started talking and that's great.
Oh hey! There is a Tex Avery cartoon that my son Avery did enjoy. He likes that cartoon about little Owl Jolson wanting to sing jazz much to the dismay of his conventional symphony-loving father: I Love To Singa. I've seen him enjoy seeing that little owl singing the signature song for the whole cartoon. So, in a small tribute to my baby son, I've drawn him as Owl Jolson.
I can't wait for him to start his education just so I can see if he would "get through Yale with buela buela"!
This being Tex Avery's 115th birthday, I'd like to use this time and bandwidth to point out a small observation I've made regarding Mel Brooks. It's in the video embedded below.
This is not accusatory in any way. Mr. Brooks has done nothing wrong. As the motto goes: "if you must steal, steal from the best". That is all Mel has done here. He has recognized that Tex Avery is a tremendous source of great and clever gags from which to steal. There are many MANY examples of gags and concepts "borrowed" from Tex Avery. It would be great to go searching for them on this day of his birth.......... and every other day of the year as well.
It's that time of year again. This is when I use this humble blog of mine to acknowledge the brith date of the biggest animation genius the world has ever seen......... Tex Avery. If medical science had advanced far enough that we were able to preserve the life and prevent the death of anyone at any age, Tex would've turned 113 today. I'd like to think he'd be celebrating by sharing many beers with his friends and fans alike.
Since I've started this blog I've talked about many aspects of Tex's life, films, and career. Whenever this time of year comes, I can always find something about him to blog about. Well, this year, of course there's something of his that's extra special and is definitely a huge part in building and securing his legacy. I'm referring to, of course, Tex's washing machine that he bought in 1931.
Ha HA! Fooled ya............... and yes, McGee, it was funny.
What I AM referring to are the bluray disks that were released in 2020.
Tex Avery's MGM "Screwball Classics" Vol 1 aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand 2. I've got them both and they are excellent. There's a great selection of cartoons to watch on both volumes and they all look crisp and clean on my TV. Observe:
There are 19 cartoons on Vol 1 and there are 21 cartoons on Vol 2. By my count, there are 23 of Tex's MGM cartoons not on Bluray. So that means Vol 3 could be the final release and would thus make Tex's entire MGM filmography available to the public, and that would be a great thing.
However, there are two cartoons that the Warner Archives would have to tiptoe around. If you've heard of the Censored 11, these would be Tex's "Censored 2". They are the cartoons Uncle Tom's Cabana and Half Pint Pygmy. If you haven't seen those cartoons at all, I'm sure you can tell by the titles alone as to why they'd be a problem. They shouldn't be left off entirely of course. Fans want a complete collection and film preservation is very important for respecting ones culture.
What Disney has done with cartoons they consider "problematic" is to put them in a "From The Vault" section. A similar treatment could be done for the cartoons mentioned above.
Hey, speaking about preserving ones culture, I'd like to use this blogpost to pitch something that I think would be equally as good as a bluray release of his filmography. It's something I've talked about online for many years and I think it's high time it happened. I think a Tex Avery biographical movie should be made. It would be much like that one about Walt Disney called Walt Before Mickey:
Although, I hope the Tex biopic won't be so full of glaring errors. (One of those many errors is the portrayal of Friz Freleng. The actor was fine but the writers got his persona all wrong. But that's a whole other blogpost for a whole other day).
The online discussions I had with people about a Tex biopic were simply about who would play which person. Could Jack Black play Tex Avery? Could Matt Damon play Chuck Jones? Maybe Jim Belushi could portray Leon Schlesinger or Fred Quimby? But that's all moot. We don't need big stars to play these parts. We just need young capable actors who can be given the correct overview of Tex's and others' personality and portray it well. However, I can think of one celebrity that might be persuaded into producing it:
Jack Nicholson. Yes, THAT Jack Nicholson. I say this because he has a nostalgic affection for that era of Hollywood animation. He started his career as a young lad working as an assistant in the MGM animation department.
A caricature of young Jack can be seen on the far right.
He would do lots of menial tasks for Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera while they kept cranking out their Tom & Jerrys. I'm not sure if he did anything for Tex Avery at all, but I have read that Tex did pull young Jack into his office just to pitch a gag idea and see if it was funny enough. I think that might entice Mr. Nicholson onboard. He could easily have a say in who would portray a young him (probably not Christian Slater though).
Anyway, happy 113th birthday, Tex. Whether this biopic idea of mine comes to fruition or not, I will definitely continue to enjoy all of the blurays and I hope everyone reading this will do the same.
"Tex and Katherine sitting in a tree
K - I - S - S...."
Ha ha! No, I'm not copping to that childishness. I would just like to use this day, what would've been Tex Avery's 112 birthday (if he had somehow become a vampire so he could live forever), to talk about an observation I've recently made between this man and that particular actress.
Of course, it's no wonder that Tex appreciated Kate Hepburn on any level. She was a 3 time Oscar winning actress whose filmography spans a decades long career. What's NOT to like? For reference, here's a bit of the Great Kate in action in one of her more acclaimed roles:
There she is holding her own beside two other Hollywood giants, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart. It's easy to see how anyone, not just animation geniuses, could be inspired by her.
The main reason I'm bringing this up at all is because of much of the reaction I've seen over Tex's cartoon The Hick Chick.
This is one of the many cartoons included in the new Tex Avery Blu Ray set. I've ordered my copy and it should be arriving hopefully sometime next week. I might find time to do a bit of a review of it. That should be fun. About the Hick Chick cartoon. I can understand how people can be so ambivalent about it. It certainly doesn't make most people's "Tex Avery at MGM Top 10 List". Possibly it didn't do well when it originally came out in theatres and even Tex himself was gravely disappointed in it.
However, I do feel that some of those same people are using their underwhelming feeling over this cartoon to gloss over what it's really about. The man who wrote Tex Avery's biography, Joe Adamson, even seemed to do that. In the back of that book is Tex's entire filmography with all the credits listed as well as a brief synopsis/opinion of each film. Here's what he says about The Hick Chick:
Granted his space to use was limited, but it still seems like a gloss over to me. That character was not a "Katherine Hepburn caricature". She was simply talking in that Hepburn voice to the slick talking "Charles Boyer" guy so she could impress him because she was disappointed in her very rural boyfriend. Tex seemed to favour that Kate Hepburn voice a lot in many of his cartoons, such as:
Little Red Walking Hood
Daffy Duck in Hollywood
Hamateur Night
Dangerous Dan McFoo
A Gander at Mother Goose
Holiday Highlights
Red Hot Riding Hood
and the aforementioned Hick Chick
Other animation directors throughout the golden age years certainly used Katherine Hepburn as well. However, to me it looks like the way Tex utilized her voice his attitude was that a Kate Hepburn performance made everything better. Remember one main key factor to what inspired Tex to make many of the cartoons he made. Many times he'd see a cartoon in theatres that in his opinion could be done better. Then he would try to improve upon it. The set up for The Hick Chick looks very similar to a Friz Freleng cartoon from 1938 called A Star is Hatched.
There's the two cartoon embedded next to each other for comparison. Did Tex make improvements on Friz' work. That's up to every individual reading this to decide. I just wanted to get that out there for Tex Avery's birthday and I did.
Happy birthday, Tex and thank you Katherine Hepburn wherever you are.
Today is Tex Avery's 111th birthday. Like I've done on this blog for many years, I will use this day to talk about Tex and his great body of work. This year, I've chosen to give my overview of the very last cartoon he ever worked on, The Kwicky Koala Show.
Before I do, I'd first like to say that it is unfair to compare this show to the forever classic work Tex did for WB and/or MGM. For one thing, the theatrical cartoons made in the '30's and '40's had a different schedule than the TV cartoons starting from the late '50's onward to today. For instance, I read that Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera had to make 10 Tom & Jerry cartoons every year. Each one was about 7 minutes long and cost about $30,000 each to make. When Bill & Joe had to produce animation for television, they had to make 26 cartoons per year. Each one cost only $9000 and was about 26 minutes long. So they and every other animation studio producing animation for TV had to streamline their production so as to get the very basic semblance of movement as possible while staying within their meagre budgets. Tex Avery had to do the exact same thing when he started working on Kwicky Koala in 1979.
Another big factor was the management system. At Warner Bros. for instance the boss Leon Schlesinger gave Tex and all his artists so much freedom to do their creative work. He'd quickly enter and leave many storyboard sessions saying "you guys know what you're doing" and that was that. Of course, the one time Leon DID interfere with Tex (the debacle with The Heckling Hare) is when things got rocky and Tex ultimately left for MGM. There at MGM he had to deal with Fred Quimby. Fred did not like cartoons at all and could not understand the people who made them. But at the same time, I think he was a man who knew better than to interfere with something that was profitable. So, much like with Schlesinger, Tex was basically free to play with his creations at MGM. Flash foreward to 1979 now. Sure, fellow animators Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera are running that studio and would gladly give Tex all the creative elbow room he asks for. However, there are other people with huge clout looming over their studio that need to be appeased, such as TV executives from various networks as well as various PTA activist groups putting demands on the content.
For instance, around that time Hanna Barbera was producing a Popeye show for Saturday morning. Of course, the fist fighting between Popeye and Bluto had to either be toned down severely or gone entirely. Then yet another imposition was made with Olive Oyl. The activists of the day felt that Popeye and Bluto fighting over Olive was demeaning to her. So everybody's wings were sufficiently clipped for that show. As stiflingly bad as things were back then, this kind of authoritarian censorship has gotten worse over the years, especially in the UK.
But I digress. The point is that Tex Avery was not working in the same kind of environment as he was during the golden age and so could only work with the resources that he had. So, I will now talk about the Kwicky Koala Show and give my assessment of it.
The main star is of course Kwicky Koala.
He's basically a mild mannered unassuming type of milquetoast everyman. His big gimmick though is that he can disappear and reappear at will. Especially when that dastardly Wilford Wolf is after him.
Wilford makes his move....
....misses Kwicky completely because the little marsupial has disappeared...
Kwicky then reappears in a whole new location leaving Wilford with a dumbfounded look on his face. That is pretty much every exchange Kwicky and Wilford have with each other. Or, as Cecil Turtle might say...
"I do that kind of stuff to him all through the series"
Despite the repetition, it's a fun show to watch. Wilford Wolf is voiced by John Stevenson and you can tell he's having so much fun doing that voice too. It must have been a nice change of pace for him after doing the voices of stuffy authority figures like Mr Slate or every policeman and butler in every Hanna Barbera show ever.
This show has other characters as well:
There's also Crazy Claws. His personality is based entirely from Groucho Marx. He has a similar voice, makes similar wise cracks, and (true to Groucho form) he would retract any wise cracks he thought weren't good enough. All the while he's out smarting a prospector with a dog that laughs like Muttley. There's also a park ranger that has had it up to here with all of them. He's fun to watch for that reason alone.
Next is Dirty Dawg. He's kind of a smooth talking homeless dog that's always trying to talk himself into a free meal whenever he can. He has a friend named Ratzo and they're both chased by an angry police officer. I personally wasn't as into this one as I was the other two shows here. It's too bad because Frank Welker does an excellent job as the voice of Dirty Dawg and you can all he's having so much fun with this character. Maybe Tex didn't give as much attention to this character? I don't know.
In-between the shows are short vignettes of the Bungle Brothers. They're trying to break into show business with a vaudeville act................... in 1979. They might as well try to get a job riding for the Pony Express while they're at it. I guess the main joke of these guys is that they're so hopelessly behind the times and/or they've been trying for their big break ever since vaudeville was relevant and still hold out hope of playing the big stages in Peoria and Cucamonga.
After watching that entire series, I'm hard pressed to pick out which parts Tex worked on and which parts he didn't.
For one thing, he sadly died part way through production. On August 26, 1980 Tex staggered into work with his face a sickly shade of green. He didn't know it then, but that green complexion was there because his liver was failing after decades of heavy binge drinking. Bill Hanna found him and rushed him to he hospital as quickly as he could. But, nothing could be done to save him. Tex left us that day. So, the rest of the episodes were completed by the remaining crew. The Kwicky Koala show debuted in the early autumn of 1981.
Also, from my own experience of working on animated shows, I know that they don't always begin production with the first episode. A lot of times the first episode the crew works on is somewhere in the middle like ep10 or 14. That way the crew has a chance to get a good feel for the show while making their mistakes. Then, when the crew feels confident in their abilities and well as how the show will be, then they work on the first episode so they can debut the show with their best efforts. The theory being that when the TV audience is dazzled by the first episode then they're more likely to forgive any mistakes in later episodes.
So, which episodes had Tex done work on before the day of his passing? Your guess is as good as mine. It would be great if any living artist who worked on that show could give their insight of their experience that would be great and super helpful.
I will end this post with a Kwicky episode that Tex Avery may or may not have worked on, but it certainly has a story structure similar to cartoons Tex did in the past like The Blow Out and Dumb Hounded. I'd like to think Tex so much of his time on this one, but again clarification of that would be helpful.
Either way, enjoy. Also, happy birthday, Tex, wherever you are.
