ThadBlog

From Mike Barrier over Walt’s polo incidents…

The source for that card’s figure is Bob Thomas’s biography, page 145, which says: “Walt had to give up polo. Roy had urged him to do so, arguing that the man on whom their enterprise relied for its creative direction should not risk his health in such a dangerous sport. Walt resisted until he played in two matches in which horsemen suffered fatal injuries. Then he himself was involved in an accident and crushed four of his cervical vertebrae.”

One of the fatally injured horsemen was the MGM contract player Gordon Westcott; the New York Times story on his death mentions that he was playing against Walt when he was injured on October 27, 1935 (not October 28, as Gabler has it). The Times story says: “Mr. Westcott was playing with the M-G-M polo team, opposing one led by Walt Disney, creator of ‘Mickey Mouse,’ when his horse fell on him, crushing him.” Westcott died on October 30, 1935.

The other fatally injured player was Winslow B. Felix, a well-known auto dealer, who was injured at Riviera Country Club on May 31, 1936, and died early the next day. The L.A. Times story about his injury doesn’t mention Walt, but a sports story about the match in which Felix was injured shows that Walt was playing on the opposing team (it says he was “defensively brilliant”).

Bob Thomas’s source–unidentified, unfortunately, as is almost always the case in that book–was probably one of his many interviews with Roy Disney. If it was Roy, he was at least misleading, if not flat-out wrong, on some points. For one thing, Walt didn’t give up polo until 1938. Walt kept playing for almost two years after Felix was killed. Even if he played less in 1936-37, that would be readily explainable just by how much time he had to devote to Snow White. Roy, however, gave up polo soon after the Westcott incident; on December 2, 1935, he wrote a note to Dolores Voght, Walt’s secretary, asking her to tell Walt that he was giving it up.

So, Roy was evidently much more disturbed by Westcott’s death than Walt was. Could Roy have been more directly involved in the Westcott accident than Walt was? Perhaps there’s a police report or coroner’s report somewhere that holds the answer, but I doubt it. According to the L.A. Times, “Due to the accidental nature of the actor’s death, the body was removed to the County Morgue. Coroner Nance, however, expressed the opinion that no formal inquest will be necessary.”

Thomas’s line about Walt’s “crushing” four of his vertebrae sounds off to me, too. I can’t imagine the injury was that severe; there’s nothing in Walt’s interoffice files from 1936-37 that suggests he was out of commission for any length of time, as he surely would have been if he’d suffered a neck injury that severe.

Welcome to another edition of Your Saturday Bowl of WTF! Last week’s sure was a hoot wasn’t it? Let’s take a look at some of the best comments left by our viewers…

“That ending can’t be adequately described in words.” - Kevin
“That, indeed, was one big-ass SUV full of WTF.” - Paul Etcheverry
“An excellent choice to start off your series, Thad. The bowl is positively brimming over with WTF on this one.” - Jim B.

This week’s entry is a little more common, and not quite as bad. But it’s indeed a bowl of WTF. It’s the most bizarre cartoon Bob McKimson ever directed, Corn Plastered. The beanie-capped crow, who dances, hops, and imitates his dwarf farmer opponent at random times, seems to have been McKimson’s own version of Screwy Squirrel. This short can be seen as even more insane when at this point all three Warner directors were settling down with two-character series, and that this could have been an actual, genuine attempt at creating a new star.

Radio actor Pat Patrick provided the voice for the crow (McKimson had a habit of bringing in actors nobody at other studios was using, like Jim Backus in A-Lad-In His Lamp and the first half of Windblown Hare, or Sheldon Leonard as Dodsworth).

Nickelodeon and Kid’s WB edited the scene with the refrigerator, fearing the children would imitate the farmer’s actions. TBS obviously didn’t care. (For the same reason, they decided it would be best not to make the time machine a refrigerator in Back to the Future.)

(A special thanks to Jon Cooke for making the Bowl of WTF logo!)

From the deck of cards of the 1985 edition of Disney Trivial Pursuit.

(Thanks, Mike Matei.)

Harvey Korman is dead at 81.

Most cartoon fans will remember him as the Great Gazoo on The Flintstones (and probably from The Carol Burnett Show too), but his greatest performance was in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles. Korman not receiving the Oscar for his role as Hedley Lamarr really was one of the many travesties committed by the Academy.

Conversation some time ago (probably in 2004…):
Me: Dad, why do you hate Tom and Jerry so?
Dad: Well, for one thing, it’s that music that gets to me… That big, brassy full MGM orchestra… It’s pretentious…

Such an illuminating discussion exposed the truth of those many wonderful Hanna-Barbera Tom and Jerry cartoons: that Scott Bradley was as much a director of those cartoons as Bill or Joe was, and when you hit the mute button, you lose a lot.

Bradley’s music certainly played more of a vital role in the T&J cartoons than it did in Tex Avery’s (the two apparently did not get along very well at all), and certainly more than Carl Stalling’s music did at Warners. While Avery usually insisted on which pieces should be used (”He’d always want really cornball things, like Home on the Range,” remembered Bradley), it seems Hanna and Barbera allowed Bradley to do as he pleased with the soundtrack, utilizing the rather large MGM music library. Thus, a large part of the film’s energy comes from Bradley’s music, and watching the bulk of Tom & Jerry’s silent makes that all the more apparent.

But when the music is as enjoyable as Bradley’s, it’s hard to find fault with Hanna and Barbera for placing so much weight on the soundtrack. I’ve made a compilation video with a live-action rendition of the song (be it in an MGM musical or otherwise), followed by Bradley’s rendition of it in a Tom & Jerry scene (see if you can guess which one is going to be used!).

Like Carl Stalling, Bradley was a master of making certain songs work with scenes totally unrelated to what the song was about, like the light-hearted “Lydia the Tattooed Lady” being used over a panning shot of pulverized cats, or “I Got Out of Bed on the Right Side” while Butch the cat is going through garbage.

I realize a lot of the songs may have had earlier/better recordings or renditions, but I did the best I could. Since my point is to show how Bradley liked to utilize popular tunes more than any other cartoon composer, I think it still works.

But if there’s one piece of music that sums up Tom & Jerry, it’s this original untitled (?) piece by Bradley. It first showed up in Quiet, Please!, but it’s played a lot livelier in Old Rockin’ Chair Tom, one of the truly great T&J cartoons.

Whenever I am listing my favorite cartoonists, after “Jim Davis” I always explain, “not the Garfield hack.” The good Jim Davis is the one who drew the Fox and the Crow (and Flippity and Flop) for twenty years. He was my favorite cartoonist in high school, and I bought every comic with his artwork that I could (I believe I may have driven up the price of them, unintentionally, seeing as I can’t find them at affordable prices anymore). His poses and drawings are beautiful and hilarious, and during the golden period of his stories (roughly 1948 to 1953), they’re very funny.

This one is from Comic Cavalcade #38 (April-May 1950), which are very hard to come by cheaply because of their 76 page length. You’re better off finding incomplete copies, because there’s only one Fox and Crow story per issue (the rest was devoted to D.C.’s cesspool of lame, badly drawn funny animals.)

This will be the last comics post for awhile, I’ll get back to the actual cartoons soon. For more comics discussion, my friend Rodney Bowcock has started a blog exclusively to share the scans we’ve been finding on pirate websites.