keyleedaud (REAL ESTATE)

Above is the complete version of The Bandmaster , directed by Dick Lundy for the Lantz studio. It's available on The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection . There are several bits of animation I'd like to talk about. The first is Les Kline's trapeze artist, which is around 3:03 into the cartoon. When we think of animators who create funny movement, we tend to think of people like Rod Scribner or Jim Tyer - animators whose movements are very broad. The shot of the trapeze artist is the opposite; it's a quiet piece of motion that could actually be accomplished with a cut-out. The idea of a cartoon character defying gravity was already old by 1947, yet the way this character moves to the music is somewhat hypnotic and always breaks me up. There is something otherworldly about it; a loopy grace that glides along the clarinet solo. The second shot of her is an anti-climax that breaks the spell. The gag with her hair is not particularly good and the...

I have an odd fascination with the Lantz studio. By all accounts, Lantz himself was a nice man who was pleasant to work for. I've never heard or read a bad thing about him, though Tex Avery and Jack Hannah both complained about the economics of the studio. While Lantz was a good boss, he didn't influence his cartoons the way other studio heads did. Because the Lantz studio only had one unit in the 1940s, the studio's output changed radically whenever there was a change of director. From Burt Gillett to Alex Lovy to Shamus Culhane to Dick Lundy, there's a wide variety of styles and approaches. Our impression of the Warner Bros. cartoons is based on the range of directors' styles, but imagine how we'd think of that studio if all the cartoons were directed by Bob Clampett and then later by Friz Freleng. That's a pretty big change, but at Lantz, it was the standard. Dick Lundy was a talented Disney animator who helped shape Donald Duck and later directed Du...

Unfortunately, I can only find a portion of this cartoon online, though the complete cartoon is part of the DVD set The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection . The clip below is courtesy of Kevin Langley . The Bandmaster-Drunkard Uploaded by klangley