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The University of Chicago Looking at Cartoons THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LOOKING AT CARTOONS: THE ART, LABOR, AND TECHNOLOGY OF AMERICAN CEL ANIMATION A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF CINEMA AND MEDIA STUDIES BY HANNAH MAITLAND FRANK CHICAGO, ILLINOIS AUGUST 2016 FOR MY FAMILY IN MEMORY OF MY FATHER Apparently he had examined them patiently picture by picture and imagined that they would be screened in the same way, failing at that time to grasp the principle of the cinematograph. —Flann O’Brien CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES...............................................................................................................................v ABSTRACT.......................................................................................................................................vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS....................................................................................................................viii INTRODUCTION LOOKING AT LABOR......................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1 ANIMATION AND MONTAGE; or, Photographic Records of Documents...................................................22 CHAPTER 2 A VIEW OF THE WORLD Toward a Photographic Theory of Cel Animation ...................................72 CHAPTER 3 PARS PRO TOTO Character Animation and the Work of the Anonymous Artist................121 CHAPTER 4 THE MULTIPLICATION OF TRACES Xerographic Reproduction and One Hundred and One Dalmatians.......174 CONCLUSION THE LABOR OF LOOKING..........................................................................231 BIBLIOGRAPHY.............................................................................................................................250 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1: Frames from Robert Breer’s Blazes (1961)...........................................................36 Figure 1.2: Comparison of frames from Walter Lantz’s $21 a Day (Once a Month) (1941) and Alex Lovy’s Knock Knock (1940)...................................................................44 Figure 1.3: Examples of newspapers and telephone books as collage elements in several animated cartoons..................................................................................................62 Figure 1.4: Comparison of a newspaper as reproduced in Bob Clampett’s Tortoise Wins By a Hare (1943), Fighting Tools (1943), What’s Cookin’, Doc? (1944), and an online database..................................................................................................................65 Figure 1.5: Comparison of a newspaper as reproduced in Clampett’s Meet John Doughboy (1941) and on microfilm........................................................................................66 Figure 1.6: Two frames from Breer’s Jamestown Baloos (1957)............................................69 Figure 1.7: Three successive frames from Jamestown Baloos ................................................69 Figure 1.8: Four successive frames from Ken Jacobs’s Tom Tom the Piper’s Son (1969)......70 Figure 2.1: Comparison of frames from Shamus Culhane’s The Painter and the Pointer (1944) and Burt Gillett’s Gulliver Mickey (1934).................................................77 Figure 2.2: Three frames from Max Fleischer’s Jumping Beans (1922).................................88 Figure 2.3: Three successive frames from Animated Hair Cartoon No. 18 (1925).................88 Figure 2.4: Six frames from Breer’s Fuji (1974).....................................................................89 Figure 2.5: Frame from Dave Fleischer’s Popeye Presents Eugene the Jeep (1940)..............95 Figure 2.6: Two successive frames from Chuck Jones’s Hair-Raising Hare (1946)..............96 Figure 2.7: Comparison of two frames from Friz Freleng’s Hare Do (1949).........................97 Figure 2.8: Two successive frames from Frank Tashlin’s Porky Pig’s Feat (1943)...............97 Figure 2.9: Frame from Bill Roberts’s Brave Little Tailor (1938).........................................102 Figure 2.10: Two successive frames from Jones’s Duck Amuck (1953)..................................112 Figure 2.11: Frame from Walt Disney’s All Wet (1927)..........................................................118 Figure 3.1: Two frames from Jones’s Dover Boys (1942).....................................................124 Figure 3.2: Four frames from Dave Fleischer’s Blow Me Down! (1933)..............................127 Figure 3.3: Comparison of frames from Gillett’s Birds of a Feather (1931), Tashlin’s Now That Summer is Gone (1938), Tex Avery’s Three Little Pups (1953), and Lantz’s Hams That Couldn’t Be Cured (1942).................................................................150 Figure 3.4: Comparison of two frames from Dick Lundy’s Bathing Buddies (1946) and two frames from Jack Hannah’s Daddy Duck (1948).................................................151 Figure 3.5: Comparison of frames from Disney’s Tall Timber (1928) and Gillett’s Chain Gang (1930).........................................................................................................152 v Figure 3.6: Comparison of frames from Wilfred Jackson’s Touchdown Mickey (1932) and Lundy’s Donald’s Camera (1941).......................................................................153 Figure 3.7: Comparison of frames from Jack King’s Donald’s Lucky Day (1939), Culhane’s Fair Weather Fiend (1946), Freleng’s Daffy the Commando (1943), and Jones’s Case of the Missing Hare (1942).........................................................................159 Figure 3.8: Comparison of frames from Riley Thompson’s Put-Put Troubles (1940), Clampett’s Tale of Two Kitties (1942), and Freleng’s Tweety Pie (1947)...........160 Figure 3.9: Two frames from Clampett’s Hep Cat (1942).....................................................160 Figure 3.10: Four frames from Van Beuren’s Big Cheese (1931)...........................................167 Figure 3.11: Frame from Ben Sharpsteen’s Worm Turns (1937).............................................167 Figure 3.12: Four frames from Gillett’s Lonesome Ghosts (1937)..........................................173 Figure 3.13: Five frames from Breer’s Rubber Cement (1976)...............................................173 Figure 4.1: Comparison of two frames from Robert Taylor’s Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat (1974)...................................................................................................................179 Figure 4.2: Comparison of frames from Disney’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) and Cinderella (1950)..........................................................................................183 Figure 4.3: Frame from One Hundred and One Dalmatians.................................................193 Figure 4.4: Comparison of frames from Jones’s Deduce, You Say (1956) and One Hundred and One Dalmatians............................................................................................211 Figure 4.5: Two frames from Edwards Bernds’s Three Stooges in Orbit (1962)..................218 Figure 4.6: Comparison of three frames from One Hundred and One Dalmatians...............221 Figure 4.7: Comparison of three frames from One Hundred and One Dalmatians...............222 Figure 4.8: Comparison of three frames from One Hundred and One Dalmatians...............225 Figure 4.9: Comparison of two frames from One Hundred and One Dalmatians.................225 Figure 5.1: Frame from Jones’s Sniffles Bells the Cat (1941)................................................232 Figure 5.2: Frame from Sniffles Bells the Cat........................................................................236 Figure 5.3: Frame from Sniffles Bells the Cat........................................................................236 Figure 5.4: Comparison of frames from Howard Hawks’s Ball of Fire (1941) and A Song is Born (1948)..........................................................................................................241 Figure 5.5: Comparison of frames from A Song is Born and Disney’s Song of the South (1946)...................................................................................................................241 Figure 5.6: Four frames from Cinderella...............................................................................247 vi ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the visual aesthetics of popular American animated cartoons. For most of the twentieth century, the making of these films was mechanized and standardized to allow for high-volume production: thousands of drawings were inked and painted onto individual transparent celluloid sheets (called “cels”) and then photographed in succession, a labor- intensive process that was divided across scores of artists and technicians, most of them anonymous. In order to understand how the industrial mode of production influenced the medium’s visual style, this dissertation regards each frame of a given animated cartoon as a historical document in its own right. What emerges is an original account of an art formed on the assembly line. The four chapters each provide a distinct perspective on the art, labor, and technology of cel animation. Drawing on the montage practices of Sergei Eisenstein and Walter Benjamin, the first chapter offers a model for understanding the historical and theoretical significance of the part (or, in this case, the frame) in relationship to the work of art as a whole. The second
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