This week marks the fiftieth anniversary of the release of what a thousand of us voted as the greatest cartoon ever made...
What's Opera, Doc?, directed by Chuck Jones, written and with lyrics by Mike Maltese, and designed by Maurice Noble. Featuring the voices of Mel Blanc as Bugs Bunny and the underrated Arthur Q. Bryan as Elmer Fudd (although it's Blanc who yells "SMOG!!!")
Since Dave Hilberman passed away in the last few days, it bears noting that both Chuck Jones and Maurice Noble were active in organizing the animation industry under the Screen Cartoonists Guild back in 1940-41. Chuck was among those locked out at Warners/Schlesinger, and Maurice hit the bricks at Disney, thereby bringing his flourishing career at the Mouse House to an end.
Happily, being active union lefties didn't slow down either of their careers.
(Interesting list in the above link, by the way. Seventeen Warners cartoons in the top fifty versus nine for Disney. And only one, The Band Concert, in the top ten.)
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This page lists all of the Wagner references, musically, in the toon. It turns out most of them actually came from works that are instrumentals in the Wagner originals. Probably easier to work with when missing the distraction of the German text.
As for why Disney toons rank so low? Consider that for most of the people of the age for judging those, they've lived with the Warner cartoons being on for between half an hour and 90 minutes (in CBS's peak during the 70s) for 40 years, while Disney's cartoons oly rarely got stuck into fillers when Wonderful World of (Disney/Color) ran out of stuff to show. Until the treasures releases, there was never an objective means to view ALL of the cartoons (and even now, we still need a 3rd Donald set to get us to the really cool educational stuff that many of us will suddenly remember if we ever get to see it again.
But yes, I was surprised in seeing Maurice Noble's name attached to Snow White's credits.
"Happily, being active union lefties didn't slow down either of their careers."
Of course, that was a time in the industry when talent actually mattered and they weren't competing with nearly as many people as we are for our jobs.
Is there ever any kind of animation festival/screening program where you can see all these shorts? I've only seen half (if that!) of the list. How does one go about tracking them all down - are they all available on DVD?
Thanks!
"Happily, being active union lefties didn't slow down either of their careers."
Of course, that was a time in the industry when talent actually mattered and they weren't competing with nearly as many people as we are for our jobs.
I'd disagree with you on this. Artists of the caliber of Chuck Jones and Maurice Noble would have no trouble finding work, no matter what their political affiliation.
In the thirty years I've been kicking around in this area of work, I've never seen anybody with serious artistic chops blacklisted because of their politics or union activities.
Another anniversary is the one for Blade Runner. The 25th.
"I'd disagree with you on this. Artists of the caliber of Chuck Jones and Maurice Noble would have no trouble finding work, no matter what their political affiliation."
Um... that was my point. Studios COULDN'T blacklist them because there were only a handfull of people who were even remotely capable of directing cartoons at the time. And back then, the system under which they created their work was far less oppressive on a corporate level than we are now.
Nowadays, you can become the next "animation star" whether you have any real chops or not because the executives are so directly and actively involved in the creative process and most execs have no idea what makes a "good director".
"In the thirty years I've been kicking around in this area of work, I've never seen anybody with serious artistic chops blacklisted because of their politics or union activities."
Me neither. They get blacklisted for entirely different reasons.
"In the thirty years I've been kicking around in this area of work, I've never seen anybody with serious artistic chops blacklisted because of their politics or union activities."
Of course, the last 30 years wouldn't really give one a representative picture of blacklisting as it existed during Jones' career.
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