For the past week or so, Stephen Worth, Director of the always amazing ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive (which I have mentioned on several occasions) has been guest blogger on Boing Boing.
During that stint he has given us a series of treats including the Boing Boing Cartoon Circus, a list of some wonderful classic cartoons.
These are almost forgotten gems from an age when cartoon characters, and the imaginations of the artists, were wildly flexible.
The list includes such bizarre and delightful wonders as Grim Natwick’s Swing You Sinners (which Worth bills as “The Weirdest Cartoon Ever”); Terry-Toons’ The Last Roundup, in which Gandy Goose faces Adolf Hitler in the form of a pig; the Fleischer brother’s Popeye in Goonland, a delightfully looney excursion into weirdness (see my previous posts on Max Fleischer and the studio’s amazing Superman and Betty Boop cartoons); Bob Clampett’s Tin Pan Alley Cats, with a parody of Fats Waller; and the beautifully realized Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, a masterpiece by Grim Natwick under the direction of Ub Iwerks, which has some of the character of a Winsor McCay comic strip brought to life.
All in all a treat for fans of cartoon animation, swing jazz and/or overall weirdness.
For more, see the links on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive under item #7 on The Top Ten Reasons to Contribute to A-HAA, for links to even more classic cartoons.
(Images at left: Swing You Sinners, The Last Roundup, Popeye in Goonland, Tin Pan Alley Cats, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp)
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