As is Koko in Snow White above.
When I was a kid in the 1950s, Terry’s Farmer Al Falfa (then known as Farmer Gray) cartoons were a staple for TV stations looking for cheap content for kids. The Mouse’s Bride is rather poignant. I especially like the duck butler.
Quite right. I remember seeing that cartoon for the first time and being impressed that it was Louis Armstrong (who was still alive at the time).
not only did the Fleischers invent the Rotoscope, they also invented a process of using 3D backgrounds, which were molded out of clay and plaster and rotated on a turntable. they had a clear frame to hold the animation cels in front. In its way, it was like Ub Iwerks’ “Multiplane” camera, only with a literally 3D background. They used it in their big-budget 2-reeler color Popeye cartoons
Look at Popeye meets Sinbad at 6 minutes in. Notice how the shadows change on the background and the perspective changes.
or Sinbad meets Ali Baba at 3 minutes in (where it’s the foreground that changes)
There was The Heckle and Jeckle Cartoon Show, aka The Heckle and Jeckle Show. I watched this as a little kid, under the age of 6 or so, but had no idea it continued until 1971. It wasn’t one of my favorite cartoons but maybe I was too young for it.
I used to watch Popeye cartoons on WPIX in New York, hosted by “Captain” Jack McCarthy. I used to look forward to when they would show Sindbad the Sailor, but I think what I saw was the re-cut shorter version, and not the original. I could tell the animation looked strange, but didn’t know why.
I vaguely remember the Captain. Was he PIX or WOR?
Me, too! I remember Jack McCarthy, and Sandy Becker, and Sonny Fox, and Chuck McCann (when he was still a kid show host) and Claude Kirshner (and Clowny!)
I had Bob McAllister for Wonderama, that was what Sonny Fox was known for right?
I remember all those. Also Officer Joe Bolton for the Three Stooges.
Sandy Becker was my favorite. He was the zaniest of them all, with characters like K. Lastima (the first Spanish pun I learned), Norton Nork, and Hambone, and puppets like Geeba Geeba (left).
Sonny Fox wasn’t my favorite, but I did meet him once, at an event on the SS United States (the largest cruise ship at the time) when it was docked on the West Side.
Sonny Fox hosted Wonderama 1959-1967, when McAllister replaced him.
Aptly enough for the thread, Claude Kirchner hosted Terrytoon Circus on WOR in New York from 1956-1962.
Kirchner was OK, but Clownie creeped me the hell out.
Since I knew Sonny Fox for Wonderama (and for Just for Fun, the game show for kids he hosted on Saturdays), I was very surprised to learn much later on that he had been the sometime host of The $64,000 Challenge, one of the shows involved in the Quiz Show Scandal of the 1950s. Fox wasn’t tarred by that scandal, though, because he wasn’t hosting very often.
Bonus fact – Sonny Fox is still around!
Am I unique in having watched Wonderama on Sunday mornings while I was in high school? I loved the guest stars Bob McAllister had on and the topics they discussed!
In High School? I doubt it is unique, but it does seem odd.
Yep, in high school. A lot of the material was geared to a teenage audience, it seemed to me. One episode that sticks in my mind is when Bob had LeRoy Neiman, the Playboy artist, on as a guest. He talked about art in general and his own distinctive style in particular.
Neiman also sketched the other guest that day, a champion fencer who talked about the sport, as he was going through some exercises for the audience.
Say what you want about the show, but 17-year-old me found it pretty interesting.
I remember watching H&J in the Chicago area, Sat a.m.s in 60s. I THINK at 7:30 (had my regular line-up thru 9, when mom made me turn off the TV. Starting at 630, the only thing on was old Superman live action…)
The 4-hour marathon that was Wonderama with Sonny Fox in the 1960s was amazing, and a big chunk of my childhood. I saw tons of Warner Brothers cartoons, Flash Gordon serials, and other such stuff, along with games and performers. It was on Wonderama that I first saw James (The Amazing) Randi, who was mainly a magician and Houdini-style escape artist. He was a frequent guuest, and I was really surprised years later in college when I encountered his writings as a Skeptic, first taking on “psychic” Uri Geller.
The theme music for Wonderama, it took me a long time to learn, was the overture to The Unsinkable Molly Brown
Bob Mcallister was a very different kind of host, with his own songs (“Kids are People, too!”). But by then I was older and not as interested. Although I might stick around because right after Wonderara they WNEX ran Eastside Comedy, which ran the old Bowery Boys movies from Monogram.
I remember watching H&J as a kid, but when watching a little of the clip the OP posted I was surprised by the accents H&J had. I don’t remember them sounding like that.
Does anyone remember the cartoons where the characters were Hollywood stars (from the 40s) with giant heads? IIRC they seemed to be at fancy Hollywood restaurant. It might have only been one cartoon that I saw numerous times.
There was a Bugs Barney cartoon like that. Elmer was a waiter and most of the stars of the day had cartoon versions of themselves in the cartoon.
Slick Hare 1947
There were a lot of Warner Brothers cartoons like that. Besides the one What_Exit mentions, there’s 1941’s Hollywood Steps Out
I know there were others in the 1930s