Tom on the GOOD Cartoons

 We were the generation that had all the good cartoons,  Some of those cartoons were theatrical releases, most of which originated from the Disney Studios, and they were feature length productions that dazzled the eyes and stimulated the imagination.  I can still remember being a kid and sitting in a darkened theatre and watching the Dwarf Chorus perform  today's Subject Line Song.  You have to suspend reality when you watch cartoons, because animated characters can do things that are logically impossible.  But kids are comfortable with magic, because much of their lived experiences seem magical.  The science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke once observed that: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", and since children understand little about the larger world, magic seems as likely an explanation for that which they don't understand as anything else.

The Disney oeuvre was just the tip of the cartoon universe.  You have to remember that cartoons predated TV, and the market for animated cartoons was largely dependent on the motion picture industry.  When people went to the theatre during the prewar years, they didn't only see a movie.  Theatres would sometimes distribute cheap dishes and glasses to customers as a token of appreciation for their patronage.  Frequent moviegoers could assemble entire dinner services.  These giveaways became known as "Depression Glassware'', and have become highly collectible, with some rare pieces fetching hundreds of dollars on markets like EBay..Once the lights went down, the fun began. There would usually be a newsreel, which recapitulated both important and amusing stories of interest.  A typical newsreel from 1934 might feature a story about the arrest of one Bruno Hauptmann for the kidnapping of the Lindberg Baby, or a story about the killing of Public Enemy #1, John Dillinger outside the Biograpph theatre in Chicago by intrepid 'G-Man' Melvin Purvis , who was dimed out to the FBI by the famous 'Lady in the Red Dress', Anna Sage.  These newsreels were produced by companies like Fox's 'Movietone News' or Pathe, a French company.  Then we'd finally get to see the cartoon.  It could be a Looney Tunes' cartoon from Warner Brothers,featuring some of the most memorable cartoon figures of all time Bugs, Daffy, and Elmer; The Road Runner and the Coyote, or a Woody Woodpecker production from Waler Lantz.   It could be an offering from the Terrytoons studio, which gave us Mighty Mouse and my personal favorite:'Farmer Al Falfa'.  Sometimes they'd play 2 cartoons. Finally, they play the movie.  There was a method to the exhibiror's madness.: The longer the patrons spent in the theatre, the more they bought from the snack bar:). If it actually was 1934, the movie could have been "It Happened One Night", which swept the Oscars in 1935, winning the 4 major acting awards along with Best Director.

But then came the war and the cartoons took on a martial aspect.  Some cartoons dealt with the war effort. We saw the Disney Studios offering the irascible Donald Duck as their version of Everyman in such masterpieces as "Commando Duck" and "Der Fuehrer's Face".  And who could forget "The Gremlins From The Kremlin"?  Many propaganda cartoons focused on the Japanese were overtly racist, including "The Ducktators' ', "Tokio Jokio' ', and the unforgettable "Nips in the Night' '.  Some cartoons dealt with the Homefront. "Like Air Raid Wardens On Parade", "Scrap Happy Daffy", and "Scrap For Victory".  We went on to win the war and the veterans of the recent war and the girls who kept their beds warm on the home front more than made up for lost time and the notorious postwar Baby Boom was upon us.  And one of the defining products of the postwar years , (besides TV dinners), was the almost universal appearance of TV sets in American living rooms.  

TVs, like all mass media, have a voracious appetite for content.  For programming directed at kids, content was largely made up of cartoons.  There were other kid-centered things on TV, such as child oriented national shows like 'Howdy Doody' and 'Captain Kangaroo', and 'Bozo the Clown', (Now that I think of it, Bozo was a franchised operation.  Each city that wanted one had their very own Bozo), along with their locally produced counterparts like Major Mudd, Rex Trailer's Boomtown, and Uncle Gus.  Disny had an outsized presence in kids TV, princpally through live programming like 'The Mickey Mouse Club' and filmed programs like 'Spin and Marty', 'The Adventures of Davy Crockett', and my favorite:'Zorro'.  I can actually remember the theme songs to many of these shows  Old shorts were a staple of kid's programming.  We spent hours watching such riveting entertainment as 'The Bowery Boys', "Our Gang', and 'The Little Rascals', and boys were especially fond of "The Three Stooges' and 'Laurel and Hardy'.  But cartoons ruled in the mysterious world of kids TV.  They were violent, racist, sexist and thoroughly enjoyable.  Kids would sit before the Devil Box for hours on Saturday mornings, eating heavily sugary breakfast cereals, (Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs) and swilling highly caffeinated soft drinks  while they were targeted by exploitative ads for exorbitantly priced products that never quite worked as advertised.  Eventually, the moral scolds took notice and kids programming became anodyne; kind of like eating predigested food.  

That topic kind of got away from me, but it could have been so much worse.  I'll cut my losses and send this off before I decide to expand its scope.