1.
Mel Blanc
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Melvin Jerome Mel Blanc was an American voice actor, actor, radio comedian, and recording artist. Coyote, Road Runner, the Tasmanian Devil, and many of the characters from the Looney Tunes. He was, in fact, the voice for all of the major male Warner Bros. cartoon characters except for Elmer Fudd and he later worked for Hanna-Barberas television cartoons, most notably as the voices of Barney Rubble on The Flintstones and Mr. Spacely on The Jetsons. Blanc was also the voice of Woody Woodpecker for Universal Pictures. Having earned the nickname The Man of a Thousand Voices, Blanc is regarded as one of the most influential people in the voice-acting industry, Blanc was born in San Francisco, California to Russian-Jewish parents Frederick and Eva Blank, the younger of two children. He grew up in the neighborhood of Western Addition in San Francisco, growing up, he had a fondness for voices and dialect which he began voicing at the age of 10. He claimed that he changed the spelling of his name when he was 16, from Blank to Blanc, because a teacher told him that he would amount to nothing and be like his name, a blank. Blanc joined The Order of DeMolay as a man, and was eventually inducted into its Hall of Fame. He moved to Los Angeles in 1932, where he met Estelle Rosenbaum and he moved to KEX in 1933 to produce and co-host his Cobweb and Nuts show with his wife Estelle, which debuted on June 15. The program played Monday through Saturday from 11,00 pm to midnight, with his wifes encouragement, Blanc returned to Los Angeles and joined Warner Bros. –owned KFWB in Hollywood in 1935. He joined The Johnny Murray Show, but the year switched to CBS Radio. The first role came from a mishap when the recording of the automobiles sounds failed to play on cue, prompting Blanc to take the microphone, the audience reacted so positively that Benny decided to dispense with the recording altogether and have Blanc continue in that role. One of Blancs most memorable characters from Bennys radio programs was Sy, the Little Mexican, sue. sew routine was so effective that no matter how many times it was performed, the laughter was always there, thanks to the comedic timing of Blanc and Benny. Blanc continued to work with him on radio until the series ended in 1955 and they last appeared together on a Johnny Carson Tonight Show in January 1974. A few months later, Blanc spoke highly of Benny on a Tom Snyder Tomorrow show special aired the night of the comedians death, by 1946, Blanc appeared on over 15 radio programs in supporting roles. His success on The Jack Benny Program led to his own show on the CBS Radio Network, The Mel Blanc Show. Blanc played himself as the owner of a fix-it shop. Blanc also appeared on other national radio programs as The Abbott and Costello Show, the Happy Postman on Burns and Allen
2.
Warner Bros.
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Entertainment Inc. – colloquially known as Warner Bros. or Warner Bros. It is one of the Big Six major American film studios, Warner Bros. is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America. The companys name originated from the four founding Warner brothers, Harry, Albert, Sam, Jack, the youngest, was born in London, Ontario. The three elder brothers began in the theater business, having acquired a movie projector with which they showed films in the mining towns of Pennsylvania. In the beginning, Sam and Albert Warner invested $150 to present Life of an American Fireman and they opened their first theater, the Cascade, in New Castle, Pennsylvania, in 1903. When the original building was in danger of being demolished, the modern Warner Bros. called the current building owners, the owners noted people across the country had asked them to protect it for its historical significance. In 1904, the Warners founded the Pittsburgh-based Duquesne Amusement & Supply Company, in 1912, Harry Warner hired an auditor named Paul Ashley Chase. By the time of World War I they had begun producing films, in 1918 they opened the first Warner Bros. studio on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Sam and Jack produced the pictures, while Harry and Albert, along with their auditor and now controller Chase, handled finance and distribution in New York City. During World War I their first nationally syndicated film, My Four Years in Germany, on April 4,1923, with help from money loaned to Harry by his banker Motley Flint, they formally incorporated as Warner Brothers Pictures, Incorporated. The first important deal was the acquisition of the rights to Avery Hopwoods 1919 Broadway play, The Gold Diggers, however, Rin Tin Tin, a dog brought from France after World War I by an American soldier, established their reputation. Rin Tin Tin debuted in the feature Where the North Begins, the movie was so successful that Jack signed the dog to star in more films for $1,000 per week. Rin Tin Tin became the top star. Jack nicknamed him The Mortgage Lifter and the success boosted Darryl F. Zanucks career, Zanuck eventually became a top producer and between 1928 and 1933 served as Jacks right-hand man and executive producer, with responsibilities including day-to-day film production. More success came after Ernst Lubitsch was hired as head director, lubitschs film The Marriage Circle was the studios most successful film of 1924, and was on The New York Times best list for that year. Despite the success of Rin Tin Tin and Lubitsch, Warners remained a lesser studio, Sam and Jack decided to offer Broadway actor John Barrymore the lead role in Beau Brummel. The film was so successful that Harry signed Barrymore to a contract, like The Marriage Circle. By the end of 1924, Warner Bros. was arguably Hollywoods most successful independent studio, as the studio prospered, it gained backing from Wall Street, and in 1924 Goldman Sachs arranged a major loan
3.
Technicolor
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Technicolor is the name applied to a series of color motion picture processes, the first version dating from 1916, and followed by improved versions over several decades. It was the major color process, after Britains Kinemacolor. As the technology matured it was used for less spectacular dramas. Occasionally, even a film noir—such as Leave Her to Heaven or Niagara —was filmed in Technicolor, Technicolor is the trademark for a series of color motion picture processes pioneered by Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation, now a division of the French company Technicolor SA. The Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation was founded in Boston in 1914 by Herbert Kalmus, Daniel Frost Comstock, the Tech in the companys name was inspired by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where both Kalmus and Comstock received their undergraduate degrees and were later instructors. Technicolor, Inc. was chartered in Delaware in 1921, most of Technicolors early patents were taken out by Comstock and Wescott, while Kalmus served primarily as the companys president and chief executive officer. The term Technicolor historically has been used to describe at least five concepts, Technicolor, Technicolor process or format, several custom image origination systems used in film production, culminating in the three-strip process in 1932. Technicolor IB printing, a process for making color motion picture prints that allows the use of dyes which are more stable, originally used for printing from color separation negatives photographed on black-and-white film in a special Technicolor camera. This meaning of the name applies to nearly all Wikipedia articles about films made from 1954 onward in which Technicolor is named in the credits, Technicolor originally existed in a two-color system. Because two frames were being exposed at the time, the film had to be photographed and projected at twice the normal speed. Exhibition required a special projector with two apertures, two lenses, and a prism that aligned the two images on the screen. The results were first demonstrated to members of the American Institute of Mining Engineers in New York on February 21,1917, the near-constant need for a technician to adjust the projection alignment doomed this additive color process. Only a few frames of The Gulf Between, showing star Grace Darmond, are known to exist today, convinced that there was no future in additive color processes, Comstock, Wescott, and Kalmus focused their attention on subtractive color processes. This culminated in what would eventually be known as Process 2, the difference was that the two-component negative was now used to produce a subtractive color print. Because the colors were present in the print, no special projection equipment was required. The frames exposed behind the filter were printed on one strip of black-and-white film. After development, each print was toned to a color nearly complementary to that of the filter, orange-red for the green-filtered images, the two prints, made on film stock half the thickness of regular film, were then cemented together back to back to create a projection print. The Toll of the Sea, which debuted on November 26,1922, the second all-color feature in Process 2 Technicolor, Wanderer of the Wasteland, was released in 1924
4.
Peter Lorre
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Peter Lorre was an Austro-Hungarian-American actor. In Austria, he began his career in Vienna before moving to Germany where he had his breakthrough, first on the stage, then in film in Berlin in the late 1920s. Lorre caused a sensation in the German film M, in which he portrayed a serial killer who preys on little girls. Because he was Jewish, he left Germany after 1933 and his first English-language film was Alfred Hitchcocks The Man Who Knew Too Much made in Great Britain. Eventually settling in Hollywood, he became a featured player in many Hollywood crime. In his initial American films, Mad Love and Crime and Punishment, he continued to play murderers, but he was then cast playing Mr. Moto, from 1941 to 1946 he mainly worked for Warner Bros. The first of these films at Warners was The Maltese Falcon and this was followed by Casablanca, the second of the nine films in which Lorre and Greenstreet appeared. Lorres other films include Frank Capras Arsenic and Old Lace and Disneys 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner, his later career was erratic. Lorre was the first actor to play a James Bond villain as Le Chiffre in a TV version of Casino Royale, some of his last roles were in horror films directed by Roger Corman. Lorre was born László Löwenstein on 26 June 1904, the first child of Jewish couple Alajos Löwenstein and his parents had recently moved there following his fathers appointment as chief bookkeeper at a local textile mill. Alajos Löwenstein also served as a lieutenant in the Austrian army reserve, lászlós mother died when he was only four years old, leaving Alajos with three very young sons, the youngest only a couple of months old. He soon married his wifes best friend Melanie Klein, with whom he had two more children, however, Lorre and his stepmother never got along, and this colored his childhood memories. At the outbreak of the Second Balkan War in 1913, anticipating that this would lead to a larger conflict and he was serving on the Eastern Front during the winter of 1914–1915 before being put in charge of a prison camp due to heart trouble. Lorre began acting on stage in Vienna aged 17, where he worked with Viennese Art Nouveau artist and he then moved to the German town of Breslau, and later to Zürich. In the late 1920s, the moved to Berlin, where he worked with German playwright Bertolt Brecht, including a role in Brechts Mann ist Mann. The actor became much better known after director Fritz Lang cast him as child killer Hans Beckert in M, a film reputedly derived from the Peter Kürten case. Lang said that he had Lorre in mind while working on the script, the director believed that the actor gave his best performance in M and that it was among the most distinguished in film history. Sharon Packer observed that Lorre played the loner, schizotypal murderer with raspy voice, bulging eyes, in 1932, Lorre appeared alongside Hans Albers in the science fiction film F. P.1 antwortet nicht about an artificial island in the mid-Atlantic
5.
Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress. Known for her independence and spirited personality, Hepburn was a leading lady in Hollywood for more than 60 years. She appeared in a range of genres, from comedy to literary drama. In 1999, Hepburn was named by the American Film Institute as the greatest female star of Classic Hollywood Cinema, raised in Connecticut by wealthy, progressive parents, Hepburn began to act while studying at Bryn Mawr College. After four years in the theatre, favorable reviews of her work on Broadway brought her to the attention of Hollywood. Hepburn masterminded her own comeback, buying out her contract with RKO Radio Pictures and acquiring the rights to The Philadelphia Story. In the 1940s, she was contracted to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where her career focused on an alliance with Spencer Tracy, the screen-partnership spanned 25 years and produced nine movies. Hepburn challenged herself in the half of her life, as she regularly appeared in Shakespearean stage productions. She found a niche playing middle-aged spinsters, such as in The African Queen, three more Oscars came for her work in Guess Whos Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winter, and On Golden Pond. In the 1970s, she began appearing in films, which became the focus of her career in later life. She remained active into old age, making her screen appearance in 1994 at the age of 87. After a period of inactivity and ill health, Hepburn died in 2003 at the age of 96, Hepburn famously shunned the Hollywood publicity machine and refused to conform to societys expectations of women. She was outspoken, assertive, athletic, and wore trousers before it was fashionable for women to do so and she married once, as a young woman, but thereafter lived independently. A 26-year affair with her co-star Spencer Tracy was hidden from the public, Hepburn was born on May 12,1907 in Hartford, Connecticut, the second of six children. Her parents were Thomas Norval Hepburn, a urologist at Hartford Hospital, and Katharine Martha Houghton, as a child, Hepburn joined her mother on several Votes For Women demonstrations. The Hepburn children were raised to exercise freedom of speech and encouraged to think and her parents were criticized by the community for their progressive views, which stimulated Hepburn to fight against barriers she encountered. Hepburn said she realized from an age that she was the product of two very remarkable parents, and credited her enormously lucky upbringing with providing the foundation for her success. She remained close to her throughout her life
6.
The Cat in the Hat
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The Cat in the Hat is a childrens book written and illustrated by Theodor Geisel under the pen name Dr. Seuss and first published in 1957. The story centers on an anthropomorphic cat, who wears a red and white-striped hat. The Cat shows up at the house of Sally and her brother one rainy day when their mother is away. Ignoring repeated objections from the fish, the Cat shows the children a few of his tricks in an attempt to entertain them. In the process he and his companions, Thing One and Thing Two, the children and the fish become more and more alarmed until the Cat produces a machine that he uses to clean everything up. He then says his goodbyes and disappears just before the childrens mother walks in, Geisel created the book in response to a debate in the United States about literacy in early childhood and the ineffectiveness of traditional primers such as those featuring Dick and Jane. Geisel was asked to write a more entertaining primer by William Spaulding, whom he had met during World War II, the words he found were cat and hat. The book met with critical acclaim and financial success. Reviewers praised it as an alternative to traditional primers. Three years after its debut, the book had sold over a million copies. The books success led to the creation of Beginner Books, a publishing house centered on producing books for young children learning to read. In 1983, Geisel said, It is the book Im proudest of because it had something to do with the death of the Dick, the book was adapted into a 1971 animated television special and a 2003 live-action film. The story begins as a girl named Sally and her unnamed brother, then they hear a loud bump which is quickly followed by the arrival of the Cat in the Hat, a tall anthropomorphic cat in a red and white striped hat and a red bow tie. The Cat proposes to entertain the children with some tricks that he knows, the childrens pet fish refuses, insisting that the Cat leave. The Cat responds by balancing the fish on the tip of his umbrella, the fish admonishes him again, but the Cat in the Hat just proposes another game. The Cat brings in a big red box from outside, from which he releases two identical creatures with blue hair and red suits called Thing One and Thing Two. The Things cause more trouble, such as flying kites in the house, knocking pictures off the wall, all this comes to an end when the fish spots the childrens mother out the window. In response, Sallys brother catches the Things in a net, and he takes it out the front door as the fish and the children survey the mess he has made
7.
And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street
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And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street is Theodor Seuss Geisels first childrens book. It was published under the pen name Dr. Seuss, however, when he arrives home he decides instead to tell his father what he actually saw—a simple horse and wagon. Geisel conceived the core of the book aboard a ship in 1936, the rhythm of the ships engines captivated him and inspired the books signature lines, And that is a story that no one can beat And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street. At least 20 publishers rejected the book before Geisel ran into an old college classmate, Vanguard agreed to publish the book, and it met with high praise from critics upon release, though sales were not as impressive. Later analyses of the book have focused on its connections to Geisels childhood, Geisel returned to fictionalized versions of Springfield in later books, and Marco appeared again in 1947 in the Dr. Seuss book McElligots Pool. The story begins as a boy named Marco walks home from school, thinking of his fathers advice, Marco, however, the only thing Marco has seen on his walk is a horse pulling a wagon on Mulberry Street. To make his story more interesting, Marco imagines progressively more elaborate scenes based around the horse and he imagines the horse is first a zebra, then a reindeer, then an elephant, and finally an elephant helped by two giraffes. The wagon changes to a chariot, then a sled, then a holding a brass band. Marcos realization that Mulberry Street intersects with Bliss Street leads him to imagine a group of police escorts, now almost home, he snaps back to reality and rushes up the front steps, eager to tell his father his imagined story. However, when his father questions him about what he saw on his way home, his face red and he says, Nothing. but a plain horse. Geisel was 33 and had ten years of experience in cartooning, illustrating and advertising when he work on Mulberry Street. He had an established and prosperous career in advertising, including a contract with Standard Oil for Flit bug spray, Geisels popular campaign featured the line Quick, Henry, the Flit. He had also made forays into book publishing, for Viking Press in 1931 he illustrated Boners and More Boners. The books positive sales encouraged Geisel to create his own childrens book, in 1932, Geisel wrote and illustrated an alphabet book featuring a collection of odd animals, but was unable to interest publishers in it. As the Kungsholm endured a storm and Geisel suffered from sea sickness, he jotted down a plot that started with a stupid horse. For days after they landed, he had the rhythm of the ships engine stuck in his head, so, at Helens suggestion, he decided to write a story based around it. The Morgans based this account on interviews with Geisel, who had given similar accounts of the creation to journalists throughout his career. In one version, he had already been working on the book for six months before the European trip, in another, he claimed he had the book about half finished when they landed in the US
8.
Dr. Seuss
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Theodor Seuss Geisel was an American writer, cartoonist, animator, book publisher, and artist best known for authoring childrens books under the pen name Dr. Seuss. His work includes several of the most popular books of all time, selling over 600 million copies. Geisel adopted his Dr. Seuss pen name during his university studies at Dartmouth College and he left Oxford in 1927 to begin his career as an illustrator and cartoonist for Vanity Fair, Life, and various other publications. He also worked as an illustrator for advertising campaigns, most notably for Flit and Standard Oil and he published his first childrens book And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street in 1937. After the war, Geisel focused on books, writing classics such as If I Ran the Zoo. If I Ran the Circus, The Cat in the Hat and he published over 60 books during his career, which have spawned numerous adaptations, including 11 television specials, four feature films, a Broadway musical, and four television series. He won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1958 for Horton Hatches the Egg, Geisels birthday, March 2, has been adopted as the annual date for National Read Across America Day, an initiative on reading created by the National Education Association. Geisel was born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, the son of Henrietta, all four of his grandparents were German immigrants. His father managed the brewery and was later appointed to supervise Springfields public park system by Mayor John A. Denison after the brewery closed because of Prohibition. Mulberry Street in Springfield, made famous in Dr. Seuss first childrens book And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, is less than a mile southwest of his home on Fairfield Street. He enrolled at Springfield Central High School in 1917 and graduated in 1921 and he took an art class as a freshman and later became manager of the school soccer team. Geisel attended Dartmouth College, graduating in 1925, at Dartmouth, he joined the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity and the humor magazine Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern, eventually rising to the rank of editor-in-chief. While at Dartmouth, he was caught drinking gin with nine friends in his room, at the time, the possession and consumption of alcohol was illegal under Prohibition laws, which remained in place between 1920 and 1933. As a result of this infraction, Dean Craven Laycock insisted that Geisel resign from all extracurricular activities, to continue work on the Jack-O-Lantern without the administrations knowledge, Geisel began signing his work with the pen name Seuss. He was encouraged in his writing by professor of rhetoric W. Benfield Pressey, upon graduating from Dartmouth, he entered Lincoln College, Oxford intending to earn a PhD in English literature. At Oxford, he met Helen Palmer, who encouraged him to give up becoming an English teacher in favor of pursuing drawing as a career. Making use of his time in Europe, he pitched a series of cartoons called Eminent Europeans to Life magazine and his first nationally published cartoon appeared in the July 16,1927 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. This single $25 sale encouraged Geisel to move from Springfield to New York City, later that year, Geisel accepted a job as writer and illustrator at the humor magazine Judge, and he felt financially stable enough to marry Helen
9.
Warner Bros. Cartoons
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Cartoons, Inc. was the in-house division of Warner Bros. Pictures during the Golden Age of American animation, one of the most successful animation studios in American media history, Warner Bros. Cartoons was primarily responsible for the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoon short subjects, in 1944, Schlesinger sold the studio to Warner Bros. who continued to operate it as Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies were briefly subcontracted to Frelengs DePatie-Freleng Enterprises studio from 1964 until 1967, Cartoons studio briefly re-opened in 1967 before shutting its doors for good two years later. That company continues to produce Looney Tunes-related works, in addition to television shows, hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising originated the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated short subjects in 1930 and 1931, respectively. Both cartoon series were produced for Leon Schlesinger at the Harman-Ising Studio on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California, pictures releasing the films to theaters. The first Looney Tunes character was the Harman-Ising creation Bosko, The Talk-ink Kid, despite the fact that Bosko was popular among theater audiences, he could never match the popularity of Walt Disneys Mickey Mouse, or even Max Fleischers Betty Boop. In 1933, Harman and Ising parted company with Schlesinger over financial disputes, as a result, Schlesinger set up his own studio on the Warner Bros. lot on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. The Schlesinger studio got off to a start, continuing their one-shot Merrie Melodies. In 1935, Freleng helmed the Merrie Melodies cartoon I Havent Got a Hat, hardaway and King departed, and a new arrival at Schlesingers, Fred Tex Avery, took Frelengs creation and ran with it. Avery directed a string of cartoons starring Porky Pig that established the character as the studios first bona fide star, Schlesinger also gradually moved the Merrie Melodies cartoons from black and white, to two-strip Technicolor in 1934, and finally to full three-strip Technicolor in 1936. The Looney Tunes series would be produced in black-and-white for much longer, because of the limited spacing conditions in the Schlesinger building at 1351 N. From 1936 until 1944, animation directors and animators such as Freleng, Avery, Clampett, Jones, Arthur Davis, Robert McKimson, and Frank Tashlin worked at the studio. During this period, these creators introduced several of the most popular characters to date, including Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Bugs Bunny. A few months earlier he banished all unionized employees in what became known in retrospective as the Looney Tune Lockout, by 1942, the Schlesinger studio had surpassed Walt Disney Productions as the most successful producer of animated shorts in the United States. Between 1942 and 1945, the Schelsinger studio produced a number of films for the United States military in support of its efforts in World War II, in 1944, Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. which renamed the company Warner Bros. Cartoons, Inc. and Edward Selzer, was appointed by Warner Bros. as the new head of the studio after Schlesinger retired. In September 1944 Frank Tashlin left, and in October 1946, tashlins unit was initially taken over by Robert McKimson who later took over Clampetts unit
10.
If I Ran the Zoo
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If I Ran the Zoo is a childrens book written by Dr. Seuss in 1950. The book is written in anapestic tetrameter, Seusss usual verse type, the book is likely a tribute to a childs imagination, because it ends with a reminder that all of the extraordinary creatures exist only in McGrews head. If I Ran the Zoo is often credited with the first printed modern English appearance of the nerd, although the word is not used in its modern context. In the book, Gerald McGrew is a child who, when visiting a zoo and he says that if he ran the zoo, he would let all of the current animals free and find new, more bizarre and exotic ones. He also imagines the praise he receives from others, who are amazed at his new Zoo, some of the animals featured in If I Ran the Zoo have been featured in a segment of The Hoober-Bloob Highway, a 1975 CBS TV Special. The small play area is located inside the area of the known as Seuss Landing. An animation short directed and produced by Ray Messecar and narrated by Brett Ambler
11.
Adult animation
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Adult animation or mature animation is a genre of animation geared towards adults and sometimes also teenagers, acting as a contrast to most animated films and TV series being aimed at children. Works in this genre may be considered adult for any number of reasons and they may be noted for using risqué themes, graphic violence, profane language, sexuality, or dark humor. Works in this genre may explore philosophical, political, or social issues, some productions are noted for sophisticated and/or experimental storytelling and animation techniques. Before the enforcement of the Hays Code, some cartoon shorts contained humor that was aimed at adult audience rather than children. Following the introduction of the Motion Picture Association of America film rating system, the earliest cartoon series were based upon popular comic strips, and were directed at family audiences. The assumed audience of these cartoons, particularly Looney Tunes, has alternated from their initial unspecific audience, to children. One of the earliest animated films was Eveready Harton in Buried Treasure. It has often suggested that the film was produced for a private party in honor of Winsor McCay. Rumors suggest that the film was developed in Cuba years after it was completed, when a print was screened in San Francisco in the late 1970s, the program notes attributed the animation to George Stallings, George Canata, Rudy Zamora, Sr. and Walter Lantz. Until the Hays Code was enforced, many animated shorts featured suggestive content, including sexual innuendo, references to alcohol and drug use, and mild profanity. In the 1933 short Boskos Picture Show, Bosko appears to use the word fuck, although it has also suggested that the character is saying fox. The Betty Boop series was known for its use of jokes that would eventually be considered following the enforcement of the Hays Code. Betty Boop was initially drawn as a dog, and cast as the girlfriend of another Fleischer character, Betty was redesigned as a human, but the series continued to suggest a love relationship between the two that went farther than the normal relationship between humans and their pets. The short Is My Palm Read contains a scene in which Betty is shown as a child between the ages of four and five, bathing in the nude, in the 1970s, this scene was shown out of context in performances by The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. Concert audiences were not aware that Betty was supposed to be a baby in the sequence, another short, Bamboo Isle, contains a sequence in which Betty dances the hula topless, wearing only a lei over her breasts and a grass skirt. According to animator Shamus Culhane, Fleischer Studios and Paramount Pictures were shocked by the sequence, Culhane also states that he does not remember any instance in which the film was censored. Betty’s hula animation was reused for an appearance with Popeye the Sailor in his self-titled animated debut short. Following the enforcement of the Hays Code, Bettys clothing was redesigned, shorts produced following the enforcement of the Hays Code were also less surreal in nature, and Betty was portrayed as a rational adult
12.
The Butter Battle Book
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The Butter Battle Book is a rhyming story written by Dr. Seuss. It was published by Random House on January 12,1984 and it is an anti-war story, specifically, a parable about arms races in general, mutually assured destruction and nuclear weapons in particular. The Butter Battle Book was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and this book was written during the Cold War era, and reflects the concerns of the time, especially the perceived possibility that all life on Earth could be destroyed in a nuclear war. It can also be seen as a work, with its depiction of a deadly war based on a senseless conflict over something as trivial as a breakfast food. The Yooks and the Zooks live on opposite sides of a curving wall. The Yooks wear blue clothes, the Zooks wear orange, the primary dispute between the two cultures is that the Yooks eat their bread with the butter-side up, while the Zooks eat their bread with the butter-side down. The conflict between the two leads to an escalating arms race, which results in the threat of mutual assured destruction. The race begins when a Zook patrolman named Van Itch slingshots the Yook patrolmans Tough-Tufted Prickly Snick-Berry Switch, the Yooks then develop a machine with three slingshots interlinked, called a Triple-Sling Jigger. This works once, but the Zooks counterattack with their own creation, The Jigger-Rock Snatchem, the Yooks then create a gun called the Kick-A-Poo Kid, loaded with powerful Poo-A-Doo powder and ants eggs and bees legs and dried-fried clam chowder, and carried by a dog named Daniel. The Zooks counterattack with an Eight-Nozzled Elephant-Toted Boom Blitz, a machine that shoots high-explosive sour cherry stone pits, the Yooks then devise the Utterly Sputter, a large blue vehicle intended to sprinkle blue goo all over the Zooks. The Zooks counterattack with a Sputter identical to the Yooks, eventually, each side possesses a small but extremely destructive red bomb called the Bitsy Big-Boy Boomeroo, and neither has any defense against it. No resolution is reached by the end, with the generals of both sides on the wall poised to drop their bombs and waiting for the other to strike. There was an animated TV special by animator and filmmaker Ralph Bakshi, narrated by Charles Durning and produced by, the special followed the book closely, notably in its preservation of its original cliffhanger ending, with the title card The end. Maybe at the conclusion of the story, Seuss himself called the short the most faithful adaptation of his work. On the other hand, Roger S. Clark, a professor at Rutgers University School of Law, captures the arms race and the development of weapons of war. The book struck such a chord with me when it came out in 1984, while its message is timeless, I suspect Seuss was well aware of the context he was writing in. N. The Butter Battle Book at the Internet Movie Database
