I assume by now the country has learned of the death of journalist/news anchor Walter Cronkite. I grew up in the era of Dan Rather hosting the CBS Evening News and so I do not personally recall when Cronkite was the anchor but I knew of him through his appearances on television programs and his distinctive voice isn't to be forgotten if you've heard it. I've been watching the coverage of the various tributes to Cronkite and those who are hard-core fans/appreciators of Cronkite will get the irony in this situation that's unfolded. He was known to not be very happy about 24/7 news channels, cable news specifically...because in his opinion he felt all-news networks politicized the coverage and those who watched cable news were watching because of the viewpoints of broadcasters and talk-show hosts about what's happening, and that they weren't watching to find out the in's and out's and facts of what's happening.
So, I find it very ironic that the 24/7 cable news stations that he often spoke out against are the very same outlets who are airing tributes to him even as I write this blog entry. I clicked over to CBS and they're airing their usual line-up of programs...no salute, no tribute, no fanfare. If anything demonstrates just how times have changed, the cable news channels of CNN and MSNBC are interviewing cable news anchors and personalities: the likes of Brian Williams, Sam Donaldson, Bob Schieffer, Morley Safer, Don Hewitt, Tom Brokaw, and several radio broadcasters have given their thoughts of Cronkite. Of course, watching cable news the last several hours I could have missed a CBS news-break or something but I just find it bizarre that, as far as I know, they hadn't said anything on their broadcast network. Perhaps the early morning newscasts will offer some commentary about the broadcaster who brought the network millions of viewers? If they don't, well, that's the way it is...
Anyway, it just seemed ironic that a lot of Cronkite's admirers in the news business shared their thoughts of him via the 24/7 cable news channels instead of on CBS...and I could be wrong but it appears as if CBS didn't want to interrupt their programming with any lengthy salute or tribute. Even more ironic is Cronkite passes away a few days before the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing of Apollo-11...and Cronkite is considered the face and voice of NASA's man on the moon coverage in 1969. It's his broadcast that typically gets singled out and re-played. July 16, 1969 was the launch and July 20, 1969 was the day of the moon landing. Just wrapping up on Fox News Channel was an hour long program about the Apollo-11 moon landing. It was a taped program...I assume contracts prevented the network from postponing the air-date. After it was over, a live transmission aired featuring a 5 minute look at Cronkite...but then it went into regularly scheduled programming of The O'Reilly Factor, a repeat from earlier in the evening.
Walter Cronkite was a radio correspondent/journalist during World War Two...and he joined CBS in 1950 and did a multitude of reports and stories. He hosted a series called You Are There for a total of four years, 1953-1957. Afterward he became the host of The Twentieth Century, a documentary program, which ran nine years, 1957-1966. Afterward, it was replaced by The Twenty-First Century, again hosted/narrated by Cronkite. This version remained on the air through 1970.
Eight years earlier, though, in 1962, he became the anchor of the CBS Evening News. It was in this position that he relayed and broadcast all of the events that took place in American and world history from 1962 through 1981. Dan Rather took over the anchor position and became a fixture in that position for decades, too. Cronkite continued to appear in news stories and remained a face/voice in news and current affairs programming. He lent his voice to a variety of projects...becoming the narrator/host on a 4-part series called Dinosaur for the A&E Network in 1996.
In his later years he became more known for his appearances on, and his narrations of, a wide variety of documentary programs ranging from sports to science to all points in American and world history. He often narrated documentaries on PBS. He hosted and or narrated several programs of that vein in this millennium. For those who think Cronkite slipped into obscurity and never did much after the 1980s you'll be in for a treat when you browse his credits at the Internet Movie Data Base.
1916-2009.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Beany and Cecil, Volume Two DVD
There is going to be a new DVD collection coming along this fall. The release of "Beany and Cecil, Volume Two" will happen on September 8th. This comes on the heels of a DVD collection from nearly 10 years ago.
In the early part of this decade there was a DVD released called "Beany and Cecil: The Special Edition" which consisted of a wide variety of Bob Clampett programs. Of course, 90% of the material was Beany and Cecil related...but a lot of the extra's dealt with other projects. In the previous collection the DVD consisted of 4 episodes of the live-action puppet show, Time For Beany, which ran for six years, 1949-1955. The puppet show ran locally, 1949-1950, but then started airing nationally later in 1950. The first volume DVD featured quite a few of the episodes of the animated version, simply called Beany and Cecil. In the animated version, the voice actors were slightly different than what viewers of the puppet show heard. In the puppet version, Daws Butler and Stan Freberg voiced the characters. In the animated version, which ran for one season of first-run episodes, but aired in reruns on the network for four more years, the voice actors for the animated version were Jim MacGeorge and Irv Shoemaker.
The cartoons usually had a sing-a-long/rhyme segment which lead up to the two characters singing together "...a Bob Clampett Cartoon" prior to the start of each episode. Beany's voice in the animated series lacked the cuteness, I think, that Daws Butler gave the character in the puppet version. The boy's voice in the cartoon is nothing like Butler's while Cecil and the villain, Dishonest John, sound somewhat close to the way Stan Freberg did the characters in the puppet version. Captain Huffenpuff, Beany's uncle, was the fourth major character. Daws voiced the puppet version while Jim MacGeorge voiced the animated version.
Much of the program's charm was the dialogue between all the characters...when the cartoon version began a lot of the charm lay in the pun's that Clampett was noted for. In one episode there was a reference to Dinah Shore as "Dina Saur" {Dinosaur, get it?}.
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/classic/time-for-beany-online-photo-archive.html
If you can't open that link, copy and paste it in your search box, click enter, and see if a link to the site comes up. If not, try Googling CartoonBrew and navigate their site until you come across the Beany and Cecil photo album. They have a fabulous pictorial up of both Stan Freberg and Daws Butler performing on the 1949-1955 puppet show. There's 10 pages of black and white pictures of the two! I saved quite a few of them.
In closing...
There were 26 half-hour productions that started to air in 1962. There were 78 segments...which means there were something like 3 segments per episode, of varying length, if my math is correct which it usually never is. So, these 78 segments/26 episodes aired consistently in reruns until 1967. The show remained in syndication on into the 1970's but eventually it left the airwaves. The cartoon and the puppet show have a cult following today and the DVD releases have been sparse. The first release that I wrote of earlier, "Beany and Cecil: The Special Edition", was the first DVD release of it's kind to focus on these characters with any degree of respect. Fast-forward a decade later, 2009, and we're about to have a second volume released to us. "Beany and Cecil, Volume Two"...
In the early part of this decade there was a DVD released called "Beany and Cecil: The Special Edition" which consisted of a wide variety of Bob Clampett programs. Of course, 90% of the material was Beany and Cecil related...but a lot of the extra's dealt with other projects. In the previous collection the DVD consisted of 4 episodes of the live-action puppet show, Time For Beany, which ran for six years, 1949-1955. The puppet show ran locally, 1949-1950, but then started airing nationally later in 1950. The first volume DVD featured quite a few of the episodes of the animated version, simply called Beany and Cecil. In the animated version, the voice actors were slightly different than what viewers of the puppet show heard. In the puppet version, Daws Butler and Stan Freberg voiced the characters. In the animated version, which ran for one season of first-run episodes, but aired in reruns on the network for four more years, the voice actors for the animated version were Jim MacGeorge and Irv Shoemaker. The cartoons usually had a sing-a-long/rhyme segment which lead up to the two characters singing together "...a Bob Clampett Cartoon" prior to the start of each episode. Beany's voice in the animated series lacked the cuteness, I think, that Daws Butler gave the character in the puppet version. The boy's voice in the cartoon is nothing like Butler's while Cecil and the villain, Dishonest John, sound somewhat close to the way Stan Freberg did the characters in the puppet version. Captain Huffenpuff, Beany's uncle, was the fourth major character. Daws voiced the puppet version while Jim MacGeorge voiced the animated version.
Much of the program's charm was the dialogue between all the characters...when the cartoon version began a lot of the charm lay in the pun's that Clampett was noted for. In one episode there was a reference to Dinah Shore as "Dina Saur" {Dinosaur, get it?}.
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/classic/time-for-beany-online-photo-archive.html
If you can't open that link, copy and paste it in your search box, click enter, and see if a link to the site comes up. If not, try Googling CartoonBrew and navigate their site until you come across the Beany and Cecil photo album. They have a fabulous pictorial up of both Stan Freberg and Daws Butler performing on the 1949-1955 puppet show. There's 10 pages of black and white pictures of the two! I saved quite a few of them.
In closing...
There were 26 half-hour productions that started to air in 1962. There were 78 segments...which means there were something like 3 segments per episode, of varying length, if my math is correct which it usually never is. So, these 78 segments/26 episodes aired consistently in reruns until 1967. The show remained in syndication on into the 1970's but eventually it left the airwaves. The cartoon and the puppet show have a cult following today and the DVD releases have been sparse. The first release that I wrote of earlier, "Beany and Cecil: The Special Edition", was the first DVD release of it's kind to focus on these characters with any degree of respect. Fast-forward a decade later, 2009, and we're about to have a second volume released to us. "Beany and Cecil, Volume Two"...
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Tom and Jerry: Chuck Jones Collection
The Chuck Jones version of Tom and Jerry typically gets a bad wrap because of the different approaches to the characters. In addition to the physical differences from classic cartoons and the Chuck Jones version of the characters we also have the characters making more verbal noises than before. Tom was famous for doing that loud howling scream on occasion and Jerry sometimes would let out with a giggle at Tom's expense or utter a nervous laugh, or gulp, if he felt he was about to be pounced on by Tom. In this version, though, we hear a lot more gasps and yelps and whimpering...mostly from Tom but some from Jerry. We don't have that howl that Tom was noted for.
There are a couple of extra's on the DVD. There is a documentary called "Chuck Jones: Memories of a Childhood" and a featurette called "Tom and Jerry...and Chuck." I had not watched the documentary yet but I did watch the featurette and it's narrated by June Foray. It's about Chuck Jones and the last years at Warner Brothers and the time he spent at MGM doing the Tom and Jerry cartoons. The profile doesn't shy away from Chuck's personal feelings about limited animation but that's come to be expected. I happen to appreciate both styles. In one style you get full animation where you can see facial expressions and body movements and there might not even be any dialogue but you can tell what's happening from looking at the sequence and in the other you get emphasis on the vocals where you didn't necessarily understand what the characters were feeling if you turned the sound off.
As I've touched upon in other blog entries, Chuck is credited with coining the phrase "illustrated radio" to describe the style of animation Hanna-Barbera pioneered on TV. The series of episodes that Chuck did at MGM often pop up on Boomerang or Cartoon Network...mainly Boomerang. Some critics have said that Chuck took away the violence...I can see where the critics come to that conclusion but it had it's share of the good ol' cat and mouse chase where Tom hits Jerry with a fly swatter and Jerry's flattened on the floor...there's all kinds of sight-gag's and eye wiggles and gestures but because they were designed different and really weren't given a chance, the series usually leaves a bad taste in some viewer's and critics mouths. There's also a myth/rumor that some fans out there deliberately dismiss the Chuck Jones Tom and Jerry cartoons because of comments made by Chuck in later interviews that he didn't enjoy doing the series and found the 'cat and mouse' formula tiresome.
In the featurette it's pointed out that Chuck never liked to talk about the Tom and Jerry days in his later interviews and didn't like to bring the series up and as a result of this, I feel, younger animators who've looked up to Chuck automatically reject the series based solely on what Chuck's opinions were. I do come across web-sites out there that deal in cartoons and animation and most of the people/fans who cite Chuck Jones as their main director/animator from Warner Brothers tend to carry the same sentiments Chuck held. I don't know if they genuinely feel the way Chuck did about animation and all of that or if they're just going along with their hero. It's tough to tell...but I can tell you that this series is nowhere near as awful and terrible as critics and Chuck himself write it off to be.
There is no episode list on the DVD cover...you have to insert the DVD in your player and then look up the episodes from the main menu. It's a nuisance having to do that. They do list the extra features on the back of the DVD. There were only 34 theatrical shorts made of the characters under Chuck Jones...and all 34 of them are presented on two DVD's. All of the characteristics Chuck brought to the Looney Tunes characters are on full display in his version of Tom and Jerry. Chuck wanted to evoke life, which is at the heart of animation, into the characters he worked on and he succeeded.
There are a couple of extra's on the DVD. There is a documentary called "Chuck Jones: Memories of a Childhood" and a featurette called "Tom and Jerry...and Chuck." I had not watched the documentary yet but I did watch the featurette and it's narrated by June Foray. It's about Chuck Jones and the last years at Warner Brothers and the time he spent at MGM doing the Tom and Jerry cartoons. The profile doesn't shy away from Chuck's personal feelings about limited animation but that's come to be expected. I happen to appreciate both styles. In one style you get full animation where you can see facial expressions and body movements and there might not even be any dialogue but you can tell what's happening from looking at the sequence and in the other you get emphasis on the vocals where you didn't necessarily understand what the characters were feeling if you turned the sound off.
As I've touched upon in other blog entries, Chuck is credited with coining the phrase "illustrated radio" to describe the style of animation Hanna-Barbera pioneered on TV. The series of episodes that Chuck did at MGM often pop up on Boomerang or Cartoon Network...mainly Boomerang. Some critics have said that Chuck took away the violence...I can see where the critics come to that conclusion but it had it's share of the good ol' cat and mouse chase where Tom hits Jerry with a fly swatter and Jerry's flattened on the floor...there's all kinds of sight-gag's and eye wiggles and gestures but because they were designed different and really weren't given a chance, the series usually leaves a bad taste in some viewer's and critics mouths. There's also a myth/rumor that some fans out there deliberately dismiss the Chuck Jones Tom and Jerry cartoons because of comments made by Chuck in later interviews that he didn't enjoy doing the series and found the 'cat and mouse' formula tiresome.
In the featurette it's pointed out that Chuck never liked to talk about the Tom and Jerry days in his later interviews and didn't like to bring the series up and as a result of this, I feel, younger animators who've looked up to Chuck automatically reject the series based solely on what Chuck's opinions were. I do come across web-sites out there that deal in cartoons and animation and most of the people/fans who cite Chuck Jones as their main director/animator from Warner Brothers tend to carry the same sentiments Chuck held. I don't know if they genuinely feel the way Chuck did about animation and all of that or if they're just going along with their hero. It's tough to tell...but I can tell you that this series is nowhere near as awful and terrible as critics and Chuck himself write it off to be.
There is no episode list on the DVD cover...you have to insert the DVD in your player and then look up the episodes from the main menu. It's a nuisance having to do that. They do list the extra features on the back of the DVD. There were only 34 theatrical shorts made of the characters under Chuck Jones...and all 34 of them are presented on two DVD's. All of the characteristics Chuck brought to the Looney Tunes characters are on full display in his version of Tom and Jerry. Chuck wanted to evoke life, which is at the heart of animation, into the characters he worked on and he succeeded.
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