Re: Walter Lantz in comedy shorts?
Posted: Sun Apr 24, 2011 11:00 pm
by Robert Arkus
My question is, if Lantz didn't do any animation at Sennett, who did do the nice little animated gags you see in films like GOOSELAND (1925) or the animated playing card in A HAREM KNIGHT (1926)?
RICHARD M ROBERTS
Pinto Colvig did some animation for Sennett ... Not sure if it was for those specific titles.
Re: Walter Lantz in comedy shorts?
Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 10:20 am
by Steve Massa
Colvig was there in 1926-27 so he might have done A HAREM KNIGHT
Re: Walter Lantz in comedy shorts?
Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 11:58 am
by Steve Rydzewski
Colvig actually left Sennett in February 1925 for Century. He too, like Lantz, was hired as a gagwriter, not an animator.
I believe the Sennett head-animator was Ernie Crockett who was with the company at least as early as the first Pathecomedies, 1923.
Trick photography and animation were his specialty and he (Crockett) may well have been responsible for those cartoon sequences.
SR
Re: Walter Lantz in comedy shorts?
Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 12:56 pm
by Frank Flood
In the 1925 or so period, there were not too many animators in Los Angeles. Most of the professionals were in New York working for J.R. Bray, Paul Terry (Aesop's Fables), Max Fleischer (Out of the Inkwell), Pat Sullivan (Felix), Bill Nolan (Krazy Kat) and the like. Walt Disney was unusual for setting up an animation studio in California in this era, but it probably speaks more to his ambitions to make live action comedies. In this early stage, he probably did not plan on becoming, well, Walt Disney. If Disney had done any animation work for Sennett in this period, we probably would know about it.
Lantz ended up out west a year or two later not to animate, but to make comedies for Bray, whose cartoon business had withered away. If I recall correctly, Walter worked at both Sennett and Roach after Bray, and ended up doing some work at Universal (on The Gumps?), which led to his return to cartoons. It would not be surprising for him to have knocked off a little animation at the same time.
The Bray comedies seem to be a mishmash of films from a number of different producers, including Joe Rock after he had been supplanted at Standard Cinema/FBO by Larry Darmour. Were some of these pick ups of unreleased comedies? There were some experienced comics like Jack Cooper, Andy Clyde, William Irving, Wanda Wiley, Perry Murdock, Buddy Messinger and Lew Sargent involved, and mystery films like HER SALTY SUITOR, written by the well known scenarist, X. Spence. Obscure.
Frank