Books Come to Life in Classic Cartoons from 1930s and 1940s

Remem­ber Spike Jonze’s stop motion film Mourir Auprès de Toi? When we fea­tured it last week, one of our read­ers called it “Slow, bor­ing and unimag­i­na­tive.” He then con­tin­ued:

Warn­er Broth­ers’ ani­ma­tion depart­ment did sev­er­al car­toons based on this con­cept over 50 years ago that packed much more ener­gy and humor into a very few min­utes worth of daz­zling ani­ma­tion.

The read­er was also good enough to point us to one such ear­ly car­toon, which we’re fea­tur­ing today. (See above.)

Released in 1946, the Looney Tunes car­toon Book Revue starts with a scene that may look famil­iar if you watched Jonze’s film: It’s mid­night. The book­store is closed. The lights are off. No crea­tures are stir­ring, not even … Scratch that, the books are stir­ring. They’re com­ing to life. And the hor­mones are run­ning high, a lit­tle too high. You can watch the rest, but we’ll leave you with this tid­bit. In 1994, Book Revue was vot­ed one of the 50 great­est car­toons of all time by a group of 1,000 ani­ma­tion pro­fes­sion­als. We thank Mike for send­ing this our way.

For good mea­sure, let’s also rewind the clock to 1938, when Mer­rie Melodies released Have You Got Any Cas­tles? It may well be the orig­i­nal books-come-to-life car­toon. We start again at mid­night, and the book cov­ers do their thing. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Fu Manchu, The Phan­tom of the Opera, and Franken­stein make an appear­ance, along with oth­er famous lit­er­ary char­ac­ters. When TBS re-released this car­toon decades lat­er, sev­er­al char­ac­ters from this orig­i­nal film (Bill “Bojan­gles” Robin­son from The 39 Steps, and Cab Cal­loway singing “I’ve Got Swing For Sale”) were edit­ed out because of the indel­i­cate way that African-Amer­i­cans were car­i­ca­tured here. Tal­ent these 1930s ani­ma­tors had. But also their blindspots too.…


by | Permalink | Comments (3) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Comments (3)
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • Jimmy. says:

    Accord­ing to mes­sage on first one, video does not exist?

  • dee simonson says:

    I have a col­lec­tion of car­toon books from 1930. They are all first edi­tion and fea­ture many of the books from The New York­er; some with col­or lith­o­graphs and in fair con­di­tion due to the age of the cov­ers,
    the inte­ri­ors are in good con­di­tion. Are you inter­est­ed in pur­chas­ing
    the books, there are about 30 of them. Thank you, Dee Simon­son

  • dee simonson says:

    I have a col­lec­tion of car­toon books from 1930. They are all first edi­tion and fea­ture many of the books from The New York­er; some with col­or lith­o­graphs and in fair con­di­tion due to the age of the cov­ers,
    the inte­ri­ors are in good con­di­tion. Are you inter­est­ed in pur­chas­ing
    the books, there are about 30 of them. Thank you, Dee Simon­son

    (I don’t have a response from you although I was on your web­site 4/17/17. Please respond.)

Leave a Reply

Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.