Jonathan Lyons

Book review: Pinto Colvig, It’s a Crazy Business.

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Colvig cover

If I could spend time with anyone from the world of animation, living or dead, it would be Pinto Colvig. His autobiography, It’s a Crazy Business: The Goofy Life of a Disney Legend might well be my favorite animation history book ever.  Colvig embodied everything this blog is about.  He lived the life of an entertainer.  In addition to being a Disney story artist, and the voice of Goofy, some of his resume is listed below.

  • A “gagologist” for the great silent comedy producer Mack Sennett.
  • Musician and sound effects man for cartoons and movies.
  • A newspaper cartoonist.
  • Vaudeville performer.
  • Circus bandmaster, clown, and barker.
  • Stooge for a professional magician.
  • Clerk in dynamite and acid factory.
  • Railroad construction worker.
  • Assistant flunky to a telephone cable splicer.
  • “Sody squirt”.
  • Hobo.

He also animated visual effects for silent movies.  I have long been curious about the uncredited artists who did that work. And for anyone struggling to learn software, you should read his description of “chalk plate cartooning” which involves creating engravings using molten metal.  This is really old school.

What sets this autobiography apart from other animation books is Colvig’s writing style.  Have you ever seen a vintage “behind the scenes” film of an animation studio, where the actors are all hamming it up for the camera?  He writes like that.  He is in character.  He is the lighthearted guy telling stories of a goofy business.  It is a hundred times more fun and inspiring than the typical dry history books.  The volume is a mere 140 pages and is not organized chronologically.  He may have written it based on how things happened to come to him.

One chapter describes several other gagmen he knew over the years.  Each is presented as a “type” of story man, and each is quite an individual character just like Pinto. They each came to Disney with wide and varied life stories.  Even though this book was written about 70 years ago, the following passage still sounds relevant.

Nowadays, since the animated cartoon has won it’s struggles up through the years and has developed from supper-hour fillers to boxoffice features, I find the newer crop of gagmen are of a more serious and “academic” nature.  Most of them who, upon graduating from high school, college and art school are taken by the cartoon studios and placed in what is known as the “de-lousing” department.  Here, for many months, they must serve an apprenticeship in the many branches of the business – particularly in animation. During this time they are tutored by art directors, psychologists, and action analysis instructors, and are given the opportunity to submit gags and stories (few of which are chosen).  For this, wages are small and promises are big – many are trained, but comparatively few make the grade

Most of the “old-time” gagologists with whom I have worked seem to have taken the bumps along “life’s highway” before arriving.

There is a lesson there. Don’t just live and breathe animation.  Do lots of things. Get away from the computer.  Join a drama club, learn an instrument, dance, and build something.  Travel, explore and meet lots of people.  And if you have to struggle along the way, you’re building character!

If you think that working in animation is all fun and games, reading the chapter about Walt Disney and the production of Snow White will take some of the shine off.  Colvig experienced a tremendous amount of stress, and it took a great toll on him.  When he gets to the final chapters, the seriousness makes him that much more believable.

For a brief look at Pinto Colvig, here is a good video to watch.

this video gives us a much deeper dive into Pinto’s life.

The Apache Dance

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La Danse Apache

I had heard of the “Apache dance”, but didn’t know much about it, until I ran across this youtube video:

It’s a humorous setting for a dance that isn’t meant to be funny. But the acrobatic moves do give it a circus-like quality. I saw some other versions on youtube that were done by professionals, but with less energy. It’s interesting that the rougher they are with each other, the better it is.

From wikipedia;

Apache is a highly dramatic dance associated in popular culture with Parisian street culture in the beginning of the 20th century. The name of the dance (pronounced ah-PAHSH, not uh-PATCH-ee, like the English pronunciation of the Native American tribe) is taken from a Parisian street gang, which in turn was named for the American Indian tribe due to the perceived savagery of the hoodlums. The term came to be used more generally to refer to certain vicious elements of the Paris underworld at the beginning of the 20th century.
The dance is sometimes said to reenact a violent “discussion” between a pimp and a prostitute. It includes mock slaps and punches, the man picking up and throwing the woman to the ground, or lifting and carrying her while she struggles or feigns unconsciousness. Thus, the dance shares many features with the theatrical discipline of stage combat. In some examples, the woman may fight back.

There are quite a few versions on youtube. This next one has a great twist; Jimmy Durante in drag playing the woman’s part. (clearly, the long shots have a stand-in)

Buster Keaton also played the female part in this example.

Here is yet another twist, with the roles reversed, and the woman is beating up the man, in this case, the clownish Ben Blue.

Disney included a Danse Apache in the 1937 Silly Symphony Woodland Cafe.

This example from Popeye is not really an Apache, but the way Bluto mishandles Olive Oyl it could well have been inspired by it.

Here is another one.  The dance starts just after a minute, but it’s fun before hand too.

Finally, this is a very serious version of the Apache, and from 1910, I assume it is as authentic as we can see.

Charlie Chaplin and objects.

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If you are working on animating a demo scene, and the character needs something to do, try to get an object in there.  Find ways for the character to interact with it and make the object become more than just a prop, that make it seem like another character.  The object can be part of the environment, as you’ll see below.

Film historian Gerald Mast wrote an excellent book on silent comedy called The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies.  Many people have commented on Chaplin’s use of props, and here is Mast’s observation.

The most significant lesson that Chaplin learned at Keystone (other than the way to shoot and assemble a film) was to become the cornerstone of his technique from His Favorite Pastime (1914) to Limelight (1952).  Chaplin learned how to relate to objects and how to make objects relate to him.

Chaplin’s first film – Making a Living – is so poorly acted and so unfunny primarily because Chaplin has nothing to play off and against.  He simply stands around fuming and stomping, and fussing: like so many Sennett characters, he demonstrates abstract cliches of passions.  He has nothing concrete to manipulate.

But his seventh film, His Favorite Pastime, contains one piece of business that is a bit different.  Charlie plays a drunk again.  His “favorite pastime” is drinking, and he attempts to enter his favorite place – a saloon – to do some.  He meets the swinging saloon door.  He pushes it, and it returns to boff him in the face.  He kicks it, and it boots him back.  He puts up his dukes and starts to spar with it; it gets in all the good punches.  Charlie gives up and crawls under it.  The saloon door is the ancestor of every inanimate object that Charlie later succeeded into bringing to life; he turns a piece of wood into a living opponent.

Note in the video, how Chaplin solves the problem, by crawling under the door. He doesn’t defeat the opponent, he just goes around it. By crawling under, he also makes a comical re-entry to the saloon.

Bimbo’s Initiation and the weird history of fraternal orders

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Bimbo’s Initiation is a cartoon from the Fleischer studio, released in 1931. Bimbo accidentally falls down a manhole into an underground lair where a group of masked characters invite him to join their “mystic order.” Even though he declines, they then put him through a series of frightening experiences to initiate him in. It might appear they are an evil cult, but really it was a representation of “fraternal orders” that were popular at the time.

For those who don’t know, fraternal orders were/are men’s clubs, where guys could get away from home and act like “real men” for a while.   According to movies and cartoons acting like real men involved wearing funny hats, drinking lots of alcohol, making sacred pledges, using secret handshakes, and going to conventions to do the same things with brothers from other lodges.  It’s full of opportunities for men to make themselves look foolish, and so it was a popular theme for live action film and cartoons. It’s been done by Laurel and Hardy, The Honeymooners, The Three Stooges, The Little Rascals, The Flintstones, Spongebob Squarepants, and more. I have put some examples towards the end of this post. The story lines in these old shows are often built around the wives disapproval of the men attending the conventions.  HERE is a list of famous fictional fraternities.

It is a big subject, so I am going to focus on the initiation ceremonies involved in joining these clubs. There are still initiations and hazing in pledging to fraternities and sports teams on campus.  Sometimes we hear about them in the news when the stunts go tragically wrong. Personally, I went through an initiation event in the US Navy when my ship crossed the equator. I am officially a “shellback.”

We have one great resource to understand what these old initiations were like when Bimbo’s Initiation was produced. An entire business grew from supplying these clubs with costumes, props, and bizarre devices for running meetings and initiating the new members.  Many of these involved electric shocks, firecrackers, and the whacking of butts.  Great grandpa and his pals sure had a weird sense of humor.  Check out some of these pages from the Demoulin Brothers catalog.   This 160 page version of the catalog is from 1930, the year before Bimbo’s Initiation was released. As scary as they look, you can imagine how they could inspire some physical comedy.

Yes, they had a human centipede.

I swear this next one looks like water boarding.

Here are a few animated examples. First, here is Bimbo’s Initiation.

The Simpsons had The Stonecutters lodge:

Spongebob had an episode dedicated to the concept of lodge initiations.

Sub-verbal Characters – Updated

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See update below.

I’m not sure if there is a proper word for these characters, so I’m calling them “sub-verbal” which means any character who speaks in gibberish.  The Tasmanian Devil is probably the most well known cartoon character to sound this way.  He was occasionally able to get out some English, but is generally known for his animal sounds.

Another of the great sub-verbal characters is the Muppet, “Swedish Chef”.  Throughout his faux-swedish, he would pepper in some understandable English.   I believe he now works as a writer for Ikea catalogs.

But one sub-verbal character that is on his way to being forgotten is “White Fang” from the Soupy Sales show.  White Fang and Black Tooth were both supposed to be dogs, but all you see are their “arms” which reach into the scene.  White Fang is very argumentative, and very entertaining.

And this gem featuring Alice Cooper.

UPDATE: I have recently learned term “grammelot” which wikipedia describes so:

Grammelot is a term for a style of language in satirical theatre, a gibberish with macaronic and onomatopoeic elements, used in association with pantomime and mimicry.
The format dates back to the 16th century Commedia dell’arte, and some claim Grammelot to be a specific universal language (akin to Lingua franca) devised to give performers safety from censorship and appeal whatever the dialect of the audience.

(Macaronic, btw, refers to text spoken or written using a mixture of languages)

Here is the video that introduced me to grammelot.

Here are selections of the Three Stooges:

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