G! G! Ryan Roe and Anthony Strand (Movin’ Right Along) attempt to help J.D. decipher the pop culture references in classic cartoons. Do they succeed? Listen to find out! (They don’t.) Listen anyway! (You won’t.)
Topics include: one-shot cartoons, the old celebrities we first encountered in cartoon caricatures, the career of Tex Avery, and what this cartoon tells us about how the animators saw their own place in the Hollywood system.
Please write in to tell us who has the most oomph!
Host/Producer: J.D. Hansel
Guests: Ryan Roe and Anthony Strand
Content Warning for Cartoon: wolf-whistling; visual fat joke; smoking.
Content Warning for Podcast Episode: discussion of a joke that is definitely bad, but I don’t know how best to categorize its badness. Racist? Antisemitic? Xenophobic? All of the above?
Availability: Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. 2; Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection, Vol. 2; Looney Tunes Platinum Collection, Vol. 2; Looney Tunes: Parodies Collection.
Notes:
I strongly encourage you to check out Devon Baxter’s article “‘Hollywood Steps Out’: The Full Scoop” on CartoonResearch.com. It has a lot more info than I shared on the podcast, naturally.
Other sources that I cited in the podcast (but feel I might as well name again here) include Donald Crafton’s essay “The View from Termite Terrace: Caricature and Parody in Warner Bros. Animation” from Kevin S. Sandler’s Reading the Rabbit, the “Behind the Tunes” featurette “Looney Tunes Go Hollywood”, and The 100 Greatest Looney Tunes Cartoons by Jerry Beck for its introduction by Leonard Maltin and its entry on Hollywood Steps Out by Keith Scott.
For the explanation of Avery’s departure from the Schlesinger studio, I refer you to the article “The Heckling Hare Problem” by Thad Komorowski and pages 365 and 609 of Hollywood Cartoons by Michael Barrier.
The info about Avery’s sabbatical comes from Hollywood Cartoons by Michael Barrier, pages 430-431.
