Theatrical Cartoons (1938): 14 Weird Facts You Didn’t Know!

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[00:00:00]Picture it. 1938. You find a seat in the dark, the smell of popcorn, cigarette smoke, [music] and something chemical from the projector. The news reel ends.

[00:00:08]The screen goes blank for half a second.

[00:00:10]Then a cartoon starts and the room comes alive. Nobody announced which cartoon it was. Nobody knew in advance. It just appeared. Behind those 7 minutes of animated chaos are 14 facts that most people have never heard, including how a single complaint letter in 1933 permanently destroyed [music] Betty Boop. How a man with zero animation experience ended up running the Looney Tunes studio. Error and why Red Hot Riding Hood was censored for civilians but sent uncut to the front lines. It starts with the cat who had [music] it all and lost everything. Fact one, Felix. The cat was more famous than Mickey Mouse and his own producer destroyed him. Felix the Cat made his screen debut on November 9th, 1919 in Feline Follies, produced by Pat Sullivan and animated [music] almost entirely by Otto Mesmer. Britannica's entry on Messmer is unambiguous. Felix was the world's most popular cartoon star before Mickey Mouse. By the mid1 1920s, Felix had appeared in over 150 silent shorts.

[00:01:04]Jazz bands [music] recorded songs about him. Manufacturers produced stuffed Felix toys sold in department stores.

[00:01:10]The Lambiac Comicopedia documents that the little black cat can be credited with popularizing animation among general audience, not just in film theaters, dome, but through colossal merchandising as well, unprecedented by previous cartoon characters. When Steamboat Willie arrived in November 1928 with synchronized sound, Felix's decline began. Sullivan refused to invest in the transition to sound cartoon. [music] The sound Felix shorts of 1929 to 1931 were commercial failures. Sullivan died in 1933 before he could reverse course. [music] Mesmer, who had animated nearly every Felix cartoon without receiving a single public credit, remained an employee with no rights over the character he had created. Felix the Cat survived on television decades later, but the version that had packed theaters in the 1920s died when his producer refused to adapt to a technology that would have saved. Fact two, Disney locked every rival out of color for 3 years, and the cartoon almost bankrupted him first.

[00:02:07][music] In 1932, an atalta Disney signed an exclusive deal with Technicolor, giving him sole rights to use the three strip color process in animated cartoons. [music] The Disney Wiki documents it directly. Disney's exclusive contract with Technicolor in effect until the end of 1935 forced other animators such as Ubi Works and Max Fleer to use Technicolor's inferior two-color process or a competing two-color system such as Cinnolor. The first film made under that deal was Flowers [music] and Tree, a silly symphony that had already been completed in black and white. Disney scrapped the finished version and ordered it redone in color at enormous additional cost.

[00:02:42]The Walt Disney Family Museum documents the risk. The color animation caused the production to run over budget, potentially ruining Disney financially.

[00:02:49]The gamble paid off. That Flowers and Trees premiered at Grman's [music] Chinese Theater on July the 30th, 1932 was a sensation and won the first Academy Award for best cartoon short subject. The cartoon research account by Disney historian [music] Tim Susanin confirms Walt had actually agreed with United Artists to produce a black and white backup version simultaneously. The legend that he impulsively scrapped everything for color was itself a piece of studio mythology. Fact three. A single theater owner's complaint. Letter triggered the end of pre-code cartoon. In 1933, a theater owner wrote to film daily complaining that there was too much smut in cartoon. The Betty Boop fandom wiki documents this director. In 1933, a theater owner complained to Film Daily that there was too much smut in cartoon or which is [music] also what contributed to animation being censored.

[00:03:37]The motion picture production code, the Haye Code, had been written in 1930, but was not strictly enforced until July 1st, 1934. The period before that date is documented by cartoon bruise [music] Vincent Alexander as the pre-code era when cartoons were teeming with soontobe verbotin elements. What those cartoons contain? Betty Boop in a strapless dress with a guarder visible above her knee.

[00:04:00]Bimbo the dog in a cult initiation sequence. Rotoscoped human movement applied to characters with unmistakably adult behavior. Musical numbers featuring black performers in jazz contexts that were later cut. All of it legal before July 1934. All of it forbidden after. As the haze code applied to cartoons with the same force it applied to live action featured. and the audience that had packed theaters for Betty Boop in 1932 sat down in 1935 and found a different character entirely. Fact four, Betty Boop drew audiences to the movie and the Haze Code turned her into someone else.

[00:04:34]Smithsonian Magazine's 2022 essay on Betty Boop's evolution quotes cartoon scholar Quesia Perea of City University [music] New York with a claim that almost never gets repeated. She's a big hit and she's a big hit in the same way that Felix the Cat is a big hit where she was drawing audiences to the movie.

[00:04:49][music] They would come for the Betty Boop cartoon. That was before July 1934.

[00:04:53]The SF encyclopedia documents what happened after. Prior to this latter date, the Betty Boop shorts were full of innuendo. Subsequently, she became chased, though demure and modestly dressed. Bimbo also disappeared.

[00:05:05]Clearly, respectable women do not date dogs. The musical numbers featuring black performers Louis Armstrong, Cab [music] Callaway, Don Redmond disappeared after 1934. The surreal rubber hose animation that had defined her visual identity was toned [music] down. The character who had pulled audiences into theaters specifically for her cartoon was replaced by a version designed not to offend. The SF encyclopedia's conclusion is direct. The best cartoons date from the prehaze code era. Betty Boop was never again what she had been in Snow White 1933 or Minnie the Moocher 1932. The Haze Code didn't just censor her, it ended her. Fact five. Popeye was more popular than Mickey Mouse for most of the 1930s and nobody talks about it. Then the SF Encyclopedia's entry on Popeye states it without qualification. Popeye [music] was more popular than Mickey Mouse. See the Walt Disney Company for much of the 1930. Fleer Studios produced 109 Popeye theatrical shorts between 1933 and 1942.

[00:06:04]The character had debuted in ECE's comic strip Thimble Theater on January 17th, 1929. and his animated version for Paramount arrived in 1933. By the mid1 1930s, theater surveys consistently showed Popeye [music] outperforming Mickey in audience preference poll.

[00:06:20]Grocipedia's analysis confirms that Popeye's theatrical shorts sustained Popeye's status as one of animation's [music] most prolific characters with consistent formulaic plots emphasizing slapstick [music] chase, spinach induced transformations, and Pluto's antagonism.

[00:06:34]The character was a workingclass hero, a sailor with a speech impediment. [music] It a physical underdog who won through resilience and spinach rather than cleverness [music] or charm. In depression era America, that was a more resonant archetype than a cheerful middle-class mouse. The audience that chose Popeye over Mickey in 1936 was not making an aesthetic choice. They were recognizing something about themselves.

[00:06:55]Fleer Studios [music] collapsed in 1942.

[00:06:58]But for a decade, the sailor had beaten the mouse. Fact sick. Mighty Mouse was called Super Mouse until a comic book company threatened to sue. The Mouse of Tomorrow debuted on October 16th, 1942, a Terry Tunes short in which a mouse escapes a hungry cat by consuming superpowered food in a supermarket and emerges with the physique of a superhero. His name was Super Mouse. Don Marstein's Tunipedia [music] documents the complication. Before the character even reached theaters, yet the another Super Mouse was already the cover of Cuckoo Comic, published by Neidor Publishing in October 1942.

[00:07:32]Seeing no reason to promote a rival character, Paul Terry changed the name to Mighty Mouse. Starting with the 1943 short, The Fifth Column Mouse. Mighty Mouse starred in 80 theatrical shorts produced for 20th Century Fox between 1942 and 1961. But as the Saturday Evening Post documented in 2020, his theatrical run was modest compared to what television did for him. When Paul Terry sold Terry Tunes to CBS for $3.5 million in 1955, Mighty Mouse Playhouse debuted [music] on December 10th, 1955 as the first Saturday morning cartoon on CBS. Groedia confirms CBS acquired Terry Tunes with the strategic intent to repackage [music] its existing animation assets for television broadcast. The theatrical shorts had built the character. his television made him a cultural institution. Fact seven, the man who replaced Leon Schlesinger at Looney Tunes [music] had spent seven years making movie trailers. On July 1st, 1944, Leon Schlesinger sold Leon Schlesinger Productions to Warner Brothers for $700,000.

[00:08:34]Oxford academics Michael Barrier in Hollywood Cartoons 1999 documents the precise term. Schlesinger retained 25% of the profits from the merchandising of the characters, but operational control passed entirely to the studio. Warner Brothers appointed Edward Selzer as the new producer. Selzer's prior role at the studio had been running the trailer and title department for 7 years. He had no animation experience. Jerry Beck's tribute essay on cartoon research, published March 8th, 2013, captures the contradiction directly. Neither man could draw. Yeah. and there are strong doubts they had any idea how an animated film was produced, but both allowed their artists to be artists. Selzer was notorious in the studio for his lack of humor. Chuck Jones documented specific incidents. Selzer reportedly walked into the room where Jones was working on one froggy evening and said he didn't understand why anyone would think a singing frog was funny. He was replaced in 1958 when he retired. The directors who had worked under Schlesingers's deliberately hands-off management continued to produce masterpieces under a man who reportedly didn't understand what [music] they were making. Fact eight. Red Hot Riding Hood was censored for civilian and [music] sent uncut to the soldier. Red Hot Riding Hood arrived in theaters on May 8th, 1943. All the cartoon research anniversary essay by Michael Lions, May 2023, quotes Charles Solomon's enchanted drawings on the reception. Red Hot Riding Hood raised eyebrows and brought down the house.

[00:09:57]Audiences, especially GIS, loved the film. Sensors at the Hayes office in slash or studio, deleted some of the Wolf's takes from the release prints of the film, although servicemen were allowed to see the uncut version. IMDb's trivia for the film confirms the Army visited MGM studio [music] to view a propaganda movie. Upon seeing this cartoon, they requested and received special uncut 16 mm prints to send to the [music] soldiers overseas. The original ending where the wolf is married to grandma and his wolf sons cheer read at the nightclub was cut entirely because sensors objected to the implication of beastiality. But the civilian version played in theaters across America with the wolf's most extreme reactions removed. The version the soldiers received on the front lines was the complete film. Top Disney animator Ward Kimble was so impressed he called Tex Avery personally to congratulate him. MGM reported it was the most popular short the studio ever released. Fact N. Walt Disney, Charlie Chaplan, [music] and Orson Wells pushed the Supreme Court to end block booking.

[00:10:56]The Paramount decree, United States versus Paramount Pictures Incorporated, decided May 3rd, 1948, is usually discussed in terms of studio monopolies and theater ownership. What rarely gets mentioned is the coalition of independent producers who drove the case forward. The National Constitution Cent's [music] account documents it. The decision enraged independent producers like Disney, Chaplain, David Selnik, Mary Pikford, and Orson [music] Wells, who formed the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers, SIMPP, and pushed the Justice Department [music] to resume antitrust action. The Supreme Court's 7 to1 decision written by Justice William O. Douglas, declared block booking and antitrust violation, and ordered the major studios to devest their theater chain. The DOJ's [music] own summary of the Paramount decrees confirms the ruling outlawed various motion picture distribution practices, including block booking. For cartoon studios, the consequence was [music] structural. The guaranteed placement of shorts in studio owned theaters disappeared. Every cartoon now had to compete for a slot on its own merit.

[00:11:55]Studios that had been producing shorts as contractual filler had to decide whether each one was worth the cost.

[00:12:01]Most decided it wasn't. The Paramount Decree didn't kill the cartoon short, but it removed the floor that had kept it alive. Fact 10. The double feature began as a depression era survival strategy and slowly consumed the cartoon's slot. In the late 1930s, independent theater owners struggling to compete with firstrun studioowned houses discovered a solution. Offer two features for the price of one.

[00:12:23]Wikipedia's entry on the golden age of American animation documents the consequence. rising production costs, the shift toward television reruns, which reduced demand for new content after studios like Disney halted [music] shorts in 1953, and the structural pressure from the double feature, all converged to end the theatrical cartoon era. The math was simple. A program that included a news reel, cartoon, liveaction comedy short, novelty reel, old be movie, and main feature could run 3 to four hours. [music] Adding a second feature meant cutting something. The cartoon, which had no star whose name appeared on a marquee, which cost $25,000 to $100,000 to produce, but generated no ticket sales on its own, was the easiest [music] thing to remove.

[00:13:05]The Groipedia synthesis confirms the cost range and the consequence. Studios halted short production as expenses rose [music] and television rerun revenue offered a cheaper alternative. The double feature was not an attack on the cartoon short. It was an economic decision made by theater owners trying to survive. The cartoon short was simply the collateral damage. Fact 11. There were entire theaters dedicated only [music] to newsre and cartoon and the last one closed in 1981. In major American and British cities from the 1930s through the 1950s, and dedicated newsreel theaters operated continuously throughout the day, showing 1-hour programs of short subjects and cartoons on a loop. The theater historical society of Americas documents them.

[00:13:46]Several chains specialized in the format. Newsre theaters, Inc., Tel News and Transluck. Many were 100 to 200 seats running programs continuous.

[00:13:55]Wikipedia's entry on news reels confirms there were dedicated newsre theaters in many [music] major cities in the 1930s and 1940s and some large city cinemas also included a smaller theater where news reels were screened [music] continuously throughout the day. Cinema Treasures documents the most specific surviving record of this era. The Victoria Station [music] Cartoon Cinema in London, a 235 seat theater adjacent to platform 19 of Victoria Station, which opened September 12th in 1933 and in later years showed continuous 1-hour programs of short subjects and cartoons.

[00:14:27]It was quietly closed on August 27th, 1981. The final program, Walt Disney's The Hound, that thought he was a raccoon and an addition of Movie Tone News featuring the 1937 coronation. A Cinema Treasures commenter confirmed it was the last cartoon cinema left in the UK when it closed. No announcement was made.

[00:14:47]Nobody outside the theater knew it was the last one. Fact 12. The Looney Tune.

[00:14:52]Directors [music] worked in a buginfested bungalow, and that's exactly how their producer wanted it. Leon Schlesingers's management philosophy was documented by his own employees. Keep costs down, stay out of the director's way, and let them create. The Looney Tunes [music] wiki documents his approach. Schlesinger largely took a hands-off approach to the animation than allowing his directors freedom to create what they wished, provided that the resulting films do well in [music] the theaters. The physical conditions told a different story. Tex Avery's unit was briefly assigned to a bungalow on the Warner lot, so deteriorated that the animators named it Termite Terrace. The structure was literally infested with termite. Wikipedia's entry on Leon Schlesinger confirms the nickname has become part of animation history.

[00:15:33]Schlesinger briefly shut down the studio in mid1941 [music] when unionized employees demanded a pay raise. Not because he opposed the raise in principle, but [music] because it threatened the cost structure that made the whole operation viable. The encyclopedia.com profile of Schlesinger captures his management style with precision. He was a somewhat rough customer whose Looney Tunes and Merry Melody's cartoons were distinctly more adult in flavor than those done by Disney. The bungalow full of termites produced Bugs Bunny, Dappy Duck, Porky Pig, and Elmer Fut. The conditions and the output had almost nothing to do with each other and everything to do with who Schlesinger hired and then left alone.

[00:16:09]Fact 13. Paul Terry said his goal was to be the Woolworths of animation and he was proud of it. Paul Terry founded Terry Tunes [music] in 1929 in New Roelle, New York with a production philosophy that was the opposite of Disney. Don Markstein's Tunipedia documents what Terry reportedly said about his approach. Disney is the Tiffany's of the business. A and I am the Woolworth. Terry's method was speed and volume. Produce cartoons quickly at the lowest possible cost and sell them in bulk. The Grokipedia synthesis of the golden age confirms Terry Tunes as a key player in the animation industry that focused on producing theatrical cartoon shorts distributed to movie theaters at a pace that prioritized output over quality. The approach generated characters that became cultural touchstone. Mighty Mouse, Heckle, and Jackekal, Gandy Goose. Not through innovative animation, but through sheer volume of exposure. An audience [music] that saw a Terry Tunes cartoon every week for a decade was an audience that knew those characters. The theatrical program that played before the feature in hundreds of smalltown American theaters in the 1940 was often a Terry Tunes product and not because it was the best cartoon available, because it was the cheapest one that arrived on time.

[00:17:16]Terry sold the studio to CBS in 1955 for $3.5 million and retired. His Woolworth's philosophy had made him a wealthy man. Fact 14. The last dedicated cartoon theater in Britain closed on a Wednesday in August 1981. With no announcement, the Victoria Station Cartoon Cinema operated for 48 years from September 12th, 1933 to August 27th, 1981. It was located adjacent to platform [music] 19 on the Buckingham Palace roadside of Victoria Railway Station in central London. A [music] 235 seat auditorium specially insulated against noise and vibration from the trains below, barrel-shaped with an attractive [music] precinium and a large clock on the left wall. Cinema Treasures documents it as having been one of several small news reel theaters in London that and in later years showed continuous 1-hour programs of short subjects and cartoons. It closed on a Wednesday. The final program, The Hound That Thought. He He was a raccoon, a 1964 Walt Disney short, followed by a Movie Tone News edition from 1937 featuring the coronation of King George V 6. A commenter on Cinema Treasures writing in 2014 [music] confirmed, "Apparently, this was the last cartoon cinema left in the UK when it closed. No obituary ran in any trade publication.

[00:18:32]No ceremony was held." The commenter added, "I'd been told by my father about them, but I never knew how long they lasted. A generation of Londoners had watched cartoons in a theater next to a train platform. And when it ended, nobody outside the building knew it was over. It is from Felix the Cat in 1919 to a Disney short in a London train station in 1981. That's the full arc of the theatrical cartoon in public life.

[00:18:54]It wasn't killed by one decision. It was eroded by economics, [music] by code enforcement, by a Supreme Court ruling, by television, by double features, and by the slow logic of an industry deciding that 7 minutes of animation before the main event wasn't worth the cost anymore. The audiences who watched those cartoons in the dark didn't know they were living through a golden age.

[00:19:13]They thought they were just waiting for the movie to start, and that might be exactly why it worked as long as it did.