The Extras - Talking Tex Avery with George & Jerry

Episode Date: October 20, 2021

For the very first time, we have Warner Bros. executive George Feltenstein and animation historian Jerry Beck join the podcast at the same time to talk about the Tex Avery Vol. 3 release from the Warner Archive.  Jerry provides a brief history on the legendary animator Tex Avery's career, while George details the challenges in the preservation work behind the cartoons.   And then both men discuss some of their favorite titles on the release.  It's an episode you don't want to miss if you love classic cartoons. The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and their release on digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Millard, your host. Today we have a very special episode as two film historians who are very well known to

our listeners join the podcast together for the very first time to talk about the legendary animator Tex Avery. So without further delay, here's my discussion with Warner Brothers executive George Feltenstein and animation historian Jerry Beck. Hi, Jerry, George. Hello. Good to see you guys. Hello, Tim. Hi. You've both been guests on the show individually, and I was hoping at some point to have you both on together. So I'm excited that we made it happen today. Great. I am as well. Extremely enthused. Let's do that. Let's talk about Tech Savory. But before we actually get into the Warner Archive release,

just for those listeners out there who aren't as familiar with the legendary animator, Jerry, can you give us a brief background? I know it could be a whole podcast in itself, but maybe you could just give us like a brief background on Tex Avery's career. Well, uh, Tex Avery, uh, was a young, uh, cartoonist, uh, in high school and all that. And back in the, uh, 1920s and, uh, when the 1930s approached and the depression was, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm really telescoping this, uh, the, uh, you know, he went out to California to find his dream and, and, and, and be a cartoonist. And he ended up in animation. He went out to California to find his dream and be a cartoonist, and he ended up in animation. He worked at the Walter Lance Studio on the old Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons

in the early 30s. And he sort of made a mark there as a very funny gag guy and a really good animator. And there's a lot of debate about whether he directed some episodes or at least contributed large amounts, because you can see some of what we now know is Avery's trademark humor in some of these Oswald cartoons. There's one early Oswald where he, Boy Scout one, where they're hiking in the woods and they get lost and they run off the background and it suddenly goes blank and you suddenly see, you know, animators names scrolled. They're hiking in the woods and they get lost and they run off the background. And it suddenly goes blank and you suddenly see, you know, animators names scrolled. They're like, they know they've gone too far. You know, he did that sort of gag later.

That's like the Technicolor ends here joke in Lucky Ducky. Right. I also think of the one where I guess it's Northwest Sounded Police where the wolf is running off the frame of the film. You know, right. You know, that kind of thing. He's, he's always pulling the hair out of the gate. Right. You know, Gabriel was essential.

I'm going to get back to his career, but he's essentially a gag man and the more outrageous the better. Also, he has a great ability to be the person in the theater, watching the cartoon and wishing, oh, well, wouldn't it be funny if the cartoon character did that? What if it'd be funny if this happened? You know, if he pulled the hair out of the gate or he started talking to me or he shot the guy in the third row, you know what I mean? That kind of thing. And Avery did that. He did it from the point of view of the person in the theater. And Gags, Gags, Gags were basically it. He was, to me, was the mad magazine of cartoons back then. There was no mad magazine.

There were humor magazines, you know, but that kind of outrageous kind of humor commenting on media and society. It's what Saturday Night Live today does. Anyway, Avery had an opportunity at Leon Schlesinger's studio. He was, of course, the producer for Warner Brothers at his own studio, he was not happy with the cartoons they were making the year prior. This was really the first year of Leon Sussinger's own studio. The very first years of Leon's Warner Brothers cartoons were Harmonizing's studio. When they left and went to MGM, he had to create a whole new studio. And that first year you get buddy cartoons and kind of mediocre kind

of things. I mean, I love them all. And I know all the fans do too. But I have to say that it's very rare that Leon Schlesinger got involved with the nitty gritty of the cartoons. I can only think of two real examples. And they both involve Avery. The first one was he decided to get a whole new crew assembled. And that brought in Tex Avery. Avery apparently was able to prove to Leon that he could make a cartoon, that he had done this cartoon and that cartoon at Lance, and Avery hired him. He also brought in Frank Tashlin. This is all in 1936. And he brought in Mel Blanc, and he brought in Carl Stalling, all in 36.

It was a whole big revamping. Those four are the cornerstone of what would be the Warner Brothers cartoons and Warner Brothers cartoon humor. And their attitude was we can't compete or stay atop of what Disney is doing. Everybody in the business was trying to be Disney, trying to do Three Little Pigs, trying to do the Silly Symphonies, particularly harmonizing. They really wanted to do Disney in the worst way. And people at Warner's, their attitude was,

let's just make funny cartoons. That's going to be our thing. It'll be different. And it would take until 1940 and Bugs Bunny for the rest of the animation industry to see it their way. And suddenly by the 40s, everybody's doing Warner Brothers type characters. Everybody's imitating that sort of white guy.

And scaling. Yeah. Well, but so Avery, Avery, and of course, they were joined by Freeling, who was already there, and Jones and Clampett. Avery is with Warner Brothers in the late 30s. He is kind of the ringleader of this sort of thing. Every other animator had their head, you know, meaning Tashlin did his cinematic thing, which was equally great. Jones, for some reason, during that period was doing, he was continuing to try to do Disney knockoffs like Tom Thumb and Trouble.

And Sniffles. And Sniffles and Sniffles. Right. Exactly. And so I think they were hedging their bet a little bit on, you know, not following the Disney lead. And I think after Snow White came out, they kind of we and by the time you get the Fantasia, which is like, you know, 1940s,. The small studios, the short subject producers, they can't follow that anymore. Avery is there and he's making all these stuff and he's exploding with ideas. A lot of his ideas that aren't with specific characters are, like I said before, parodying, making fun of the other cartoons on the block, the other short subjects in the theater, the travel logs, the newsreels, you know, the movies themselves. Like I say, he's like a mad magazine. And that rubs off to the

other directors as well. And he even comes up with new ideas, like the idea that eventually became Speaking of Animals. George knows what I mean, which was an idea that he had, and he tried it out at Warner's, but he did it all in cartoon. You know, they'd show you the farm animals and they'd have a narration about it and it'd be drawn realistically. And then they'd say something funny, the animal. That was the idea. Avery wanted to do it in live action. And Schlesinger was like, that's, we're not doing that. That was, you know, to me, that was like strike one. Later, by the time we get into the forties, Avery's getting more and more ambitious. And later, by the time we get into the 40s, Avery's getting more and more ambitious. And he's just in love with the idea of killing off the lead character in the cartoon.

And this is where Leon butts in for a second time creatively, which he never did. When Avery did a cartoon, The Heckling Hare, where he kills off Bugs Bunny at the end, even though it's a gag. Leon, well, you're killing off my cash cow. You're not doing that. That was actually strike three three i'll get to strike two in a minute uh strike three and i and then he was put on suspension that suspension allowed him to fulfill his dream of doing this speaking of animals idea with paramount and it allowed him to be available at mgm who who had always wanted a star, a star character. They wanted Mickey Mouse in the worst way in 1929, 1930. They couldn't get him. They got a Byworks instead. Later on,

they got Harmon and Isaac. And now Bugs Bunny is the big character. And the guy, one of the guys who's one of the pivotal people involved with creating Bugs Bunny is suddenly at liberty. He's suddenly available. You don't think they're going to grab him? And at the same exact time, they've got Hanna and Barbera creating Tom and Jerry. So MGM gets its dream by hiring Tech Savory. They now have a cartoon department that's the best, and they did. And I want to say what Strike 2 is because it relates to our video release. I'm going to tell you right now, this is speculation by me, recently concocted by me. Strike two, I think, and it's Leon who's got the strike,

is The Crackpot Quail. The Crackpot Quail is a great cartoon that came out. George reminded me, is it 42 or 41? But I think it's 42, the release of it, which is the same year that Avery's gone. He makes this cartoon and it's got this, the character's doing a raspberry sound through the whole cartoon, fart sound through the whole cartoon. Well, first of all, if you look at the Hays Code, you're not allowed to do the raspberry. You can refer to it. You can't do it on screen. Here's a whole

cartoon of it. I'll bet Schlesinger blew his top. They had to go in and redo it with whistles, which are horribly annoying. It's a read. And that is how everybody has seen it until now. Until now. Amazingly, in the vaults at Warner's held at UCLA, they have a nitrate vault print of that cartoon. I happened to see it back, well, how many years ago now? I don't even want to guess, like 20 years ago or more, 25, 30? I don't know. When I did my book on Looney Tunes, I was looking at the original prints for the credits

and things back then and watched the cartoon, why not? And heard that. And I was like, what the hell? And watched the cartoon, why not? And heard that. And I was like, what the hell? And I wrote it in my book that there was this raspberry sound, which had never come out. I figured when Warner's got around to restoring the cartoon, which they did eventually for HBO Max, that they all would be right with the world. And then when it wasn't, and we were doing this, I said, George, George, we got to do this.

We got to do that. Somehow we never did it in the entire time. We were doing the Looney Tunes Golden Collections. You know, this is a thing I forgot about. We have to do this. And I'm so glad we did because I've reevaluated. I think it's one of the best cartoons he did at Warner Brothers. It's fantastic. I think I personally believe, and I may be wrong. I love, you know, other of my fellow colleagues can come and debate me about it, but it seems to me between killing off Bugs Bunny, a whole cartoon with raspberries, and his insistence on trying to do this speaking of animals thing, which he literally did three or four of these.

I think that was like, he put him on, why would Leon suspend one of his great directors? It didn't make any sense, but clearly something was wrong here. I don't know. That's just the way I see it. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of The Extras Podcast. And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes.

Three strikes and you're out kind of a thing. I think it's also important to give him the credit that he was the director. Everybody contributed to the development of Bugs Bunny. All the directors had a different take. But it was he who nailed it with having Bugs say to the closest version to Elmer from before Elmer became Elmer, and what's up, doc? And that was in a wild hair.

And that is, you know, some people say, you know, that is the first bugs bunny cartoon. And that's where you really see the whole basic plot points of what would be maybe several dozen to follow of Elmer and Bugs involved in some kind of chase. But Tex came up with the formula that really stuck.

And each director continued to play with different forms of Bugs in future years. But by that time, Tex was within a year, he was over at MGM. And we're all the better for it. The first cartoon he did there was called Blitzwolf. It earned an Academy Award. And it is the first cartoon on what we're here to talk about today, which is Tex Avery Screwball Classics Volume 3,

which has just come from the Warner Archive on Blu-ray and DVD, just in time for people to enjoy the fall season and get ready for the holidays. But I'm so happy that this turned out the way it did because we had our A-team on it. We owe it to the people at warner brothers motion picture imaging they worked on the first volume and they did a great job with this here and it's just been very important to me jerry and i worked on a laser disc compilation of te Tex Avery's work in probably the mid-90s, I want to say. Maybe a little earlier. I guess in the mid-90s.

Yeah. Like 93, you know. Yeah. And we were constricted. There were some censored cartoons on there because the people at Turner wouldn't send us uncut masters. It was the best that we could do, but it was never right. And then when I got to Warner Home Video, I wanted Tex Avery done right. And the amount of money it would take was so staggering that it seemed impossible. And I thought we could get the money from France.

In France, tech savories as popular as The Simpsons. I don't know how it happened, but there is tech savory merchandise all over France. He's huge. merchandise all over France. He's huge. And a tin came out from Warner Home Video France in the early aughts. I want to say around 2001, 2002. And the cartoons are censored and bad masters as beautiful tin packaging. And they even got a cartoon from Universal and they had a booklet.

And it made the front page of Le Monde, the French-Parisian newspaper. Oh, mauvais Warner Brothers, you know, c'est terrible, you know, because they recognize that, as Jerry and I do, we think of these as classic American short films. They're not kiddie babysitters. They weren't meant for TV. They were meant for theatrical audiences. They are seven- to eight- to nine-minute films that happen to be animated that were made by and for adults. But children could see them, too. And certain gags would go over their heads.

And we've always fought for the respect for the classic animation, both on the Warner and the MGM side, as well as the Popeye side, for people to respect these films the way they should be. And the Laserdisc set, we almost got there. What the French did in France sold very well, but it wasn't the right thing. And to get them on Blu-ray, that's why we had to do it a disc at a time. And I'm so pleased that this third volume turned out as nicely as it did with 20 beautiful MGM cartoons. And we should mention that, tragically,

the original negatives to all of these MGM cartoons, not just the ones that text directed, but the entire cartoon library and short subject library went up in flames at a tragic fire in the late 1970s at an archive on the East Coast. And it is from second and third generation materials that we were doing our work. And we didn't have the luxury that Crackpot Quail has of being from the original negative. You know, the original negatives to most of the Warner Brothers cartoons are still extant. That isn't the case with any of the MGMs. And so I didn't know how good we could make them. And furthermore, in prior years, they were in the hands of other people who would pull

reissue versions from the 60s with a contemporary MGM Lion, and I would say Metro Color, which is your immediate giveaway that those are not the right titles. But I had nothing to do with it. Jerry had nothing to do with it. Jerry had nothing to do with it. And there were a lot of mistakes made. If you put these things in the wrong hands, there are going to be problems. We're all human. We're all subject to, you know, slipping up here and there and making a mistake. But the amount of mistakes that were made on a lot of these cartoons in the past is really depressing. And this was an opportunity to get it done right. You know, I want to say something that's in praise of what we've been doing and what George

is doing. Right now, we're living in a universe where there's a streaming service, HBO Max. We also have the cartoons, Popeye, Warners and MGM filtering to MeTV on a broadcast channel. And honestly, they wouldn't be there if we hadn't been doing, if George hadn't been championing, doing these cartoons, restoring the cartoons, the Warner cartoons, the Popeye cartoons, you know, the MGM cartoons, Tom and Jerry and Tech Savory. There's a lot of people right now sitting back on their sofas and they're able to watch, you know, these cartoons on MeTV, or maybe they can bring them on on HBO Max. They wouldn't have been there at all if it weren't for what we'd done in the, how many years has it been now? The last, boy, about at least 15 years or so of restoring the

cartoons for the Golden Collections and the recent Popeyes. Those Popeyes wouldn't be on MeTV at all if we hadn't restored them, you know, the black and white. The color ones. The color ones, the color ones. Yeah. The black and whites were done years ago. And we, we never thought we could get to the color ones because of the cost involved. Cause you're dealing with three colors and it's just a very complicated,

you know, and it's been the process. I just realized it's another, another thing to champion here or to celebrate is also the fans who are listening because they supported what we're doing at Warner Brothers there they bought the product they couldn't wait they still can't wait for more stuff and that's what helps make it happen if we didn't have any support you know with the with the sales on blu-ray or sales on DVD, you know, we couldn't continue to do it. Right, George? That is, that goes without saying. And when we were kids,

I know Jerry, you probably felt the same way I did. You know, it was wonderful to watch the cartoons. They were pink and we loved them. Anyway, they were faded. They were cut up. Right. But to own them. Yeah. Ownership. Mm-hmm.

Physical ownership. Mm-hmm. Because you can have something in a streaming service, but it may not be there the next day. Right. You can have something that you have in your digital locker. And this won't happen with Warner Brothers because it's not Warner Brothers policy. But there are certain other studios that have been known to have a movie be available digitally and sell it. And the fine print allows them to pull it out of your locker and you don't have the movie anymore. Wow. So that's why when you can hold it in your hands, you don't have to worry about buffering. You don't have to worry about compression.

Hopefully, because our discs are, the compression and authoring is done very, very well. And a lot of TLC went into this. Some people go a little too far. They watch everything frame by frame. And in a way, I feel bad for people who can't just sit back and watch the cartoon and enjoy it. Right. Enjoy it. But we want to present it in the best quality possible. And we are very, very proud of the fact that we have this opportunity and are looking forward to the next opportunity. Who knows what may be lurking around the corner? Who knows what we might work on next? I can't wait. Jerry, I did want to ask you about, you know, in our last podcast, we were talking about the

curation of how you curated for the Golden Collection and everything of the Looney Tunes. How did you go about selecting the shorts that are on this release? Every collection is a little bit different. Tex Avery, in this case in particular, I think George might be able to answer better. There's a lot of factors that allowed certain cartoons to be preserved over other ones in a certain order and it's actually look at the draw and also blitzwolf was the first cartoon right and i wanted to be the first cartoon on the first release we only have one 35 millimeter color reversal internegative. That's it.

Right. We don't have, we went literally searching the world, trying to find another good source to work from. And by the way, George, George, George, I really want to, I want to get this clear for fans who may be listening. This is something I find a lot of them don't understand. We don't just look at Warner's vaults around the world. Right. Tell them that you we I know that we look at all the archives.

Please explain that. Just I want you to mention. Well, we canvas the various members of FIAF, which is the Film Archive International Association, really, of all the archives around the world. Of course, here we have UCLA, Library of Congress, George Eastman House, Museum of Modern Art, Film Institute. And then you go from there. There's the British Film Institute. There's the Cinémathèque Française. There's so many. There's in Belgium. There's a very, very important film archive. We put out an all points bulletin. We're looking. Do you have anything on Blitzwolf. We went everywhere. And Jerry knows a lot of collectors. I used to. I don't anymore, except for Jerry and myself. But, you know, no one had good material on Blitzwolf. So it wasn't just that the first two minutes are from like a fourth generation do uh but also it was previously released and was so it looked like a train had run over it i didn't see how it could possibly

be cleaned up in order to be viewable and enjoyable, the first two minutes of the cartoon do look soft and doopy. And before the release came out, we were very public since we couldn't put a note on the disc. We were getting the word out there, hey, the first two minutes of the first cartoon you see are not going to look so good, but it's not for lack of trying. And then when the Hitler wolf puts the treaty out, suddenly everything is beautiful because we were able to clean all of the damage. And this is really important with the classic animation. You fix the film damage, you remove the dirt that was on the film, not the dust or dirt that was on the animation cell. You leave the animation with its warts and all, because that's what people saw on the screen in 1942 when the cartoon premiered.

Jerry and I both share this philosophy that you don't clean it. There is another studio very famous for animation that tries to make everything look brand new. And in the process, it no longer feels organic like film. So we leave that, you know, occasional dribble of dust that goes up the cell as it went through the animation camera. But we fix the scratches on the film element, the black marks and the white marks on the film element, but nothing in terms of the animation. That's the difference. And we also did audio restoration on these as well. Tried to take out the little clicks and pops and make them cleaner. Tried to take out the little clicks and pops and make them cleaner.

And it's something we're very, very proud of. And the initial response has been very, very rewarding. And it's only been out for a week and a day. It feels like forever. Well, how long have you guys been working on these volumes? When did you start? I mean, I don't mean like from Laserdisc. I mean, from the Warner Archive DVD Blu-ray. The first Blu-ray, I guess, was two years ago.

Jerry, I was wondering if there's any fun stories about some of the shorts included in this release, Volume 3, that you wanted to highlight. Let's see. Well, this is a great collection. There's so many great things i mean i'm like george we're into getting out the ones that are particularly ones that really we really care about this set has more cartoons on it that i really care about than i think any other set now that's hard to believe because i care about all the uh cartoons and all of the tech savory cartoons but king size canary is one of the

absolute greatest cartoons ever and it's finally on here and uh happy go nutty which we had a problem with that was going to come out in volume one i believe uh that was one of the screwy squirrel cartoons and yeah and there's a rumor out there that says Warner's, everybody seems to know everything about our company, even though they don't work there. So they spread lies on the Internet. They pull out of their pocket. Well, the legal department never said no to happy-go-nutty ever. It just was what was ready and what was available to us

and a lot of work went into this so we knew we could put it on a future volume because all the squeaky squirrel cartoons were there except for Happy Go Nutty so that led some of the conspiracy theorists

to say oh you know the legal department said no. And I read this stuff and I just laugh and I say, like, you know, well, I can't really say what I want to say, but I just wanted to say that I'm delighted that it's there. Yes. And that we're able to bring it to the people. And that we're able to bring it to the people. I mean, there were some cartoons, and George, you can talk to this better than me, but there were some cartoons that were held back by us because of the possibility of finding a better neg or separation or something that was better than what had already been. Some of those things where we thought something would be better were already rushed through for HBO Max that's right Warner so we but we knew there was a better element and again I'm not really up on this I know that um I believe Little Tinker is one because that's one of my absolute

favorite Avery's uh I know that was one that that I the rumor was there's a like the neg may exist you know the camera nag may I don't know if it was true, but the camera neg may exist on that one. It came from safety separations, which is the next best thing to the negative. And that's why it looks so beautiful. Right. That is not as famous as some of the other cartoons. It's one of my favorite Avery cartoons.

Yeah, me too. It's not like in the top 10. Right. But I think it's so sweet and funny. Yeah. It's got the Avery gags. Here's a thing you've probably never heard about that. It's again, this is Jerry Beck speculation, but it's a it's first of all, it's a it's a great cartoon and it's a rare Avery with heart, as they say.

Right. rare Avery with heart, as they say. Right. And but the thing is, I keep looking at that cartoon and I'm like, man, it's almost like Avery saw the first Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoon in 1945. And he goes, I know how to do this idea funny, because even though he's not a ghost, the cartoon is all reactions to him as a thing they don't want to be near, which is the whole premise of Casper the Friendly Ghost, you know, but those are never funny. They're just, you know, they're just these little reactions. And that's it. Avery, every reaction is hilarious.

You know, I mean, I just I just love it for a lot of a lot of reasons on that. We've got some great I'm going off here. I'm suddenly have pulled up the list here and Cellbound, which is the last cartoon that he directed at MGM, which is a classic. I mean, this guy, this hardly, I don't think there were any bad ones at Warner. And now here's one of the ones that had just been done and we redid it. I want to say something that may be debatable, but honestly, a lot of fans, you're talking before about fans on the internet and they don't get this and right. A lot of fans, you were talking before about fans on the internet and they don't get this and right.

You know, a lot of them think because they're critical of, for example, Avery 2 or so, they're critical of some of the sets that have been put out, that it's their criticism that makes us do this. Well, that's not true. We're trying to give you the best possible collection at every step of the way. George, you have anything to say about that? Other than that? I think the best thing to say is that we're here to celebrate the release of Volume 3. I'm very proud of it. I'm so glad to continue our collaboration in animation and other things. Jerry likes other things besides animated cartoons. He likes great filmmaking. That's right.

And it's a pleasure to be with him, to talk with him, talk shop, as we say. But we both have the same passion for the work and to get it to the fans so that they can own it and have it on their shelves. And it's been wonderful, Tim of you to have us here today to be able to talk about these wonderful

cartoons and to keep the memory of tech savory alive in gorgeous Technicolor. It technically doesn't end here in this case. Right? Yeah. Well well it was it was great fun having the two of you on the podcast at the same time you've had your own episodes and you know i just get to sit back and listen to your great stories i i just become a fan as i'm hearing you guys um so i i'm sure everybody else will enjoy it and you gave us a few teases i'm gonna have to

re-listen you tease some things you guys are maybe working on or that you're going to have for the fans. Am I reading that right? Yeah, could be. All right. Well, that's great because it just gives everybody a reason to keep listening to the podcast. And I hope everybody's enjoying as much as I am these episodes with you. So we'll have to do this again soon before too long. Sounds great. Thanks again. Thanks again to George Feltenstein and Jerry Beck for joining the show today. Be sure and subscribe

to the show on your favorite podcast provider so that you don't miss any of their future episodes. For those of you interested in learning more about the Warner Archive release of Tex Avery Volume 3, there will be information on the website at www.theextras.tv. Also, follow the show on Facebook or Twitter at TheExtrasTV or Instagram at TheExtras.TV to stay up to date on the latest episodes and for exclusive images and behind the scenes information about the episodes and upcoming guests. Until next time, you've been listening to The Extras with Tim Millard. Stay slightly obsessed. The Extras is a production of Otaku Media, producers of podcasts, behind the scenes extras,

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