With apologies for again being slightly out of chronological order, we begin our animated fare with The Capture of Tear-a-Long, the Dotted Lion (Bob Clampett, Beany and Cecil. 1/20/62) – Captain Huffenpuff has our heroes off on another get-rich-quick scheme. Hoping to capitalize on the health craze, the Leakin’ Lena sets sail for the Vitamin Sea and a remote island destination called Vitamin Pill Hill. There, exotic trees grow vitamin pills big as beach balls in clusters like grapes. Objective: take back one of the trees to a bottling plant for a quick fortune. The obstacle, however, is the trees’ guardian – a health nut feline known as Tear-a-Long, the Dotted Lion. The critter spends his day in monogrammed athletic shirt, supervising the trees like a gym instructorm in a voice reminiscent of Foghorn Leghorn. Signs on the island advertise Tear-a-Long’s Jungle Gym – “Vic Tanny went to us”. The lion works out by stretching the limbs of a rubber tree like springs from a wall. He grabs a serpent from another tree, and skips rope with it. The boys avoid detection by posing as trees (though Tear-a-Long thinks them the flabbiest specimens on the island). The lion touts to them the virtues of vitamin B, but inadvertently swallows a beehive instead, causing a brief diversion. The crew take the opportunity to start toting away one of the trees, not realizing the lion has returned and is inside its limbs.
In 1995, Kasem quit his role as Shaggy in a dispute over being pressured to do a Burger King commercial as the character and that Hanna-Barbera would not make the character of Shaggy a vegan but later resumed the role in 2002.
We’ve got a Facebook event page setup here, where updates are shared and comments can be made. We’re also highly recommending advance tickets, since space is limited. Those can be purchased here. A little bird tells me nearly half of our tickets are already sold as of this writing—so if you’d like to attend, secure your spots now!
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Original Songs: “Off to See the World,” “Flying with the Eagles” by Randy Edelman; Mexican Holiday” by Randy Edelman and Ross Bagdasarian; “Weekend in France, Italy, England, Amsterdam, Greece” [sic] by Randy Edelman, Ross Bagdasarian and Janice Karman; “My Mother” by Randy Goodrum; “The Girls of Rock and Roll” by Jay Levy and Terry Shaddick; “Getting Lucky” by Barry DeVorzon; “Diamond Dolls” by Donna Weiss and Elysée Alexander.
Perhaps a bigger reason while I like this short so much is that my mother, who enjoyed watching the super 8 print of this cartoon, used to imitate the Little King, saying “Shay boy! Sell me some Pwetzels!”. How often can you get your mother to repeat lines from a 1930s cartoon?
Disney’s Donald Duck and Chip ‘n Dale characters released their own interpretation of “The Chipmunk Song” (or “Christmas Don’t Be Late”) twenty years after David Seville and the Chipmunks changed the world of pop novelty music with their version. “The Chipmunk Song” then made its second appearance on a Disney record label for 1988’s Solid Gold Chipmunks, but this time it is not the 1958 Liberty Records version, but the 1981 version from the RCA album A Chipmunk Christmas, tying in with the Chuck Jones-directed animated TV special (more about all of that in this Animation Spin). The version of “Witch Doctor” is also a newer one, from the IJE soundtrack LP of the Saturday morning cartoon, Songs from Our TV Shows.
In short, I plan to be back on Cartoon Research again in the coming weeks, with news about more events (hopefully some more Video On Demand ones for our online followers, too) and updates on various silent animation restoration projects in the works. In the meantime, I hope to see some of you at the upcoming event. One last word I’ll leave off on for now is a note about some of the difficulties faced as a result of lockdowns, regular events ceasing, and ultimately being unable to continue hosting streams for a long period.
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