How to Be a Detective - December 12, 1952

It begins with a man being violently thrown from a bridge into the icy cold waters of the river below. It ends with a climactic car chase through both urban and rural landscapes. In between, blackjacks are wielded, bullets fly, mickeys are slipped and violence reigns supreme.

It’s a fast paced, hard boiled eight minutes. And oh, did I mention--it’s a Goofy cartoon.

Released on December 12, 1952, How to Be a Detective is without a doubt, one of the best Goofy cartoons ever produced. An over-the-top send up of Hollywood’s dark crime noir genre, it is as irreverent as it is hilarious.

The Goof is cast as Private Eye Johnny Eyeball, who is paid a fast $100 by a “classy dame” to simply “find Al.” He is quickly confronted by Pete in the role of a homicide detective who tries to warn him off the case. He then finds himself consistently at odds with a “suspicious character” who closely resembles one of the weasels from the Wind in the Willows sequence of Icabod and Mr. Toad. Eyeball finds himself subsequently being drugged, machine gunned, fitted with cement shoes and thrown in the river, dropped down an elevator shaft, and kicked out of the morgue (“Beat it! And don’t come back ‘til you’re ready!”)

Comically violent images abound. Take for instance the window actions near the beginning of the short:It’s enough to send a soccer mom on boycotting and letter-writing rampages. Fears of just such actions pretty much kept How to Be a Detective locked up in the vault until its release on the Disney Treasures Complete Goofy DVD a few years ago.

Crazy criminal activity aside, the short sports some outstanding art direction. There are some top notch backgrounds that really evoke the crime film genre that is the target of the cartoon’s humor--

The opening bridge toss:

The eerie, rundown house on the hill:

And the seedy Al’s Joint saloon:

. . . are just a few great examples.

In the end, the case is of course solved, and more by happenstance than by the efforts of Johnny Eyeball. An all around great cartoon and one of the studio's better efforts from the 1950s.

Teachers Are People - June 27, 1952

Despite its now uncomfortable parade of guns, grenades and schoolhouse explosions, the Goofy cartoon Teachers Are People remains one of the studio’s funnier endeavors and yet another hilarious take on post-war America sensibilities.

Released on June 27, 1952, this animated homage to the teaching profession took the interesting twist of placing Goofy’s Mr. Geef persona into a role that was at the time nearly completely dominated by the fairer sex. And much like his other Geef vehicles, the Goof plays the role with the usual disconnected innocence that is in stark contrast to the antics of the young pupils in his charge.

Allen Reed, who would go on to voice Fred Flintstone for Hanna Barbera, provided the irony-laced narration that was a standard feature of many of the Goofy shorts. All of the usual schoolhouse conventions are present: pigtails dipped in inkwells, apples for teacher, paper airplanes and overbearing parents. But the short’s humor is better found in its irreverent depictions of some of the less than innocent realities of childhood. The mayhem of the classroom and the apparent joys of truancy are not ignored, while homage is also played to cheating on exams and the limited attention spans of even our best and brightest. The cartoon’s most funny and likely perceptive observation is that sex education is more often learned in the schoolyard than in the classroom. Not necessarily the kind of gag one would expect to find in a 1950s era Disney production, but it’s an excellent example of how the Goofy shorts often pushed the envelope in ways more typically associated with the efforts of Warner Brothers and MGM.

This is no more apparent than in the scene where George, the resident class clown empties his pockets of everything from a slingshot and firecrackers to the slightly more lethal hand grenade and revolver. Potentially offensive in our current era of increased school violence, the scene manages to maintain its overall tone of absurdity enough to diffuse any real strong cries of protest. But even then it’s hard to completely exorcise from mind recent headlines and news reports when the schoolhouse literally explodes into ruin, and the cartoon concludes with George at the blackboard repeatedly scribing I will not bomb the school again. It’s a funny moment, but sadly, due to our all-too-recent history, a somewhat disquieting one as well.

Teachers Are People can be found on the Disney Treasures Complete Goofy DVD set.

Images © Walt Disney Company

They're Off

Director Jack Hannah and his crew really appear to have enjoyed themselves when making the 1948 Goofy cartoon short They're Off. Similar to elements in prior cartoons such as The Nifty Nineties and Hockey Homicide, a racing form makes reference to the short's own makers as well as other Disney Studio personnel.

Horse owners include Hannah, Campbell Grant, Riley Thomson, Al Bertino, Yale Gracey, John Hench, John Sibley, Art Babbit, Ken Anderson, Charles Phillippi and Andy Engman. Among the jockeys are Bill Berg, Volus Jones and Hugh Hennesy.

Hannah, Gracey and background artist Howard Dunn are also alluded to on a page of scrawled notes and formulas.


Still mysteries to me are the following names: M. Satterwhite, B. Selk, Toby, M. Greenberg, B. Newman, Bobby N., F. Bresson, R. Carlson, D. Link, T. Witmer and A. Scott. I am hoping that some of the ever so resourceful readers here can help identify any or all of these equestrian notables. I will update the post accordingly.

Edit-From Hans Perk:

Around this time (more precise in July 1946), Jack Hannah shared his room 2C-6 with his assistant director Bee Selck. Mary Satterwhite was in 2C-7, and in 2C-5 we find M. Greenberg, Yale Gracey and Thelma Witmer (bg painter) - next door to Howard Dunn, Don Griffith and Eustace Lycett in 2C-4. Frank Bresson in 3D-14, Robert Carlson (animator) in 1F-3 (with Russ Dyson), Dorothy Link in 2F-7 (with Jack Bruner and Chuck Wheeler), Art Scott in 2A-3, Toby Toblemann (ass. dir.) in 2A-7. No Newman at that time...

Also of note is a wonderful background pan near the beginning of the short that features numerous books on horses and racing. Funny bits include authors Pickham and Weep and titles Mother Hubbard's Selections and Know Your Nags.

Images © Walt Disney Company

The Violent Mayhem of Hockey Homicide

In our current era of too-frequent overbearing political correctness, the 1945 Goofy cartoon Hockey Homicide stands as a shining example of a creative process not held hostage by studio executives overly concerned with pleasing soccer-mom demographics. The genius of this short is rooted in its parody of the sport’s reputation for excessive violence and the subsequent frenzy that that violence inspires in the game’s spectators. Rather than ignore or disavow this darker side of competition, it embraces it and celebrates it with an irreverent and sardonic glee. In the fifty-plus years since its release, Hockey Homicide has lost neither its humor nor its relevance. It is a hyper-paced, hilarious eight minutes of unbridled mayhem that also casts a satirical eye to sports fandom’s often unquenchable thirst for blood and brawling.
 

The cartoon is very much in the spirit of the classic quip of “attending a boxing match only to have a hockey game break out.” Beating and pummeling are the strategies of play with occasional hockey maneuvers peppered throughout. The short’s most memorable and now classic gag is the ongoing rivalry between star players Ice Box Bertino and Fearless Ferguson. When the two begin brawling even prior to the opening faceoff, it sets off a cycle of fighting and penalty suffering that extends almost the length of the cartoon. It is highlighted by the announcer’s oft repeated “Here come Bertino and Ferguson out of the penalty box . . . and there go Bertino and Ferguson back into the penalty box.”

The frenzy of the game builds and builds until it spills into the stands and ignites the spectators. The crowd storms the ice and chaos ensues, leading to an eye-popping montage of violence that incorporates scenes not only from other Goofy sports cartoons but from the studio’s features Victory Through Air Power and Pinocchio as well.

A couple of particularly funny gags: the two rival fans featured throughout the short are seated appropriately in Section 8; and when the ice is cleaned between periods, among the debris shoveled up are cowboy boots and spurs, cups and saucers, a bottle of Heinz 57, boxing gloves, an umbrella, a hair brush, a croquet mallet and even an extended hand clutching a cigar.

Especially notable in Hockey Homicide are the references by name to Disney employees. The aforementioned Bertino and Ferguson refer to animators Al Bertino and Norm Ferguson, while referee “Clean Game” Kinney pays homage to the short’s director Jack Kinney (and possibly also to storyman Dick Kinney). When a scorecard is examined early in the short, the teams’ rosters are a veritable who’s who of the Disney Studio in 1945. It’s a great screenshot, worthy of Freeze Frame status, and it is very likely the most extensive “in-joke” ever incorporated into a piece of Disney animation. 

Hockey Homicide stands as one of the best Goofy cartoons produced and also easily qualifies as one of the studio’s funniest. Goofy in name, but certainly more sophisticated in content and humor, the short takes a not-so-subtle shot-on-goal at a professional sport and the antics of its passionate fans.

How to Hook Up Your Home Theater

If we can go on the assumption that Goofy has some degree of canine genetics in his biology, then the new cartoon How to Hook Up Your Home Theater proves that you can in fact, teach an old dog new tricks.

Currently showing in theaters with National Treasure: Book of Secrets, this new animated vignette is the first in a series of new cartoon short subjects that were commissioned by John Lasseter and Ed Catmull shortly after taking the reins at Walt Disney Feature Animation. It is wonderful marriage of nostalgia to contemporary popular culture, applying the formula from the classic 1940s and 1950s era Goofy "How-To" cartoons to digital age home electronics. It's a fun and very often hilarious combination.

Like its predecessors such as How to Be a Detective, How to Swim or Home Made Home, How to Hook Up Your Home Theater comes out of the gate fast and never slows down until the end credits. It pays immediate homage to the original Sport Goofy films with a direct connection to How to Play Football, by utilizing the original stadium background from that 1944 production and expounding similar pratfall-filled gameplay. But the shorts contemporary sensibilities soon emerge. For, while the mid-20th century everyman clearly loved football, his early 21st century counterpart loves it equally as well but just translated to a mammoth television screen with all the accompanying home theater bells and whistles.

With his ever present off-screen narrator, the Goof explores the world of home entertainment via both sharp witticisms and broad physical comedy. The moment Goofy walks into the Shiny Stuff superstore and subsequently (and hilariously) professes his love for a wall-sized television, you realize that this animation golden age superstar has definitely embraced the modern age. The short pokes fun at numerous home theater conventions, including delivery windows, instruction manuals, tangled cables and universal remotes.

And for the quintessential Disney geek such as myself, there are plenty of hidden details and inside jokes. References can be found to Mickey Mouse, Dopey and even a supporting character from Pinocchio. In addition, quick but distinct homages are paid to both John Lasseter and Walt Disney himself. But especially notable was use of the original early era design styles of both the opening title cards and the end credits. It is both a testament to, and a celebration of, the Disney Studio's legacy of cartoon shorts, of which How to Hook Up Your Home Theater is a most welcome addition.