In which I return to the recurring theme of how fleeting fame can be:
The arrival of the new Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 3- yes, I'm an adult with no kids and I still buy cartoon DVDs- was a welcome note in a busy day, especially because one of the DVDs collects those cartoons with all the bad Hollywood caricatures. You know the ones if you, like I did, grew up on the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies diet of TV watching. I think I learned a lot about the celebrities of my grandfather's day from those cartoons, but today they're kinda sad, because if you show a kid any of them, they won't have much of an idea what's going on. A good example is this one:
"The Coo Coo Nut Grove" was a plotless 1936 Friz Freleng cartoon with a series of lame gags, some of which played on the celebrities (and the audience's familiarity with them) and some which came out of nowhere. Adding to the confusion, some were drawn as animals and birds, some as humans. Here, the non-human (inhuman?) depictions of bandleader Ben Bernie and gossipista Walter Winchell:
Bernie was the guy best known for interjecting a mournful "yowsah, yowsah" in his stage patter, a tic later appearing in the dance marathon episode of "Happy Days," spoken by a very non-Ben-Bernie-like Richie Cunningham. Bernie's completely forgotten now, while Winchell at least was the subject of that HBO movie a few years ago with Stanley Tucci ("The Untouchables" doesn't play on TV enough to count anymore). But this guy was once the most feared man in America. Now, his name evokes almost no reaction.
This guy wasn't even a big star in 1936:
He was a contract player named Hugh Herbert, nicknamed "Woo Woo" for his trademark catchphrase. A version of him was seen in a lot of Warners cartoons, as was this individual:
Edna May Oliver. Played lots of spinster and crazy aunt roles, and had that face, easily cariacatured. Also parodied in a lot of cartoons of the era. She was an Oscar nominee for "Drums Along the Mohawk" in 1939 but died three years later. Now, other than the cartoons, there's practically no trace of her.
Same for this guy:
Ned Sparks, famous in the 30s as the guy who never smiled and had a distinctively crabby voice. Warners and Disney both used Ned Sparks voice parodies in many cartoons. Unknown today.
In 1936, these kids were a household word:
The Dionne Quintuplets. The first surviving identical quints. Their lives were made into a sideshow with tragic results- it wasn't happy. The story's easy to find, but most people will draw a blank on them.
Think anyone other than the cinema buffs knows who the Great Profile was?
Oh, there are some people who remain familiar to more than the movie-obsessed, like these:
W.C. Fields is easy. The horse- real nice, those Boys From Termite Terrace were- is supposed to be Katherine Hepburn. You'll recognize these icons:
And this sorta freaky image:
A Harpo bird, in a running gag, chases a woman with a big hat and her face away from the camera, which turns out to be Groucho in drag for no apparent reason other than maybe the animators and writers had a thing for moustachioed comedians in women's clothing.
This dance card is half-famous today:
Mae West, who still has some fame several years after her passing. She's dancing with a turtle who's supposed to be George Arliss- the monocle's the tipoff. He has a star on the Walk of Fame, but I imagine most tourists dodging the beggars and prostitutes on Hollywood Boulevard have no idea he was a big star, an Oscar winner for his celebrated portrayal of Benjamin Disraeli.
"Gone With the Wind" keeps this guy familiar:
But the cartoon ends with a sequence that seems very odd indeed if you don't know that this person...
... was a very famous singer, Helen Morgan, the original torch singer who would make tough guys weep as she sang about being done wrong and twisted her trademark napkin. She was in the midst of a brief comeback in 1936, a triumphant appearance in the movie version of "Show Boat." But she was a drinker, and she died a few years later, her liver shot to hell. She was famous enough in 1957 to warrant a big biopic, "The Helen Morgan Story." She's not famous enough now for anyone to remember her. But remembering her explains why forgotten movie tough guy Wallace Beery:
... and less-forgotten tough guys Edward G. Robinson and George Raft...
... are crying here. And they cry so much that everyone in the Coo Coo Nut Grove floats away on a sea of tears, leading to...
The cartoon, frankly, is awful- not funny, bad caricatures, bad voices, no plot. But it should be required viewing to the ego cases of today, the actors and musicians and rappers and athletes. Hey, Paris Hilton, ever heard of Ned Sparks or Wallace Beery or George Arliss? No? Good. Enjoy fame while you still can.Someday, you'll be completely irrelevant.
Oh, wait, you already are.
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