Mark Evanier is helping legendary voice actor June Foray write her autobiography. She turns 90 this year! Evanier recently said he “will soon be announcing some sort of publication date, I hope.” June herself has a slightly different take on the situation. She was on WBZ radio in Boston late Sunday night, and this is what she said.
Category: Cartooning
The Real Elmer Fudd
A few postings ago, a little man in a cameo movie appearance was identified as Arthur Q. Bryan. He was a popular voice on radio, mostly in the 40’s, but thanks to TV he’s best remembered today as the voice of cartoon character Elmer Fudd.
For a brief time, director Bob Clampett made Fudd look like Lou Costello, but then wisely returned to Tex Avery’s previous design, patterning Fudd more after Arthur Q. Bryan himself.
Bryan is shown in this photo with Artie Auerbach, who is playing Father Time, in a publicity photo for the Al Pearce Radio Gang show. Pearce was very popular in his day, but now seems to be largely forgotten.
Anime On Long Beach
Back in April we attended the Anime Boston convention. Unfortunately, my post about it was lost in the database disaster in early June. This weekend in Long Beach, CA is the big one — AX, The Anime Expo. A bit too far away for us to take Eric and his fellow Anime fan cousins!
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Who’s Hitting Who?
I agree with Arlo’s sentiment here…
Watch this 30-second clip from a movie that was recently shown on Turner Classic Movies. Can you name the character actor who punches “Santa”? Who’s playing Santa?
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Old Yorker, J. B. Handelsman
New Yorker cartoonist J.B. Handelsman has died at 85. Like a lot of artists and cartoonists whose eyesight holds up, he worked pretty much up to the end. He wasn’t a favorite of mine, but anybody with staying power at The New Yorker must be respected.
Here’s a mini-gallery of Handelsman cartoons from 1965-1970. Click to enlarge. I picked those years because Handelsman seemed conservative, and that was a time of great upheaval. I consider these to be the best of the bunch, and I’ll be honest and say that compared to other New Yorker cartoons, I don’t think they hold up very well. Handelsman’s humor could be dry to the point of being banal, even when insightful.
© The New Yorker
Eric’s Anime Pick — Kurau
Kurau Phantom Memory is about a girl with extraordinary powers who’s a secret agent; but not for the government, which is out to get her. At least that’s what’s happening in the story as far as we’ve seen it. Kurau has a kid sister named Christmas to protect, who is actually a younger version of herself. Where this is heading, I don’t know!
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The video has the “clean” (captionless) versions of the opening and closing to Kurau, along with a clip from episode 6.