indy mike
07-22-2008, 02:07 PM
Some of the harder to track down cartoons from the golden era of the 30's through the early 50's are the shorts from Columbia Pictures. Their animation unit seemed to be in the second or third tier in comparison to the big guns like Disney, Warner Brothers and MGM. There was a bright spot for Columbia's animation unit in the early to mid 40's - Frank Tahslin (and later for brief periods Dave Fleischer and Bob Clampett) came in and the cartoons from Columbia began to improve in quality. Tashlin was the driving force behind the creation of the Fox and Crow series of cartoons. Chuck Jones noted that his Roadrunner cartoons inspiration (based on one blackout gag after another) came from Tashlin's The Fox and the Grapes. I came across a blogger who's been posting some Fox and Crow cartoons online - they're really well animated and pretty funny as well: http://classiccartoons.blogspot.com/2008/07/room-and-bored.html