Showing posts with label Marvin Kaplan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marvin Kaplan. Show all posts
Monday, July 23, 2012
How Woody Allen stole Manhattan, Part 1
OK! It's Monday morning and time for your assignment.
I've been wondering about some things - specifically, about Top Cat, that cult classic cartoon series which ran ever-so-briefly in 1961. Only 30 episodes were ever made, possibly because the characters were all petty criminals with no moral compass whatsoever. Not a good influence on the kiddies.
Watching these again on a Classic Toons channel, I'm finding them hugely entertaining. But there are certain things that make the back of my neck prickle.
My fave character in the Gang of Six, then as now, is Choo-Choo. When I looked up Top Cat in Wikipedia, an entire entry was devoted to the different characters. Here's what it said about Choo-Choo:
Choo-Choo
Choo-Choo, nicknamed Chooch to TC and the gang, is enthusiastic and devoted to TC even when he’s clueless as to what he’s doing. He is a pink cat with a white long-sleeve turtle-neck shirt, he is the tallest of the alley gang cats and often is depicted with the eyes of a Siamese cat. He lives at the fire house as the fire house cat as seen in one episode "Hawaii Here We Come". Choo-Choo is apparently a very skilled poker player, as stated by Top Cat in the episode "The Golden Fleecing". He had a couple of love crushes "Choo-Choo's Romance" and "Choo-Choo Goes Gaga-Gaga", however unlike Fancy-Fancy or Top Cat, Choo-Choo has no courage talking to girls. When he talks, his voice sounds like Woody Allen. In the movie, his voice is a bit narrow and higher and he plays bingo at a retirement. He is voiced by Marvin Kaplan and Jason Harris in the movie.
Yes. Choo-Choo is definitely the best cat, if not the "top" cat. The Woody Allen connection is a little strange however: how many people knew about him then? He was likely doing standup, and maybe he'd been on Ed Sullivan or something, but I don't think he'd been in any movies. But for some reason, Hanna-Barbera wanted a likeness of his voice, maybe for its fundamental New York-ness.
Anyway, concerning the above clip: you have to watch a specific portion, 1:09 to 1:22. It's very New Yorky, full of the funk and babble of the city and its ramshackle urban skyline. But just listen to the music! Doesn't it remind you of something, perhaps a cartoon take on Rhapsody in Blue?
Now watch the beginning of the clip from Manhattan, the first thirty seconds or so. Compare and contrast.
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Jesus, I can't believe how similar they are! When Woody begins to narrate, it's like we're hearing Choo-Choo resurrected from the Hanna-Barbera vaults.
I can't help but think that Woody unconsciously borrowed from this cartoon when making Manhattan. This is only one of many episodes that opened in a similar way. I mean. . . with a character in it who was supposed to be him. . .
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
It took me years to write, will you take a look
Order The Glass Character from:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA
Barnes & Noble
Thistledown Press
Monday, July 16, 2012
Les Meows: Victor Hugo in the trash can
Oh my GOD, I am too tired to write about Top Cat right now, but I have to get this down before I collapse! Since I started watching this show again on the Classic Toons channel, my whole life has changed. And as elegant as these opening and closing credits are - some of the neatest, most sophisticated animation I've ever seen, giving the lie to the belief that Hanna-Barbera only turned out schlock - the real discovery, or rediscovery,is a certain character: the one I used to call "The Pink Cat", my favorite Top Cat gang member when I first saw the show. When I was seven.
Which I was. Seven. And the cat was. Pink. I doubt if I knew his name then, as I was trying to keep the names of the whole gang straight and there were SIX of them which was just about one cat too many.
Another very odd thing about the show was the way they mixed cats with humans: a cat could be in a human hospital with a cat nurse, and the nurse could be engaged to a doctor who was actually a human. A cat could be a torch-singer in a night club that human males had the hots for. It was all extremely weird and anthropo - anthropo - excuse me while I spit this word out.
I do remember Arnold Stang, T.C.'s voice, from other things, including commercials for a chocolate bar called Chunky. Stang died only a couple of years ago at age 90, so doing T. C. must've been lucky for him. They only made 30 episodes of this gem, maybe because these were alley cats and part of an actual gang of no-goods who went around cheating and stealing and breaking the law. Not a very nice example for the kiddies.
But I digress. I digress because I'm so tired my head will soon roll off my shoulders and bounce down the stairs like a bowling ball. I have to just get this in before I fade out for the day: now I've found out more about The Pink Cat! His name is Choo-Choo and he is THE coolest of the gang, wearing a white turtleneck (which was very beat back in 1961) and speaking in a Brooklyn-accented voice which Wikipedia tells me was supposed to resemble Woody Allen's.
Did someone mention Woody Allen? Did anyone know who the hell he was back then? Had he even made a movie? So unless you lived in some esoteric part of New York and went to coffee houses, how would you ever be exposed to him? Jesus. Hanna-Barbera was incredibly progressive.
The thing is, this was 1961 and I was seven. And then there was this pink cat. Then my brother got home from band practice. Then I went to bed.
TAKE TWO. . .
As it turns out, yes, yes, I DO have more to say about Top Cat. It came on late enough at night that I watched it through a drowsy haze. I liked it, but it was Different. It wasn't simple like The Flintstones or dumb like Ruff and Reddy or ridiculous like Underdog or Superchicken.
Top Cat was originally meant to be a sort of cartoon version of The Phil Silvers Show, which ran some time in the late '50s and which scared the bejeezus out of me because at the start of the show, there was this cartoon guy yelling out this incoherent gibberish. Took me years to figure out it was an army guy barking orders. I was about four, so my confusion was understandable. But who gave a shit about Phil Silvers anyway? He has been completely forgotten, and for some reason his name reminds me of an empty can of cheap salmon rattling around in a garbage can. He has all the historic importance of Arthur Godfrey's discarded fingernail parings.
But back to Top Cat.
In my last rather pathetic entry, posted in a twilight state, I neglected to mention that besides his Gang of Five (and no, I'm not going to give you their idiot names because it doesn't matter: they're something like Brain, Stupid, Fleas, Burlap Sack, and Twinkie), this show had an undercurrent of Victor Hugo that was completely missed by audiences and critics alike (not to mention Nielson ratings, which were always poor).
Top Cat was a rapscallion and a scalawag and a scofflaw and all those other things good alley cats aspire to be: but he was also hunted, chased from one end of the City of New York to the other by a menacing figure.
Behold: the Inspector Javert of the alley!
OFFICER DIBBLE!
Witless as he was, this guy had such an effect on world culture in the thirty short weeks of his cartoon life that in some parts of Australia and New Zealand, "dibble" still means "the fuzz".
As a kid I used to call him Dribble, or even Drivel sometimes, as he could be incredibly stupid. But that's not the point. Our wily Jean Valjean of the alley needed an adversary, something to push against. Otherwise there'd just be no story.
As I watch these cartoons again fifty years later (oh God, it's even more than that), they look different. I now realize "the Pink Cat" couldn't have been my name for Choo-Choo because he was grey, just like all the other cartoon characters, just like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Deputy Dawg, Tennessee Tuxedo, Wally Gator, Magilla Gorilla, Twinkles the Elephant, Lippy the Lion and Hardy-Har-Har, and all the rest of them.
Now the colors look deeply saturated and incredibly vibrant, as if I've stepped over the threshhold and into the land of Oz. Those colors were there all the time, of course, but hidden beneath the veil of early '60s drabness. The veil peeled back, these cartoons are incredibly enjoyable to watch again, though I am not sure why.
Maybe it's their sweet pointlessness. Hanna-Barbera, clever as they could be, were not Victor Hugo, after all. But there are still moments that cause a little frisson of shock.
Top Cat is very New York, more New York than Woody Allen (and I've already explained how Choo-Choo, my fave character, was meant to be a Woody Allen impersonation, though frankly I like Marvin Kaplan's voice characterization better - a little more adenoidal but friendlier, not so whiny). Its New Yorkness, if ever so simplified, is crucial to every plot line.
But at the beginning of more than one episode, there's an opening shot sweeping the ramshackle skyline of T. C.'s glorious domain, accompanied by a raffish bluesy upslide on the clarinet which is strongly evocative of the first few bars of Rhapsody in Blue.
Holy God! Is THAT where that famous opening shot in Manhattan came from? Did Woody Allen really think he was being original?
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
It took me years to write, will you take a look
Order The Glass Character from:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA
Barnes & Noble
Thistledown Press
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