Thursday, July 17, 2008

of sea-sick sea-serpents

This is my second attempt at this post. Sometimes YouTube dumps a post for some strange reason. It's happened to me twice this week and I didn't have the time to recreate what I had written - so I went without posting. I need to get into the practice of creating my post in Word before logging onto YouTube. That being said - on with the post!
Time for Beany & Cecil by Bob Clampett. The original 1962 release of the cartoon was Matty's (Mattel) Funday Funny's. Mattel got tired of using Casper the Friendly Ghost and went with Beany and his sea sick sea-serpent. The show became Matty's Funday Funny's with Beany & Cecil. It wasn't long before it was called The Beany & Cecil Show. It was one of three shows that were produced in color. The other shows were The Flintstones and The Jetsons.
There was an attempt to revive the cartoon in the late eighties. Eight shows were made and only five aired. This last reincarnation was produced and directed by John Kricfalusi, who later created Ren & Stimpy.
I once saw an interview with Harpo Marx's son (Marx Brother's fame) who said that his dad, Harpo, didn't watch much television but loved to watch Beany & Cecil. The episodes were filled with slapstick and puns. I can see where Harpo got a kick from that particular show.
Another tidbit of information. Joel Hodgson said that Beany & Cecil was an inspiration for his show Mystery Science Theatre 3000. You may recall that Beany & Cecil Show had a character named Crowy....MST 3000 had a character named Crow. Perhaps Joel was paying homage to B&C.
Here's an image of the outside of Bob Clampett's business card. Pretty cool huh? Upon opening, there are various illustrations of his cartoon characters. Bob was a cartoon pioneer that was involved in a lot of the early Warner Brother's cartoons. If you have the time - go check out some of the Beany & Cecil cartoons posted at YouTube. It might bring back some old memories for some of you older Babyboomers out there.

No comments: