Fanny Friday

 

It's a Fanny Friday!

 

We're putting words in Fanny's mouth!

 We've been having a little late-night fun with 'Flapper Fanny Says', with the viewers/side-chatters of my YouTube Channel coming up with the jokes to go with some Ethel Hays and Gladys Parker drawings. Going forward, we'll be sharing the results as an extra post on every other Fanny Friday!

In addition to the post here, you'll be able to vote for your favorite of the jokes on the YouTube Channel's Community Page, here. (And if you like what you see, please subscribe to the channel, and come by and hang out with us some night!)

This is the cartoon (selected for today, because it's almost fitting for Mermay):

Here are the five best of the jokes the YouTube viewers came up with:

"There are plenty of other fish in the sea... like blobfish."

"Is that a harpoon in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"

"You get we your way, I'll get wet mine."

"Oh, I don't come here to swim. I'm here to show off my suit."

"'Just the tip' of my toes."

Flapper Fanny

It's Fanny Friday

You can review these posts here at Shades of Gray to see if our dancers are covered or not.

Flapper Fanny on National Secretary's Day

Fanny Friday

The more things change, the more they stay the same...

An important reminder from Shades of Gray...

For most filers, U.S. Federal income tax return (and most state income tax return) filings must be submitted by Tuesday, April 18. This is particularly important if you have to pay additional taxes instead of getting a refund. It'd down to the last few hours, folks!

Meanwhile, Fanny feels fortunate that they've not yet figured out how to directly tax her good looks.

It's a Fanny Friday!

An amusing silent comedy with new music!

The Water Plug (1920)

Starring: Billy Franey, Robert McKenzie, and Silas Wilcox

Director: George Jeske

Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A hobo (Franey) acquires a fake fire plug and a policeman's badge, and sets out to make some money taking bribes from motorists trying to get out of parking tickets.

 

"The Water Plug" is a swiftly moving comedy that consists of a series of loosely connected gags, first involving water and then the water plug of the title as our hobo hero tries to earn a dishonest buck. 

The strength of this film rests with the fact that it's non-stop action from the very beginning through the final fade. While not every gag is bust-a-gut funny, all will at least invoke a smile... and if you don't laugh during the "gopher" sequence, you may need to look into a sense of humor transplant.

One thing I also appreciated about the version that formed the basis for this post (and which you can watch by clicking below) is the original score--composed and performed by Ben Model. Too many of the silent movies you find uploaded to YouTube or elsewhere are saddled with some random bits of public domain music that rarely fits the mood of the film, and hardly ever matches the action on screen. On a simlar note, I also appreciated the history provided as to how this comedy was "accidentially preserved".

It's a Fanny Fool's Day!

 

Fanny Friday

In 1927--the year this week's Flapper Fanny cartoon was originally published--the U.S. was fully engulfed by the Black Bottom dance craze. For more information, and to see demonstrations, check out this previous Shades of Gray post.

It's Women's History Month...

... and Flapper Fanny makes a special appearance (via the pens of trailblazing female cartoonists Ethel Hays and Gladys Parker) with commentary on changing fashion.

In 1928...

In 1938... 

Then, Now, and In the Future...

Fanny Friday

It's Women's History Month...

... so here's one more cartoon about 1920s fashions from illustrator and writer Ethel Hays.

A fun but sloppy entry in the 'Cartoonland' series

Alice Chops the Suey (aka "Alice in Chinatown") (1925)
Starring: Margie Gay
Director: Walt Disney
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

When Alice is kidnapped by cartoon Chinese gangsters, her animated cat friend sets out to save her.

 

 "Alice Chops the Suey" is a so-so entry in the "Alice Comedies" (referred to as "Alice in Cartoonland" in these parts where the strengths are almost cancelled out by the weaknesses. It was an early series animated by Walt Disney himself, and if it tells us anything about Disney, it's that his talent for gathering and managing creative teams was superior to his own creative talents.

Coming during the latter half of the series, and ostensibly starring the fourth and final girl to play the live-action character having adventures in a cartoon world, this short film is literally non-stop action from beginning to end. Like some of the other best moments in the series, the fun it has with cartoon-world physics and the malleability of animated characters are also highlights here, especially if you have a taste for surrealism and the absurd.

On the downside though, there is a lack of attention to detail that felt sloppy and that I found frustrating. The most obvious example of this is the way Alice's shape changed to appear more like one of the natives of the Cartooniverse when she was put in a bag and carried off by the gangsters. I've previously commented on how disappointed I was when the live-action Alice turned into an animated Alice for no reason other than to make the scene easier to execute, but it's never been as badly and sloppily done as it is here. At the very least, Disney could have bothered to make the struggling character in the bag thinner, to match Alice.

I was also annoyed by the way this installment opened, but not for the reasons I understand that has frustrated other reviewers.

I've seen negative comments directed at "Alice Chops the Suey" because its opening moments are a clear and obvious "rip-off" of Fleischer Studios' Out of the Inkwell shorts. I didn't see that as a negative, but more as Disney acknowledging where the inspiration for his series mixing live-action and animation came from... even if Fleischer consistently did it better than Disney ever managed to do.

To my mind, the biggest flaw here is that Disney either forgot the set-up of the series and that the "borrowed" opening from Out of the Inkwell doesn't fit with how he uses it. Alice is NOT a creation of pen and ink, but is instead a flesh-and-blood being who enters Cartoonland. It makes no sense for her to pop out of the ink well, especially not since she isn't a drawn character. I don't know if the target audience for the series would be bothered by this, but it cast a pall over the entire episode for me. And the pat ending didn't help. 

Ultimately, though, the good almost cancels out the bad here, with "Alice Chops the Suey" being fast-paced and goofy enough to entertain.

It's a Very Fanny St. Patrick's Day!

It's Women's History Month...

... so here's another cartoon from the 1920s about women's fashion trends, by author/illustrator Ethel Hays. (Her self-titled cartoon series was syndicated to over 500 newspapers.)

It's Women's History Month...

 ... so here's a 100+ year-old cartoon about women's fashion trends, by cartoonist and children's books author/illustrator Ethel Hays. 

Among Hays' creations were "Flapper Fanny Says" and her self-titled "Ethel" series, which were syndicated to over 500 newspapers during the 1920s and early 1930s. ("Flapper Fanny" appeared daily while "Ethel" was two or more times a week.)

Hays stepped away from newspaper cartooning to focus more on her children and family, but she continued to illustrate children's books.

'Alice the Jail Bird' is pretty good

Alice the Jail Bird (1925)
Starring: Margie Gay
Director: Walt Disney
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

After stealing a pie and getting caught by the police, Alice and two of her cartoon animal friends are sentenced to prison and hard labor.

"Alice the Jail Bird" is a simple and straight-forward short film that I think will be appreciated even by the modern members of its target audience--six- and seven-year-old kids--more than it will by adults. That said, I think even little kids will be frustrated by the numerous sequences that drag on beyond the point where they are interesting, as well as wonder why one of the three companions is ignored and left behind during the inevitable jailbreak.

Another flaw, although a purely technical one that may bother me more than most viewers, is the poorly executed integration of animation and live action footage. While Alice does interact more with the animated characters than she does in several other entries in the series, the combination of live-action and animation still pales in comparison to the conceptually similar series from the Fleischer Studios, Out of the Inkwell featuring Ko-Ko the Clown. The film also sloppily breaks with its own conceit when live-action Alice is replaced with an animated Alice in the "long shots". Although I doubt it is something that will annoy the target audience--if they even notice--but it annoyed me enough to knock a Star off my rating. The scenes where Live-Action Alice is replaced by Animated Alice also happen to be the ones where there's the greatest degree of action and interaction between Alice and the animated world. It's a shame that Disney didn't have the budget or the technical know-how/equipment to keep the Alice character purely live action, because some of the sequences in this film would have been amazing. As it is, it's just an annoying bit of incompetence that breaks the consistency of the imaginary world of the series.

Despite its flaws, this is still one of the better entries I've seen of this series. The events all tie together to form a fairly coherent story and most of the gags serve action that moves the story forward. Even better, the character of Alice has a role that warrants her name being in the title; she is not central to all the action, but she is a central mover to the plot. 

What I enjoyed the most about "Alice the Jail Bird", though, is the nutty cartoon-world physics that's on display throughout the film. While some of the gags are stretched beyond what's good for them, they remain great examples of the surreal weirdness that makes even these weaker shorts from the 1920s and 1930s still worth watching.
 

And speaking of watching -- you can watch "Alice the Jail Bird" right here in this post. Just click below and sit back.