Posted on 06/09/2019 3:32:17 PM PDT by MNDude
When I was a kid, I loved to wake up Saturday morning to watch The Bugs Bunny Roadrunner hour. I bought the Looney Tunes golden collection which should contain most of the episodes, and it is money well spent. Those episodes never get old.
But I was wondering, is there anyone here old enough to remember how they were originally broadcast back in the 40s and 50s? I doubt they had Saturday morning cartoon lineups back then. Did you have to go to the movie theaters to watch them or what?
I like Betty Boop cartoons today more than I did as a kid. My favorite is “Minnie the Moocher” (1931) which features Cab Calloway & the Cotton Club Orchestra.
1948 here.
When I was about ten our local supermarket would provide free passes to the Saturday matinee for kids. My younger siblings and I would look forward to watching the cartoons and maybe a western or space man short.
Not all cartoons were created equal. We very much looked forward to our favorites. I especially liked Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, The Road Runner. I was unamused by some of the older cartoons that featured depictions of Hollywood actors or singers. I seldom knew who they were supposed to be and the gags didn't seem funny at all.
The remake of Dumbo leaves out the hipster crows
There’s one episode of
Engineer Bill on YouTube,
Amazing.
We did not get TV until 1970, but my best friend’s parents owned the Trading Post not far from my house so my brother and I would hike over there and watch Saturday morning cartoons. The theater still often showed them between movies too so it was changing over I guess in the 60s at least in small towns. Cartoons and movies were something town kids had that we got to see sometimes.
1942 here.
I got to go to the Star theater on Saturday,
and pay nine cents for a movie, cartoon, and serial.
The thing I noticed was that my shoes wanted to
stick to the floor. Kids spilling their drinks,
I figured. Looking back, I HOPE that’s what it was.
I’m a little surprised.
I didn’t know that. Good for you, but Cab Calloway was not one of the best known acts in the segregated South at that time. Some punk kid name “Elvis” was the “cool” thing back then.
I was transitioning from the Wiliam Tell Overature (Lone Ranger intro) to Roll Over Beethovan (Chuck Berry) at this time. It was only later that I came to like and appreciate Cab Calloway.
BTW, the only cartoons shown were between double header horror movies at the local drive-in. Sometimes I watched the cartoon if the car windows were not fogged up.
Great memories.
Especially getting horse-collared by a speaker wire. Didn't know they had switched to radio. They didn't have drive-ins where I moved after I got out of the service... Right, and by that time most of the old drive-ins had been torn down, it seems. Those were the days! Fun days. Sometimes painful days, lol.
They were shown on TV in the late 50’s.
One of my professors used to invite all of us over to his house a couple of times a year. He ALWAYS had an endless loop of cartoons playing. Yeah, weird.
He said that cartoon music from that era was the original Avant-Garde music. I can't disagree with him. Look up Carl Stalling. He did most of that music.
If you’d come to my house, there would have
been an endless loop of Andrew Dice Clay.
Don't forget Space Angel.
Kill de Wabbit, Kill de Wabbit...
Interestingly, my favorite piece of music when I was a kid was "The William Tell Overture." However, my favorite movement was not Galop (or "Cavalry Charge," the Lone Ranger theme) but The Storm. Nowadays, my favorite movement is Ranz des Vaches (Cattle Call), which immediately precedes Galop.
Incidentally, I saw Cab Calloway perform at the Hollywood Bowl in Hollywood, Calif. in 1991--one of his last appearances.
Cool! I’m glad to see I’m not the first one to mention Carl Stalling.
Many of the studios also had a music publishing interest
and/or record co., so interspersed with the
great original stylings by Stalling, Bradley, and others
would be musical quotes
from decades worth of catalog, subliminally driving sales of
records and sheet music. The acquisition of publishers also
was a hedge against 3rd party synchronization fees.
WB enforced an inclusion of an entire song
in early days.
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