The Extras
The Extras
Restoring a Cinematic Legacy: Tom and Jerry The Complete CinemaScope Collection Blu-ray
Join animation historian Jerry Beck and George Feltenstein from the Warner Archive as they unfold the rich tapestry behind the Tom and Jerry CinemaScope Collection. Discover the revolutionary role of CinemaScope in the 1950s and how it breathed life into MGM studios amidst turbulent times. We promise you'll gain an understanding of how these iconic cartoons were meticulously restored, leveraging modern technology while preserving their original charm.
Celebrate the 85th anniversary of Tom and Jerry by traversing their cinematic universe. Relish fan-favorite episodes like "Pet Peeve," "Touche, Pussycat," and "The Flying Sorceress," and appreciate their timeless appeal and artistic brilliance. Whether you're an animation aficionado or a nostalgic fan, prepare for an enlightening journey that cherishes the legacy of these beloved characters.
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TOM AND JERRY: The Complete CinemaScope Collection (1954-1958) BLU-RAY
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Hi, tim Millard here, host of the Extras podcast, and today we continue our animation discussion with historian Jerry Beck and George Feltenstein from the Warner Archive. And today we're going to be talking about the Tom and Jerry CinemaScope collection. That includes 23 cartoons that were released between 1954 and 1958, plus three bonus cartoons. I think you'll really enjoy this discussion. There's a lot of good background information on this release, and then we talk about some of the specific titles on the release that we all enjoyed. Well, we have one more release we're going to talk about, guys, and I know a lot of fans have been anxiously waiting to hear our take on this one. It comes out on February 11th, so we're recording this before the 11th, but this is the highly anticipated Tom and Jerry the Complete Cinema Scope Collection 1954 to 58. I watched all of these cartoons and this is a fantastic collection. I mean no surprise to people, of course, but how did this come about, george?
George Feltenstein:I can't exactly say when I had the idea. It literally came to me and I thought, hey, this would be really cool because it takes advantage of the fact that everybody has widescreen televisions now and people in animation land really want to keep that full frame, open mat aspect ratio for the cartoons, Even those that were made to be projected at 185 in theaters. They don't want widescreen cartoons, but CinemaScope cartoons were specifically drawn that way. And going back to Jerry and my adventures in Laserdisc land, we steamrolled through the first letterbox transfers of the CinemaScope cartoons for Laserdisc and now, lo, these many years later, we have a Blu-ray.
George Feltenstein:What we were able to do is these most of these were mastered, I would say, probably in the last 10 or 12 years, probably in the last 10 or 12 years. But we put a sizable budget together to clean up any film damage, not to change. There's no DNR, there's nothing that gets in the way of the animation, but we cleaned up film damage and we also did some additional color correction because some of the colors were not right. And so we took these what I call recent masters and made them look as good as new, I think, To be able to put them all together with a nice bit rate on one Blu-ray disc and add the three cartoons that Hannah and Barbara made that weren't Tom and Jerry cartoons was the icing on the cake, and I believe that was Jerry's idea when we talked about it.
Jerry Beck:Well, I think it was, yeah, a thing we definitely should have done and we did. You know I like to be as complete and thorough, you know, whenever we're talking about these things, concocting these ideas, as we can be. You know, I figure anybody buying it, you know, may want to see that additional thing. Anyway, yeah, these are fantastic. Cinemascope we should talk about that. That was a revolution in the 1950s. I actually believe this is not based on any research or anything, it's just me, I'm just thinking. I actually believe CinemaScope, and these cartoons in particular, kept that studio alive for a few more years. You know, the MGM closed the studio, I believe, in 1956. And yeah, well, yeah, in 57. Well, they released them into at least 57. 58? Yeah.
George Feltenstein:Kyle Watchers was released in 58.
Jerry Beck:That was the last one. And keep in mind that the first Rough and Ready was on TV in 57. So the story goes that they were given what I call a soft layoff. They were told they were going to close the studio I think in I'm going to say 55, or it's 56. I forgot which year, sorry. And they were given a year to wind things down, to do the last season of cartoons, and you've got your office there for 12 more months. You'll finish the cartoons. And you know, you've got your office there for, you know, 12 more months. You'll finish the cartoons, you'll do this post-production and you can use our telephones. I mean, that was the impression I got. But so it was all hunky-dory and nice and you know that was the end of Tom and Jerry for the time being. And of course Hanna-Barbera had to figure out what they were going to do next and we all know that story. But I think that MGM might have closed earlier.
Jerry Beck:Disney closed down its shorts units in the early 50s they still made shorts, but it was one or two a year, that kind of thing. And I think because of scope and because there was a need for scope product for the theaters, this was a reason to keep making the cartoons. It's an interesting period as well because in animation history, the very beginning of these scope cartoons, as one sees if they watch it I'm sure you noticed this, tim. It starts off in the classic, what I call full-spectrum background artwork and it's just as lavish as any of the primo 1940s cartoons. But as they go along in this set they start to pick up that UPA artistic sensibility where it's a little more abstract, you know what I'm saying. And the characters themselves even begin to, you know, are modified in their design as well as they. This is what the mode was, the zeitgeist of animation in that mid-50s period. That's what represented. New was that look? And they wanted to be new, they wanted to be different.
Jerry Beck:Cinemascope was part of that because they were, of course fighting television. Television was the big scourge, the big enemy of the movies. If you were coming to see a movie, you were going to see an entertainment you could not see on TV and to see a widescreen, fully animated Tom and Jerry cartoon. I mean, that was just a perfect weapon in the arsenal of MGM in particular against that thing. These are just great cartoons because there's scope there, what I call eye-filling. The thing I tell my students when I talk about this where I teach at CalArts is that CinemaScope back then and George tell me otherwise, cinemascope back then was like IMAX today. It was usually on really large screens, peripheral vision, I mean. They really designed live action and animation for the Scope screen. It wasn't just here's the cartoon and some extra material on the left and right. It was very designed for widescreen, as many live-action movies of that time were that way as well.
George Feltenstein:You are 100% correct, as usual, and the thing is that the CinemaScope technology was basically developed under the aegis of 20th century Fox, using a system of an anamorphic lens that squeezed the image onto a traditional frame and then the projector would spread it out, and the early lenses were not that great, which caused some focal problems very early on, but they continued to perfect it and perfect it and CinemaScope was marketed by Fox as the miracle, you see, without glasses, because of course, it was preceded by the very brief tenure of 3D and its fad in the movie industry, and people didn't like the glasses and they didn't like a lot of things about 3D. But when Fox premiered the Robe which was not the first CinemaScope movie filmed, but it was the first released it was just an enormous sea change for the industry and MGM signed a licensing deal with Fox for the technology right away, and Warner Brothers eventually followed suit, as did, on occasion, columbia and Universal. Paramount developed VistaVision, which we've talked about in other podcasts and that did not use a lens that distorted the image, but rather gave you greater depth of field, but everything was about the widescreen to bring people into the movie theaters. It's interesting in terms of the timing jerry mentions, because 1956 was the year that most of classic animation hit television in a big way. The number one syndicated television cartoon series were the Popeye cartoons number one. And then the pre-'48 Warner Brothers cartoons, which had just been sold off they were very, very popular. And the Terry Toons that CBS had bought that Terry Toons animation studio. All these different cartoon series were hitting television, but not Tom and Jerry. Mgm did not put Tom and Jerry on television until 1965, Saturday mornings at CBS.
George Feltenstein:Tom and Jerry were so popular as they still are today, more popular internationally than in the United States, tremendously popular here but unbelievably popular overseas because for all intents and purposes they did not talk. So there was the universal humor of the visuals and the audio gags that made them so fresh and CinemaScope added a great deal of dimension. No pun intended. The problem with these cartoons is that when they went on television they would be panned and scanned. They would be panned and scanned, sometimes radically, when a 4x3 television was the thing, or even today where you've got broadcasters showing a 178 pan and scan of the Scope cartoons.
George Feltenstein:It is true that the first four Tom and Jerry Sc scope cartoons were also made in flat versions. They were made twice. Just like MGM made features two ways like Brigadoon, seven Brides for Seven Brothers, the Student Prince they were shot twice, once for CinemaScope and once for what was called widescreen, a 1.75 aspect ratio that matted the top and the bottom. They were really tossing the dice on what would last. Cinemascope proved its viability and that it wasn't going to go away. So MGM didn't feel the need to make two different versions of their features or cartoons anymore and in the meantime it really like when jerry and I did the laser discs years ago, creating letterbox masters of these cartoons was unheard of, you know, because people were still having their 4x3 TVs. But we wanted people to see them the right way.
George Feltenstein:I also want to clear up a little bit of a point of confusion, because the early aspect ratio for CinemaScope was 2.55 in order to make room for the magnetic stripe, for the stereophonic sound, and 20th Century Fox insisted that if you wanted CinemaScope you had to have stereophonic sound. The early cartoons, the negatives I had them checked specifically the camera negatives are 235, not 255, which is kind of weird because the industry Fox relented on the aspect ratio and agreed to 235 and optical versions like a year later. So how the cartoons ended up being 235 before Fox had blessed it is a little bit of a strange anomaly, and we don't have documentation that explains that. All I can do is tell you that our people brought in the camera negatives and looked at them very recently so that I would be able to speak with truth to what the proper aspect ratios of these cartoons are supposed to be. And they are two, three, five, and there really is no explanation as to why there's that dichotomy. Maybe someday I'll find a memo in the files that will explain it.
George Feltenstein:But I'm very pleased with the way these turned out there. It's a beautiful, very entertaining, fun disc. It's also a great value because you're paying less than a dollar a cartoon. So we think it's a really cute package. It's got lovely artwork and I just hope people will really, really enjoy it. And a lot of times we're kind of against the gun trying to make our dates and trying to get the screening copies out. This was one case where we really had a long lead time so that reviewers have their copies and as we record this, we're still a week before street date. So that's really the ideal situation. That's what I'm used to and I'm hoping we can get back to that again.
George Feltenstein:This gives me an opportunity also to take a moment to acknowledge that things around here got a little hot. I'm not trying to be funny about it. The fires literally put our studio to a stop for two weeks. People were working remotely and many of my colleagues lost their homes. Many more of my colleagues had to evacuate, including Jerry, and I was in an area that is known to be a fire zone. So, even though we were not directly affected, there was always that fear that a match could strike or somebody throw out a cigarette button. God knows what would happen.
George Feltenstein:We're coming out of this tragedy for this area, but it created a lot of. It basically brought us to a standstill. Certain people were able to get here and do their work, but a lot of people weren't, and a lot of people needed to stay home in case they had to evacuate their families and their pets, and so, until it was safe, we lost some very important work time. So if things get delayed or not happening as they should be specifically our new release announcements, which I'm hoping by the time this podcast goes live, we'll have some new release announcements to share with everyone. But it's just a very heartfelt request to everyone to understand the circumstances under which we were operating and we are in the pink to be back on track as soon as possible.
Tim Millard:Just to get back to the Tom and Jerry release, george, there were a couple of things I wanted to add to the topic. One, jerry, you mentioned the IMAX element of it was the IMAX of its day, maybe, or something along those lines. A younger person and you aren't sure about these. Keep that in mind. This is a different experience. When you put this Blu-ray in and you see it on your widescreen, it feels more modern.
Tim Millard:Just simply for that fact, it feels like wow, this is a fantastic experience of watching classic cartoons, fantastic experience of watching classic cartoons full screen, like that, and I thought that was a key point that we needed to put out there for fans who maybe are not as familiar with these cartoons. And so they're beautiful, they sound great and they're a lot of fun. I had a few that I thought were really worth going into to talk about a little bit more, that I thought maybe we could just point to for a few examples of how fantastic these are, I'd like to get your guys' take on them, but you start right off with Pet Peeve and that's just a fantastic way to start. But is it just because it was the first one that was released, george?
George Feltenstein:Yeah, it's as simple as that.
Jerry Beck:They're in the order they were released. Yeah, yeah.
Tim Millard:Yeah, so it's a, it's from the from the get go. It just starts off so much fun and then immediately you go into the second one and you've got Touche Pussycat, which is an Oscar nominee right.
George Feltenstein:Yeah.
Jerry Beck:Yeah, that's something them trying something new. I believe it was even a sequel to a previous cartoon where they just tried to put Tom and Jerry in different locations and things like that, and this one being in old France, you know lends itself visually to the cinemascope and widescreen and I think they had a lot of fun with that in particular.
Tim Millard:Well, you were talking about the international appeal and this one, basically the whole thing's in French. You know even the spoken language elements of it, so that makes it feel really international in that sense. And then you have another one there, tom and Cherie, which am I right that that was the first kind of exclusive Cinemascope release?
George Feltenstein:There was, no, there wasn't a flat version made.
Jerry Beck:Yeah, so that would be the first one. That's big, yeah, but they weren't thinking about it like that. They made them in scope and they just offered not every theater could play that, not every theater could expand and put in that screen. If you were a neighborhood theater that had 400 seats your 185 is about as wide as you can get, you know. And so CinemaScope was really special back then. It was really first run theaters and the big, the old vaudeville houses and things like that. So that was an attempt to offer it to the nabes, the neighborhood theaters. I think by the time they got into that next year, more and more theaters were running scope and they figured out other other ways.
Jerry Beck:Um, you didn't mention in between there, you didn't mention southbound duckling, which I'm only mentioning because it's right after two-shaped physique. I always like to point that one out as one of the few cartoons where tom wins. At the end he seems seemingly captures. We don't know what happens, but we see him capturing Jerry and the little. This is the duckling, yeah, in that one. So I find that to be something to point out to the, to those who say it's like people are always asking about the roadrunner Does the coyote ever catch, you know? Well, not really, but here's a rare case where he actually is getting them.
Tim Millard:Well, I also really enjoyed the Flying Sorceress.
Jerry Beck:I was hoping you were going to mention that one. Yeah, with June Frey. Yeah, june Frey is the voice and it really uses the scope screen in that one, more than even others, in my opinion, because she's flying all over the screen. I mean, I, I've actually seen that one in a theater. In fact, we ran that one when we did a tribute to june after she passed away. We purposely ran that one because, uh, it's her doing that classic witch hazel voice, but also, um, uh, the fact that the character is just all over the place on that big screen. It really looks cool.
Tim Millard:Yeah, and then I really really enjoyed Blue Cat Blues, oh yeah.
George Feltenstein:That's a very different kind of cartoon.
Tim Millard:Yeah, tom is the lovesick cat and Jerry is trying to help him. I mean, instead of the chase, you know, it just changes it up there. I thought that one was fantastic.
George Feltenstein:It added a whole other dimension to their relationship, which I think was very smart of them.
Jerry Beck:Yeah, I mean. The thing is a lot of people stereotype Tom and Jerry cartoons. Oh yeah, the cat chases the mouse, and that's really a lot of people think that's every single cartoon. There is one cartoon early, early on called Kitty Foil. That is literally them chasing each other for seven minutes. That's it. But every other one has some unique angle to it, usually a story, and sometimes the stories are bigger than that. Whether it's Mouse in Manhattan or you know, all of them have some unique take on them and that's what I think also especially makes a collection of them work. They didn't design them for being in a collection, but they really do work that way.
Tim Millard:Yeah, and maybe a little bit more in the traditional. You know Tom chasing, jerry is mucho más, but I really enjoyed that one I love. Jerry is el magnifico. I really enjoyed that one Jerry is El Magnifico.
Jerry Beck:It's the Spanish one, yeah.
Tim Millard:Tom, is this world champ that is brought in to capture that one I thought was really fun because it's the whole Spanish element of it too.
Jerry Beck:That one has particularly good backgrounds in it. It's showing off the countryside. It's almost like they sent the designer to Spain to take portraits and things. It's a very beautiful looking film.
Tim Millard:Did you guys have any other favorites that you wanted to point out?
Jerry Beck:Oh gosh, I'm a guy who just likes everything. I'm interested. I love those later ones. I don't even think the series ever went really downhill. There was no jumping the shark here. The later, later ones have, the more're really the characters are front and center. They're close up. It's all dialogue to look at this beautiful landscape, these beautiful places that they are. And even when they're stylized, they're smart. I call it smart, stylized. It's like modern art. It looks great.
Tim Millard:Yeah, how about you George?
George Feltenstein:I'm with Jerry. I mean I, you know it's like which of your children do you love the most? You know I mean they are. They're to be treasured because they represent a time and a place that we'll never see again, just like with live action features. Um, you know mgm was mgm and their cartoon department was just like. The rest of their studio is awesome. And you know we've talked endlessly about tech, savory, and we'll continue to do so and what Bill and Joe did with Tom and Jerry. At the same time, these cartoons last forever and they're really to be admired and adored and have a place on your shelf that you can watch whenever you want, Won't suddenly disappear one day.
Tim Millard:And your three bonus cartoons I thought were just fantastic, and the Goodwill to Men speaking of lasting forever, and I mean it's a theme that is timeless.
George Feltenstein:Well, goodwill to Men. As animation fans know, is actually a remake of the 1939 cartoon piece on earth which was done by Hugh Harmon on the, you know, precipice of world war two, and Bill and Joe updated it, reanimated it and brought in the whole threat of nuclear catastrophe, which makes it all the more chilling and frightening. Especially many years later, it's still as powerful as ever.
Tim Millard:Yeah, well, it's a fantastic collection. I want to thank you two for pulling this together for the fans, and I've started to see some of the reviews and they're coming in and they're all saying the same thing of how fantastic these look and, you know, maybe like wow, this seems so obvious. Why didn't we do it earlier? But it's like when you get those releases, it means that it's like touching a chord with people like, yes, this is a really good one and one that people I think really are going to want to add to their collection, because there it is, it's so packaged so well in one disc at a great price, as you mentioned, george. So I think fans are going to really, really enjoy this.
Tim Millard:Well, guys, that was a lot of animation to talk about. Yeah, it's just the beginning. Well worth it. Yeah, but it's just the beginning of the year. So, uh, I know there's a lot more. You've mentioned, george, that uh still coming this year. You mentioned last year that you two are working on more looney tunes that the fans have to look forward to, and I know that probably won't be too long before we'll hopefully have a chance to talk with you guys about that. So, listeners out there, pick up these Blu-rays, because you need to prepare yourself for the Blu-rays you're going to be picking up in another month or two as well, and just enjoy these. They are fantastic. So thanks, guys.
George Feltenstein:Well, thank you, tim. It's a pleasure to be with you, as always, and to be able to talk to the folks about what we're cooking up. Yes, well.
Tim Millard:I hope you enjoyed that discussion with Jerry Beck and George Feltenstein. I always enjoy when they're on. I learned so much about animation history and all the work that went into the restoration of these terrific cartoons, these terrific short films that were made for adults and have been enjoyed for so long. And this is the 85th anniversary of Tom and Jerry, so it's a terrific time for us to be celebrating these releases. If you haven't yet picked up your copy, be sure and look in the podcast show notes for the link, and you can purchase that today. If you're enjoying the podcast, please think about subscribing or following at your favorite podcast provider. Until next time you've been listening to Tim Millard, stay slightly obsessed about animation.