The Extras
The Extras
Previewing Woody Woodpecker Golden Age Collection Blu-ray with Jerry Beck
Animation historian Jerry Beck joins the podcast for a preview of the upcoming Woody Woodpecker and Friends Golden Age Collection Blu-ray. Our wide-ranging and entertaining discussion reveals his involvement with the Woody Woodpecker releases from Universal over the years. We trace how Woody Woodpecker and the Walter Lantz library moved from dormancy to restored Blu-rays, powered by curation, overseas masters, and the rise of MeTV Toons. Along the way, you'll hear insights and stories on Woody Woodpecker history as only Jerry can provide.
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Hi, Tim Lard here. And recently there's been a lot of classic animation announced, and Universal announced that coming in January, there will be another Woody Woodpecker release, this time called Woody Woodpecker and Friends, the Golden Age Collection. And that has 25 theatrical shorts now remastered in HD, plus quite a few extras on there as well. Well, that has led to a lot of questions about how's this different from the screwball collection released in 2021. And then going all the way back to the DVDs that were released, uh, how is that different as well? Is there any tie into the Meat TV tunes? So I went to somebody who would know all this, and that's animation historian Jerry Beck. So he's joining me today. And I think you'll enjoy hearing what he has to say about all the various DVD Blu-ray Me TV tunes and the showing of all the Walter Lance cartoons there. So a lot of great information there. And then we have submitted questions for Jerry that we're going to dive into a little later on. So I think you'll enjoy that. Stick around for that as well. Jerry provides such great stories, background, and history on Woody Woodpecker and all this classic animation. He also delves into a little bit about how do these kind of all come together in terms of from the studio, what's his involvement, and I think you'll find that fascinating. So here's my conversation with Jerry. Hello and welcome to The Extras. I'm Tim Millard, your host, and joining me is animation historian Jerry Beck. And Jerry, we're gonna talk some Woody Woodpecker.
Jerry Beck:Oh yeah. How are you doing? Okay. Um doing fine. It's uh, you know, a great new year coming up for the world of classic animation. I mean, it's unbelievable. The world outside gets too crazy. Classic cartoons is your escape, and I think I have lots of answers for that.
Tim Millard:Well, it's been a great year for the classic animation, and then now we're talking about uh the upcoming release of the Woody Woodpecker. Uh, this will be the Golden Age Collection Blu-ray with 25 new theatrical cartoons uh remastered in HD. But before we kind of get into that, I did want to go backwards just a little bit um and ask you just like I mean, I I know you are an expert in Woody Woodpecker, but how far back does that go? And when did you start doing that?
Jerry Beck:You mean my relationship with the uh universal, or do you mean just my own personal love of cartoons? What do you mean?
Tim Millard:No, I I mean obviously Chowdh it goes, but I mean like uh uh we talk a lot of Looney Tunes, but when have you always been also a Woody Woodpecker historian?
Jerry Beck:Well, I quick answer, although it may not be the quick answer to that, would be that I I love all the classic golden age Hollywood cartoons, and Woody Woodpecker was a major character of the 1940s mainly and 1950s and so on. You know, he was sort of the Mickey Mouse mascot, you know, for the universal theme parks for a long, long time. By the way, I digress because I I went, I actually took a day off yesterday and went to the uh Universal theme park here in Los Angeles, Universal Hollywood, and I went on a mission hunting for any reference to Woody Woodpecker, and I found two, actually. Uh, but that's it. I found a mug. Wow, they actually still make a mug with Woody Woodpecker on it. And uh, there was a poster that was in one of the back rooms of one of the places. But that was about it. Woody Woodpecker's been replaced by the Minions and Dr. Seuss and the Grinch and things like that. Anyway, but I I know, as many of us did, many of us of a certain age, in the late 50s and 60s, there was a Woody Woodpecker TV show sponsored by Kellogg's. And Walter Lance actually hosted it in live action, and he told us how to draw and how to make animated cartoons. It was very cool. Yeah. Uh he really explained the whole method and the system. And they showed a lot of the classic cartoons on that show. And, you know, there you go. It's like he's just part of the mix, the same mix with Huckleberry Hound and the classic Looney tunes in Popeye. So uh just Woody Woody has been there. Woody has been there, but unlike some of those others, uh, Woody's belonged to one of the other conglomerates, you know, Universal Pictures. So, you know, they've done things with the character throughout the years. In recent years, recent years being the last 25 or so, the the characters sort of slowly disappearing off the face of the earth. So I feel like uh, you know, I it's my duty to keep all my friends, all my cartoons from that period alive and uh make them available one way or another.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
Jerry Beck:If you want to hear a little story, I'll tell you another story about how they got on the DVD first. In fact, I don't remember, but do you uh we we put out two uh DVD collections. Here they are, actually. Right. Back on I don't remember what years these were, but I think uh 2007. Okay. 2007, it looks like 2008. And the story there is um that was a few years after the uh golden collections that George and I worked on the Looney Tunes Golden Collections, and they were selling really well. This was the golden age of DVD, and I really felt then I had been doing this, as George says many times, with George and others at other companies. I'd worked in the VHS era. I helped get the Betty Boop cartoons out on Republic, you know, on Laserdisc and VHS. And I worked with uh Disney on a lot of their collections. I worked with George at MGMUA. I worked with Warner Brothers separately when they weren't together until they finally came together. I've done a lot of that stuff. I'm sure I'm forgetting everything that I did with that. I worked with Columbia House. Remember that? Columbia House had the first VHS, then then they went DVD. And when I was with Columbia House, I I uh worked on the there was a like a 20 or so volume Looney Tunes set that came out every month like a subscription. And then they they they wanted to do Walter Lance and they made a deal with Universal. That was tricky because they didn't have all the cartoons, what I call loose, they had them all part of the the Walter Lance, you know, the TV show that I grew up on. Uh, but they didn't, and I trying to explain to them these were actually theatrical shorts that are separate was pretty crazy. I kind of couldn't do it back then. I did what I could, but we did that. And so all of this was in my DNA. And then when the DVD, and then later Blu-ray came about, you know, I wanted to make sure these characters were on whatever that medium was at the time. And so when we were doing well with Looney Tunes, and I remember the movie Happy Feet, a CG animated movie that won the Oscar, I believe, for best uh animated film that year. I think Robin Williams had a voice, I think, in it. And um, that was like popular at the time. What happened was I decided I did a cold call. I did something I rarely do. I mean, I didn't know anybody. I didn't know anybody who knew anybody who worked for Universal Home Entertainment. Uh, so I did a quick internet search. I somehow found the name of the president of it. I wrote the guy a nice little letter that said, I'm working, uh, I'm freelance, but I'm working with uh Warner Brothers. We just did this. And I mentioned, I did, I made it very concise. I figured he could look up things, see how we were doing. And I said, you know, I'd love to talk to you about doing the same thing with what you have. You have this Walter Lance library. And I mentioned in particular Chili Willy because Happy Feet was a movie about penguins. I figured maybe that would help. And the next thing you know, within a day or so, literally within 24 hours, I got an email back from the guy. And he said, Hey, let's make a meeting come in next week. Okay. So I went into Universal. I brought, you know, odds and ends, show and tell. And they said they were, this is what they told me in that meeting. They said we were contemplating putting out an all Woody Woodpecker set. And on the one hand, I understand that and I understand why collectors would want that. And maybe, I'm not saying it's gonna happen, but maybe someday that could could actually happen on Blu-ray. But it's not planned. So nobody, nobody spread rumors. But um, I went in there and they said they were gonna do that. And I said, well, I got a better idea. Let's may, I would suggest you do it the way we do it with uh the Golden Collection, where we mix up the characters. It's a bigger library than that. And honestly, the first collection is pretty much my dream. It's exactly what I wanted to do. In fact, I picked everything that's on here. The idea was, and I'll have to remind myself, but the idea was we would have mainly the Woody Woodpecker cartoons on the first disc. That would be most of the ones from the 40s, uh, which is the best ones. This was still a period where they're spent money to put things like this together and to remaster the cartoons and things like that. I'm looking to remind myself what was this giant set. Yeah. We had Woody Woodpecker. Oh, yeah, we had Woody spread out over three discs, and it was all the 1940s going into the 1950s. And then I said, and then we'll have these little subunits on each disc. The first one on the first disc was Oswald the Rabbit. We had five Oswald the Rabbits, and cartoon classics were miscellaneous cartoons from the history of Lance, and then Andy Panda on the on the second disc, the Swing Symphonies, which is a great series. Then on the third one, uh Chili Willy, and then Cartoon Classics, I made sure to get in all the four tech savories that were done at Lance on here. I made sure to get any oddities, especially ones I hadn't seen, because there were a few. And I put on ones that might have been politically incorrect. I'll be honest about it, because what the hell? They're like at Warner's, if there's a problem, they'll tell me this. We can't do that one. You can pick another title. So imagine my surprise when uh they told me they were going to put put every title I suggest, oh my God, okay. Kept my mouth closed, didn't say anything about that. Oh, we also had uh bonus materials of which our most proudest of, and some of those were uh, you know, uh some of those little interstitials from the Woody Woodpecker show that show Walter Lance giving behind the scenes information. My my most proudest was there was this 1936 black and white short subject that Universal made back in 1936, showing the behind the scenes of making an Oswald a rabbit cartoon. And that's really rare. And there were bootleg duopie prints that were around. And I, if I could get that on here, that would be the killer. And it was at the last second they said, okay, we found it. We found the nag. We're gonna, and they restored it and put it on here. And I'm like, oh my God, this is this is if they do no more, this is okay. But then it did so well that they said, you want to do a second? I said, Yeah, count me in. And we did a second, and we took the Woody Woodpecker cartoons, I think, throughout up through the 1950s, and uh we had enough for to do a third set. And I put on more bonus material and pilots and all sorts of things that I knew they had. I loved it because I was telling them what they had. They had to go and look for it and they found it. And but you know, I I love that. I love that because the the studios don't have a George Feltenstein. George is unique. Let's praise George on this. George is a unique person. I don't know how many people beyond me and how many times I say this in my travels. I wish this company had a George Feltenstein. I would, I think he's become a trademark, a brand name now for the type of person that these companies need who know they have the institutional knowledge of the library. They know George is way beyond that. He knows the films, he knows what happens in all the films and the shorts and the TV shows. And he knows all the contracts and who owns what and what the problem would be. You know, nobody, there's nobody like that. There's nobody at a in, you know, as part of their business affairs, or there's nobody at any company like that. And George is extremely important at Warner Brothers. Yeah. I wish there were people like him at Paramount Universal, uh, at Disney, 20th Century Fox, that library, and others. Um uh there are good people, and there are some really, really good people at these companies, but you know, George has sort of always been in the position where he can, you know, uh act upon a good idea. You know, let's put out this, you know, that kind of thing.
Tim Millard:And and just just to clarify for I answer the question.
Jerry Beck:I don't think I did, but go ahead.
Tim Millard:No, I just want to clarify for those folks who don't listen to the extras or or watch us on YouTube that often that George Feltenstein is from the Warner Brothers and specifically the Warner Archive now. Uh, but he's been there since um, I guess you since he was at MGM and there Turner bought them, and then Turner was purchased by the yeah.
Jerry Beck:I always think his history, but he he's he's always been attached to that library one way or another, starting with him being a a 16 millimeter film salesman uh in New York, and then and then uh working for MGM UA and and then one point when laserdisks were hot, he was in charge of that whole home video department, and uh uh and then and then went to when uh I guess when Turner and Warner merged, I guess he came over to Warner. So he's been there the whole time, you know.
Tim Millard:And uh well, going back, you mentioned that third DVD. Was that ever released? No.
Jerry Beck:No, uh, no, no, it wasn't. What happened was this, and this is the finish completing finishing up with the story that I was saying, was I went in there and we talked about that. We did the first one, major success. Second one was the beginning of the decline of DVD in the later 2000s. And people don't remember that. I mean, I worked on a lot of DVD projects with companies, um, which I remember in 2009, even uh companies that had high hopes about certain projects on DVD were telling me it didn't sell well, it didn't work, you know. Oh well, it was it was ending. And I was telling people at the time it's it's declining, it's a problem, and we're not gonna get the libraries out. That's why when I do these sets like uh the Golden Collections in the beginning and this and others, look, I try my best to put out what I believe. I admit I'm a one-man show, and at least back in those days. I put out what I believe are uh the ones that as a historian and a and a uh teacher of animation history and a writer of books on it, that these are the ones that you need to see, that you should have. You know what I mean? It's not, it's really, really curated. It's not uh blind, as I say. It's not blindly like you pick any title. So uh it they're important titles. In some ways, in later years, I've actually picked titles that I think I need to show this in my class, so I need to have it on Blu-ray so I can show it. So I'll purposely do that. But you are getting kind of the best, the cream of the crop. Now, the goal for George and me, and the goal for me for sure, is to get everything out. We want it all. I'm like the fans, I'm like the people watching this podcast, I want it all. I want every classic Hollywood cartoon. I have a horrible beat-up copy of a book I'm very proud of that I didn't write, but Leonard Malton did. And I was his associate, sorry, it's a beat-up copy of it myself from 1980. And I hate, I don't normally promote myself, but I was the the uh research person on this. I worked with Leonard on the book, and it's a it's still in print and it's a classic. And in the back of the book, one of the things we did was a filmography of all the classic Hollywood cartoon, just a giant list that takes up many, many pages. And honestly, I've been saying to people for a long time, my goal is to get everything, everything in that filmography available. One way or another, you can see it. And by the way, the the work to do that is not complete. We do not live in a world where you can see every film that's on it. I mean, you'd yeah, in a way, you may, maybe, if you uh, you know, go on YouTube or you look for uh, you know, you look for bootleg discs or something. But for the most part, legally and and restored and this and that, I want all that stuff back out there if I can help uh make that happen. I I I think I've done a lot, and I there's much more to do. There is much more to do.
Tim Millard:Yeah, yeah. So let's let's get back to Woody Woodpecker here because to the point of the DVD, do we jump then all the way to 2021 with that release of the screwball collection before there was any more uh Woody released? You're talking about Blu-ray. Yeah, now on Blu-ray, of course. But I mean, I mean, was there basically a 10-year span where that much was released, if anything?
Jerry Beck:Yeah. And here's the thing. Here's again, to continue that story, once I was now in touch with the key people I needed to be in touch with at Universal, we did that first one, it was successful. We did that second one, that was okay. It was certainly successful in terms of the content of it. I I stayed in touch with them. I never kind of let go. I would have periodic emails or phone calls. What about number three? Could we do this? How about that? I did work for Universal on a variety of projects in between, and you'll know what they are. They are the Rankin Bass Christmas specials and that sort of thing. In fact, I I don't know if this was mentioned on your show, but about a year or two, two years ago, tell me if uh this is a highly unusual thing. But uh I I had a little bit to do with uh they they released a set on Blu-ray. It was a multi-disc set of all the Rankin Bass Christmas specials. And if you look at the side of it, it was a co-production of Warner Brothers and Universal. Has that ever happened before on disc on physical media? They they cooperated with each other to do a complete collection of uh, you know, they have Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, but in in the case of the Rankin Bass uh specials, it turns out that the first group, the first half are owned by Universal, the second half are owned by Warner Brothers. So they came together and they they did that. And um so I things like that. I've been involved with some of the Rankin Bass stuff that Universal released throughout the years. That was my intermediary period. So I've been in touch. I've even gone to the TCM festival and hung out and sat next to the Universal guys. And I'm and I, you know, I'm always I'm I'm a bit aggressive. I'm like, you know, the cartoons, you know, we got to get them. And so what happened? And this may be the question you were going towards, like, well, how did it get on DVD at all? Now, the thing is, as the fortunes for physical media, and I hope I'm not telling tales out of school, I don't know uh the fortunes internally at Universal, but the fortunes for physical media in general were declining throughout the years. And the but yet these companies still have these departments putting out new movies and old movies, you know, on physical media. So I still stayed in touch. They basically told me at a certain point, maybe a few years ago, maybe during COVID, they were like, There's no money. We have not a penny. And us they literally they didn't say it, but they were kind of indicating if you can figure out how we could do this, and it won't cost us one cent. One cent, we'd probably do it. Uh I A lot of colleagues now, a lot of good friends and and and fans who write to me about this or that and why don't we do this? And people suggest things to me because they know I'm involved. And one of my friends, I was telling him about uh I'd love to get Woody Woodpeckers on, but they won't they won't lift a finger. Now, this was a year before this came out. They won't list a finger to really to restore anything, they won't do anything, they won't spend any money. I don't see how we're gonna do it or how I can talk them into it. And this friend wrote me back a few days ago or something after that and said, uh, I found a channel on YouTube that's in like Arabic. Honestly, I don't remember the line, it was like Egyptian or something. And it's got Woody Woodpecker cartoons, and they're dubbed, you know, an Egyptian or something. But look, he said, look at them. They look really good. They look like really high quality. And I looked at it and I'm like, oh shit, this is restored. But it was it was only a handful of the cartoons. So I contacted my friend with a link to one of them, and I said, you know, in Europe, and I knew this already throughout the years, as you may or may not know, um, uh Woody Woodpecker is very popular around the world, more so than the United States. And so I've been involved with slightly with Woody Woodpecker things that were done for Europe. And uh there was a documentary that was made. There's all sorts of things that were done for foreign countries. So I was aware of this foreign love uh for Woody. So I wrote to my friend there. He didn't know about this. He said, I said, these look, could you look into it? And he did. He looked in this took months. I mean, I called him. This was typical with my universal relationship. It's not like George and I talk every week. You know, universal, maybe, you know, if lucky if I talked to him once a month or every two or three months. He called me back a while later, a while later, months, and said, we we researched it, and there's 25 cartoons that have been restored in Europe, you know, blah, blah, blah, and we can get them. Are they good? And he sent me the list. And he said, Are these good? Are these can we do a disc with this? And I said, Yeah, we could. In fact, I actually said there's a couple in here. I I would just stick with these 1940s Woody Woodpeckers, which I forgot the number of that. It was like 20 or something, or something like that. And I said, I would maybe cut out the other five because they're like later, you know. Uh, not that they were bad. They were just, I just thought, let's keep it pure to the, you know, and maybe there'd be hope. My hope is always when we put out a DVD or something that that it sells well enough that they'll come back and say, we want to do another. Sure. That was always my hope.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
Jerry Beck:So they ended up saying, you know, we want to go with 25. 25 sounds like a better number. All right, you know, it's the sales. I'm not in the I said, listen, there's some great Woody Woodpecker original art that the heritage auctions, you you know, you don't even have to hire an artist to paint the cover. We could actually use a real still from one of the opening titles or something. And they were like, we don't have any again. I got the speech, and I get the speech often. We don't have any money. I go, but these are done, so we'd be happy to put them out because it won't cost us anything to do it. And except what are we gonna do about the packaging? And they said, well, finally they came back and told me later that they were just gonna use the same, this this is the DVD, and this is the artwork from the right, sure. So says we're just gonna reuse it and change the name, and that's it. And uh, I think they they asked me, and that was he said, Do you want to give us a quote or something for the back? And I said, Yeah, because that would be my only acknowledgement that I had anything to do with this thing. And I wanted that acknowledgement. Sure. So uh, but I I wrote the copy on the back, and I use things like that. I do things like that. That's what I do. Well, similarly, the new one that's coming out has volume two from the DVD's artwork is on the cover. They don't want to spend any money. People are always saying, Well, why don't they do this? Why don't they do that? This is the only way they would do anything, and I thought it's worth the shot. Sure. Because, hey, it's great to have these restored, beautiful blue, you know, on Blu-ray. Anything. Let's get them out there.
Tim Millard:Yeah. Well, I I I think you bring up some really good points. And and for our audience who are obviously animation fans, I'm gonna drop a little bomb, Jerry. You're gonna probably agree with this. But when you're an animation fan and you're on Facebook or in your forum and it's all animation people that you're talking to all the time, you think there's a big audience for these. And then when you're working for the studio and you look at the number of sales, you say it's a pretty small niche audience for these. It's a very intense audience. I that may be very, very fanatical, and they will buy it, but when it comes to pure numbers, and it's the the fact that, okay, do we have the budget to take Well, I see I could I could dispute?
Jerry Beck:Yeah, I mean, you may I don't know the numbers, but I I don't I uh what I do know is if it works uh and it's successful, like okay, that brings me to the second then the continuation of the same story. So the they put this out, and no kidding, this was like two years ago or something. They called me up at the end of the year, I forgot when it came out, but they called me up at the end of the year and they said, This is the universal home video, or whatever they call themselves these days. And um, because they always change their names. It's universal home entertainment. They said, uh, whether he was just pulling my leg or something, he said, he goes, Oh, that Woody, that that was one of our biggest sellers of the year. So I don't know what that means compared to their maybe they had, you know, the Monpah Catalog. I don't know what else they're putting out. But and they, of course, they have their movies, you know. They're I don't know about that's even counted as part of, you know, I'm sure that the mainstream, you know, you know, Fast and Furious films they're putting out are selling more than Woody Woodpecker. Right. But I they were very impressed with the sales.
SPEAKER_02:Sure.
Jerry Beck:And so they did say, if I heard of any more Woody Woodpecker cartoons that that were being restored, you'd think they'd want to do that. You know, if if I knew of any other way to put a collection together with restored, just like we did that one, let them know. Right. That's by the way, leads us to the new one that's about to come out. Yeah.
Tim Millard:Is that is that what led to this one? That in this new golden, I mean, it's called the Golden Age Collection, so it's not like Screwball Collection 2, volume two, it's a whole new name.
Jerry Beck:Yeah, I don't know what to speak to that. I think the word collection is the thing that that that binds everything. Um, yeah, what happened was this, and here's where I can plug Me TV tunes. In the interim between this set and the new one, uh Me TV Tunes uh started. Right. And I'm part of that too. I won't go into the whole story. We did a podcast about it. There's too much to say about the origins and the the mindset of what the philosophy of the channel is. You know, is it aimed at kids? Is it aimed at adults? It's aimed at adults. But all right, the thing is, uh Me TV Tunes Neil Saban, if you're listening, you he's the greatest. Everybody should, he's the George Feltenstein of broadcast television. He really is. He really is. He's he knows his stuff. He's a movie, TV, and cartoon buff. And that's exactly the kind of person that should be doing these sort of things. And um, you know, he told me at one point, I don't I don't want to get too much into the story, but he told me at one point, but way before Me TV Tunes, that uh that the their Tune In With Me cartoon show was very highly rated on the on the channel. And that's when the the birth of the idea for Me TV Tunes, and I was in on that, and I said that, you know, we basically made a list of all the cartoons that we grew up with. He's about my same age as me, maybe a little younger. And uh we grew up with the same stuff, and uh we went after as all of it, as much of it as we could get. Some of it you can't get, and some of it you can, some of it you can, and then they take it back from you. But the um the uh the uh we're putting on lots of great stuff and much more to come in the new year. And I'll talk more about, I'll do another plug for MeTV Tunes shortly. But MeTV Tunes came on, and Neil had already been dealing with uh Universal. He was already dealing with every studio. But let's say, take Universal, they have Adam 12 and Dragnet, many, many other uh big classic TV series from the past, Leave It to Beaver. Many, many, I guess. If I stop and think about it for a second, it's a lot.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
Jerry Beck:And I said, you know, and well, he knew. If you talk to the same people who you're getting Leave It to Beaver from, they they have Woody Woodpecker, you know, and and they have Casper and they have all these other things. And then he went after it and he got it. And here's the thing to Universal's credit, oh my God, it gives me chills when I think of this. When when when asked for it for a sale to me TV, they went ahead and restored all the cartoons. I mean, they weren't going to. There was no reason to, not for home video. Again, there was no George Feldenstein-like champion there. So they they restored them for the the sale to me TV.
Tim Millard:So does that mean they're just more than 25 that have been restored? Yeah. Okay.
Jerry Beck:But the thing is, the you gotta understand, it's not my decision. It's my decision. I think you guys would know what I would do. If if it it you know, you gotta deal with the the situation as it is. I went to them and said there's there's more cartoons available. And so they and again, a month or two comes, they call call me back and go, well, what would be what would 25, what would you pick for 25 of that? Okay. And since we used most of the 1940s uh cartoons on the first one, um I had two the screwball collection, you mean? Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
Jerry Beck:Um, I I decided in my mind that what we would do is we would we would it would be a Woody collection, in that Woody would have a an amount in there. But honestly, out of 25, he's got the least amount. No, it's it's is like eight Woodies, I think it is. And I'm looking at the list over here. And uh there's uh whatever else, the whatever the remainder of that is, like you know, 17 or whatever uh other things that Walter Lance did that are from the golden age, really from the golden age. The woodies are mainly from the 50s and 60s.
Tim Millard:This is I guess that's why they're calling it the Woody Woodpecker and Friends.
Jerry Beck:Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, you're right. They, yeah, they that's right. Uh absolutely. That's that's smart, but it's smart because, okay, I and by the way, I've heard that the Woody Woodpecker hour that's on every day on um on MeTV Tunes is doing very well. I don't, even I don't understand its popularity. But that said, uh I don't I love it. I love that those cartoons are on. There's they're really cool in their way. There's something, there's a charm about the uh Walter Lance Library in general. And I have to tell you, I was not a fan of the, and this is reflected in these releases in a way. I'm not really a fan of the 1960s and and dare I say 70s. They they they kept going into the 1970s cartoons. They're pretty poor. But now I now I find them fascinating. But you are talking to a guy who does a show for the Comic-Con called The Worst Cartoons Ever. So I'm looking at them from a different point of view here. Right. But the thing is, uh, it's a it's a great little library. And to see them restored, like they're brand new. That's the beauty. I say this when we're on with George. When you see these things completely restored from the camera negative, brand new, they look like they were just made by the by modern-day animators. They look like as crisp and visual as I bad example, but let's say SpongeBob or any contemporary cartoon that's on. They're just as vivid. Yeah. You know, they're evergreen, and they, yes, there's some dated references in many things, part of the charm, but they're understandable by most, by everybody, really. Everybody old and young can love these cartoons. So we have a great, this collection is great, but I guess if if I were being honest, it would be for the non-woodies that are on here, and they're the majority. And I do want to mention, I I do want to mention at this point in my time, I am a consulting with uh fans. I can't take everybody's suggestions off the internet, but I do read them. But essentially I want to mention um Thad Komarowski and uh Devin Baxter, are two of my uh colleagues on uh choosing cartoons. And uh I run it past them. Is this something you'd want to see? They'll say they'll make a change, they'll do this, they'll do that. And I it comes out to a little consensus of what really is the best to put out. Again, I'm hoping that the sales, especially since the last time the uh Blu-ray was put out, there are more people right now more aware of Woody Woodpecker than than then, you know, if you think about it. Yeah. So I'm hoping the sales will be as good or better, and then we can go further. Um, in fact, I have uh I have some ideas for them uh that I'll keep in check right now, but because we don't want to get too far ahead, but I have some ideas on uh what to follow up on.
Tim Millard:So if I could if I could summarize this, Jerry, because uh of the success on the Me TV Tunes lock, that has, you know, I'll obviously the first Blu-ray had to sell well enough as well, but really this Me TV is really helping, maybe just in terms of uh whole revival in the whole classic uh uh animation genre, but specific to this new upcoming release. Now it kind of tests it again to see if if that translates to the physical media area. If so, if people come out and support and buy this, there's a chance that it could lead to more. But people need to say, instead of asking the question, why aren't there more than 25 or why aren't they releasing 50 or 100 like they did for the DVD, they need to realize this is a different climate. You got to support these for more than that.
Jerry Beck:I will say there's um there are uh two, I did a little extra research this morning amongst my colleagues. There are two uh cartoons on this disc that, as far as we know right now, have not run on MeTV. Now, I don't know why that is, but they haven't uh run two of them yet. They may, uh they have the whole library there, but uh, but my my my my friends who you know keep track of everything that's on, you know, said there's two of them on here that have not aired. And um uh well, as for the moment you'd have two that no one else can see anywhere else if you when this comes out.
Tim Millard:All right. Well, we'll we'll leave that for the fans to see if they can figure out which those are.
Jerry Beck:A little game they can play if they want to.
Tim Millard:And I I think that uh somebody had asked, like, maybe did you have any favorites on here where you're like excited, especially excited to see them on this Blu-ray release?
Jerry Beck:Um a lot of them. I would say most of the non-woodies, even some of the Woodies are ones that I'm happy to have on here. The ones that aren't the Woodies. I don't want to I hate to do it like that, to separate them out. Are really classic uh Hollywood cartoons from the Lance Library. I'm looking at the list, uh, is why I'm not looking straight at you. You've got some cartoons. There's a period after Avery, okay, Avery was let go, I believe, at MGM. Uh he immediately went to his old boss, Walter Lance. This is where he started in the 1930s on the Oswalds. And Walter Lance, he was by now, Avery was a superstar in short cartoons. He hired him immediately. Uh, I think Avery didn't want to do Woody Woodpecker for a variety of reasons I can speculate on, but he took Chili Willy and developed that character. He made two hilarious, all four cartoons he made for Lance are great. He was only there about a year. Uh, and then he left and he went and entered the world of television commercials, which was a loss for those of us who love classic cartoons, uh, but it was good for him. And uh he made these cartoons, but he influenced the studio. I believe a lot of us speculate that a lot of the cartoons that came out in the year following Avery, even Woody Woodpecker ones, have an Avery feel to them.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
Jerry Beck:He may have boarded them, he may have suggested things, he may have given them notes. There's a real Avery feel at the entire Lance Studium. We have a few of those on here. Some of the directors really, really followed up on that, that, that feeling. It was that begins to dissipate as the 50s go on. And unfortunately, that's, and then the cartoons really kind of lose it. There's some great directors that join the studio, like Jack Hanna and um oh uh Sid Marcus, and they do great, great stuff. And we have a representation of theirs. There's very, very good stuff. We have some early stuff from the 30s, like The Adventures of Tom Thumb and A Sleeping Princess, which are like fairy tale, like silly symphonies. There's a few more than that. I mean, there's just some great oddball material on here, including the characters like Chili Willy, Andy Panda, uh Ma and Pa. That was a little Ma and Pa Kettles series they did, and others. I'm I'll leave it at that. And it's it's really a beautiful little package. And I'm I'm proud of it. I'm happy about it. Yeah, it'll be great. No one will be disappointed.
Tim Millard:Yeah. First off, I'm gonna say I thought our conversation would go to about 10 minutes. Oh, I didn't know that. Here we are at 40 minutes, and we're finally gonna get to questions that have been submitted for you. And I'll just make a plug for our Warner Archive Animation Facebook group, where these questions came from. This uh group, I'll have a link in the uh the show notes here for anybody who's interested. But this is to celebrate all of these releases from the Warner Archive, and of course, now this is a universal release, and uh a lot of the stuff that is showing up on me TV tunes to be clear, and stuff that you're very involved in. So people who want to maybe check out that group can do so. Look for that link. But we asked for some questions. We're gonna run through them. You may or may not be able to answer them. That's fine. Let's uh let's just see what some of the interest in. These are a little bit more of a deep dive sometimes than the general stuff we have just addressed. But let's start with this first one from Justin. One, will Spook a Nanny get an HD upgrade on the bonus features? And two, if this succeeds, will it lead to other things in the Universal Classic Cartoon Vault coming to Blu-ray?
Jerry Beck:Well, the second part we've already addressed. Of course, if it succeeds, there'll be more one way or another. Uh, here's the thing I must mention. People are always asking me about some of the bonus materials, which of course I suggest, most of them from the first, uh, these first two Blu-rays are, you know, we potted them over from the DVDs. Again, let me repeat, and I'm not trying to put anything down here, I'm not trying to, they really won't spend any extra money. Uh so unless on their own they have upgraded it because on their own. Uh, and I don't know in the case of Spookinani. I'm under the impression it's gonna be SD. But I might be as surprised as you when it comes out and it's it's up it's upgraded. I honestly do not know.
Tim Millard:No.
Jerry Beck:I'll get up on that.
Tim Millard:All right. Well, let's go to the next one from Gregory. For those not as in tune with Woody's catalog, how much of his golden age does this and the previous Blu-ray, that would be the Screwball collection, uh, how much does it encompass?
Jerry Beck:Well, the previous one, I believe, doesn't have every 40s, but it has most of them. And I would totally, if you're interested in the the golden, the real golden age of Woody, you gotta get the uh screwball collection that has the classics in there, for sure. Now the new one, uh mostly it depends on what your uh your your definition of golden age is. Because to some people the the early 50s is still golden age. I I don't think so, but you get a couple of things from the uh uh the mid-50s and even the sixties, and it's a it's a schmorgasboard. It's a it's a lot of a lot of variety, but I think uh if you want the 1940s on Woody, go to the first collection. On this set, we've got a lot of nice stuff from the 40s, 30s, 40s, and 50s, you know, filling it out. And I I do say that if you're interested in just the golden age, you will want this. You will you'll want this. Uh you'll be you'll kick yourself if it somehow sells out and you missed your shot, you know. You want this.
Tim Millard:All right. Uh next question from Angel. Will we get to see Woody cartoons from 1960 to 1972 on Blu-ray?
Jerry Beck:Well, as I said, there's one or two on here, but on the new one. But the um, all right, you guys are forcing me to say it, right? You guys all know. You know what I'm gonna say. I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan of uh the director Paul Smith, you know, uh, of that period. I'm not a fan of those Barry family cartoons. I can't stand those those chilly willies with that opening where all the characters are waving to us. It's oh my god. It's I can't stand those. That's me. You guys might love that stuff. Will we? I never say no, and I never say never, and I am dedicated to getting all the theatrical cartoons out if I can, someplace. But um, you know, will it? I I can't it's not happening now, but are we still chipping at it, you know, getting getting it out? You know, I have to say for me it's priority list, it's low, but for the 60s, I'm talking '60s and seventies Lance cartoons.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
Jerry Beck:By the way, I will say, and I would do want to praise them. We do have a few here. You know, if it was directed by Sid Marcus or Jack Hanna or anybody else that isn't Paul Smith during that period, I'm shocked how good those cartoons are. And it makes me sad that Lance was in production through 1972, and he could have had these other directors directing those cartoons. They would have been, they could have been good, but we'll never know.
Tim Millard:Yeah. All right. Next question from Aaron. What new cartoons are on this Blu-ray, which are not on the previous DVDs, the 75 and 150 uh cartoon DVDs?
Jerry Beck:I don't I didn't prepare and I don't have a a list of what that would be exactly, except that um I I don't know. I I'll say that many. I'm gonna say many. I I just don't know the the number exactly.
Tim Millard:Okay. Oh, you would say many? Okay.
Jerry Beck:Yeah, but somebody will somebody in the comments and on those pages will will uh correct me or tell me what, you know. There's a few.
Tim Millard:Okay, next from Nicholas. Will any of the black and white Oswald's, i.e. hell's heels, get onto a future uh Woody Woodpecker Blu-ray set?
Jerry Beck:I tried to put a to get an Oswald on here, to be honest, uh, or two. In fact, I even they even said, well, you know, again, we're not gonna restore them. I said, but you know, and you guys may know this, there was two Oswalds from 1930 on the Criterion King of Jazz set. And uh and if you have that, there's two beautifully restored Oswalds on there that are fantastic. And I said, just put those on here for the collectors. A lot of cartoon collectors don't know about that. And and by the way, that King of Jazz has, of course, the first opening two minutes or so, or three minutes is a Walter Lance color Oswald at the beginning of the film with Bing Crosby as the voice of Oswald. Wow. I can go on and on. King of Jazz from Criterion. But um I tried to do that, tried to get that on here, and the only way I can get it on would be to pull something that was free. Like and here we go. But they did they just didn't want to do that at this point. Fine, that's what happens. Yep. Um the black and white Oswald is a major goal for me because we're aware that they've got the negatives or they've got superior something or other prints. I don't know what they've got, but they've got something that they can make great restorations from because they've been doing it occasionally, as they did on the original sets. We put a bunch of black and whites from the um from the 1930s on here. So we know they have them. It's just a matter of it, it's you know, it's money and time consuming, but we know it can be done. And it's a goal for me. It's a goal for me, TV tunes, but it's not happening. But don't nobody go away with uh thinking it's gonna happen. It ain't happening. Yep. But it's a goal. You know, you gotta have like little goals. What else can we do in mind?
Tim Millard:Next question from West. Hugh Harmon of Harmonizing Productions, responsible for the first WB and MGM Cartoon Studios, has a story credit on Convict Concerto, which I believe is his only credit with Walter Lance Productions. What was his involvement and how did this come to be? And why did his involvement uh not continue?
Jerry Beck:You're gonna have to ask Mark Kausler or Thad or somebody else about that. The the reason I say it that way is I don't know that that part of the story. Um, obviously he was. I mean, Hugh Harmon and Rudolf Ising after after World War II, you know, their story is very, very uh all over the place. They really wanted to be independent animators. I think they wanted to be Walt Disney. I don't know anything, but I I just get the feeling when you look at their career that they were trying to be Walt Disney as best they could throughout their entire career. They believed in themselves uh a lot, and they they had their own companies. And uh Harman in particular was doing a lot of industrial films. They did a lot of when TV came in in the 50s, he did TV pilots. None of them sold. It's it's sort of sad from what I from what I gather, you know. And obviously, an opportunity came for him to sell a story to Lance, and he did. And by the way, that's a great cartoon. It's a really good one. But sorry, I don't have the full answer on that. But yeah.
Tim Millard:And then one last question from Michael. Are there Woody Woodpecker cartoons with stereotypical undertones that will be considered for release? I think that's kind of referencing like censored material.
Jerry Beck:Yeah. Um, the good news is that Universal doesn't seem to it doesn't seem to bother Universal as it m as much as it does other studios. You know, Disney is a family brand. You know, Warner Brothers is aware that kids and families enjoy the cartoons. Uh Universal's mindset is not in that, you know, I mean they kind of are. They have a great, you know, family unit there. They do the Illumination movies and the DreamWorks movies, they have a theme park. But they they really do think of their older films as old films, as classic movies. They do have that attitude. And it just doesn't, there is nobody saying you can't release this or you can't release that. So the the quick answer is there's a few of those. Well, there are some of those all over the DVDs we did, and definitely a few of them on the Blu-rays, and I'm gonna leave it at that.
Tim Millard:And are they also on Me TV Tunes?
Jerry Beck:Yes, some of them are. So if they're there, that also go too far from ETV, but Okay. Some but there are others that Me TV is cool with. No problem.
Tim Millard:Well, the I mean, if they're on Me TV Tunes, I think that, you know, as you just mentioned, that is an insight into what could potentially come down the line.
Jerry Beck:So yeah, Me TV Tunes is pretty uh liberal or open to these things because the thinking is is that we know kids are watching, but it's not aimed at kids. And as you know, the commercials are all for prescription drugs and walkers and yeah.
Tim Millard:Sure. Well, th that by the way, those are everywhere on everything you watch, by the way. They're not just but still. But did you have any more information about the Me TV that you wanted to uh to talk about or get into?
Jerry Beck:Well, I I just wanted to say that the uh um I'm looking off of a piece of paper here right now, that the important thing is when I talk to people about it, when I mention it, uh either they've heard of it or they've never heard of it. And we really want to make it clear that the channel is very available. It's uh it's available in a lot of places. It's on Comcast on channel 1736 nationwide. It's on DirecTV 295, um, and it's on Dish, it's uh channel 376. It is available on many, many cable systems. It's available on many, many apps like Philo and Friendly, and it's even and even more so. It's a broadcast network. It is an affiliate sub-channel, a digital sub-channel to a channel where you live for the most part. And there's a great page on their website. You put in your zip code, it tells you exactly three, four, five, six, ten ways you can get it. So it's very available. We want it to be, and it will be eventually available in even more places. As we're still in the beginning with MeTeam, it's only been on for a year, right? And a lot more changes, a lot more uh new programming that is coming to the channel. I've been authorized to say that they're gonna be adding uh Milton the Monster and Batfink uh and other things to the Casper and Friend show. So keep your eye on that one. Uh so uh, you know, Me TV, please support that. And please, of course, support the physical media releases of classic cartoons. If you want to see more of that stuff, I know I sound like a broken record. I say that a lot. Uh it's it's the bottom line. Nobody can put this stuff out. It's a business. If they don't make money, if they lose money, you're gonna say, oh, it's universal. They have tons of money. No, they it's each of these giant corporations treat each division like its own separate business. If that business doesn't make a profit, they they close that business. Yeah, and you'll never see that again. Yeah. So the thing is, you gotta, you gotta, that's your way of supporting it, is uh purchasing.
Tim Millard:Yeah, and I think uh people also don't understand that when something does very well in broadcast, when people watch it, whether it be in streaming or on a broadcast network or whatever, that actually translates well to physical media. It's not like, oh, I'm never gonna watch it, I only want to buy it. No, as a matter of fact, uh the higher the number of people watching, the studios will say a percentage of that number is gonna want to also own it. Oh, yeah. So it works in tandem. It doesn't, they're not adversaries, they work in tandem. So if you're watching on me TV, or the more exposure that me TV tunes gets, it's actually going to be good for physical media collectors as well. You watch something, you're reminded how much you enjoy it, and then you think, dear God, what if this were to ever go away? I better buy it and own it and have it on my shelf as well. That way I can also go back to it any at any time in the future. Uh, I mean, these things work in tandem, so I think that's why you're involved with both. Anything that encourages the love of classic animation and the re-airing of these things. And also, as you mentioned earlier, when they're broadcast and they do well in broadcast, it lets the studios know let's put some money behind restoring these. And when money is put into restoring them, that also makes physical media copies look much better and you know, higher percentage that it will get there as well. So uh it all works together.
Jerry Beck:Well, um, I'm glad I gave you a full show instead of a uh segment.
Tim Millard:But well, it's always great uh to have you on. I I appreciate it.
Jerry Beck:I think that's you know, I did not I did not know you it was only gonna be 10 minutes.
Tim Millard:So that's that's just in my mind. I wasn't sure if we would have enough to talk about uh uh for for a full uh hour here. But you know what? I I appreciate the way you gave the background and you filled in because you answered so many questions along the way as to how and why the DVD is different from the Blu-ray and why and how me TV tunes fits into all of that as well. So really great to have you on today and talk about this, and maybe we'll talk again once the next uh collection comes out, and we're able to actually review some of that stuff. Uh that would be great as well. So thanks, Jerry. You are well, I love talking with Jerry. It's uh it's always interesting. I have one thing we're gonna talk about when we go into it, and uh, we end up talking about so much more. I love hearing his stories and just his knowledge and background on classic animation. So I hope you enjoyed that. For those of you who are interested in actually pre-ordering this new Woody Woodpecker and friends uh Golden Age collection, I do have links below. Be sure and get your pre-order in, let's the studio know what the demand is for these. I also will have links in there to the previous release Group Collection and the DVDs and a few other things we discussed uh here today with Jerry. And I also want to let you know that the animation group that I mentioned, I'll have a link for that as well. In case you're on Facebook and you want to join with other people who kind of have a more of a daily discussion on a lot of these things and their own reviews and anticipation, and of course the pre-orders when they become available. So I'll have that in there as well. Uh anything else I've forgotten, look for that in the show notes as well. If you enjoyed it, maybe you want to subscribe to our YouTube channel here or to our podcast, and that way you'll get all of our animation content sent directly to you. So lots of great stuff. Uh, and I've been speaking with uh Jerry and others, and there are just a lot of great animation coming in 2026. So if you are a classic animation fan, you'll definitely want to join our Facebook group so that you can stay on top of all of that great information. So for our YouTube subscribers, thanks again for watching. And for those who are listening to our podcast, stay slightly obsessed about classic animation.