Animation Artifacts 17 Apr 2006 06:56 am
Larry Riley
In celebration of the new season of baseball I have a couple of model sheets from a Paramount cartoon.
A story writer, Larry Riley, gave me these drawings back in 1972, but he never told me the film’s title.
Thanks to Thad Komorowski and Bob Jaques we know they’re from Heap Hep Injuns (1950). (see comments)
(Click images to enlarge.)
Larry Riley was a wild guy. On my first commercial job at Phil Kimmelman & Ass. he and I were the inbetweeners working side-by-side on some of the Multiplication Rock series. Larry had had a long and busy career in animation. He had been an asst. animator at Fleischer‘s, a story writer at Paramount, an animator at many studios. He ended up doing anything – including inbetweening at Kimmelman’s for the salary. The stories Larry told me kept me laughing from start to finish. There was no doubt he had been a writer for years. In a not very exciting job, it made it a pure pleasure to go to work every day to hear those hilarious stories. I can’t see Lucky 7 without thinking of laughing. It wasn’t the stories per se that were funny, it was his take on it.
Larry told me of his years at Fleischer’s in Florida where he was an assistant. He and Ellsworth Barthen shared a room, and, according to Larry, had lined one of the walls of their room with empty vodka bottles. Now, I’ve heard of frats doing this with beer cans, but doing it with vodka bottles requires some serious drinking. One of the many times I got to work with Ellsworth, I asked him about the story, and he reluctantly backed it up telling me what a wild guy Larry was.
Larry also told of a 3D process he’d developed for Paramount in the 50′s when the movies were all going 3D. I believe there were two Paramount shorts done in this process: Popeye: The Ace of Space and Casper: Boo Man. Larry offered to give me the camera on which he shot these films – he had it stored in his basement. He was afraid it would get thrown out when he died. I didn’t have room for it, and it probably did go in the garbage.
My regret; I still hear the sadness in Larry’s voice.
(Forgive the racist pictures, but I guess they’re a product of their times.
The animator who drew these is Tom Johnson (he signs the bottom one) and they were approved by the director Isadore (Izzy) Sparber per the top one.
The drawings are deteriorating, obviously. The one above uses a lot of glue to hold it together, and that’s eating away at the paper.)
on 17 Apr 2006 at 11:09 am 1.Thad Komorowski said …
Mike,
I’m guessing that those are from HEAP HEP INJUNS, a film I’ve never seen. GREAT stuff though!
on 17 Apr 2006 at 11:34 am 2.Michael said …
There’s a good chance you are right. That film was directed by I. Sparber and animated by Tom Johnson. I also have another model from this film which has nothing to do with baseball.
on 17 Apr 2006 at 12:39 pm 3.Bob Jaques said …
The drawings are from Heap Hep Injuns. I just watched the cartoon to verify. Thank goodness for PD copies. Mike – can you please post a scan of the model??
on 17 Apr 2006 at 1:53 pm 4.Michael said …
Thanks for the great detective work. I’ll post the last of these models tomorrow.
on 17 Apr 2006 at 2:26 pm 5.Thad Komorowski said …
That sounds great, Mike. I plan on doing a post on another Famous artist, Marty Taras, on my own blog Wednesday. Jerry Beck and Bob have helped me out a lot on the topic.
-Thad
on 18 Apr 2006 at 11:34 am 6.Ken Layton said …
I certainly would have said Heap Hep Injuns too. This is a cartoon I have never seen. If anyone has spotted it on vidtape or DVD please let me know.
on 18 Mar 2007 at 3:10 pm 7.Margaret Ann said …
Larry Riley was my step-father. He indeed was a wonderful person.
on 15 Dec 2007 at 1:37 am 8.John said …
My mother had sent me this a few months back and I never read all of it. Larry Riley was my Grandfather. I have to tell you the camera did not get thrown out. It was sold a few years ago to another collector from NYC.
on 15 Dec 2007 at 1:39 am 9.Michael said …
Thanks for the comment, John. It pleases me to know that Larry’s work lives on in some small way.