William Horberg

When The Novelty Wears Off

 

Once upon a time, there was a thriving business in America selling Bellhop Monkeys, Bermuda Bonnets, sneeze powder, itch powder, bending knives and dribbling water glasses.

It was called the Novelty business, and their products could be found advertised in the back of comic books or in hobby shops or in a section of certain toy stores.

I came across this complete wholesale catalogue from the San Francisco-based Freedman Novelty Company, run by one Alex Freedman out of an office down on Mission Street, and MAN, I wanted to dial up that warehouse and place an order!

Klondike 2 - 0121 - even their phone number was outta sight!

 

  

How many situations have YOU been in lately where that Squirt Pocket Mirror would have come in really handy!

william
  

P.S. Thanks to Diane for her comment and for sending me to this link. I loved this photo so much I've added it to the post to share it with you here.

 

Letting Go Of The Coconut Meat

T. Hee. 

What a great name.

Born Thornton Hee, he was a legendary animator and illustrator, most famous for his contributions to Disney's "Fantasia" as well as some classic cartoons for Leon Schlesinger's studio and, later, United Productions of America, or UPA, the limited animation cartoon studio of the 1950's.

I found this letter he wrote back in the 1940's online, and thought it was a delightful ode to the human imperative to follow our dreams, and worth reprinting for you here.

Dear Gurney,

In a "Frank Buck" movie, a lot of wary little monkeys watched hunters gather coconuts from under the trees and cut a hole in one end. But the hunters didn't eat the sweet, milky meat inside. With a long knife they scraped around inside the shell, loosening the succulent pulp. This they left inside the nut. Then, placing the coconut open end up on the ground, they pounded stakes into the ground at an angle, pinning the nut firmly to the earth. The hunters then retired to a distance to await results.

The monkeys, bursting with curiosity, clambered down out of the trees and approached the coconuts. To their delight, the little hole in the end of the coconut was just large enough for them to get one hand inside, where, delight of delights, the coconut meat was already cut away from the shell.

Filling his hand to capacity, the monkey was surprised to find he could not withdraw his fist from the nut without releasing the sweet, white, nutmeat. He was further surprised and dismayed to see the hunters calmly walking towards him with a large wooden cage. Dilemma. If he let go of the precious coconut meat inside the shell he could easily have scampered away. But, he held on with all his might, with an embarrassed grimace and tears streaming down his wizen, unhappy little face. And so, he was placed within the cage and shipped to the St. Louis Zoo, or wherever it is that stupid little monkeys wind up.

I was one of those monkeys with my hand in the coconut. But, thanks to you, I got my hand out of the nut hole in time to escape. And I am gratified to know that even though it takes a little more work, there are other coconuts in the world for the cracking and I still have my freedom. Again, thank you.

Working at the Disney Studio was life with one's hand inside the coconut. A beautiful and extremely comfortable edifice, wonderful co-monkeys, a delectable fare (just enough coconut meat to keep one from really working hard and developing, and not quite enough to make one wealthy or happy [and] enough prestige to dull one's creative urge). However, if one really got the urge to do something original, on his own, the realization that he would have to let go of the small, juicy nutmeat inside the coconut was enough to frighten him into rigidity. Perhaps there would be no other coconuts lying around and one would starve. Better hold on to the thing that was at hand.

You liked some zany cartoons I sent you and published them. I was born again. I was me. An individual. You'll never know just how nice it felt, (this ought to be put to music). Then you were kind enough to give me some publicity (verboten elsewhere). Thank you.

I was out at Disney's. Then things began to happen. Things. Nice things that should have happened long ago. I designed some dolls and started a doll factory that is flourishing, The Hollywood Flopdolly Co. Thank you.

I went to Paramount where I wrote for a year, at considerable more coconut meat than I thought existed, special material and an original story, "Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hope." Thank you.

The coconut meat I stored up permitted me to spend time writing, (with a fellow escapee) the book and lyrics for an All-Colored-Cast Broadway Musical Show for which that great, wonderful Duke Ellington has composed the score. "Angels" are now hovering over copies of the opus, "Coal Black and The Seven Dwarfs." Thank you.

But, most of all, thank you for awakening a creative urge that was either dying or in a stupor. I have just completed the book jacket design for the composer / conductor, Meredith Wilson's new Doubleday book, "And There I Stood With My Piccolo". In work, two books, A Picture Book for Children Over 21, (with no morals) An Illustrated Book for Grownups Under 12 (with a very important moral) and a novel, (My In-Laws Were Acrobats). Thank you.

AND- I've been doing some painting again and wondering if I might become a member of your "family" once more. It is with that thought in mind, since you were so kind as to like the things I sent you before, that you might like the [things] I am sending you under separate cover, and perhaps would care to foster me with your art editor. But Gurney, please understand. Just because I'm grateful to you, I don't want you to feel obligated to me. Even if you never buy another thing of mine I shall always be tempted to send you all the hairs on my head.

Most Cordially,

T. Hee

Enjoy!

william

First Snow

The first snow of the season is always a magical event for kids.

But what about the first snow of your Life?

You've grown up reading about it. You've seen it falling in white flakes in movies and on television. You've heard and even sung songs about it. 

But what must it be like for my father-in-law Freddy Mora to have been born in 1937 in the countryside of the provinces of Cuba, and to only feel, taste and revel in real snow last weekend for the first time in his 73rd year on planet Earth?

Elsa's mom and sister-in-law also made up for their childhoods on a tropical island and became part of the "kids-of-all-ages" crowd who delighted in their close encounter with this winter wonderland.

There is a Cuban expression - "cuando nieve en La Habana" or "when it snows in Havana" - which basically means never, or perhaps is the Spanish equivalent of - "when hell freezes over". 

But on this day, for Freddy and the Mora's, snowfall in Havana had come at last!

william

Quasi at the National Film Registry

I was pleased as punch to see an old friend picked as a classic worthy of preservation by the National Film Registry this year. 

 

 

It has been almost thirty years since I first laid eyes on "Quasi at the Quackadero" and "Make Me Psychic", two vibrantly inventive and colorful cartoons by animator Sally Cruikshank.

At the time, my friend Peter Hannan and I were fumbling around at the beginning of our careers and trying on different hats in the film business. One idea we had was to produce a series for PBS called "American Film Showcase" that was meant to discover and promote the short film work of a newly emerging generation of American filmmakers. This was back around 1981 or '82.

The show never made it on air, but in the process of trying to put it together we had collected all of this amazing work that we loved and didn't quite know what to do with. As with many enterprises, the original concept morphed along the way, and we ultimately set ourselves up as a distribution company called FutureVision, Inc. and put together a catalogue of these shorts and sold them as what was called "interstitial" programming to cable channels that were sprouting up like weeds back then and had a seemingly insatiable appetite for programming. 

Because feature films were of an odd length and the channels did not carry commercials, they would use these films as filler to round out the hour until their next programming slot. It was kind of a gap in the corporate media system that allowed for some fairly alternative work to slip through the cracks and get presented to an unsuspecting public!

"Quasi" was one of our best-selling titles, and we took some pride in the fact that Sally said we were one of the few distributors of her work that actually sent her a check for residuals now and then.

It is a giddy delight of a film set in a Coney Island of the Mind and was voted #46 of the Fifty Best Cartoons of All-Time by the society of animators.

Check it out!

william

Human Nature

Behavioral economist George Loewenstien, according to his recent interview in Discover magazine, thinks we need to move past the antiquated classical notion that people act rationally making logical decisions about how and why they spend their money. George and others are working for a better understanding of why people act the way they do, in the hope they can use these insights to better predict market behavior.

According to George, we're self destructive. 

If we want to believe in something, we're amazingly adept at persuading ourselves that what we want to believe is true. We fail to generalize and learn from our specific actions or mistakes, to connect-the-dots. We feel safe in numbers and tend to follow the herd. We have a 'present bias preference" which makes us short-sighted and challenged to deal with slowly unfolding threats like the housing bubble and climate change. We suffer from the 'default effect'; we are lazy decision makers and tend to take the path of least resistance.

Sounds about right to me. 

But nothing that George and his colleagues couldn't have ascertained more easily and readily, and with a lot more wit and flair, if they had picked up a copy of the beautiful new edition of The Complete Lyrics of Johnny Mercer.

 

 

As students of human nature, no one since old Will Shakespeare has done it better that Johnny and his Tin Pan Alley brethren at distilling into rhythm and rhyme the convoluted contours of the human heart. 

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread
And so I come to you, my love, my heart above my head
Though I see the danger there
If there's a chance for me then I don't care

Fools rush in where wise men never go
But wise men never fall in love so how are they to know
When we met I felt my life begin
So open up your heart and let this fool rush in

william

Hot Rod Horberg

The lease was up. It was time to move on. After 10 years of leasing the same make and model car, renewed and refreshed every 3 years or 36,000 miles, Twenty Ten seemed like the year to try something new in the wheels department.

Unfortunately, the Kustom Kars of George Barris Industries that defined the automoblie culture of the Southland in the 1960's are no longer in vogue, so this mean surfing machine might be found in a Hot Wheels toy set but probably not cruising the streets of Los Angeles today.

 

I wonder what the gas mileage was in this pink puppy? At least you didn't have to breathe the smoggy L.A. air of that era when you were ensconced under that dome, but if your passenger lit up a joint, it must have made for an interesting workout for the windshield de-fogger.

 
What would I have given to have spun the family around the Arroyo Seco in this souped-up design by the legendary Ed "Big Daddy" Roth himself? What? There's no back seat in that bubble? Where did they put the strollers?

Alas, I had to settle for a Pepper White 2010 Mini-Cooper. At least it doesn't have any room for strollers, either!

:)

william

 

I Know You Want To Help

Here's one easy way to get money to the people in Haiti who are suffering from this terrible calamity.

Donate through Wyclef Jean's foundation, Yele Haiti. 

Text "Yele" to 501501 and $5 will be charged to your phone bill and given to relief projects through the organization.

Please give what you can to those who need it most.

william

Heeza Liar

  

 
The advertisement screamed "Bizarre Cartoons of the Past" and "Cartoon Rarities of the Silent Era". 

Just the thing to add as a stocking stuffer for the kiddies, and for us kids of all ages. We already enjoyed "Betty Boop" and "Felix The Cat" together, but how far out into the wilds of early animated cinema would these two 21st century citizens be willing to travel with me?

And yet I was presently surprised to discover how much Diego and Natalie liked these collections of obscure cartoons from the 1920's and '30's. 

 

In fact, the older and more primitive the better seemed to be the rule, as one of their favorites involved a character named Colonel Heeza Liar who first appeared in 1913 and was directed here in a cartoon short by Walter Lantz in 1927; and another one from 1917, about a boy and his mule who have a run-in with a local farmer who has swilled one too many tastes of what looks like a jug of moonshine, was drawn by a man named Earl Hurd who is credited with inventing the "animation cel" drawing technique that opened the door to Walt Disney and all that came later.

Oswald the Rabbit. Alice in Cartoonland. Singing Car-tunes. Koko the Clown.

The Bray Studio. Van Beuren. Paul Terry. Otto Mesmer. John McCrory. Dave and Max Fleischer. 

These are some of the names of the other pioneers of this American art form whose contributions have been somewhat eclipsed by the house of Mouse.

 

Glad to know that there work is still available and being enjoyed by children almost 100 years after it came Out of The Inkwell and onto the silver screen.

Enjoy!

william 

It Don't Mean A Thing....

....if it wasn't recorded on SWING!

Swing Records, that is, one of the premiere 78 rpm labels for French and Belgium pre-war Jazz.

 

Where else can you find the Trio Big Boy and list to his boogie-woogie swingin' piano rhythms?

 

Songs like "Montemarte" by Rex Stewart and His Feetwarmers, a quartet that included Stewart on cornet, Barney Bigard on clarinet, the incomparable Django Reinhardt on guitar and Billy Taylor on bass, just plain sound better when taken out of their brown wrapper and placed on the old Victor Victrola and spun under the steel needle with the hiss and crackle coming off the 75+ year old shellac disc.

 

I doubt I would have ever heard of bandleader Phillipe Brun and arranger Gus Deloof and enjoyed their smoking recording of "Harlem Swing" or "College Stomp" if he hadn't recorded on the Swing label. 

Now that I trust that almost anything on Swing will sing, I try to track down these rare discs, and I'm willing to take a chance on any artist on their roster. 

More often than not, it is a risk that is highly rewarded!

william

 
 

Fire Rocket To The Moon

Thanks to Elsa's new Flip video camera, here is a short film of our first adventure in rocketry, taken on Christmas Day 2009 at our local park. 

My two favorite moments are when you hear me yell in panic and the camera cuts as Diego takes off like a rocket himself running away across the park and we had to stop filming to go and get him; and the small smile of pleasure that creeps up on Natalie's face as she realizes that she gets to tell the world who messed up the parachute!

 

Enjoy!

william