Reuben Lucius 'Rube' Goldberg is remembered for his wildly implausible comic-strip contraptions, but he was a man of many talents. By 1916 (at the time he made 'The Boob Weekly'), he had already published three book-length collections of his comic strips, sheet music for a popular song, and a card game. Goldberg's most popular comic strip (of many!) at this time was his long-running 'Boob McNutt', about a simpleton who invariably got into trouble through his own stupidity but usually triumphed afterward through dumb luck. The famous 'Rube Goldberg machines' came later. A talented sculptor, Goldberg designed and created the National Cartoonists Society trophy, given annually to the most noteworthy comic-strip artist of the year. (It's a sculpture of six naked acrobats, the uppermost man balancing an inkwell on his upturned bum.) This award is named the Reuben, in Goldberg's honour, and Rube Goldberg was its first recipient. In 1948, he received the Pulitzer Prize for a serious political cartoon about nuclear brinkmanship.
Rube Goldberg's first attempt at an animated cartoon, 'The Boob Weekly', is a parody of newsreels in general and the Pathe Company's newsreels in particular. In the days of silent films, many Americans got most of their news from cinema newsreels rather than radio or newspapers. Silent-film newsreels were clumsy affairs, as they typically alternated between long wordy captions and wordless images. Newsreels didn't truly come into their own until the sound era, when audiences could get information from the on-screen images and a narrator's voice simultaneously. By the way: in 1927, several months before 'The Jazz Singer' was released, movie audiences got their first chance to see an on-screen image synchronised with a sound recording from the same source ... in newsreel footage that recorded the image *and sound* of Charles Lindbergh's aeroplane taking off from Roosevelt Field, Long Island, for his long flight to Paris.
But in 1916 newsreels were still silent, and 'The Boob Weekly' suffers from the same problem as the art-form which it parodies. We have to read a long wordy caption - admittedly a funny one - pretending to be a real news item, and then we see an animated cartoon image that basically just illustrates the caption. For instance:
"SOUPBONE, MINNESOTA - Dedication of the monument to Olaf J. Ivory, the only honest lawyer in the United States. He starved to death." After this very funny (typeset) silent-film caption, we cut to a brief animated-cartoon image of a woman smashing a bottle of champagne over a statue, witnessed by an 'audience' consisting of only one dog. The image doesn't add to the joke; it merely illustrates the caption. Another caption is followed by a brief cartoon of a giant baby who is playing cards and smoking a pipe, in a room with a chandelier that looks a bit like the naked acrobats in the Reuben Award.
Rube Goldberg drew every frame of 'The Boob Weekly' himself, which is one of its drawbacks. He drew the backgrounds and the foreground figures as a single drawing, so he had to redraw the (static) background in exactly the same register, over and over, for each frame in which the foreground figures move. Inevitably, some of Goldberg's drawings were out of register, so the backgrounds in this cartoon tend to 'shimmy'. Goldberg spent 10 hours a day slaving over his animation drawings, in addition to the time he spent on his newspaper comic strips (his primary source of income at this time).
In the 1930s, Tex Avery at Warner Bros used this same idea of animated cartoons parodying newsreels, but Avery was able to take advantage of later innovations such as acetate cels (enabling the artist to animate the characters in front of a consistent backdrop) and in-betweeners (low-paid assistants who drew most of the cels, freeing the key animator to draw only the cartoon characters' most important actions). Also, Tex Avery was able to combine narration with his on-screen images, freeing audiences from the annoying illustrated-caption format which Goldberg was forced to use in silent days.
This is a good place to point out an error in 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit'. During the scene in which Roger and Eddie visit a cinema in 1940s Los Angeles, Roger Rabbit (who is only interested in funny stuff) protests that he hates newsreels. Whoever wrote that line had no knowledge of what a trip to the movies was like in the 1940s. A typical newsreel ended with a funny afterpiece ... in fact, one very popular movie comedian (Lew Lehr) had a long successful career specialising as a performer in the humour sequences at the end of serious newsreels. (Lehr's 'news' footage often depicted monkeys imitating some human activity.) What Roger Rabbit really should have said was: 'Newsreels? I only like the funny part at the end!'
I'll rate 'The Boob Weekly' 3 points for good intentions and one more point for execution. I'm a fan of Rube Goldberg, but he did his best and funniest work in newspapers, not movies.
Rube Goldberg's first attempt at an animated cartoon, 'The Boob Weekly', is a parody of newsreels in general and the Pathe Company's newsreels in particular. In the days of silent films, many Americans got most of their news from cinema newsreels rather than radio or newspapers. Silent-film newsreels were clumsy affairs, as they typically alternated between long wordy captions and wordless images. Newsreels didn't truly come into their own until the sound era, when audiences could get information from the on-screen images and a narrator's voice simultaneously. By the way: in 1927, several months before 'The Jazz Singer' was released, movie audiences got their first chance to see an on-screen image synchronised with a sound recording from the same source ... in newsreel footage that recorded the image *and sound* of Charles Lindbergh's aeroplane taking off from Roosevelt Field, Long Island, for his long flight to Paris.
But in 1916 newsreels were still silent, and 'The Boob Weekly' suffers from the same problem as the art-form which it parodies. We have to read a long wordy caption - admittedly a funny one - pretending to be a real news item, and then we see an animated cartoon image that basically just illustrates the caption. For instance:
"SOUPBONE, MINNESOTA - Dedication of the monument to Olaf J. Ivory, the only honest lawyer in the United States. He starved to death." After this very funny (typeset) silent-film caption, we cut to a brief animated-cartoon image of a woman smashing a bottle of champagne over a statue, witnessed by an 'audience' consisting of only one dog. The image doesn't add to the joke; it merely illustrates the caption. Another caption is followed by a brief cartoon of a giant baby who is playing cards and smoking a pipe, in a room with a chandelier that looks a bit like the naked acrobats in the Reuben Award.
Rube Goldberg drew every frame of 'The Boob Weekly' himself, which is one of its drawbacks. He drew the backgrounds and the foreground figures as a single drawing, so he had to redraw the (static) background in exactly the same register, over and over, for each frame in which the foreground figures move. Inevitably, some of Goldberg's drawings were out of register, so the backgrounds in this cartoon tend to 'shimmy'. Goldberg spent 10 hours a day slaving over his animation drawings, in addition to the time he spent on his newspaper comic strips (his primary source of income at this time).
In the 1930s, Tex Avery at Warner Bros used this same idea of animated cartoons parodying newsreels, but Avery was able to take advantage of later innovations such as acetate cels (enabling the artist to animate the characters in front of a consistent backdrop) and in-betweeners (low-paid assistants who drew most of the cels, freeing the key animator to draw only the cartoon characters' most important actions). Also, Tex Avery was able to combine narration with his on-screen images, freeing audiences from the annoying illustrated-caption format which Goldberg was forced to use in silent days.
This is a good place to point out an error in 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit'. During the scene in which Roger and Eddie visit a cinema in 1940s Los Angeles, Roger Rabbit (who is only interested in funny stuff) protests that he hates newsreels. Whoever wrote that line had no knowledge of what a trip to the movies was like in the 1940s. A typical newsreel ended with a funny afterpiece ... in fact, one very popular movie comedian (Lew Lehr) had a long successful career specialising as a performer in the humour sequences at the end of serious newsreels. (Lehr's 'news' footage often depicted monkeys imitating some human activity.) What Roger Rabbit really should have said was: 'Newsreels? I only like the funny part at the end!'
I'll rate 'The Boob Weekly' 3 points for good intentions and one more point for execution. I'm a fan of Rube Goldberg, but he did his best and funniest work in newspapers, not movies.
