Snip from a Chicago Tribune article on a retrospective of work from filmmaker Frank Tashlin:
[Tashlin], a fantasist who came out of animation without ever leaving it behind entirely, once said, "There's nothing in the world to me that's funnier than big breasts." You might call it the opinion of a boy-man who grew up just in time for the 1950s. Thanks to the models rolling off the assembly lines of Detroit and Hollywood, the decade was nothing if not aerodynamic.
(…) The simplest thing to say about Tashlin is that his animation, especially the Looney Toons and Merrie Melodies classics, dove headlong into some stunning, cinematically "realistic" visions of the world. Later, his live-action features were labeled "cartoony." Yet is that all they are? If so, explain why "The Girl Can't Help It" and "Rock Hunter," his blaring masterworks, keep calling to us. They come from a world unlike our own, yet very much like our own.
Link to the full text of Michael Phillips' article, with details on related screenings at Chicago's Siskel Film Center this month. (thanks, Coop!)
Image: Still from an early Tashlin work — "Private SNAFU's girlfriend, Sally Lou, reads his letter in Censored (1944). Warners' animators, especially Tashlin, took full advantage of the servicemen-only audience: there was never such blatant pulchritude in a standard Looney Tunes film. " courtesy Bosko Video, snipped from an entry on Tashlin at sensesofcinema.com.
Reader comment:
John Aho says,
I found a number of Private Snafu films on archive.org, including Booby Traps, Spies, Snafuperman, and Home Front.
