Farewell, Gene. In my book, Gene was every bit an animation legend as, say, Chuck Jones or Tex Avery, and it's really a pity that most people will probably know of him simply for the series of
Tom and Jerry cartoons he did in the early 60s, and not for the rest of his extraordinary body of work. I challenge anybody who's only seen that part of Gene's body of work to watch, oh, I don't know,
How to Avoid Friendship and hopefully be pleasantly surprised. By the way, I confess to finding a good percentage of those entires (save for
Down and Outing and
High Steaks) as at least decent, not just for the weird and wonderful SFX (that loud "BOI-OI-OI-NG!" never fails to get at least a chuckle from me), but for the interesting and creative gags (e.g. Tom as the captain's shadow in
Dickey Moe or the ants on the sheet music in
Carmen Get It!, which incidentally is probably my favorite of the batch) and Steven Konichek's scores, even if the sound quality as recorded by an Ampex tape recorder makes it sound like it was recorded in a lavatory. Even though I haven't seen much of his book adaptations for Weston Woods since I was young (much of these were issued on a DVD series called "Scholastic Video Library" or something like that), I never knew Gene worked on those and must admit, I'll always prefer his take on Sendak's
Where the Wild Things Are to the CG remake that came out some years ago. Also, I really like how the soundtrack in
The Three Robbers is entirely vocal, even down to the sound effects.
I've decided to take this weekend to watch films from ol' Gene that I've never seen before, like much of his Terrytoons,
Tom Terrific, Nudnik,
Munro, the "Self-Help" series, etc. and although I'm not as great a fan as Jerry Beck, I totally appreciate his contributions to animation, lest we forget his charming contributions to the comic strip world in the form of that renowned "hero of his'try,"
Terr'ble Thompson.
I'm afraid I couldn't possibly muster up anything as eloquent as what others may say, but that's the best I can do. I'm just going to say one thing, though: even though I don't mind the feature-length adaptation of
Charlotte's Web from Hanna-Barbera, I can't help but wonder what Gene's take on it might've been like. (Useless trivia: E.B. White was actually good friends with Deitch!)
Well, I guess I'll say one other thing: check out Gene's posts on Cartoon Research and his "Roll the Credits" webpage if you've the chance.
Edited by user
4 years ago
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Reason: Makin' a few tweaks.
"With all respect to the great mousetrap."- Popeye, "The Spinach Overture" (1935)