When I was elementary a while back, I played the saxophone for music class (being in band was required for most, including me). I remember not being that good and just syncing in most performances when I ran out of air. So when I saw The Restless Sax for the first time, it got a bit of a personal laugh for me, as it reminded me trying to play the instrument and being just as good as Krazy.
For one interesting note, it credits Gould only instead of both him & Harrison. Would this mean Gould solely directed this one? Then again, the "By Harrison & Gould" credit would return eventually, and Al Euguster said that this credit was a bit misleading: Harrison wrote the stories & handed out scenes while Gould just animated. I do suspect Gould would eventually do layouts and may have contributed to timing, but I have no lead to prove this.
One interesting part is the beginning, how it shows Krazy receiving his sax through a early animation montage, perhaps the first of its own kind? Compared to montages in later Columbia Cartoons & Frank Tashlin's montages, it plays out slower. I also wonder how audiences would've seen such a montage in 1931, because it does make a big impression on me, but maybe that's just for me.
From here, we see various gags of people reacting to Krazy's poor rendition of "The Old Oaken Bucket", and Krazy refusing to accept he's a mere beginner. Hell, even his own saxophone rips his diploma (which the audience in this video reacted to well), and he goes on with a solution: honey to make it sweet! Also to appreciate is how Krazy doesn't even try to follow along to the street band playing "O, du lieber Augustin", who aren't playing that much better than Krazy is.
Perhaps my favorite gag is this cartoon (which was hard to pick!) with the 2 deaf guys, the timing works out really nice for it. We first get curious why they don't react in anyway, and then the realization dawns on you a little, then they play out the gag, with some hilarious noises for the fingers included! I also really like how it ends with Krazy doing an impression of Rudy Vallée, singing "I'm just a Vagabond Lover". You can hear the real deal preforming it here.
And with that comes an end to the cartoon, with a nice iris to the end title, surrounding by some nice ribbon. Overall, a really funny one with well timed gags and pleasant music (when Krazy isn't on the sax!). I hope all reading this enjoyed this cartoon as much as I did!
Harrison and Gould did indeed direct cartoons separately (and receive individual "by" credits) for the 1931–32 theatrical season. It may have been more that Harrison split off to do a few films of his own, as he did only four and appears to have done a lot of the animation himself in the first three—and they get especially high in the weirdness quotient. Gould carried the balance of that season's films and relied more on animators Al Rose, Jack Carr, and Harry Love as normal. (Hygo/Samba Pictures' carelessness toward accuracy in their TV titles resulted in the first three Harrison films carrying inaccurate credits for Gould and crew instead.)
ReplyDeleteI'm not aware of Eugster saying that the "By Ben Harrison & Manny Gould" credit was "misleading", just him recollecting what each of them was most involved with in making the films, which Love recalled similarly and which can be seen in studying the films themselves. Gould was evidently much more involved with actually animating than Harrison, who focused more on the writing, directing, and character layout duties (there are often scenes where you can see Harrison's style underlying the work of one of the other animators). But there was definitely overlap; there is a considerable difference in style and sensibility between the solo-Harrison and solo-Gould films, and between those and the films they co-helmed.
I'm aware of an even earlier montage at the end of the Fleischer Screen Song "By the Beautiful Sea", also a simple one using cross-fades but faster-paced. Though on that subject, it's really Art Davis's strikingly cinematic "The Puppet Murder Case" (1935) that stands out in my mind, holding its own compared to Tashlin's work yet pre-dating Tashlin's time as a director at Schlesinger. Heck, for all I know maybe Tashlin saw this one and thought "I want to make stuff like that!"