A Itchin' to Fly: Howard Post's The Itch

It's amusing to me, compared to last week's cartoon of pick, this week I'm going to be giving some thoughts of something the complete opposite! Think about it, 30s to 60s, B&W to Technicolor, Inkblot to Modernism. A bit inconsistent, but I fear overtime I will fall into certain repeats between series and times based on what I watch, but I won't be able to help that if it occurs.

  The Itch is one of those 60s Paramount shorts after Seymour Kentiel passed where it quickly went through 3 quick leader changes all trying different things, each more unique than the one before. I am up to the opinion that when the shorts of this era are good (because a lot of them get just as bland and hard to watch as the Famous Studio Shorts before), they are some of the best the 60s offer! With that said, let's dive into this one off oddity. 

Per usual at Famous (see The Plot Thickens & In the Nicotine), the married couple presented has issues, with the wife being overbearingly nasty towards her naïve, and undercut husband. It presents us a nice exchange to show us his life at home, just so happening to be in England. This also gives us some nice accents throughout, done by (among others) Hermione Gingold. I do think this film gets a bit carried away in the dialogue but it's understandable, as almost every film of this period used excessive dialogue for budget reasons (even the earliest Pink Panthers). Despite this, a lot of the lines are funny and creates some funny lines (like when the wife says she's "watching an important exchange program from America" and it shows us a typical western) 

 After some mishaps with our hero on the bus and some belittling by his wife, he eventually gets an itch that eventually grows him some wings! The use of an itch did come off interesting to me, most writers would've had a standard backpain before the wings grow. He immediately tries them out, and hilariously, on a reused BG from a Superman cartoon! 

I do like how the film also doesn't fall into just him flying, getting into trouble flying, and ending there (I feel like some Hanna-Barbera cartoons around this time used a plot similar to this, but I do know Terrytoons occasionally did their barnyard flying 'ventures as late as 1940 with Plane Dumb!), and we get our protagonist in a bit of trouble, but quickly working things out to get a license in order to continue flying (though nobody questions how his wings came from a simple itch in the back), and is off to figure things out with it. You can tell during the scenes of him flying that the budget was a struggle to commit too, but again, typical of the era, I won't hold it down too hard

From here, we get some more English-humor with the exchange between two hunter types accidentally shooting the star of the picture into the grow, losing his wings, there and done. So you think. You would expect it to stay sad, and have some harshness in him going back to normalcy, but I won't quite spoil what happens, just take the image below as an idea of what happens

It doesn't seem like many to got this see this one in theaters sadly, as by the 60s most theaters weren't regularly booking cartoons, and were mostly booking the reissues from other studios, so this little odd gem was already by the B-Side then. As noted on this Cartoon Research Post on Academy Submissions, it was submitted to contend for best Animated Short, along with "A Leak in the Dyke" (another good short from Post's time), but alas was not nominated. A Shame, I think either would've made a good nomination

Admittedly, due to a flood of schoolwork I felt like this post was a bit rushed, but I'm happy with it. I promise next week's post will be with a film that's less talky, maybe not much better, but definitely one that'll be fun to watch 

Cheerio, see you next Tuesday!