"Miss Glory": Thoughts

[frizfrelengfan]

I just got "Miss Glory" in a trade (thanks - you know who you are). I hadn't seen it in many years, and it was well worth it to see it again. The Art Deco backgrounds are stunning and the Busby Berkeley-style musical number is fun.

This cartoon has no credits other than the composers of the song and "Moderne Art conceived and designed by Leadora Congdon." According to web sites it was directed by Tex Avery. It certainly has early Avery's brand of humor in it. Why no director's credit? Was he dissatisfied with the way it turned out?

No credits for animators or soundtrack either. If I were to guess, Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett worked on it, because (a) they were part of Avery's unit in the mid-Thirties, and (b) the animation style appears to be an inspiration for Chuck's "Dover Boys." My guess is the soundtrack is either by Norman Spencer or Bernard Brown. Chunky soundtracks (which I like) seemed to be in vogue before Carl Stalling arrived and lightened things up.

At the end of the cartoon (after the dream), when the people are lined up outside the hotel waiting for Miss Glory, there are caricatures of Avery, Jones, and Clampett! I wonder whether any of the other characters in the cartoon are caricatures of anybody who worked at the studio. There was certainly plenty of opportunity for that, since all the characters in this cartoon are human.

Please share your thoughts about "Miss Glory."

[janiepooh34]

I really love this cartoon. So many things about it just speak to me.

I find quite amusing the part where there are some waiters walking thru the hotel lobby and there is a full bottle of wine (or whatever) on one tray, then it gets switched to another waiters tray, then he goes behind a column, slows down a bit and the bottle is almost empty and he has a red nose. Just cracks me up every time.

The only thing I dislike is the older lady that does the "fan dance." It just does not fit with the rest of the story and could have easily been something else.

As for why they did the credits the way they did...I have no idea.

[David Gates]

Great cartoon, thank God they moved on and didn't water it down by trying to make more like it. It's also the drinkin'est Merrie Melody since "You Don't Know What You're Doin'" and "Lady, Play Your Mandolin!" As for the fat lady, I think Tex figured since they were only in the third year under the Hayes code, they could get away with a striptease gag much easier if they didn't use shapely young thing in it. Of course, during WWII, Tex got much bolder. :wolfie: :red:

[Sogturtle]

I just got "Miss Glory" in a trade (thanks - you know who you are). I hadn't seen it in many years, and it was well worth it to see it again. The Art Deco backgrounds are stunning and the Busby Berkeley-style musical number is fun.

This cartoon has no credits other than the composers of the song and "Moderne Art conceived and designed by Leadora Congdon." According to web sites it was directed by Tex Avery. It certainly has early Avery's brand of humor in it. Why no director's credit? Was he dissatisfied with the way it turned out?

No credits for animators or soundtrack either. If I were to guess, Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett worked on it, because (a) they were part of Avery's unit in the mid-Thirties, and (b) the animation style appears to be an inspiration for Chuck's "Dover Boys." My guess is the soundtrack is either by Norman Spencer or Bernard Brown. Chunky soundtracks (which I like) seemed to be in vogue before Carl Stalling arrived and lightened things up.

At the end of the cartoon (after the dream), when the people are lined up outside the hotel waiting for Miss Glory, there are caricatures of Avery, Jones, and Clampett! I wonder whether any of the other characters in the cartoon are caricatures of anybody who worked at the studio. There was certainly plenty of opportunity for that, since all the characters in this cartoon are human.

Please share your thoughts about "Miss Glory."

Frizfrelengfan~

In later life Tex told Joe Adamson this about 'Miss Glory', "I think I was forced to make it. But forget it. It was lousy" :eek: Genius-creators are oft-times NOT good critics of their own best work...:o As to who SHOULD be in the credits (beside Leadora Congdon)... Avery stuffed enough caricatures in this baby to tell us darn well who made it, despite the anonymous credit card. In one single scene are caricatures which don't just include Tex, Bob and Chuck, but CLEAR cartoon caricatures of Melvin "Tubby" Millar, Bob (Bobo) Cannon, and what I'm pretty sure are meant to be Virgil Ross and Sid Sutherland (they're wearing hats so it's harder to tell). Notably absent is former Lantz animator (like so many in this unit) Cecil Surry, but I don't have an identified photo of Surry to compare to the rest of the cartoon, and he was credited in the Tex cartoons all around this one so his work is almost certainly in it...

Sooooo with all that in mind we can get a hypothetical mental image of internal studio credits reading "Supervision Fred Avery, story Melvin Millar, animation Charles Jones, Robert Clampett, Virgil Ross, Sid Sutherland, Cecil Surry, Bob Cannon; and Moderne art layouts by Leadora Congdon":)

And yes, Bob Cannon was not yet a credited animator at that time, so his function on this cartoon may have been as an animator on brief, minor scenes or even still as an assistant animator, but Tex chose to depict him in the scene with himself and the full animators. Annnnnd Melivn "Tubby" Millar always worked with the Ben Hardaway part of the story department (while Ben was there) so that should be kept in mind.

Lastly, this is nearly the last toon that Bob Clampett would work on before quitting to go try to make his "John Carter On Mars" cartoon series for MGM. Purportedly (according to his family) he was only gone from Schlesinger's for a month before returning, buuuuut he was definitely NOT in the whole Schlesinger studio portrait made in June 1936, sooooo he MAY have really been quit more like two or three months...

(photo of scene in question borrowed from the as always wonderful, Hidden Looney Tunes Gags site)
http://members.tripod.com/gregbrian/hidden/images/pagemissglory0.jpg

[J Lee]

There have been several posts over the years on the TTTP about "Miss Glory" (including one just a couple of weeks ago) but it bears repeating that the cartoon showed that somebody in the front office at Schlesinger's studio was more than just the clueless dunces Jones in his later years made Leon, Henry and Ray out to be, since by rights if Warners needed a second unit to handle color cartoons -- especially one as stylized as this cartoon -- there was no logical reason to bypass the unit helmed by former Disney animator Jack King and give the job to neophyte Tex Avery, who had directed all of two cartoons for the studio at the time.

Avery may have felt restricted by the demand that the story center around the art deco designs, but there's no question that looking at the body of the studio's work in the 1930s, it was one of the best-looking cartoons Warners would put out until about 1938 or so. And someone if the front office was smart enough to put Avery on the more prestigious Merrie Melodies series, which he would soon begin molding towards his own style of humor that would affect the studio's entire output (just try to imagine what this cartoon, or the MM series in the mid-30s would have been like, if King's unit had been the one promoted to share duties with Freleng on the color shorts).