I was sorry to hear—via Mark Evanier—of the passing of Michael Schlesinger, a film fan, film preservationist, and filmmaker par excellence. Almost 20 years ago, when Mike was at Sony/Columbia, he provided the beautifully restored prints of Scrappy cartoons for Jerry Beck’s memorable Scrappyland event. (Here’s video of the festivities.) I wish everyone could see for themselves how good those shorts looked on the big screen. But it’s reassuring to know they exist, even if they spend most of their time locked up in the Columbia vault. I’m forever grateful to Mike for his role in protecting our Scrappy heritage.
Mark’s post covers some of Mike’s other activities in the film world, which were many and varied. My condolences to his family and friends.
As part of my ongoing effort to polish things up around here, I recently updated Scrappyland’s Scrappy Links page—mostly by adding the wonderful Scrappy write-ups and embedded cartoons that have been part of Steve Stanchfield’s Thunderbean Thursdays column at Jerry Beck’s Cartoon Research site for years. Steve, a true friend of all of us who love old cartoons, is one of the world’s leading Scrappy aficionados. I always enjoy reading his commentaries and watching the prints he shares from his own collection. The comments from other animation buffs are also extremely worthwhile.
Rather than telling you to go over to the links page to find the list of Steve’s Scrappy posts I compiled, I’ll share it right here. The first one happens to be his look at the first Scrappy cartoon, but these are actually in reverse chronological order beginning with his most recent post. Go read. And thanks for all the great stuff, Steve.
Just a quick note: After grudgingly embedding YouTube videos that included color elements—like that big red play button—I have finally figured out how to ensure they’re as monochromatic as the rest of this silly website, which honors Scrappy by embracing the B&W aesthetic of almost all his cartoons.
Here, take a look at one of my favorite Scrappy shorts. It was always in black and white, but now the YouTube player is, too:
My friend Ernie Smith—creator of the excellent Tedium newsletter—got me started on this major upgrade by pointing out, over on Bluesky, that it’s possible to desaturate YouTube videos. After some experimentation, I ended up using an alternative method that works better in Safari. That one I got from ChatGPT, which has also gotten smart enough to cite Scrappyland a lot when I ask Scrappy-related questions.
I’ve gone back and tweaked old embedded videos on this site to be truly monochromatic; if I’ve missed any, I’ll get to them eventually.
Now, I’m not a fanatic: When I embed those few Scrappy cartoons that were in color in the first place, I’ll leave them as is. I also recently wrote about a piece of art that was so beautiful in color that I added a link to that version—the first color image that has ever appeared on Scrappyland. Maybe I’ll weaken again someday. But it’s nice to know it’ll be my choice rather than somebody else’s newfangled design choices seeping into my site—which is happy to remain stuck in the 1930s forever, thank you very much.
Oh, and Happy New Year to you and yours. Scrappyland is about to turn 20, and I have plenty of material to keep it going well into the future, whatever it may bring on fronts less directly related to almost-forgotten old cartoons.
If you’re collecting vintage animation art on a budget, specializing in Scrappy will save you money. But not because Mintz art is exceptionally cheap. It’s just that so little of it ever comes up for sale that you’ll only rarely have the opportunity to buy anything at all.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve never seen a Scrappy cel reach the market. And some of the Scrappy artwork I have managed to buy—like this, this, and this—is so ephemeral that don’t know how or where it was used. It seems unlikely that the Mintz studio went out of its way to preserve its production art, though I cling to the vanishingly minuscule chance that Columbia still has it all neatly filed away somewhere.
Anyhow, I was pleased to recently add another piece of Scrappy art to my collection—or, more specifically, a piece of Yippy art. Except I’m about to question whether it is, indeed, a depiction of Yippy.
The drawing in question was made for a series of cartoon-character pinback buttons manufactured by a firm called Western Theater in the 1930s. The company did an impressive job of lining up licenses with animation studios and newspaper syndicates, resulting in 50 pins. They included everyone from big names (Betty Boop, Hans, Fritz) to also-rans (Goopy Gear, Marty Monk). Several featured Mintz characters, from both the Scrappy and Krazy Kat series.
Here’s the drawing I bought:
Curiously, Western Theater released its Yippy button in two slightly different designs. One features the art shown above. The other is a pretty crude version of the same image, as if copied by a lesser artist. I don’t know which came first, but I’d hate to think Western Theater started with the button at left and saw fit to replace it with the one at right.
I don’t know who drew the art I bought, but it has a pleasingly Mintzian verve to it, and the odds seem high that it was done at the studio rather than by somebody working directly for Western Theater.
But here’s the strange thing about the drawing: That isn’t the Yippy we know. That Yippy is a small dog, possibly some sort of terrier. Like all Mintz characters, he can look shockingly different from appearance to appearance, but at least you can generally tell who he is.
A few examples from previous Scrappyland posts:
The pooch shown on the pin is entirely different—seemingly a larger, lankier hound dog of some sort. But he does resemble the dog in several 1932 Scrappy cartoons: The Pet Shop, Camping Out, and The Bad Genius, at least. Whether or not that dog is Yippy, he did replace the terrier as a supporting character in the series for a time. And let’s face it, he comes off as a bit of a Pluto knockoff:
Via Animation Resources, here’s a model sheet from Ray Patterson’s collection. Showing Oopy and Scrappy for scale, it seems to establish that the hound is nearly Marmaduke-esque in size, though he was never particularly gigantic in the cartoons. Note that Patterson or some unknown person seems to have used this art as a scratchpad for personal notes.
And then there’s the 1934 Scrappy Big Little Book. Most, if not all, of its illustrations look like they might have existed before the book was conceived. The author, Pat Patterson—who was also credited on two other Columbia-related BLBs—patched together an episodic storyline around that art. Yippy is a major character. But other dogs make fleeting appearances, including a hound bearing a striking resemblance to the one on the pin.
His name is Woofus—not to be confused with the Texas Woofus, which didn’t come along until a couple of years later:
So did Scrappy have two dogs in this book? Nope: Patterson explains that Woofus was “a schnozzle hound owned by Brinker the baker.” There you go: Woofus is a schnozzle hound.
In the Scrappy Big Little Book, Yippy and Woofus are unquestionably different dogs. But the whole purpose of Patterson’s text was to weave existing art into a (semi-)coherent narrative. Revisiting the Scrappy cartoons themselves for this article, I realized that the classic terrier version of Yippy appeared in fewer cartoons than I thought. He came and went, and in between, Scrappy had other dogs who might have been Yippy—and at least one who definitely wasn’t. Bottom line: It’s not all that easy to tell if any given dog is or isn’t Yippy.
1934’s Scrappy’s Dog Show has dogs aplenty, but none of them seem to be Yippy. In 1935’s Scrappy’s Camera Troubles, the terrier Yippy is back, though significantly redesigned. The following year, In My Gondola gives Scrappy … a french bulldog, maybe? Then in 1937’s Canine Capers, Yippy is back in pretty much his original design. A year later, in Scrappy’s Playmates (1938), Scrappy buys a St. Bernard named Butch. 1939’s The Charm Bracelet and 1940’s Practice Made Perfect and The Pooch Parade have a dog who may be Yippy—but if so, he’s been redesigned in the mode of Betty Boop’s regrettably cutesy pal Pudgy.
So I’m not ready to discount a scenario in which Yippy started out as a terrier, was briefly a schnozzle hound (possibly under the alias of Woofus), may have tried life as a french bulldog, went back to being a terrier, and ended his days as a generic cute pup of indeterminate breed. If you have any better theories, please let me know.
Meanwhile, Pluto—who’s about 11 months older than Yippy—began life as a bloodhound named Rover but quickly became his still-recognizable self, and stayed so. Nine decades later, he remains a big business for Disney—okay, a minor one, but surely a heck of a lot more profitable than Yippy was even at his peak. (The Western Theater pin is the only piece of merchandise I know that was solely devoted to Yippy.)
Maybe if Scrappy’s cartoons and merchandising hadn’t been so hap-hazard in terms of consistency, we’d have a Mintzland, Mintz World, Mintz Stores, and Mintz Plus streaming service today. Or possibly not—but it’s fun to think about.
Addendum: Another of Western Theater’s Mintz buttons is noteworthy for naming-related reasons. On the pin for Scrappy’s little brother, he’s called Vontzy rather than Oopy. In a 2013 Scrappyland comment, Mark Kausler said that Dick Huemer himself told him that he intended the character to be known as Vontzy—a reference to Vontz, the Yiddish word for bedbug. Western Theater’s button is the only piece of Scrappy merchandise I’ve seen that uses that name, but if Dick Huemer said Oopy was really Vontzy, that’s all we need to know. He wouldn’t be the first or last movie star who adopted a stage name to conceal his heritage.
Almost 16 years ago, I created a Twitter account for Scrappyland. It was never that huge a deal—all it did was post automated links to new posts on this site, and only 74 people bothered to follow it. So Elon Musk may not bother to fly into a rage upon hearing this—but given his abominable behavior, I’ve decided that maintaining even a minor presence on his site is no longer tenable.
If for some unaccountable reason you’ll deeply miss this feed, fear not: I’ve reestablished it on the much friendlier social network known as Bluesky. You can follow @scrappyland.com here. While you’re at it, you may want to follow my main Bluesky account, @harrymccracken.com, as well. Scrappy and I thank you for your support.
Here’s a recent addition to the Scrappyland archive, and a pretty remarkable one: a print that Charles Mintz presumably sent out to personal friends and/or business associates in the mid-to-late 1930s. I know it looks like a Christmas card, but it’s much larger than one and extremely suitable for framing. If you click on it, you can inspect it at a much larger size. If you insist, you can also see a color version here.
Exactly what it depicts remains enigmatic to me. The lad inside the wagon is surely Scrappy, and the girl with him looks like a brunette version of Margy. The boy doffing his hat on top of the wagon could be Scrappy, though he might just be a generic 1930s cartoon kid of the sort who appeared in Mintz’s Color Rhapsodies. That would mean the girl next to him is likely not Margy herself but simply Margyesque. But that must be Oopy on the other end of the wagon roof. Right?
The wagon is being pulled—or, actually, not pulled—by what seem to be inebriated seals. Thank you to Friend of Scrappy John Vincent for pointing out their resemblance to the title character of the 1936 Screen Gems cartoon The Untrained Seal.
There are also seven spindly elves. Wrapped gifts abound—some possibly to be delivered by the kids—raising the possibility that the structures in the background are Santa’s workshop. Not present: Krazy Kat, Mintz’s other principal continuing character besides Scrappy.
I am, of course, curious who painted this idiosyncratic and opulent piece. Rather than looking like a scene from a Mintz cartoon, it has the feel of a European children’s book illustration. That turned my mind to the work of such celebrated 1930s Disney inspiration artists as Albert Hurter, Gustav Tenggren, and Ferdinand Horvath. And what do you know: Horvath worked for Charles Mintz. According to Didier Ghez’s fine 2015 book They Drew as They Pleased: The Hidden Art of Disney’s Golden Age, he joined the studio on May 31, 1938, after two tours of duty at Disney. “By the new year, however, he was out of work again,” Ghez writes.
I don’t know which Columbia cartoons Horvath worked on, or why his stint was so short, but his employment at the studio is an intriguing glimmer of ambition on Mintz’s part. After leaving Columbia and failing to get re-rehired at Disney, the artist briefly sculpted characters for George Pal’s Puppetoons. Then he tried again at Disney. When that didn’t pan out, he left animation.
Horvath, who famously contributed pre-production art to Snow White, certainly had a quaint style in the same aesthetic Zip Code as Charlie Mintz’s Christmas print. But after studying examples of his drawings from Ghez’s book and elsewhere, I haven’t found any that obviously identify him as our mystery artist. Indeed, I’m inclined to say he probably wasn’t. Maybe someone else at the studio was also capable of this fairy tale-esque flair: If you know of any candidates, I’d love to hear about them.
Season’s greetings and a happy new year to you from me and the entire Scrappyland gang.
I’m not sure when people stopped carrying handkerchiefs. But it was certainly later than the 1930s, when Kleenex was still a relatively new invention and hadn’t yet cornered the market on nose-blowing aids. I’m guessing here, but I imagine that in the pre-tissue era, good parents made sure their kids carried hankies with them, just in case. What better way to encourage the habit than by giving them ones with featuring Scrappy, Margy, and Yippy?
These three examples are new to the Scrappyland collection. They use stock art, but someone put thought into their design: I like the 360-degree effect. They are in good condition given that they must be something like 90 years old and were meant to serve as portable germ collectors.
I’m not going to sneeze into them, of course—but I am halfway tempted to tuck one into my breast pocket the next time I wear a suit.
Ub Iwerks will always be best remembered for the essential role he played in bringing Mickey Mouse to life. But if you’re interested enough in 1930s animation to be reading this site, you probably familiar with the cartoons he made at his own studio, featuring characters such as Flip the Frog and Willie Whopper. They were not particularly successful, and he ended up going back to the Disney studio and working productively on special effects for the rest of his career.
But between the closure of Iwerks’ studio in 1936 and his return to Disney, he directed a bunch of cartoons for other studios—including Charles Mintz’s Screen Gems. They were in the Color Rhapsodies series, and we haven’t mentioned any of them here because didn’t feature Scrappy.
Or so I’ve always assumed. I kinda figured if they had, I’d know about it! But in a recent Scrappyland comment, Mark Kausler—a Friend of Scrappy and as good a friend as animation history has, period—amazed me. He pointed out that Iwerks’ 1938 Color Rhapsody Horse on the Merry Go Round includes a Scrappy appearance.
(Actually, I’m not sure whether the name of this short was Horse on the Merry Go Round or The Horse on the Merry Go Round—newspaper ads that mention it use both titles.)
This isn’t a Scrappy cartoon. Not quite, anyhow. It’s set at an amusement park, and an early scene involves a booth with a wheel-of-fortune style game. Someone wins a prize. A Scrappy doll!
Here he is:
We’ve written about real-world Scrappy dolls in quite a few Scrappyland posts, including this one, this one, and this one. None of them look like the Scrappy doll in Iwerks’ cartoon, but I wouldn’t be startled if Scrappy dolls were indeed awarded as prizes at amusement parks and carnivals. Or at least they should have been.
As Mark says in his comment, this fleeting Scrappy appearance is a bit of a mystery. Did Iwerks himself decide to plant the character in this cartoon? Or maybe the writer did? (Readily-available prints of the short have reissue titles sans credits.) Perhaps it was a willful bit of cross-promotion for the Mintz studio’s biggest star. Or maybe it wasn’t meant to accomplish anything in particular.
I’m not even positive whether most of the people in a typical 1938 audience would have instantly recognized Scrappy and been at least mildly pleased to spot him. If they didn’t, the whole thing would have been kind of pointless, since it’s not a gag—just a bit of scene-setting.
Regardless, I thank Mark for bringing this to our attention. It’s not quite a lost Scrappy cartoon—or a lost cartoon at all, since it’s aired on the Totally Tooned In syndication package and MeTV, and may well show up on the new MeTV Toons channel. Maybe you already knew about it, even. But it’s my favorite Scrappy discovery of 2024.
Here’s Horse on the Merry Go Round in … well, not quite its entirety, but close. An unfortunate gag right after the Scrappy doll’s appearance is cut from this modern TV print. (If you must, you can find a worse copy of the cartoon on YouTube where it’s intact.) This version also gives the cartoon yet another name: the no-nonsense Horse on Merry Go Round. I’m fairly confident that wasn’t its precise original title.
We’ve got a new link in our left-hand sidebar: Newsletter. Click it, and you can sign up to receive every Scrappyland post right in your inbox. Until now, subscribing to Scrappyland—which I only vaguely knew was possible, though a bunch of you managed to do it—got you an excerpt, and you had to go to the site to read the whole thing. Henceforth, the email version should offer each post in its entirety.
Just dont expect the emails to arrive on anything like a regular schedule—but I do plan to post more frequently than I have so far in 2024. The topic here is Scrappy, so I’m in no danger of running out of material—ever.
I’m not surprised that you could buy Scrappy stationery in the 1930s. But I didn’t know for sure until recently, when I acquired this letter written on it. It features Scrappy and Yippy in an iconic pose, and–well, you can read it for yourself:
If you didn’t get through the whole thing, it’s from a girl named Mary Sue. She gave her mother a brief account of a lovely wedding (Aunt Marie wore an orange silk dress), and part of it is by a third person—most likely Mary Sue’s father. Whoever Mary Sue was, I hope she was a raving Scrappy fan rather than merely someone who had received a box of Scrappy notepaper as a gift.
After all these years of writing Scrappyland, I’m still uncertain just how well-known Scrappy was in the 1930s. We do know that he wasn’t Mickey Mouse. He probably wasn’t even Porky Pig. I do feel he was probably more recognizable than Flip the Frog, though I have no way to prove it. But I’m intrigued by the fact that this Scrappy stationery feels no need to identify the character. Maybe that’s a tiny sign that if you wrote someone a letter on it, there was a decent chance they’d know who he was on sight.
