Saturday, December 22, 2007

Roland (Doc) Crandall - Part 2


'The Adventures of Popeye' - 1935 (re-use animation clip)


'The Adventures of Popeye' - 1935 (re-use animation clip)


'The Spinach Overature' - 1935


'Vim, Vigor and Vitaliky' - 1936


'A Clean Shaven Man' - 1936


'Brotherly Love' - 1936


'Bridge Ahoy' - 1936


'What - No Spinach?' - 1936


'Never Kick a Woman' - 1936


'Little Swee'pea' - 1936

Sometime around mid 1936 Crandall was promoted to head animator/de facto director and given his own unit. He vacated that position sometime in 1940 resuming a position as animator - his last work on a Popeye cartoon appeared in 'Popeye Presents Eugene the Jeep' in 1940.


'Shakespearian Spinach' - 1940


'Popeye Presents Eugene the Jeep' - 1940

7 comments:

Thad said...

Where'd he go after '40?

Bob Jaques said...

Good question. I heard that he didn't continue on with the Famous Studio because of his loyalty to Max. This is probably a good question for Ray Pointer - he may know what happened to Doc.

Unknown said...

Bob, congratulations on a fantastic site. Looking at your profile, seems like alot of us Popeye fans are also fans of the classic horror films of the 30's and 40's.

What's the latest, if any, news on the 2nd Popeye DVD box set? Sounds like 2008, but I hope sooner than later. The Woody Woodpecker vol.2 collection is coming out in the Spring of 2008?, so hopefully Warners isn't too far behind if not ahead of their date.

I read recently that the next box set will probably complete the rest of the black and white Popeyes (including the very first ones from Famous) rather than just finishing out the Fleisher stuff.

Again, thanks for the great insight into these wonderful toons.

Larry Levine said...

I heard that he didn't continue on with the Famous Studio because of his loyalty to Max.

Doc Crandall showed more loyalty to Max than his own son-in-law did!

Anyone how Fleischer & Kneitel got along after ol' Seymour took the reins at Famous?

hubbit said...

I still laugh over the fact that what appears to be a ham has the word "kosher" emblazoned on it in Hebrew. (This was a favorite Fleischer gag, appearing many times in Ko Ko and Betty Boop cartoons, and probably a few early Popeyes.)

Martin Juneau said...

Everyone wanna know how they created the 30's and 40's Popeye cartoons but you did it very well. Do your best Bob and great stuff about Roland Crandall!

J Lee said...

Seems as though Crandall lost out on his director's job after Gulliver was finished, when Max's ex-employees just back from Disney (Natwick, Culhane) were given their own units. Don't know if that was enough to send him packing the way it did Hardaway over at Schlesinger at about the same time, but he and Tom Johnson seemed to be the "utility players" in the Fleischer's head animator system in the mid-to-late 30s -- getting cartoons when Kneitel, Bowsky, Waldman and Tendlar were busy elsewhere -- but Johnson kept his unit in the early 40s and ended up as one of the main Popeye directors by the end of the Fleischer's operations.

(Along with "Snow White", Crandall also gets a solo credit on "Thrills and Chills", the final Betty Boop cartoon made in New York. Like the first cartoon, it has extensive rotoscope use, but isn't anywhere near as imaginative. However, it does have a unique Christmas-y opening version of Betty's theme music.)