Little Gold Men on 1934's "It Happened One Night"

by Nathaniel R

The year of guesting on podcasts continues (after no invites forever I'm suddenly mouthing off everywhere!) with Vanity Fair's "Little Gold Men" podcast. I join Katey and Joanna to talk about the early Best Picture winner It Happened One Night. The story of Clark Gable's bare chest sending undershirt sales plummeting is old school famous, of course, but Joanna's additional research nuggets kind of blew my mind. I'd seriously never heard the bit about Bugs Bunny before (whaaa?!). We also talk briefly about the 2021 Academy invitees previously discussed right here. 

Have a listen and even a watch (the movie is streaming free on Crackle with ads). What a great film.

Showbiz History: Maya Rudolph, Presumed Innocent, and Lindsay's Last

10 random things that happened on this day in showbiz history

1940 Bugs Bunny and his catch phrase "What's up doc?" make their official debut in "A Wild Hare" which is nominated for the short film Oscar.

1969 TV wunderkind Bryan Fuller is born in Idaho. We will always love him for Pushing Daisies and Wonderfalls. 

Maya Rudolph, Prince, Bob Hope, Lindsay Lohan and more after the jump...

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Tim's Toons: In celebration of Bugs Bunny's 75th birthday

Tim here. We're coming hard upon one of the most important birthdays in animation: Bugs Bunny is turning 75 this week. It was on July 27, 1940, that the world first got to see the Merrie Melodies short A Wild Hare, written by Rich Hogan and directed by the legendary Tex Avery. And it was in this short that the unnamed comic rabbit character that the cartoonists at Warner Bros. had been noodling around with for a few years reached the final form of his personality. Though not, in fairness, anything close to his final design.

An ever-changing face notwithstanding, it was here that voice actor Mel Blanc premiered the sarcastic Bronx accent and the instant catchphrase, "Eh, what's up, Doc?", that separated the one true Bugs from the Bugs-like characters tormenting the primitive form of Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd in a few cartoons up to that point. And while refinements were still to be made – he wasn't yet an effortless in-command wit, but still a manic slapstick creation; it would also be five years before he'd take his first wrong turn at Albuquerque – it's remarkable how stable the character has been through all of the intervening decades.

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Tim's Toons: The state of animation in 1948

Tim here. We're talking about 1948 this week at the Film Experience, and it's my turn to take you back to the world of American animation in the aftermath of World War II. It was a fertile period: of the three studios that had dominated the medium prior to the war, Fleischer had been absorbed into Paramount and disappeared, while Disney had been badly damaged by an animators strike in 1941 and the loss of overseas markets, and spent the second half of the decade in desperate survival mode. That left a vacuum, which was filled by a sprawling variety of competitors that thrived even after Disney managed to find its footing again.

Pictured: Disney in 1948. Literally: it's from their film Melody Time.

In tribute to this unusually diverse marketplace, arguably not matched again in theatrical animation until the early 2000s, may I present three of the most unique and important animated milestones of 1948 after the jump... 

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