The Origin of The Chipmunks. "Ross Bagdasarian Sr. (who went by the stage name "David Seville") was an actor who appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window and on Broadway in William Saroyan's Time of Your Life. He wrote novelty dialect songs, including Rosemary Clooney's huge hit "Come On-A My House", and released a few records but his successes never seemed to result in very much money in his pocket. He bought a tape recorder with his last $200 and played around with shifting the speeds, coming up with a novelty song titled "Witch Doctor". He got the single released and two weeks later, he found himself
appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show performing the song.
The success of "Witch Doctor" gave him the idea of creating characters with sped up voices, so he quickly knocked out a Christmas demo titled
"The Chipmunk Song" and took it to record executives Simon "Sy" Waronker, Theodore "Ted" Keep and Alvin "Al" Bennett at Liberty Records."
[more inside]
posted by ocherdraco
on Oct 11, 2009 -
39 comments
George Herriman's Krazy Kat (
previously,
previouslier) has been animated several times: in 1916 under the aegis of William Randolph Hearst a series of at least ten shorts was made, including "
Krazy Kat Goes A-Wooing," "
Krazy Kat Bugologist," and "
Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse at the Circus." By 1930, under the control of Charles B. Mintz Krazy Kat had lost much of the Kat's own look, and had become, in films like "
Alaskan Knights," a knockoff of Felix the Cat and Mickey Mouse. In the 1960s, Gene Deitch's
Krazy Kat series got back to the original look of the Kat, but animation quality was poor, and the Kat was—GASP!—made explicitly female. In 1996, director Derek Mogford gave Krazy the stop motion treatment in a well-made short that's meant to be
an introduction to Herriman's kooky love triangle of Kat, Mouse, and Pup.
posted by ocherdraco
on Jun 12, 2009 -
24 comments
