Beany and Cecil celebrate Independence Day. © 1999 Bob Clampett Productions LLC. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce in any form.

Close Call...
I developed an active social life and participated in the same poignant rites of adolescence that my peers did...and that's where this journey nearly ended. By 1970 American TV animation had deteriorated into a stagnant pool of repetitive dross. Disney was moribund. Animation's voice was growing smaller in my soul, and there was no Leakin' Lena at the dock, no new Beany beckoning me to novel adventures, no steadfast Cecil playing Puff to my rapidly maturing Jackie Paper. The sound of animation dying within me was the whiny snicker of Muttley, goofing his way through another dreary concoction of thin slapstick and tinny music. The wondrous connection I once felt with this medium was muffled beneath the weight of too many wooden superheroes, too many judicious, pro-social polemics in cartoon form, and too many spiritless pieces of hackwork that were far too much alike. Then a horny grey cat saved everything.

I was sixteen when Ralph Bakshi unleashed Fritz The Cat against a middle-class morality that was already reeling; by the time of the film's premiere in 1972, sex, coarse language and violence had become a staple of American cinema. What no one expected was that an animated feature would join the fray, earning the penultimate "X" rating. I had to see this -- but I could barely pass for my own age. After hearing me rant, my sympathetic father offered to be my "accompanying adult" and off we went to the Avon drive-in (local theaters were refusing to book the flick). Fritz may not have been the finest animated feature I ever saw, but it was a milepost in my fandom. If this film was possible, then anything was possible; there had to be alternative voices in animation, and it was just a matter of finding out who they were and where their films were showing. If I succeeded, cartoons might live for me again. Alas, this quest sat on hold for the next several years while I dated, hung around Cape Cod, attended college and did other things too incriminating to reveal here. Then, most unexpectedly, the final component clicked into place.

Dick Dastardley, along with his faithful dog Muttley, formed a devilish duo on the Wacky Races animated series. © Cartoon Network. All rights reserved.

Recognition and Rejuvenation
For those of you who have never visited the Brattle St. Theater in Harvard Square, Cambridge, make the pilgrimage someday; it's worth the trip. On a spring day in 1977 I went to this venerable movie house with my then girlfriend and a buddy to catch a Fleischer retrospective. There were a few Betty Boop cartoons on the docket as well as the celebrated Popeye films that featured Max Fleischer's "3D" tabletop effects. Also present was a local film scholar (whose name I no longer recall), who wrote a pamphlet for the event and discussed the films afterward. There were few attendees at this particular showing and we had this knowledgeable gentleman virtually all to ourselves. As he regaled us with tales of the Fleischer studio and impressed us with his expertise, a humbling truth became clear to me: I had watched thousands of hours of cartoons and didn't know anything about them.

The Jetsons, the first modern animated family. © Cartoon Network. All rights reserved.

That's right. My knowledge of cartoons was limited to identification alone. I could remember Bugs Bunny's actions in a specific cartoon or name the lineup of The Wacky Races. I could tell Roland from Rattfink, or even identify Swifty and Shorty if you showed me a picture. But as to where they came from and who made them, I had no clue at all. I had not even connected Bob Clampett, the Aesop of my youth, with his Warner Bros. cartoons even after I had seen his name in countless credits; it simply never registered. I could recall seeing episodes of Woody Woodpecker as a small child; between the cartoons, there were segments on how these films were made, but since they weren't animated, I became bored and tuned out until Woody himself returned. Technology, history, the studios and their personnel were beyond my rudimentary experience of animation. On that day in Harvard Square as I thrilled to that erudite scholar, the next phase of my journey was set.

Next month: Walking to Toontown, Part Two, the path from ignorance to bliss as this journey reaches the present day.

Martin "Dr. Toon" Goodman is a longtime student and fan of animation. He lives in Anderson, Indiana.