A Cartoonist's Nightmare

Plot synopsis:
It is closing time at an animation studio and all the staff members are calling it a day. Meanwhile, an animator chooses to carry on with his work while a custodian keeps on watch. In his drawing, he sketches a dungeon scene where Beans the Cat encounters a goblin. Weary for working several hours continuously, the animator decides to take a little snooze. Before ending the session, he draws a steel barricade between the two characters to prevent the goblin from reaching Beans. Suddenly, the goblin comes to life and pulls him into the drawing. The goblin carries the animator away, heading somewhere beyond the scene.
Shocked and terrified, the animator tries in vain to break out of the goblin's grasp. He is then brought into a mystic chamber where painted portraits of various villains are displayed on the walls. The villains happened to be the animator's creations as well as those of his colleagues. They too come to life and emerge from their illustrations. As revenge for how he and other cartoonists made them get subdued in the end of each film, the villains give the animator a pencil and force him to draw a deep pit in the floor where they toss him inside. Upon falling in, the animator holds onto a branch, trying to avoid being devoured by the crocodile at the bottom.
Back at the scene still being worked on, Beans still stands behind the barricade, boredly waiting for his artist to come back. Just then, Little Kitty comes to him, offering a lunchbox. Beans is expecting food but is a little surprised to find a saw in the bread. He uses it to cut his way out of the metal fence. Finally freeing himself, he goes around to find his animator.
In no time, Beans finds the chamber where his animator is being tormented. To intervene, he hurls a boot at the goblin, luring the villains away as they try to capture him. Beans manages to lose them somehow when he returns to the place to rescue the troubled man. The animator then receives a pencil from Beans and draws a ladder to climb out the pit. When the villains return, Beans squirts grease from a grease gun between the room's entrance and the pit. The villains slide on the grease mess and fall into the hole, except for the goblin, who attempts to escape from the hole, but is punched by the angry animator into it. To vanquish them for good, the animator removes the hole with an eraser. Beans and the animator shake hands for a work well done.
It turns out that what the animator went through was merely a dream, as he is awaken by the custodian. To his relief, he finds the drawing on his desk unchanged. Not wanting to recall his experience, the animator erases the goblin and the steel barricade, leaving only Beans in the picture. As a compliment to his little friend, he draws a platter with gelatin on top for Beans to eat.

Tags: psychedelic

Review:
A Cartoonist's Nightmare was an amusing early Warner Bros.
cartoon.
Just found this rare Warner Bros.-Looney Tunes cartoon on YouTube.
"Supervised" by ex-Disney animator Jack King (though he'd later return there as the new resident Donald Duck helmer), A Cartoonist's Nightmare is one of the few that starred a now-forgotten character named Beans the Cat who was first seen in Friz Freling's color Merrie Melodies short, I Haven't Got a Hat, which also introduced Porky Pig. In this one, with all the other animators having gone home, one particular cartoonist stays on trying to finish his drawings on time.
As he draws bars on Beans to protect him from a monster, the animator goes to sleep and dreams of getting attacked by other villains he created.
It's up to Beans to rescue him...Lots of clever creative ways of drawing and erasing escapes abound here and while nothing hilarious happens, I was constantly amused at this early version of Duck Amuck that Chuck Jones made with Daffy Duck 18 years later!
On that note, I recommend this for any Warner cartoon completists out there..
Beans Amuck.
Sort of a forerunner to Chuck Jones's more famous "Duck Amuck", "A Cartoonist's Nightmare" portrays an animator working on a Beans cartoon.
He falls asleep and ends up in the cartoon, where the monster threatening Beans proceeds to menace the cartoonist.
It's up to Beans to save the day!
This short, directed by Jack King (previously a Disney animator, he soon returned to Disney, after which Frank Tashlin took over his unit), came out right after Friz Freleng's "I Haven't Got a Hat", which debuted not only Beans but also Porky.
If I remember right, Porky and Beans were officially a team (pork and beans, get it?).
Needless to say, Beans quickly dropped off the radar, while Porky gained fame as WB's first bona fide cartoon superstar, although he soon got overtaken by a certain stuttering duck, and later by a wise-guy rabbit.Anyway, this one's OK as a historical reference..
It may be a nightmare for the cartoonist, but it's not for the viewer.
As has been said by me a fair few times already, it is always interesting seeing early Looney Tunes characters that are not the iconic more well known characters that we all know and love, with more interesting and fleshed out personalities.Beans the Cat, the third Looney Tunes star after Bosko and Buddy, never made it big, starring in 10 or 11 cartoons and then retired after a year when Looney Tunes/Warner Brothers/Merrie Melodies started to evolve and become more imaginative and wittier.
This is a shame, because he was a funnier and more compelling character than either Bosko or Buddy (both of which lasted longer), though there are admittedly funnier and more interesting Looney Tunes character around, being neither an annoying stereotype or bland.The cartoonist has a fun role that is done quite inventively here, the frustration and such is done very nicely.
The caricatures of particularly Bob Clampett were funny and will be for anybody familiar with them, a potential problem with caricatures is not knowing who they're caricaturing so it goes over the viewer's head but that is far from the case here.One of the earliest cartoonist/characters on page coming to life cartoons (something done a lot in animation), 'A Cartoonist's Nightmare' is not among the best of them (1953's 'Duck Amuck' is the king of them all) but it's a good one still.
It's not hilarious, the best of it is still very amusing but not much more than that, and not hugely imaginative and fairly slight in terms of story with the conflict obvious.However, the way the drawings come to life are handled in an inventive and lively way and look great.
Everything looks very fluid and detailed and the setting of the animation studio is used to full advantage.
The energy is constant.Not just in the very amusing gags and the characterisation.
But particularly in the cleverly orchestrated, beautifully scored and characterful music score, with songs that are catchy and with remarkably witty lyrics (particularly the song of the villains, who are suitably dastardly).In conclusion, pretty good and interesting.
7/10 Bethany Cox. Monsters are exterminated when teddy bears have their picnic..
Directed by Jack King, "A Cartoonist's Nightmare" is a delightful black-and-white Warner Bros.
cartoon about - dig this - life inside a cartoon studio!
An unidentified animator works after hours to put the finishing touches on a cartoon featuring Beans the cat, a character who never really made it big.
When the animator creates a monster as Beans' nemesis, he very soon wishes he hadn't!
Here are a few of my favorite moments from "A Cartoonist's Nightmare" (DON'T read on until after you have seen this cartoon).
All of the various cartoon villains taunt the animator with alternate lyrics to the popular children's song about a teddy bear's picnic, which we actually hear throughout this film.
The animator gets knocked around to an electrifying sound effect inside the cartoon villains' room.
And as all the other animators leave the studio for the night, we see some fine caricatures of wacky animator/director Bob Clampett and goofy comedian Ed Wynn.In "A Cartoonist's Nightmare", the unidentified animator literally gets grabbed & pulled into his own animation cell by the monster he draws.
A certain contemporary animator, who I won't name, claims that any Warner Bros.
cartoon directed by Bob Clampett has the same effect for him; it grabs him and yanks him into the story!.
How can an "expert" commentator mistake .
. a classically-molded mound of jello--with the typical but Cartoonishly exaggerated attribute of stale hardening--for "ice cream"?
Yet that's the rudimentary sort of haphazardly careless visual error contradicting what 99 out of 100 average viewers would decipher easily with their own eyes that Cartoonbrew.com's Jerry Beck makes at the end of his effort to muddy up, obfuscate, and confuse viewers' comprehension of A CARTOONIST'S NIGHTMARE, the 15th Looney Tune offered on Disc 3 of Volume 6, Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes Golden Collection.
With "experts" such as Beck, this product is about as "Golden" as the toilet seats in Trump Tower!
Mistaking "Bean's" jello "reward" for "ice cream" is but one of many questionable statements that Beck makes on his alternative commentary soundtrack.
(It has about the same ring of Truth as a seven-minute rant by Donald J.
Duck on "Crooked Hillary.") Philosophy 101 students learn such Syllogistic Equations as "Ronald Reagan was a Repub.
Reagan had Alzheimers.
Therefore, all Repubs are demented" (or is it "All demented People are Repubs"?) Who's to say where Mr. Beck fits into this Equation..
Warner Bros' take on Felix the Cat.
"A Cartoonist's Nightmare" is a 7.5-minute short film from pretty much exactly 80 years ago directed by Jack King and featuring the voice work of Billy Bletcher.
Both went on to become very prolific and successful int eh decades afterward.
This is a black-and-white movie, but it's not a silent anymore.
I must say the cat character in here, Beans, really reminded me of Felix the Cat from Disney and it's probably no coincidence.
However, Beans is not half as famous and I'm not even sure if there are more cartoons starring him apart from this one.
It is about a cartoonist who has a dream, in which he joins his fictional characters in their world and needs Beans' help when one of his villains, a scary monster, attacks him.
I wonder to what extent King brought himself in here.
I don't know how he looks and if the character maybe looks the same like him.
Anyway, there were a couple funny moments in this one, but it's nowhere near Warner Bros' best and I can see why it is not really a well-known work.
All in all, not recommended.