Lots of people that I have met over the years just assume that everybody here in NC is as dopey as Ernest T. Bass, or Barney Fife. Not everyone is that bad.

(AFAIK, the Griffith show was filmed at Desilu in Los Angeles, the lake exteriors were done nearby.)

This is nothing compared to what they are doing in MS, Georgia, SC, and others. The will of the few is prevailng over us all. It's gonna be dull around here when the zealots get through removing everything that irritates anybody anywhere.

Personally, I thought that Coal Black and the Sebben Dwarfs is an incredible cartoon. The jazz score was great. Bob Clampett and his crew went to several black establishments to get the ambiance that comes across in this film.

"Confederate Honey" is one cartoon that I was surprised to see on local TV long after the demise of Inki, and the others. Now, when you see it on Cartoon Network, it is heavily edited.

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Driving UP is the easy part, believe it or not. When you go down make sure you put your car in first grear and ease her down gently. If you don't you will smoke your breaks! I know a guy who just drive his car UP that hill. When he came back down, he got to the bottom of the hill and both of his front wheels were smoking!

But rather than banning the showing of these old films, use them as an opportunity to educate and instill respect and tolerance for others. When they are shown, they should be introduced with an explanation and disclaimer, much like Turner Classic Movies' host Robert Osborne introduces each film on TCM. Put in the context of their times, these films show how attitudes have changed for the better, but we still have a long way to go.

For many years, the Nazi propaganda film "Triumph of the Will" was banned in the United States. IMHO, watching this film today clearly shows the power and evil of Hitler and his regime. It also shows the profound influence film can have on the unwary. A naive person watching Leni Riefenstahl's cunning masterpiece comes away admiring the Nazis. Seeing the film in the context of history, the evil is obvious. We can avoid repeating history only by KNOWING it.
Link to information about "Triumph of the Will"

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Broadcast on a commercial station might not be the best way of allowing access to racist and offensive product. However, I must admit that I would get a chuckle out of seeing one of Comedy Central's obnoxious "Timmy!" Southpark bugs on "Triumph of the Will." I think it would be a bit of art worthy of Warhol, in that it would show the triumph of crass commercialism and idiotic cartoons over the strident attempts to reform mankind in the form of the "master race."

I've got a poor 16mm dupe of "Tokyo Jokio" that only mirrors the sensibilities of the times. It's not really a funny cartoon. It does little to promote the WB style.

Enjoy!
http://members.fortunecity.com/goopygeer1/

I've had a chance to look at a couple of the cartoons now and I must admit this has changed my point of view slightly.

The cartoons are a mixture of sweetness and sourness. The sweetness of animation, comedy and color mixed with the sourness of an underlying distainful attitude towards persons of non-anglo-saxon background. I felt that the authors of some of the cartoons had a hatred of blacks so poor was the characterisations of them.

In particular, All This and Rabbit Stew perpetuates certain black stereotypes. I had not been aware that afro-americans were stereotyped as being unable to resist gambling however this cartoon showed me the stereotype prevailing at the time.

I think the cartoons should be kept out of the mainstream media but not banned entirely. I think there is merit and something to be learned from the study of these cartoons, but only in the context of a study of their faults.

I think that someone should make up a 3-4 hour documentary looking at the whole question of racial stereotyping and include the cartoons, amongst other examples, in full, within the documentary. This way people could still see the cartoons for what they are but be made aware that they are not acceptable by modern standards. Banning them would only give them a cult mystique and enhance their destructive tendancies.

cheers Peter

Artistically speaking it is an outstanding cartoon.

That Riefenstahl's work has become so univerally synonomous with Nazi propaganda can, IMHO, be put down to two factors: firstly, the fact that her skills as a self publicist were just as advanced as her talents at film-making, and secondly the fact that a group of German film historians immediately after the war tended to hold her responsible for whatever political gains the Nazi film propaganda programme might have achieved - see, for example, Siegfried Kracauer, 'From Caligari to Hitler' (Princeton UP, 1947), Lotte Eisner, 'L'Ecran Demoniaque' (Paris, 1966), not to mention R's autobiography 'Memorien' (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1996). For an slightly less sympathetic biog of R, see Audrey Salkeld, 'Leni Riefenstahl - a Life' (London, 1998).

They all missed the point. 'Triumph', together with Riefenstahl's other two major films from the 30s, 'Tag der Freiheit' (1935) and 'Olympische Spiele' (1938) did not perform very well at the box office, and were produced under Hitler's personal patronage and in the teeth of opposition from Goebbels, who believed strongly that documentaries and films with an 'instructional' tone were a big turn off.

Goebbels believed that political propaganda had to be contained within fictional feature films in order for a mass-audience to swallow it, so he promoted the careers of successful feature film directors such as Veit Harlan and Wolfgang Leibeneiner. He went for big budget action/adventure/special effects films which gently pushed the Nazi message. The Nazi film industry invested heavily in technology too, particularly the Agfa process of single-strip colour using dye-coupling emulsions. Features that pioneered this process included 'Immensee', (1943), 'Munchhausen' (1943) and 'Kolberg', (1945).

Getting back to the point about the impact of these films now, I really don't think that anyone in their right mind would think positively about Hitler following a viewing of 'Triumph des Willens'. When I was a final year history undergrad I even had trouble sitting through it to the end! Far more dangerous are the fiction films pushing Nazi ideas, for example 'Jud Suss' (1941) in which a wealthy Jewish businessman is portrayed as a fraudster and a rapist, or 'Ich Klage An' (1942) in which a doctor gives a lethal injection to his wife who is seriously, but not terminally ill.

None of this can really be compared with the Looney Tunes cartoons because they were not systematically produced according to a state agenda. Warners did not need the government to tell them to make a cartoon depicting Yamamoto in the electric chair - plain simple market forces got that message across. And as for Coal Black, Tom's mammy and the rest of them, they were characters that evoloved naturally from cultural stereotypes of the time rather than ones that were dictated by political leaders. It's a pity that studio and distribution bosses now obviously can't see the difference.

Thanks for the background on these Nazi propaganda films. It's been a few years since I saw "Triumph of the Will" or "Olympiad", but I remember that they used cinematography and editing in a very powerful way to reinforce their message. In particular, I recall the "cutaway" scenes of the crowd and individual spectators during the droning speeches in "Triumph of the Will" as very powerful, almost making this film a "religious experience" (with Hitler as "god") than a political film. Yet, in "Olympiad", you could sense that the filmmakers betrayed a grudging admiration for Jesse Owens and some of the other non-Arian athletes.

Bewarned its 80 odd megs.

Racism aside, it is a classic cartoon.

cheers Peter

John: I agree that 'Triumph' and 'Olympia' have some very striking individual sequences, but, IMHO, anyone who wants to sit through the lot (especially Olympia, which is so long that an acetate print of it won't fit on a platter) is braver than me...

IMHO, one of the major issues that is stopping a sensible debate about just how influential (or otherwise) Riefenstahl's films were is that she's still alive (in her late 90s). She appears on TV documentaries from time to time insisting that her films were simply 'art' and that she was never an active supporter of Hitler and the Nazis. A few years ago a British university had to abandon a conference on her because she threatened to sue several of the speakers for slander. Whenever the National Film Theatre show their prints of 'Triumph' and 'Olympia' as part of the 360 Classic Films rep season, they have to pay royalties to her company (though I believe that the 'fair use' provisions of US copyright law prevent her from being able to make any money out of them in America).

Riefenstahl was never tried for war crimes. Veit Harlan was tried at Nuremberg on the grounds that 'Jud Suss' (which he wrote and directed) played a direct role in inciting the Nazi genocide programme. He was acquitted due to lack of evidence and Riefenstahl, who was being held by the French at the time, was subsequently released without charge. So she can quite justifyably claim that she never did anything wrong, with the result that even historians and academics have to watch their step whenever they write about her. My tutor at university had a book proposal for a biography rejected by several major publishers, who were scared stiff at the prospect of getting caught up in a high-profile lawsuit.

But she is coming up to 100, and you can't libel the dead...