Oswald und der Wolkenkratzer

Before Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks made history with Mickey Mouse, Disney made some very similar cartoons featuring a character named Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Oswald and Mickey were both drawn in the same stark black-on-white style, and had similar adventures. In both cases, the most distinctive feature of the character was his ears: Mickey's were two black discs, whilst Oswald's were like long black exclamation points. The success of Mickey Mouse is largely down to the character's longevity, developing a distinct personality over the course of years and decades. Oswald never developed (artistically, nor as a character) to anything like Mickey's extent, but he was simply never given a chance to do so, as Disney dumped the Oswald character when Mickey made his debut.

SPOILING ONE GAG NOW. 'Sky Scrappers' finds three characters -- Oswald, a Big Pete-style bully and a Minnie-ish female character -- all engaged in knockabout humour on a building site. The most startling gag occurs when Oswald's black skin is torn off, revealing his whitish outline underneath. Disney's crude animation hasn't bothered to include shadows for any of the characters. But in this set-up -- and only this one -- Oswald has suddenly acquired a shadow. So, of course we know what's going to happen: Oswald detaches his own shadow and then steps into it, giving himself a form-fitting black skin once again.

I'll rate 'Sky Scrappers' -- and most of the other Oswald toons -- only 3 points out of 10. The 'Flip the Frog' cartoons that Ub Iwerks did without Disney are much better-drawn and funnier than the cartoons that Disney did without Iwerks.

Again, Oswald is in love with a girl who sells box lunches on a construction site. Ozzie wrecked his lunch and she comes to the rescue. But the Pete character immediately has designs on her and kidnaps her. Oswald knows that chivalry is not dead and comes to the rescue. What ensues is the usual bunch of animation impossibilities. It's cute but ordinary.

"Sky Scrappers" marks the end of Walt Disney's affiliation with Universal Studios. Just a short time earlier, Universal hired him and he came up with the delightful character, Oswald. Oswald was very successful....and Universal unwisely decided to cut Disney out of the films by hiring most of his animators and firing him! In the long run, this was a great thing, as it forced Walt to try other options....and his next projects, for his own studio, were Mickey Mouse cartoons. As for Oswald, after "Sky Scrappers" they made some decent shorts (helmed by Walter Lantz) but soon the character became much less funny and much less interesting....and eventually he just faded away because the studio and Lantz were inept when it came to this plucky character.

The story finds Oswald working at a construction site, building a skyscraper. When his lunch gets ruined, along comes a lady bunny and sells him one...and soon the pair start smooching. But then, Peg Leg Pete* sees her and tries to abduct her...and the rest is much like a Popeye cartoon, though Popeye still wasn't a film star for several more years.

This is not among Walt's best Oswald cartoons, but it is enjoyable and clever. More a curiosity than a great cartoon....and it was soon followed by classic Disney films, "Plane Crazy", "The Galloping Gaucho" and "Steamboat Willie".

*Pete would become a character in future Disney owned films, such as "Steamboat Willie", though he was changed to a cat. Here, he looks more wolf-like.

Despite Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and his cartoons being popular and well received at the time, they have been vastly overshadowed over time by succeeding Disney characters (like Mickey, Donald and Goofy) and those from Looney Tunes. It is a shame as, while not cartoon masterpieces, they are fascinating for anybody wanting to see what very old animation looked like and what Disney animation was like before Mickey arrived on the scene.

'Sky Scrappers' is not one of the best Oswald cartoons. It is not as good as its consistently funnier, more polished and more polished remake 'Building a Building', and there are Oswald cartoons that meet those three adjectives a little better such as 'Great Guns', 'Bright Lights' and 'Oh What a Knight'.

This said, there is still not much wrong with 'Sky Scrappers'. It's slight and conventional in story and the pacing is at times too hectic (not unusual for an Oswald cartoon at this point).

However, the animation is very good on the other hand, it's crisp and fluid enough with some nice detail especially with animation techniques still in early days. The music is lush and energetic, adding a lot rather than distracting and enhances the cartoon's quality even, the use of sound is never static and helps make the action understandable.

Luckily the gags are numerous and also creative, well-timed and never less than amusing. Oswald is a likable lead character, and the other characters are fun.

In summary, pretty good but not great. 7/10 Bethany Cox

While I have no issue with Mr. MacIntyre's review of this animated short, he does make an error in his description of the history of Mickey Mouse and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Disney did not decide to stop creating Oswald so he could develop Mickey. In actual fact, Disney lost control of Oswald through a rather complicated path: he was releasing through Mary Jane Winkler, doing business as M.J. Winkler out of New York City. She was, at the time, the leading cartoon distributor, as she also distributed Felix the Cat, but needed something to hold over the head of Pat Sullivan, who owned Felix. She was also married to Charles Mintz, who claimed that the contract gave control of Oswald to him and he enforced it. Disney's old Kansas City crew -- Harman, Ising and Friz Freleng -- went over to Mintz before striking out on their own the next year. Only Ub Iwerks and Carl Stalling stayed with Disney.

The story as I have it -- always difficult to be sure of, since Uncle Walt always made sure that his version, as the creator and originator of all things animated, was out there -- is that Walt roughed out Mickey on the train trip back to Los Angeles, Iwerks cleaned it to make it easier to animate and they produced them in short order -- with Iwerks doing almost all the work on the short singlehandedly.

It was with the third short, STEAMBOAT WILLIE, which included synchronized sound effects that the crowds took notice.

Mickey, in his early shorts, is clearly a variation on Oswald -- with round 'globe' ears instead of Oswald's long floppy ones.

Mintz soon lost control of Oswald to Universal pictures. Oswald continued on in moderate health under Walter Lantz for a total of almost two hundred cartoons, the series petering out in 1938, with a one-shot reappearance in 1943. Mintz wound up producing cartoons for Columbia through the end of the 1930s.

Harman, Ising and Freleng invented Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid, got a contract with Leon Schlesinger releasing through Warner Brothers until they tried to renegotiate without the middle man, whereupon Schlesinger raided their shop -- grabbing Freleng -- and left Harman and Ising out in the cold, whereupon they started releasing through MGM until Metro raided Schlesinger and Harman-Ising and they gradually lost all their production capabilities around the end of the Second World War.

And what about the Disney loyalists, Iwerks and Stalling? They left Disney in 1930 when Disney refused to grant them what they considered proper credit or a piece of the profits. Instead they set up shop under Pat Powers and began to release through Metro. When that collapsed in the mid-thirties, they both went to Schlesinger, where Stalling stayed for the rest of his career. Iwerks went to Columbia, then back to Disney, where he was relegated to the back room. he spent the rest of his career making great advances in multiplaning techniques. And Uncle Walt died in 1966, rich, respected and credited with being the first in everything in animation, even, or perhaps especially, when he wasn't.

And Mary Jane Winkler? After she married Mintz in 1924, she seems to have given up her job and concentrated on raising children.

If this were about the early series of Aesop's Fables, I would have a rather flip (the frog?) moral for this tangled web, but that was another tangled set of animators and producers. Draw your own conclusions.