123 NOTES Introduction 1. Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 3–12. 1. The Silent Era 1. Donald Crafton, Before Mickey (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982), 9, 57. 2. Ibid., 110; Leslie Cabarga, The Fleischer Story (New York: Da Capo Press, 1988), 18. 3. Cabarga, The Fleischer Story, 16. 4. Crafton, Before Mickey, 153. 5. Cabarga, The Fleischer Story, 17. 6. John Higham, Strangers in the Land (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1955), 196–97, 242, 264–65. 7. Jack Zander to author, April 18, 2000; Shamus Culhane, Talking Animals and Other People (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 41–42. 8. Zander to author, April 18, 2000. 9. Elizabeth Hay, Sambo Sahib (Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble, 1981), 156; Phyllis J. Yuill, Little Black Sambo: A Closer Look (New York: Racism and Sexism Resource Center for Educators, 1976), 3. 10. Fredrik Stromberg, Black Images in the Comics (Seoul: Fantagraphics, 2003), 55. 11. Crafton, Before Mickey, 149, 169, 175; Cabarga, The Fleischer Story, 18. 12. Crafton, Before Mickey, 287; Creighton Peet, “The Cartoon Comedy,” New Republic, August 14, 1929, 342. 13. Leonard Maltin, Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons (New York: Plume, 1987), 129. 14. Crafton, Before Mickey, 310; Maltin, Of Mice and Magic, 201. 15. Dinner Time—the first sound cartoon, produced by Amadee Van Beuren—had preceded Mickey’s first appearance in theaters by two months but caused no stir because of its failure to blend visual humor effectively with sound. 2. The Arrival of Sound 1. Scott Curtis, “The Sound of the Early Warner Bros. Cartoons,” in Sound Theory, Sound Practice, ed. Rick Altman (New York: Routledge, 1992), 195–97; “Looney Tunes,” advertisement, Variety, June 25, 1930, 73. 2. Jack Zander to author, April 18, 2000. 3. “Talking Shorts: Box Car Blues,” Variety, March 11, 1931, 14. Mel Shaw relates Bosko to Felix in Charles Solomon’s book Enchanted Drawings (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), 100. “Talking Shorts: Congo Jazz,” Variety, August 20, 1930, 14; Zander to author, February 9, 1999. Zander’s story also appears in Leonard Maltin, Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons (New York: Plume, 1987), 225. 124 Notes 4. Thomas Cripps, Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Film, 1900–1942 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 236–40. 5. Leslie A. Fiedler, The Inadvertent Epic: From Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Roots (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 26–27, 48; Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852; reprint, New York: Signet Classic, 1966), 417. 6. W. C. Handy, “St. Louis Blues,” in Call and Response: The Riverside Anthology of the African American Literary Tradition, ed. Patricia Liggins Hill (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), 572. 7. “Talking Shorts: Dixie Days,” Variety, May 21, 1930, 19; “180 Days for Aesop Fable,” Exhibitors’ Herald-World, April 26, 1930, 45. Exhibitors’ Herald-World became Motion Picture Herald in the mid-1930s. 8. Henry T. Sampson, That’s Enough, Folks: Black Images in Animated Cartoons, 1900–1960 (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1998), 139, 142. 9. Shamus Culhane, Talking Animals and Other People (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 53. 10. Leslie Cabarga, The Fleischer Story (New York: Da Capo Press, 1988), 50–51; Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, Or Does It Explode? Black Harlem in the Great Depression (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 177. 11. Culhane, Talking Animals and Other People, 43. 12. Myron Waldman to author, July 25, 1997. 13. Culhane, Talking Animals and Other People, 52; “Talking Shorts: Hot Dog,” Variety, April 16, 1930, 21; “Talking Shorts: Ace of Spades,” Variety, March 25, 1931, 16. 14. “Talking Shorts: Blues,” Variety, June 30, 1931, 15. 15. “Talking Shorts: Cuckoo Murder Case,” Variety, October 29, 1930, 17; Gilbert Seldes, “Disney and Others,” New Republic, June 8, 1932, 101. 16. “Talking Shorts: Plane Dumb,” Variety, November 22, 1932, 16; Robert Sklar, MovieMade America: A Cultural History of American Movies, rev. and updated ed. (New York : Vintage Books, 1994), 16, 58; Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 96, 156. 17. Melvin Patrick Ely, The Adventures of Amos ’n’ Andy: A Social History of an American Phenomenon (New York: Free Press, 1990), 29; David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 211. 18. The Rasslin’ Match, advertisement, Variety, January 9, 1934, 13; Bill Littlejohn, telephone interview with author...