Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 31, 1944

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 30, 1944

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 29, 1944

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 28, 1944

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 27, 1944

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 26, 1944

In My Life in 'Toons," Joe Barbera reveals himself to be "the instigator of the MGM Water Wars."

They began with little enough inspiration. I took a paper cup, filled it with water, and placed it above an office doorway. When the victim opened the door, the cup would tip, fall, and douse him with water. From this modest beginning, I graduated to brilliant feats of genuine engineering. I tied one end of a string to my desk fan, ran the string up and over the pipe for the sprinkler system, which ran overhead, then tied the other end to a two-handled trophy cup I had, which I filled with water. I plugged the fan into the socket for the animators light board, so that when he turned on his lightboard, the fan would start instead, wind up the string, upset the trophy cup, and, once again, douse the animator.



This technique rarely yielded a direct hit, though it did soak the desk, eliciting very satisfying screams and curses from the victim. It also incited others to join the ongoing combat. A particularly intense rivalry developed between Harvey Eisenberg, a layout man, and Irven—Irv—Spence, an animator. This escalated rapidly until one would take the entire bottle off the water cooler and use it against his foe as heavy artillery. Thus attacked, Irv, taking note of a hole in the back of Harveys shirt, stuck his finger in it and pulled down sharply, ripping his shirt from near the collar all the way to the tails. By way of retaliation, Harvey tore off the breast pocket of Irv's shirt. Irv then ripped off Harvey's. Before the two of them were through, they were both drenched, and their shirts hung down from their belts like hula skirts. Harvey then grabbed the water cooler bottle under one arm, climbed to the top of his desk, took hold of the overhead sprinkler pipe with his free hand, and started swinging from it like an ape.



At this juncture, Fred Quimby, who had been utterly unaware of our battles, walked in. The mouth opened. The jowls drooped. "Jeeezus. A bunch of goddamn high school kids." And he turned and walked out.



This hardly ended the wars. Irv Spence devised what he considered a brilliant defensive strategy. He brought into his office a pile of empty film cans, which he stacked precariously on the edge of his desk. He attached string to them, and ran it to the doorknob, so that nobody could come into his office without triggering a very loud booby trap.



At lunchtime I secured a ladder and a drill. I set up the ladder outside in the corridor and drilled through the plywood wall of Irv's office right over where his head would be. We all waited for Irv to come back from lunch. He went into his office and set up his defensive booby trap. With Irv behind his closed door, I brought back the ladder, set it up, took a big mouthful of water, climbed the ladder, put one end of the straw in my mouth and the other end through the hole I had drilled. Then I let loose with the water.



Now, we had timed all this, and we had studied the trajectories involved. The stream must have hit Irv squarely on the head. He let out a scream, and unable to figure out where the water was coming from, thoughtlessly pulled open his office door, triggering his own booby trap of some twenty empty metal film cans. It sounded like the end of the world. Of course it wasn't. But while we were throwing pushpins and developing the weapons of a water war, Europe and Asia were erupting in a very real war we all wondered how long we could stay out of.

Early water-bomb related humor from Irv Spence, published in the Los Angeles Times on August 5, 1928.

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 25, 1944

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 24, 1944

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 23, 1944

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 22, 1944

The Barrymore Collar

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 21, 1944

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 20, 1944

The Uninvited had already been in release for a month at this time. The Los Angeles Times' film critic at the time, the enjoyable and confounding Edwin Schallert, wrote on April 14, 1944, "I kept thinking of such a masterwork as Henry James' 'Turn of the Screw' while looking at 'The Uninvited,' which is probably a sort of lurking huge tribute to its mentality." So there.

TCM's website has the trailer.

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 19, 1944

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 18, 1944

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 17, 1944

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 16, 1944

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 15, 1944

Lovell Norman was a sound editor at MGM. He also appears in this drawing of the 1956 MGM cartoon staff by Bud Shenkman.

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 14, 1944

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 13, 1944

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 12, 1944

MGM Cartoons producer Fred Quimby.

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 11, 1944

The May 11 diary drawing was the second of two that have been lost over the years. The diary continues tomorrow.

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 10, 1944

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 9, 1944

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 8, 1944

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 7, 1944

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 6, 1944

On this day The Million Dollar Cat  was released.

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: May 5, 1944

Irv Spence's Cartoon Diary: Straight Outta Compton / May 4, 1944

The diary drawing for May 4th is one of two that were missing from the original diary. In its place, here is an Irv Spence editorial cartoon, published in the Los Angeles Times on July 29, 1928, when he was 19 years old.

UPDATE, November 13, 2013

The long lost drawing for May 4, 1944 has surfaced on the Heritage Auctions website. How it arrived there and where it has been all these years isn't said. I wish the other 365 had shown up with it, but I'm happy to be able to share, for once, a good scan from the original drawing rather than the usual umpteenth-generation xeroxes.