Chilly Willy: Cool and Spicy

Over at About.com, I selected Chilly Willy's Sub-Arctic World as The Funny Site of the Day. Among many treats, this excellent fan tribute offers most of the cuddly penguin's cartoons online, including the two that shaped the series, from director Tex Avery, "I'm Cold" and "The Legend of Rockabye Point."

I grew up on these films, seen often in theatres, and later I projected them during my career as a motion picture machine operator.

(I had a side career as a malted milk ball and Jujube inhaler, but there was no money in it, and reference sources blanched at crediting me. Jealousy is everywhere. I didn't bother to mention the Black Cow suckers.)

As I recall, in the 1960s, Universal Studios released at least 13 new cartoons each year with several Chilly tales in the mix. They'd also reissue a batch of his earlier shorts. Attractions changed twice per week at my neighborhood theatre. I'd routinely see a penguin or two each month. That's when I learned to take a jacket to the movies. It gets cold in those auditoriums and it seems penguins revolt if the Jujubes are frozen. Those rabid little monsters didn't much care if they had a cartoon counterpart on the big screen or not. They were mean and they turned up their beaks at my licorice peace offerings.

By 1972, the traditional pre-feature cartoon in American cinemas became a memory. I remember it well, because, concurrently, as a big college man, I was phasing out duplicate pocket lints.

Economic forces were to blame for the cartoon's demise and major animation centers were shuttered. It is said Hanna-Barbera's unfunny Frenchy, Loopy DeLoop, soon died in shame. He must have gotten around to watching his pictures.

I regret I couldn't have been present to throw his Loopy ass for a loop into the asphalt, stomping him into an untalented grease stain on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Doubly nice, while there, I would have had the opportunity to give the "thumbs up" to the geeks in line at Grauman's Chinese for "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith."

Sheesh, are they going to be mad -- when there's no Donald or Daffy Duck before Darth.

From 1977 to 1980, I was part of an effort to sustain the pre-show cartoon custom. I worked one night per week in a drive-in theatre, so I could run the old style projectors, plus enjoy the outdoor ambiance and sitting duck fear.

The theatre company was a firm believer in programming a "color cartoon" before the first show as a customer enticement. They would post "color cartoon" on the marquee and specifically announce showtimes on their answering machine: "... starting at dusk with a color cartoon." Hadn't all cartoons been in color for 40 years at that point?

Perhaps I'm confusing them with the hamburgers. The mustard and ketchup were black and white.

The only cartoons we played each evening were old, deteriorating Universal prints. I showed tons of Chillys during those years, as I had before in 1970, during my earliest times groveling for the almighty benevolent projectionists' union. Amen.

On several occasions, the Business Agent sent me to run a soft porn movie house near the posh section of town. The odd thing was the management insisted on showing a cartoon between the abysmal features. The programs usually lasted an hour, so 10 times each day I'd screen a Universal short subject, always starring Chilly Willy or Woody Woodpecker. It was very surreal.

You wouldn't believe how much time I spent sitting in that projection room trying to figure out if "Woody Woodpecker" and, for that matter, "Chilly Willy," had some kind of porn world significance. Those names seemed awfully suspect and redundant in that place.

But, so would "Speedy" and "Droopy."