The Cartoonist Who Crashed the Party
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
In the 1950s, American culture suddenly blew up. Cinemascope doubled the size of movie screens, televisions burst into living rooms everywhere, comic books were a four-colored geyser drowning the newsstand under hundreds of titles, rock ‘n’ roll came screaming out of nowhere to own the airwaves, and Hollywood went crazy for epics: Biblical epics, Western epics, musical epics. What motion pictures needed was a plus-sized director who could stand up to this mushroom cloud of pop culture; what they got was animator-turned-gagman Frank Tashlin.
Film historians like to say that Tashlin, who will be remembered with a week-long retrospective beginning tonight at Film Forum, directed his cartoons like live action and his live action like cartoons. It’s hard to argue when confronted with his characters, who spurt steam out of their ears, address the camera like a best friend, and break the laws of physics like pretzel sticks.
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