A rich slice of film noir to start off #Noirvember

Over at Twitter, a Twitter member named Marya (@oldfilmsflicker) has designated November as the month of “Noirvember” in honor of the esteemed genre of film noir. I’m no noir expert, but I’ll try to sprinkle some fun noir stuff into this blog throughout the month.

For starters, film noir fans with sweet teeth (tooths?) will savor this 2007 gem.

Scream for Tom & Jerry

If you’re a fan of “classic” Tom & Jerry — the M-G-M cartoons directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, before they went to “limited animation” for TV — you’ll note that one of their recurring gags was Tom’s crazy scream whenever Jerry did some bodily harm to him.

Ever wonder how they got such a quirky and funny yelp from Tom? The answer is that Bill Hanna provided his finest scream for the movie’s soundtrack, and then the sound editors chopped off the beginning and end of the scream, so that its coming out of and going to nowhere would be funny instead of frightening.

Here is one of the introductions to CBS’ 1965 series of Tom & Jerry broadcasts. There are enough examples of The Hanna Scream here for you to appreciate them.

Happy 85th birthday, Donald Duck!

Donald Fauntleroy Duck (yes, that’s really his full name) made his film debut on this day in 1934 in The Wise Little Hen. But to fully honor his legacy, I’d like to present to you what is, IMHO, his finest hour (or at least, his finest seven-and-a-half minutes). Here is Donald’s glorious appearance in Fantasia 2000. (Since annual graduation ceremonies recently took place around the country, I’m sure you’ll recognize the musical score.)