Anybody notice the phantom is doing Jerry Colonna? And the reference to "Horrors Heights" probably went over the heads of anybody who wasn't around when Horace Heidt and His Musical Knights were regaling us with swing music. Ah, the nostalgia ...
In the late 80's my parents recorded about 14-15 Beany and Cecil episodes onto a VHS tape that I've seen over 100 times as a kid and on the last episode recorded, it shows the Horse Opera as an upcoming episode and it feels really delighting to finally see it after all these years.
I love the showbiz puns in this toon. Far and away the wackiest part is neat the end when Cecil is fighting the Phantom and Beany is cheering him on... all covered in invisible paint! ("This the greatest fight ever filmed! Too bad you can't see us!") The victory pose where only Beany and Cecil's mouths are seen seals the deal! :D Kinda makes you wonder if Bob Clampett was sniffing paint when he wrote the script for this thing. Rich Rodriguez West Covina, CA
Just a little too young to remember Beany and Cecil on network TV (I was born in '65) but I've seen some of the reruns and I think it's a great cartoon! Very cleverly written! Of course one can't go wrong with Bob Clampett, one of the finest directors ever to come out of the WB studios!
Greetings from Lima-Peru (South America); Fantastic and Very Funny "Benito y Cecilia" (Beany and Cecil)! The spanish version for Latin America kept the songs untouched in it's original english version...quite a challenge and motivation for learning it! Cesar
Villain's "invisible paint" didn't work, I see, on the hat, saddle, etc. Lucky for him he's just after a foolishly adventuring unarmed boy, old man, sea serpent, and crow,...instead of an armed lawman!
This is one of the 54 Beany & Cecil cartoons that don't appear on either of the 2 DVD sets. Really funny stuff for kids and adults. Thanks for posting.
HORSE HEIDT, and his Mare-sical Knights. Clampett did for Republic a horse cartoon, his last short, for movies, "It's a grnad old nag", with Stan Freberg as a lovestruck (and starstruck!) horse who goes to a Hollywood with many horse punny names (actuallly beginning at the critter's barn, with "Heady La-mare", his love, and "Clark Stable"..:rolleyes")
Aww, Cecil really is lovable. I just felt a pang of pity for the kids who came after me (I'm 50). We had Cecil; they had Barney the Dinosaur. No contest.
I just realized that in one scene Beany says, "Cecil, you shouldn't talk with your mouth full.", yet Cecil talks while flipping the horse like discus with the horse's tail in his mouth. Really, how can Cecil avoid talking with his mouth full, when he has no limbs! Finding Beany and Cecil on RU-vid has truly brought back memories of 1962. It has also cleared up some old images I have in my memory. One was the opening of the show of the flying propeller to reveal children around a television.
Oh the subtle humor kids would never have understood in the 60's. References to "Wuthering Heights" and "Horrors Heights" (a play on Horace Heidt, a popular band leader in the 30-40s. Never got those jokes till now
Just saw a video where the person was wearing a beanie boy hat and made think back to my child hood of Bosco and Beanie and Cecil yeah i dated my self but any one watching this has got be as old or older than me so haha
Actually, that voice is supposed to be Jerry Colonna, who was frequently used in many Warner Brothers cartoons. Usually, he was seen with wide eyes, and a big mustache. The real Jerry Colonna was part of Jack Benny's troupe in the 40s.
Yep, and at the end when the Phantom ends up shaped into a stone sphinx, his face takes on Colonna's likeness as well! I also enjoyed Colonna's work with Disney, narrating "Casey at the Bat" and "The Brave Engineer," and voicing the March Hare in "Alice in Wonderland".
Nope. It was a tradition carried over from the "Time for Beany" puppet show, where Cecil was a sock puppet whose tail was never seen because in reality Cecil was the arm of puppeteer and voice actor Stan Freberg. Only two cartoons showed Cecil's entire body: "Beany and the Jackstalk", when Cecil is wound up in the spring of a giant cuckoo clock; and another one with a little worm repeating "Now?" to help Cecil, who is mummified and gagged and spells out N-O-W with his entire body. :)
I recall another time when Cecil was fighting Billy the Squid. It showed Cecil flying through the air into the water as his entire body including his pointed tail went plunging in.
This segment displays the creativity and fun that were a consistent part of the Beany and Cecil series. I wonder . . . has anyone else noticed that at 2:00 - 2:07, one of those giant hamburgers temporarily disappears without the aid of the invisible paint?
This series brings back a flood of memories from around 1962, except I saw the original in black and white (no color television yet). I think I'd like to be Beany, the freckled blond, in any cartoon. I get the jokes now! "I'd put a gag in this kid's mouth, but I'm running out of material." I didn't learn of Groucho Marx for another decade, so I did not get "Ain't that a kick in the head?" I'd like to see the country progress toward the 21st century again after decades of reaction.
And the big band riff from Alvin and the Chipmunks used during chase scenes or when someflicte's clobbered somewhere or stepped on some pin was archived and used as a circus theme for Beany!
You're right. My bad. I'm just glad I was in the same general era for that comparison. I should have remembered all the times Jerry made it out with Bob to entertain the troops during WWII.
Run a keyword search for "D.J. the D.J.", in which Cecil writes and sings "Rag Mop" with two dogs under the guidance of Dishonest John. It satirizes teen pop music, Tin Pan Alley and even Alvin and The Chipmunks! BTW, the title is short for Dishonest John the Disc Jockey. :)
@EvilCleric Only in three instances: in the episode "Beany and the Jackstalk" Cecil's entire body is wound up from head to tail in the tension coil of the giant's cuckoo clock; in another episode where Cecil is gagged and mummified and he spells out "N-O-W" with his body when a worm on a fishing line asks "Now?" to help him; and when he turns into Super Cecil, the big green S on his chest is actually a miniature of his body shaped like an S.
I agree as well, a conjecture that I've made before since Bob designed used puppets on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1960 of the Chipmunks for Ross Bagdasdarian. Now who can tell any mor eabout Jack Roberts?? Darrell Calker's "Woody Woodpecker": theme is heard a few themes in other episodes, "Dirtyh Birdy" for example.
actually, it WAS on Cartoon Network a few years ago if one looked hard enough. CN used to have a show called the Bob Clampett Show, which was 30 mins of "Bob Clampett cartooooooooons!"...erm, 'scuse me. anyway, it was mostly Bugs Bunny kind of stuff, but if one watched enough eps, they'd occasionally come across a Beanie & Cecil cartoon.
Ollie of Kukla, Fran and Ollie fame was cute, too. We just had better sorta-reptilian critters than subsequent generations did. But... they had Animaniacs. XD
It's funny how the animators never decided to give Cecil a body. You just see his upper half. But maybe that's a good thing. Remember the rare instances where you would see Alf's entire body? It didn't look right. Kinda scary.
Watching a doc on making of Ren and Stimpy and John K just said he hired Billy West for the show because of the work they did together on The Beany and Cecil Show. Never heard of this before! it's ... interesting..
it was a reboot of the show that he made at DiC in 1988, entitled The New Adventures of Beany and Cecil. this video here is the original show produced by Bob Clampett, and the two shows did not share any of the same crew.
