Animated Manhattan: Part 1
How 5 classic cartoons depicted New York City
Between 2006 and 2009, I wrote a series documenting New York City as it appears in various styles of animation. I thought it’s time to update it for the newsletter.
Just like many of your favorite sitcoms and live action movies, a lot of cartoons have taken place in Manhattan. Let’s look at how the Big Apple has been depicted in some classic animation.
The Simpsons
The Simpsons came to New York in their 9th season episode “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson,” to retrieve the family car that Barney had borrowed and left illegally parked in front of the World Trade Center. While Homer goes to the WTC to straighten matters out, the rest of the family goes sightseeing.
Since so much of the episode took place at the base of the towers, a lot of stations didn’t air the episode for years after 9/11.
Here is how the show depicted the city:
As anyone who has ever been in New York during Manhattanhenge can tell you, that sunset photo is not a view you could see in real life. This view of the Empire State Building is looking South. Or possibly North. Either way, the sun would never be there.
Fritz the Cat
This 1972 movie directed by Ralph Bakshi, based on the comic books by Robert Crumb, was the first x-rated cartoon. It follows Fritz the Cat on his drug-filled sex romp in search of love in Manhattan. The movie takes our hero from his NYU haunts downtown all the way up to Harlem on his adventures.
Most of the movie takes place in and around Greenwich Village. When we first meet Fritz, he’s hanging out with a hip crowd in Washington Square Park.
Sometimes the movie gives us sweeping views of the skyline like this:
Or unusual distorted vantage points, like this establishing shot of Washington Square Park as the center of the world:
Under the closing credits, actual photographs of locations seen in the movie are shown. The last photo in the credits sequence depicts the same view of Times Square that we see as the opening shot of the movie. Here are those shots side by side:
Antz
Antz was a computer-animated Dreamworks film about an ant named Z, voiced by Woody Allen. The film starts out reminiscent of Woody Allen’s movie Manhattan, with a silhouetted view of the Manhattan skyline:
But a lighting change quickly reveals that we aren’t looking at Manhattan at all, but an extremely close-up view of some blades of grass:
The camera then pans down, through the ground, and we meet Z for the first time, talking with his therapist. This begins the story of how one little insignificant ant can rise up, find love, save his colony from destruction, and save the day becoming a big hero.
At the film’s conclusion, Z is surrounded by his new love, and his whole colony, in the aftermath of the great battle that ended the film. The camera starts with a close-up of the pair before zooming out to show that the whole dramatic film has been taking place in a tiny anthill in the middle of Central Park:
Those buildings in the final shot aren’t quite positioned accurately, especially the World Trade Center towers, but it gets the point across.
Sundae in New York
The 1983 Academy Award winner for Best Animated Short was a stop-motion claymation film called Sundae in New York directed by Jimmy Picker. It featured then-mayor Ed Koch character singing “New York, New York” as he makes his way from scenario to scenario throughout the city meeting different people like Frank Sinatra, Rodney Dangerfield, Alfred E. Neuman, Woody Allen, the Statue of Liberty, and more.
Even though it’s simple claymation on tiny sets, it has a vibe that got me excited to one day move to New York where I would surely meet all these zany people.
You can watch the full three-minute film here:
Tom & Jerry — “Mouse in Manhattan”
Usually, the Tom & Jerry cartoons pit cat against mouse. But in the 1945 short film “Mouse in Manhattan,” Jerry has his one and only solo adventure — in New York!
The film opens with Jerry leaving a note under a sleeping Tom’s paw, explaining that he’s leaving their boring country life for the exciting bright lights of the big city.
He arrives in New York at Grand Central Terminal:
Where a shoeshiner mistakes him for a brush, resulting in this cringe-worthy racist moment:
Yikes.
Undeterred, Jerry heads out to see the sites.
But inevitably he has some misadventures. He gets caught in traffic, dances with some local ladies, gets mistaken for a thief, and finds himself dangling off a building like Harold Lloyd. Who among us hasn’t had a night on the town like that?
Unfortunately, it ends up being too much for Jerry to take. He decides he’s had enough of New York and heads home, by way of both bridge and tunnel.
Five animated movies seems like the right amount to cover in a newsletter. I have at least 15 more of these to share, but I’ll save them for other issues. Nobody wants to read an email about 20 movies.
I’ll see you next time!
David