Ron Kurer never outgrew
his love of old cartoons
BY JEFF WILFORD,
Journal Times, 9/28/02
The grainy, black-and-white cartoon character
cavorted around on the screen on Ron Kurer's computer monitor. It's
part of the process of converting the cartoon from 16mm film to
digital.
"This is an old Terrytoons. It's called the 'Barker Bill Cartoon
Show,' " Kurer, 45, said. The cartoon was made in the 1930s. The
"Barker Bill Cartoon Show" was the first network weekday
cartoon series, appearing on CBS from 1953-56, on which Terrytoons
were shown.
The significance of this particular cartoon: It has the Barker Bill
logo at the beginning.
That's according to the "Encyclopedia of
Animated Cartoons" that Kurer keeps on a shelf next to his
computer.
"I keep a library of reference books on hand, in case I get a
question by e-mail ... that I don't know the answer to off the top of
my head," Kurer said.
Kurer is a cartoon fan who never outgrew his boyhood love for
Hanna-Barbera, Warner Brothers and other cartoons. Of that, there is
ample proof.
That Kurer converts cartoons to digital, and keeps an animation
encyclopedia handy, we'll call that Exhibit A.
Exhibit B: A basement filled with stacks and stacks of film reels,
containing cartoons ranging from six minutes to feature length. Kurer
stacked them according to cartoon, so all the Hanna-Barbera cartoons
are in the same stacks; all the Warner Brothers and MGM cartoons are
together; and so on.
Exhibit C: Kurer's Web site, www.toontracker.com,
which is devoted to archiving and preserving old cartoons. The site
contains many old cartoons that you can watch, as well as information
about the history of the cartoons.
"My idea is to preserve some of the things you're not going to
find," Kurer said. "I kind of look at it as a museum, or an
archive."
Kurer started collecting cartoons when he was still a little boy.
Then, you could buy the films at department stores. Now, he buys them
through Big Reel magazine, from other collectors and on eBay.
He started collecting cartoons mostly out of nostalgia, to remember
the ones he grew up with.
"And actually, once I started doing this, I discovered some I
didn't remember from when I was a kid," Kurer said. "They
apparently were on, and I didn't watch them."
Kurer seeks out older, more obscure cartoons. His library is a
collection of cartoons that aren't well known, haven't been seen for
awhile or were among those he watched growing up.
The oldest cartoon in his library is of "Gertie the
Dinosaur," circa 1914. The rarest is "The Beagles," a
parody of the Beatles involving two dogs from Liverpool, that aired
from 1966-68. The creator once e-mailed Kurer to say they had lost all
of the original 35mm masters of the cartoon. The hardest to get was
"The Adventures of Pow Wow." Why it was so hard to find, he
doesn't know.
"There's one I'm looking for, and I don't know if I'll ever find
it," Kurer said. "It's called 'The Nutty Squirrels,' and
it's a knock-off of 'Alvin and the Chipmunks.' I don't know if I'll
ever be able to find one."
Kurer lives in the Village of Waterford with his four children --
Hannah, Joshua, Melissa and Sarah -- and his wife, Mary. Make that his
"patient and tolerant" wife.
"I can't forget her," Kurer said. "She puts up with
entirely too much."
"Too much" would include the hours -- up to three hours a
day, when he has the spare time -- he spends in his basement,
converting cartoons to digital.
"Probably more than I should," Kurer said. "The
conversions, there's no way of doing it quickly. A half-hour film is
going to take one half-hour, probably more, because I have to thread
it, make sure there are no bad splices. You pretty much have to
monitor it because if there's a bad splice and the film breaks, you
have to repair it."
But with four children, ranging in age from 4
to 16, spare time is rare.
"Too much" could also include the
cost of buying cartoons and running the Web site. Cartoons can cost as
much as $150 on eBay ("They could even go up higher than that,
but that's out of my league," Kurer said) and the bandwidth for
his Web site isn't free.
Kurer does get some of that money back —
from donations people make to his Web site, to money he earns
converting cartoons for other people or designing Web pages for
people.
"It's my hobby," Kurer said. "It's about the only thing
I spend money on."
Mary Kurer said she has been surprised by the number of people who
share her husband's interest in old cartoons.
"There's a lot of people out there who
are into animation and the history of animation," Mary said.
"I guess that was my biggest surprise of all. I just thought it
was his weird little thing."
Mary isn't one of those people. Her interest
in cartoons begins and ends with the cartoons she watched growing up.
The Kurers never have Cartoon Night for the family.
"No, that's what's so funny about
it," Mary said. "We've got tons and tons of this stuff in
the house, and we never sit down and watch it."
