Joe Noble

(1804-1984)

Charles Harrison "Joe" Noble was born in Manchester on 25 December 1894, the elder son of poster artist Charles Frederick Noble and his wife Kate.

When his mother died, in 1918, Charles Frederick, Kate and their two sons moved to Hampstead, Northwest London. The house, 44 Parkhill Road, was to be the family home for the next thirteen years; Joe and George continued to live there and when George married in 1927 he brought his wife Iris into the home. In 1931 the family moved to 10 Melrose Avenue, Wilesden, and three years later George Iris and their two daughters moved into a home of their own in nearby Blenheim Gardens. After the War they moved to Wimbledon.

In 1919 Joe started work as a titles designer for the Daily News Film Agency in Wardour Street, producers of the Daily Cinema News, a daily release that aimed to get that day’s news onto cinema screens by 8.30 pm. In 1920 the company moved to offices in Shaftesbury Avenue, and Joe found himself working below the animation studio Kine Komedy Kartoons. He had been fascinated by the early American cartoon imports of Raoul Barré's The Animated Grouch Chasers and J. R. Bray’s Colonel Heeza Liar and he discovered that the Kine Komedy Kartoons animators were studying the American way of animating. Not all of them were prepared to give up the cut-out animation technique that British animators had been using, but cartoonist Dudley Buxton was keen to adopt the sequential drawing method which, although requiring a simpler drawing style, had more vitality and freedom of action, and Joe became his assistant. He may have worked on the last of Buxton's Bucky's Burlesques series and the two Memoirs of Miffy cartoons.

But Kine Komedy Kartoons had been failing to make a profit and the other animators were already leaving. Despite producer Frank Zeitlin attempts to recruit popular artists such as J A Shepherd and H M Bateman he was unable to raise sufficient funding, and Kine Komedy Kartoons ceased productionat some point in the autumn of 1921.

Joe Noble looked round for other animation work and found it in Brentford, where newspaper cartoonists Tom Titt and W D Ford had persuaded clothing manufacturers Broda, Jenkins & Co to invest in making cartoon films. Joe joined them at the B J Film Producing Company where they were working on a series of 12 films featuring characters called Crock & Dizzy. Joe used his newly acquired expertise to work as both animator and cameraman on the series.

The trade magazine Kinematograph Weekly was running a Bright Ideas feature, where readers could submit tips and inventions for cash prizes (5 shillings for the to best, half-a-crown for any others — about £15 and £7.50 in 2023's money), and Joe Noble became a regular contributor (although some of his "perfectly safe" electrical dodges would not get published today!). He initially gave his address as "B. J. Film Producing Company, Art Studios, Market Place, Brentford, Middlesex."

There does not appear to be any record of the films produced by the B J Film Producing Company, although they are thought to have been released by M P Films, 1921-2. The B J Film Producing Company appears to have closed down in the summer of 1921 — records show the occupants of the building in October to be a company called Semper Nova Films.

Sports cartoonist Tom Webster had been approached by producer Tom Aitken to make an animated version of his newspaper cartoon of the racehorse Tishy, which had come last in the 1921 Cesarewitch despite being joint-favourite, for showing at the Royal Command Performance on 12 December 1922. The idea that Tishy was inclined to cross her legs had prompted Webster to depict them plaited together and the cartoon had been very popular. However, the project had hit a problem – perhaps due to the limited time available. Joe Noble took over the project, and with the help of W D Ford completed the film on schedule. It proved a big hit and was subsequently put on general released by Napoleon Films, who announced that it would be the first of a series of animated versions of Tom Webster's sporting cartoons. In the end only two more were made — Jimmy Wilde (the Welsh flyweight boxer) and Inman in Billiards. Denis Gifford credits the same team, Noble, Ford and Aiken, with these two entries.

According to Danish animator and historian Harry Rasmussen, Noble became production manager for Visual Education Ltd in 1923, animating diagram films for various purposes.

In 1924 he worked with Tom Webster again, making a couple of films for screening as part of a stage revue called Cartoons, which opened at the Criterion on 19 April, and then teamed up once more with Dudley Buxton on a series for Pathé featuring a dog called Pongo. Pathé wanted a cartoon series to replace the Felix cartoons that they had been including in their Eve’s Film Review cinemagazine reel. My assumption is that they contacted Buxton, as the more famous animator, and that he called on Noble to help out. They appear to have made 7 films in the series, but Pathé seems not to have been happy with them and the series was discontinued. It may be, as a reviewer for the Kinematograph Weekly predicted, that ”clever though the cartoons are” Pongo, a black dog that walked on its hind legs, suffered from comparison with the immortal cat he was attempting to replace.

On 31 October 1924 Noble gave a lecture to the Cinematograph Group of the Royal Photographic Society entitled Out of the Inkpot: How It Is Done as part of an evening of lectures on Trick Cinematography and Professional Secrets.

1926 saw Noble working on another Tom Webster project — a series called Alfred and Steve featuring the misadventures of a racehorse and his trainer, being made for release by the Ideal Film Renting Co. He was partnered with American animator Dick Freil, who brought with him to the UK animator Earl Hurd’s idea of tracing the animation onto cels to allow more detailed backgrounds. It seems that only three films were made, suggesting that Ideal had declined their option on a further five, apparently because the cartoons failed to match up to the US standard, being too reliant on title cards, and not enough on humorous action.

In the summer of 1926 Dean’s Rag Books launched a new addition to their range of stuffed toys — a doleful dalmatian called Dismal Desmond, initially advertising it in the June issue of monthly magazine The Picturegoer. The soft toy became a phenomenal success. In January 1927 Gaumont launched a cinemagazine called the Gaumont Mirror. Designed to compete with Eve’s Film Review, issue 1 concluded with an animated cartoon by Joe Noble featuring Dismal Desmond. Noble’s version of the character was simplified, with a large head and small body, and does not seem particularly to reflect the original design by Dean's toy designer Richard Ellett. At least 4 cartoons were made in the series, and probably more, as the other three are listed in April and May issues of the cinemagazine.

It appears that during the summer of 1927, some time around the end of June, an issue of the Pathé Pictorial included a cartoon film titled The Froth Blower's Nightmare. This film lampoons the Ancient Order of Froth Blowers, a charitable society of beer drinkers founded in 1924, whose motto of 'lubrication in moderation' was perhaps not always strictly observed. Uncredited, it is thought to be the work of Joe Noble.

In 1928 Joe Noble started work on a new series for Pathé’s Eve’s Film Review. Titled Sammy and Sausage it featured a boy and dog duo and utilised the device originated by Max Fleischer and used by several of the series produced by Bray Studios, and in the UK by the earlier, highly successful Pathé series Jerry the Terrible Tyke, animated by Sid Griffiths, of having the cartoon characters interact with their creator. (It would seem that he had used this approach in the Dismal Desmond cartoons, judging by the only available still from that series.) It should be noted that the Bray studio tended to use photographs of the live-action (either still shots or registered prints of the live-action frames) reshot with the animation cels on top, whereas Griffiths and Noble both used bipack matting, with its inevitable fringing, to add animation to live footage.

Joe animated and appeared in about 20 episodes and it seems likely that his brother George, who had previously worked as a press photographer, was the cameraman. A rough title card for the film Shadows! (presumably Noble's copy, before release by Pathé) reveals that he had planned to call the series On the Easel (referencing Fleischer's Out of the Inkwell), and also that he was an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society.

The last Sammy and Sausage cartoon to be released, Call me "Speedy", is an anomaly. Released in 1930 as an item in Pathé Pictorial it is prefaced by an amended version of the series title card showing the characters Sammy and Sausage, but Sammy does not appear in the film. Sausage's partner here is a lanky stereotyped black youth apparently called Sambo. The story involves them sneaking into the Pathé studio to shoot a screen test — the sort of storyline that often features as the start of a cartoon series — so it is possible that this was Joe Noble's 'pilot' for a series to be called Sambo and Sausage. Presumably Pathé bought the film, but decided to change the black character to a white one. It is unlikely that the black character would have been seen as offensive in the late 1920s, so perhaps Fred Watts, manager of Pathé's cinemagazines, thought him too American and wanted a more British character. The 1930 Pictorial release, with its amended title card reading And now meet SAMMY AND SAUSAGE The KARTOON KIDLETS in Call me "Speedy" (and no episode number) remains a mystery — it looks like an attempt to to restart the series but not for running in the Pictorial or it would have included a Pathé Pictorial flash on the title card. Perhaps it was being repackaged for export.

With the coming of sound Joe Noble turned his attention to synchronisation. In 1928 he applied for a patent for a method of producing sound cartoons by filming a live performance, either mimed to, or during the recording of, the proposed soundtrack, and then using that film as a frame by frame guide when creating the animation. This is presumably the method he used, with his brother George providing the voice and performance, to make Britain’s first sound cartoons, for British Talking Pictures Ltd, The Jazz Stringer and Music Hath Charms featuring ’Orace the ’Armonious ’Ound, a dog very similar in design to Sausage. The second film uses spoken dialogue and was advertised as The First Talking Cartoon in the World. This in turn led to the first talking cartoon advertising film, Mr. York of York, Yorks for Rowntrees.

“Plain Mr York of York, Yorks” was a character that had been created for press and poster advertising in 1925 by the cartoonist Alfred Leete. Although the body of the cartoon involves the character moving about in various scenarios, the primary talking scene involves the still image as designed by Leete, with just the mouth animating smoothly open and shut in sync, like a ventriloquist’s dummy. Perhaps the decision had been made to avoid other mouth shapes so as not to risk losing the likeness to the posters, and the result probably satisfied audiences at the time, but in America the emphasis had shifted from the cartoon character being a drawing that moved to being a living breathing entity in its own right, and Disney would later worry that when a character stopped moving it reverted to lifelessness. American animators were now concentrating on the way characters moved, creating more interesting and entertaining actions and improving the smoothness and fluidity of the animation, and changing mouth shapes was a natural extension of expression. But Noble seems content with this simple mouth action, and continued to use it in his subsequent sound cartoons.

In 1929 Fred Watts decided to start a new cinemagazine specifically for the sound market. Titled Pathé Sound Magazine it featured items such as interviews with celebrities and performances by comedians and popular bands, recorded at a specially-built sound studio in the Wardour Street Pathé building. The magazine was planned to be released at fortnightly intervals, and Joe Noble began a series of sound cartoons, Little Bruin, the Talking Teddie, for inclusion in it. The first four issues of Pathé Sound Magazine were shown to the trade on 18 June 1929, and the take up was so good that from September onwards (issue no. 8) it became a weekly release. A mute print of the first Little Bruin exists, without the accompanying soundtrack, but although it has a series title card prepared by Pathé's titling department there is no evidence of it ever having been included in the magazine.

The character reappears as Teddie, along with a pig (Piggie) and a parrot (Poll) in a pilot for a proposed series called The Elstree Erbs ('erbs being short for 'erberts – Joe seems to have a fondness for cockney slang). The addition of the words "Noble Bros" at the end of the film rather suggests that Joe and George financed the film themselves, and perhaps the name Elstree Erbs means they hoped to sell it to British International Pictures, owners of Elstree Studios. They clearly had a producer/distributor in mind, as the music that would accompany the distributor's title card is here accompanied by the note "25 FOOT IS RESERVED HERE FOR MR THORP'S MAIN TITLE", but I have no idea who Mr Thorp might have been.

The soundtrack is a jaunty rag composed by Lawrence Easson, a songwriter who made a name for himself in the 1920s with I Wish I Could Go Where The Birdies Go and Banjulele Baby, and is played by a combo called The Innes Chicago Cabaret Eleven, of whom I can find no other mention. There is some dialogue, but most of the vocal expressions, those of assorted worms, sausages and fish, are created by instruments. The animation and drawing is rather crude, but the synchronisation is well-planned and precise. The humour is rather cruel and heartless, with Teddie fishing with a worm that is only too aware of its forthcoming demise (though not that the fish is actually going to shoot it!) and a cow's udder being used as a punchbag, and the idea of Poll, here the owner of a sausage shop, being part of the trio of “Erbs” is rather undermined by the fact that Teddie and Piggie conclude the film by eating him along with his stock! And the funniest joke, a throwaway credit reading 'Not forgetting “WANDA” -- a wronged worm,' while a worm in a skirt pushes a pram full of baby worms across the screen, is perhaps a little indelicate for some middleclass audiences.

The interesting thing about the video available online at the BFI website is that it has been made from the double head — that is, the picture reel and the soundtrack reel, both edited to length and able to be run together on a double-headed projector or an editing viewer like the moviola, prior to them being printed together to make a combined negative. As it is usual for the picture element to be shot open gate — that is, the whole 35mm frame area being exposed, with the actual smaller off-centre intended picture area being masked off later when the combined negative is made (it means that any dirt accumulating around the edges of the larger full camera gate will not be seen in the final print) — we actually get to see more than would appear on the final print: a little more top and bottom, but a distinct strip on the left hand side where the soundtrack will go. The underwater scenes have a repeating set of numbers, and some written notes, appearing in this space on specific frames — presumably as a guide for the editor to line up the soundtrack in sync.

Lawrence Easson also wrote the theme song for 'the successful talkie film “TEANY”,' (an advertising film for Lyons Tea) according to the sheet music published in 1931, which features a cartoon elf on the cover. It could be that this film was animated by Joe Noble, but it appears to have vanished without trace, like most advertising films of the time.

Joe Noble continued working for Pathé creating segments for the cinemagazines, initially featuring comic animation along with straight illustrations, animated diagrams and live-action clips. Despite the appearance of a few themed films — items showing the mechanics of The Hand and The Eye are subtitled Our Wonderful Body/Bodies and the introduction of an animated microphone (called the Pathe Microbephone in "Wed-Time" Stories and the Pathe Microbophone in Illusions) as narrator of a couple of items (was this a comment on Fred Watts' decision not to add sound to Eve's Film Review?) — no further cartoon series evolved. Gradually the cartoon animation became replaced by more quickly produced live-action skits, usually featuring Joe dressed up and filmed by George in the Wardour Street studios, and the creation of various optical fx, such as a girl placed in a test tube (the Noble segments frequently included lots of pretty young women). Topics such as humorous depictions of hats, fashions, and the workings of parts of the body for Eve's Film Review gave way to more general and scientific ones for Pathe Pictorial and Pathetone Weekly, though often with a cartoon gag to finish off. In 1935 Pathé made a 10-reel silent technical film titled The Romance of the Motorcar (originally The Motorcar and its Mechanism), produced by Fred Watts with photography by George and animated diagrams by Joe.

For the 1939 England & Wales Register Joe Noble listed his occupation as: ”Film photographer & technical film director – film cartoonist – draughtsman” in that order.

The filmography below lists many of the Pathé magazine segments directed by Joe Noble, but is by no means complete.

Joe Noble continued to work for Pathé until 1945, when he left to make films for The Directorate of Naval Training, according to Harry Rasmussen. Animation historian Ken Clark, who interviewed Noble, reports that during the war he had made training films for the Canadian Army Headquarters in London.

The only naval instruction film that I have found is This Film is Dangerous, about the danger of nitrate film reels catching fire, made for the Admiralty in May 1948 by British Documentary Films, one of two production companies run by Ronald Haines and his wife Jean. Joe provided an animated sailor for the title sequence and a couple of internal titles, animated diagrams of a "good" film splice and film running through a projector, and probably the Felix-like cat inked and painted on a nitrate cel which is burned to demonstrate celluloid's flammability (a familiar hazard for animation studios of the day, but a bit 'niche' – celluloid collars or pingpong balls would have been more familiar examples).

Jean and Ronald Haines went on to produce the 1950 live-action biopic Mr H C Andersen, which includes animated sequences based on Hans Andersen stories {although bizarrely it appears that Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is also included) credited to "Leon Boje". Since I can find no other reference to such a person, and the name just happens to be an anagram of "Joe Noble", who is known to have worked on the film, I assume that he is primarily responsible for the inserts. Trade-shown on 22 June 1950, the film was made in black and white, and the cartoon segments would have compared badly with the colour feature-length cartoon of Andersen’s The Tinderbox, made in Denmark in 1946 and released in Great Britain with an English soundtrack in late 1949, and the film itself was no match for the Danny Kaye colour musical released two years later. The review in the Kinematograph Weekly was damning:

His [Hans Christian Andersen's] fame still lives, but the film, little more than an overgrown charade, interspersed with crude and unfunny cartoons, utterly fails to capture a true likeness of the sensitive genius. Pathetically incompetent, it frequently evoked laughter.
[29 June 1950].

Since Joe Noble was working for the Haineses at this time it seems likely that he was also the uncredited animator of Rhymes of all Times, a nursery rhyme cartoon promoting the National Savings Bank's scheme for young children.

In 1949 George Noble became cameraman for the newly created Gold Coast Unit of the Colonial Film Unit, making films in Africa for African audiences. Joe probably worked for the CFU’s London base — no longer a film production unit itself but providing post-production services, support and coordination for the African units — providing maps, diagrams and optical effects. He continued to work for the Overseas Film and Television Centre, a commercial company set up in 1954 to take over the work of the CFU’s London facilities on its closure by the Colonial Office, until his retirement in 1970. He died in 1984, aged 89.

Filmography

Links to Other Sites

Animator Magazine: Charles 'Joe' Noble. 1894 to 1984. A tribute. Obituary by Ken Clark.

The Lost Continent: The life and films of Joe Noble Blog by Neil Emmett

British Pathé:Flashbacks Reel 2 A compilation reel of silent shorts including Tom Webster's "Tishy" (largely animated by Joe Noble) at 10:28.

British Pathé: The Adventures of Pongo the Pup five episodes of the series animated by Dudley Buxton and Joe Noble.

British Pathé: The Froth Blower's Nightmare uncredited, but appears to be the work of Joe Noble.

British Pathé: The Adventures of Sammy and Sausage nine episodes of the series animated by Joe Noble, including the anomalous 'Call me "Speedy"'.

British Pathé: Shadows! 'The Adventures of Sammy and Sausage' episode 4. Not from a Pathe release print but from the original print that Joe Noble would have presented to Pathe.

Yorkshire Film Archive:Mr York of York, Yorks (aka 'Meet Mr York') advertising film for Rowntrees milk chocolate bar.

British Pathé: Little Bruin, the talking teddie 'Misery Farm,' the proposed first episode. Although it has a 'Pathe Pictorial' title card it does not seem to have been released. This is the mute print from the double-head (the separate rolls of sound and picture before they are combined). Sadly the sound roll was not with the print.

BFIplayer: The Elstree Erbs First episode of a proposed series by Joe and George that was never taken up. The video has been combined from the double-head. Note that the picture is the entire open-gate image rather than the masked-off sound picture area.

British Pathé: Wed-Time Stories A household cartoonlet by Joe Noble and the Pathé Microbephone An item from Eve's Film Review issue 557, 4 February 1932.

British Pathé: Illusions Being a few Words or Widom by Eve's Microbophone assisted by Joe Noble An item from Eve's Film Review, c.1932.

British Pathé: Hats An item from Pathé Pictorial [New Series] issue 356, 25 January 1943. Joe Noble plays 'the husband' and 'the hat brim manipulator' in the sketches (note that the latter 'manipulations' are actually shot in reverse).

National Library of Scotland: This Film is Dangerous 1948 Naval training film. Video of live-action film on the dangers of nitrate movie film, produced for the Admiralty by British Documentary Films, with animation and diagrams by Joe Noble.

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