Look Magazine February 28, 1939

Original Caption

"Human litterbugs Are Models...

"For Dancing Insects
In an Animated Cartoon

"NOBODY ever knows what a jitterbug will do next.
Even those masters of miracles, the Hollywood animated
cartoonists, who can make pigs dance and ducks
talk, couldn't figure out the jitterbugs.
"When the jitterbug craze hit the country," says Cartoon
Producer Walter Lantz, "we started out to make a
jitterbug cartoon. But after making many hundreds of
drawings, we realized it was impossible to follow the
intricate steps conceived by these dizzy dancers unless
we could work from actual jitterbugs in action."
So Lantz rounded up jitterbug teams, turned them
loose in front of a camera, then had animators study them
on the movie screen. Even then, the timing problem was
too difficult. Finally, each frame of action was projected
and a tracing was made of it. Animators then drew the
cartoon bugs over the tracings of the dancing teams.
Some of the human models and the cartoon scenes
they inspired for "I'm Just a Jitterbug" are shown here.
The cartoon required 12,000 individual drawings, but it
takes only seven minutes to show it on the screen."