In 1956, UPA released the final of four cartoons featuring Dr. Seuss’s adorably strange, noise-making little boy, Gerald McBoing-Boing. This last cartoon in the series deviates from the typical McBoing-Boing short in one important way: the creative, sometimes nonsensical rhyming meter of the previous Gerald entries is gone, replaced by a straightforward narrative. And while I find myself…
On June 9, 1934, the Walt Disney animation studios released The Wise Little Hen, a Silly Symphony adapted from a classic fairy tale. As with most of the Silly Symphonies, the cartoon did not feature any of Disney’s stock recurring characters, such as the already-legendary Mickey Mouse. But one member of Hen’s supporting cast–a petulant, musical, sailor suit-clad duck–would…
It’s a lovely moonlight night, and everyone who’s anyone is making the scene at the Coo-Coo Nut Grove, the hottest nightspot in town. Ben Birdie is leading the band, the rat fink gossip columnist Walter Windpipe is looking for a scoop, and the mood is just right for stargazing. Or, at the very least, for enjoying a…
Thanksgiving is almost here! For this week’s edition of Saturday Morning Cartoons, we animation lovers here at True Classics are giving thanks for all of the glorious classic cartoon bounty there is to enjoy this season by highlighting one of our favorite Turkey Day ‘toons, the 1949 Tom and Jerry short The Little Orphan. A…
Today, November 18th, marks the 85th anniversary of the debut of Mickey Mouse in the groundbreaking 1928 cartoon Steamboat Willie. We’re celebrating over at The Moviola today with a look back at the cartoon that started an animation empire. Happy birthday, Mickey, ol’ pal, and thanks for all the memories over the years.
It’s (finally) starting to get chilly down here in the South, and that turns our thoughts to … penguins. Okay, not really, but for the purposes of this week’s edition of Saturday Morning Cartoons, let’s just say that’s true as we present you with The Legend of Rockabye Point, featuring the cutest penguin ever. The…
By 1927, Adolph Zukor, the Hollywood mogul behind the rapidly-expanding Paramount-Famous Lasky Corporation, had built a veritable entertainment empire. The studio had moved into a new, multimillion-dollar twenty-six acre lot off Melrose Avenue. They had amassed a chain of nearly two thousand theaters across the country, called Publix Theatres, in which to screen their many…
Ralph Phillips is bored, bored, bored. While his schoolmates mindlessly chant their math lesson (“Two and two is four. Four and four is eight …”), Ralph stares dreamily out the classroom window, imagining himself as a bird, flipping and flying freely through the sky–until his reverie is rudely interrupted by his teacher. She, for some…
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