Fleischer’s “Stone Age” Cartoons
With Dreamworks’ The Croods topping the box office, I thought it would be appropriate to take a look back at the original “modern stone-age” cartoons. No, not The Flintstones. Twenty…
Category Archives: Animation History
The Marvel Super-Hero Cartoons (1966)
I was the perfect age to soak in the super-hero craze of the 1960s. We all knew way back when how cheap these Grantray-Lawrence Marvel Super Heroes cartoons were –…
The Bob Clampett Coloring Book
Get out your crayons! Today, courtesy of Aaron Higgins, who through his Retro Reprints archive of classic coloring books, is allowing me to share selected pages from this jaw-dropping 1963…
Theatrical Cartoons 1961-62
My recent reprinting of Boxoffice Magazine’s annual short subject issue for 1964-65 proved so popular, I think I’ll feature these on a semi-regular basis. This week I’ve decided to take…
Walter Lantz Thru United Artists
When Walter Lantz met with Universal in 1947, to renegotiate his contract, the studio played hard ball. It wanted to completely own all of the Lantz cartoons in perpetuity. But…
A Terrytoons Poster Gallery
To paraphrase former President Ronald Reagan, the six most terrifying words in the English language are: “This Theatre Regularly Shows Terrytoons Cartoons!” – or language to that effect. Let’s be…
The Adventures of Lariat Sam (1962)
From the files of forgotten cartoon characters, The Adventures of Lariat Sam – the official follow up to Gene Deitch’s pioneering TV cartoon Tom Terrific (1957). Like TT, Lariat Sam…
Theatrical Cartoons in 1965
The Hollywood short was practically dead by 1964. But you wouldn’t know it by reading the Hollywood trades. When BoxOffice Magazine printed its annual Short Subject issue in late 1964,…
Betty Boop in “Be Up To Date” (1938)
Today we’ll dig into one of those later Betty Boop cartoons – you know, the ones produced after the Production Code went into effect. No character was more affected than…
Disney’s Forgotten “Puppets Cereal” Commercial
Does this image ring any bells? If you were a child in 1966, you might have bought Nabisco’s Puppets Cereal. Crunchy, crappy breakfast food sold in plastic “dolls” in the…
JERRY BECK is an animation producer, writer, former studio exec and an animation historian with over 15 books to his credit.