This week another top-ten list: five favorite finds and five most-wanteds; the continuing search for the missing stuff!
I’ve of three minds when it comes to the reasons to continue searching for the odd and forgotten animated shorts from the past…
The first reason is selfish – I want to see a lot of these things! I’m sure most of you folks that love this kind of stuff can relate. A lot of years ago (back in 1981) Jerry wrote an article for Movie Collector’s World about the search for elusive films and original title cards. It fascinated me to learn that these things were out there, really just waiting for someone to sell or trade it. I really had no idea I’d be searching for these things years later with the intention of sharing them with anyone, I just wanted to see some of this stuff.
The second reason is that I really love the idea of these things not being lost to the sands of time. Films come alive again when we watch them. So many film are lost because there isn’t a major company to support them.
For a while it seemed like I was always defending the Van Beuren Cartoons as the Thunderbean sets were being worked on and coming out. It was never my goal with any of these things to place the cartoons on some sort of higher status or to herald them against the best films in the industry- instead, the goal was to make the best possible version of the film available, so it could be looked at, represented in a version that is fair to the film, enjoyed- and perhaps act as a piece of work to understand the history of the medium just a little better.
The third reason is really all about the creators. Animation takes a lot of work to produce, whether it’s for a feature or a commercial, and of course the work is varied in quality and appeal – but it’s someone’s work, someone’s life, and it should at the very least be available to those who’s like to look at it.
I’ve been incredibly lucky to have found a lot of cool stuff in collecting, and the collectors who have come before me (and now after me too!) as well as archives have been incredibly kind to lend so many astonishing things.
Now, all of that said, the mission continues! Here is a short list of the most wanted films that are STILL hiding as well as some of my favorite finds, all in no particular order.
These days it’s pretty easy to find someone that has put Thunderbean stuff on Youtube… I am much happier when they at the very least mention where they got it from!
Top ten favorite founds:
1) UPA Dr. Suess Commercials.
I do hope to find the rest of these someday; there’s now a lead to where 3 more may be, happily. These were borrowed & transferred from a print of a 1949 football game that Ford Sponsored. I think there were either seven or eight produced originally. The last one here is my favorite:
2) Mendelssohn’s Spring Song by Cy Young (in color!):
It was a treat to have a print of this short show up in color, after seeing a black and white print many years back. Very early on in this column we talked about this short. It has an important place in history in that it’s the film that led Disney to hire Young for the special effects department. This is the only known (almost) complete print, and is now preserved at the Library of Congress.
Here’s a nice little summery of the film from Steven Hartley’s blog.
3) The Peanut Vendor (experimental animation by Len Lye, 1933)
Technically, not a ‘find’ in that it had been available as part of a Stop Motion Animation program that Em Gee film library used to rent. As my friend Ken Preibe notes, it might very well be a the creepiest puppet film ever made. Of course, Len Lye’s more famous films are quite wonderful and beautiful, and deserving of being seen- I have to wonder if Lye would rather this little experiment be forgotten rather than showing up on a blog in 2014. I have an occasional nightmare with the monkey leaning back while singing ‘sleeeeeep’>… It appears on the Cultoons, Volume 3 – Monkeys, Monsters and More.
4) Kinex Studio’s Stop Motion shorts (1928-29)
The Kinex Studio films fascinate me still. A film collector friend, Ralph Spitulski, Introduced me to these films first around 1982, trading me a reel of them for who knows what. They’re not the best animated, but interesting just
the same, and full of early stop motion innovations. For a long time, I was trying to find ALL of them for a DVD release, and finally settled on what we were able to get. Someone industrious posted many of them here from our DVD,
Stop Motion Marvels:
5) Tom and Jerry in ‘Doughnuts’ with everything intact.
The Van Beuren Tom and Jerry cartoons ended up with different distributors. It isn’t unusual for a handful of things to be cut from these pre-code cartoons on re-issue. One film, Doughnuts, seems to have at least three different cuts perhaps more scenes were taken out as the film went to Television. the mighty Tom Stathes managed to unearth a print with everything in it, replacing another print with ALMOST everything in it, assembled together by Mark Kausler. It
features perhaps the most bizarre Jewish Stereotype gag of all in the middle of the film.
AND NOW, a Top Five STILL WANTED:
1) DR. SUESS cartoons from 1931: ‘Neath the Bababa Tree and Put on the Spout
These two shorts were released by Warner Brothers in 1931, and are high on the list of most wanted cartoons. They appear to have been made at Audio Cinema, sponsored by Flit and likely animated by Terry. The scores for the shorts are by Phil Scheib. Will these ever show up? That’s anyone’s guess.
2) Benny the Bear in A COWBOY I WOULD BE. A search of the US copyright catalog has a listing from 1930 for this title. A Racket Sound Cartoon. Animated by Alexander Cruickshank. Whatever this is, it just has to be great- and it’s been on my personal most wanted list for 25 years.
3) Romer Grey’s cartoons. There appears to have been at least two cartoons that were completed by this small studio. Here’s a nice little article that covers the studios history very nicely… though the statement that none of the films survived isn’t completely accurate any more. 🙂
4) The long lost Popeye and Betty Boop stag film.
This short was long rumored to have been produced in 1938 for a party, animated after hours by Fleischer Animators. I can’t confirm this story and it might not be true, but I’ve heard that once someone brought this up in an interview with Dave Fleischer, and he punched the interviewer. I asked a couple of animators about it, funny enough. Gordan Sheehan confirmed that it had been made, and even admitted to doing a little work on it. Myron Waldman waved his hard though the air and said ‘It was dumb…and I don’t think anybody kept it’. Who knows though. It was shot in 16mm.
5) Goofy Goat in ‘Getting his Nanny’
Ted Eshbaugh’s films always have fascinated me, and I’m happy to say that the Technicolor Dreams and B/W nightmares disc comes ever closer to having a master, so it will be finished soon. I’d love to find this in color. Some sources credit this film as being the first color cartoon, but of course it wasn’t…
Now, what are YOUR holy grails??
Steve Stanchfield is an animator, educator and film archivist. He runs Thunderbean Animation, an animation studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan and has compiled over a dozen archival animation DVD collections devoted to such subjects at Private Snafu, The Little King and the infamous Cubby Bear. Steve is also a professor at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.
My most wanted list:
1-Play Safe (with the original credits)- The greatest Fleischer cartoon ever. Would love to see this with the original credits; personally I believe the parchment style titles are some of the most beautiful cartoon credits ever!
2-A Two-color technicolor print of “The Sunshine Makers”. The commercialized Cinecolor version that was done for Borden’s in the 40’s is great; the use of color in the film enhances the story. However it would be interesting to see how this cartoon originally looked in its two-color technicolor version, and how the original color scheme is used to tell the story
3-Complete Cinecolor prints of Ub Iwerks’ two Cinecolor Willie Whopper cartoons: “Hell’s Fire” and “Davy Jones’ Locker”
4-“The Amazing Recovery of Inbad the Ailor”- 1939 World’s Fair exhibition film made by Walter Lantz Productions
5-“Getting His Nanny”, “Safe Driving”, and other Ted Eshbaugh films in their original color state.
hmmm
in no particular order,-
-the full story reel for Disney’s 1938 version of Alice that’s been missing for decades. we have a lot of the art, but some of it isn’t clear.
– the stop motion Oz short(s?) briefly attempted by Kenneth McLellan in 1938 ( may have not finished production, but there are photos)
-Anything Oswald
-I heard Flash Gordon had a film at the 39 world’s fair, and that it might have been animated but info seems scarce.
– Clampetts Tarzan toons for MGM, did anything come of that like his John Carter test?
– the animation sequences for “The Wizard of Oz” (1939) which apparently were near or fully finished before being cut during test screenings. Oddly not a thing seems to have survived.
add to that the uncut version of “The Black Cauldron”, or maybe a earlier work print ( tons of finished animation seems to have been made for earlier scripts )
Are you referring to the Jitterbug sequence?
(PS- In terms of my most wanted list for live action films, the deleted scenes to the Wizard of Oz are on top of that list! If I had the opportunity to take a vacation back in time, I would love to attend the original Preview to see the full 120 minute version).
Both ” The Jitterbug” and the “Bee Scene” utilized traditional animation — apparently Jitterbug was finished/nearly finished animation wise (the bugs were described as pink and orange in various books I’ve come across , plus this scene definitely was in the test screenings), “Bee” was filmed but I have no idea if they ever vstarted animation on it or not. “Bee scene” if your not familiar with it took place at the tin man’s cottage, the current scene the witch lights up the scarecrow and threatens to make a beehive out of the tinman. After she disappears the tin man scoffs and makes a “clank” sound before looking oddly at his hand, before jumping ahead to Dorothy’s “best friends I ever had” schtick. Originally the rumbling continued and animated bees would have burst out of him. Cutting this required the “best friends” shots to be reversed in order to place the gang in their pre-bees position.
— More Toby the Pup
— The uncensored HOLLYWOOD STEPS OUT
— The Mein Kampf version of Disney’s CHICKEN LITTLE (probably could turn up as 16mm blue-track)
— The complete color versions of Screen Gems’ MYSTO FOX, FOWL BRAWL and WACKY QUACKY (some leads on WQ are likely)
— Famous Studios’ SPREE FOR ALL (confirmed as having survived), CAT O’ NINE AILS, and the commercials the studio did for Borden’s.
Kinda getting off topic here. I greatly appreciate all of the great work restoring the Van Beuren cartoons (and I still need to upgrade with all of the latest Thunderbeans), but the Sad Sad Story in movie history is how the LIVE-ACTION shorts, along with the newsreels, are even more undeservedly forgotten and neglected. At least the cartoons were saved to some extent thanks to TV demand as kiddie fodder. Only the advent of color TV and changing tastes after the sixties made many of these less desirable with the masses. Yet this is not to say everything else that the major studios showed before their main feature was not worthy equally of a renewal. For example, Van Beuren made many interesting travelogues, comedies and documentaries for Pathé and RKO between “circa” 1927 and 1937. Turner Classic Movies does show at least one of the Stacey Woodard nature reels he produced, NEPTUNE’S MYSTERIES (1935, covering the life of an octopus!), on occasion, but there hasn’t been enough good information and promotion on wikipedia (and elsewhere) to generate enough “buzz” for a DVD compilation of this kind. The one blessing is that the Warner Archive, along with Sony releasing through their site, is dusting off the live-action “shorties” from the Warner, MGM and Columbia vaults at least. (Of course, everybody is bugging them MORE for a mint-condition COAL BLACK AND DE SEBBEN DWARFS, a full Tex Avery set and the inclusion of MOUSE CLEANING in the next Tom & Jerry Spotlight. Yet we already have Jerry Beck campaigning as our voice here… LOL!) Yet… it is a start. Sadly, Fox, Paramount and Universal have zero interest in reissuing any of their vintage short subject stuff that hasn’t rotted away in canisters already. Also many RKO shorts, apart from a select number of Edgar Kennedy and Leon Errol, are unavailable today. Oh well… at least I placed my order for Mister Magoo, arriving in another three weeks.
Would love to see a complete version of “He Can’t Make it Stick” someday …
My favorite finds
Little Match Girl (thanks to that special someone)
Now You Tell One & It’s a Bird by Charley Bowers
It’s the Cat by Mark Kausler
Sisyphus by Marcel Jankovics
Son of the White Mare by Marcel Jankovics
Closed Mondays by Will Vinoton & Bob Gardiner (thanks Chris)
The Three Inventors by Michel Ocelot
Undersea Wedding by in color (thanks Chris)
The Silly Goose by Hans Fischerkoesen (thanks Chris)
Most Wanted:
How War Came by Paul Fennell – Columbia
Rippling Romance by Bob Wickersham – Columbia
Damon the Mower by George Dunning
Man Alive! by Bill Hurtz – UPA (Oscar nominee in the documentary category)
Why Man Creates by Saul Bass (Oscar winner in the documentary category)
Brave Little Soldier by Paul Grimault
The Thieving Magpie by Gianini & Luzzati
Melody by Ward Kimball (in 3D) — Disney
Day and Night by Teddy Newton (in 3D) – Pixar
Tell Tale Heart by Ted Parmelee (in 3D) – UPA
actually any cartoon in 3D is my most wanted
Hey Steve- MAN ALIVE! is on the Thunderbean Mid Century Modern Animation, Volume 2. We transferred an IB Tech print…
Is it possible for me to get a copy of “Undersea Wedding”?
been waiting for years to see jerry beck’s bio on famous studios.
we also need to have collected and preserved the many puppet shows, and local children shows that featured cartoons … puppet shows like kukla fran and ollie, winky dink (okay, not an actual puppet, i know), howdy doody, foodini, time for beany, and rootie kazootie. children shows like shrimpenstein, pixanne, and gene london. and countless others!
Oh yeah, I would love to see the pencil test of Kingdom of the Sun that became The Emperor’s New Groove.
Any more footage from Richard Williams’ unfinished Nasrudin film that sort of became The Thief and the Cobbler – and any other unused material from that long production.
A complete and better copy of Errol Le Cain’s The Sailor and the Devil.
Say, did the Mark IV version of the Recobbled Cut ever come out ?
I’d love to see the “lost” feature film GUITAR PICKS AND ROACH CLIPS, if for no other reason than to see if it’s as flawed as it seemed the FIRST time I saw it in 1975!
Kind of echoing what Mr. Segal wrote, but:
-How War Came (1941)
-Rippling Romance (1945)
-A Place in the Sun (O misto na slunci) (1959)
-Labyrinth (Dedalo) (1976)
-Lorenzo (2004)
Mostly because those are the only Oscar nominated films in the Best Animated Short category that I have yet to locate. (I’ve located two more nominees I haven’t seen, but I haven’t had a chance to go there to watch them yet.)
Well, I’d have to admit, after reading this wonderful piece, that my wish list is pretty pedestrian and mainstream, but I am always interested in those missing corners of curiosity, along with stories as to why they remained unearthed. I don’t know whether it is better to keep bugging the majors to get busy and start restoration or hope that it all falls into the public domain someday and, thus, it would no doubt show up on a far-off future release from Thunderbean, right? I’d love to see that TEX AVERY set because of “alternate” or “director’s cuts” versions of certain cartoons, if they exist at all, but I’d also like to see some live action odds and ends that I’ve talked about so many times before like other language versions of OUR GANG films back when Roach would have the cast perform the entire film again with appropriate actors sometimes replacing American actors…or the rare short that still appears to be missing, like “HOLY TERROR” in which Mary Ann Jackson is the lead nasty little girl playing tricks on people in the neighborhood or something like that. Sometimes, live action comedy shorts can contain animated sequences created by the animation departments of whichever studio created the short, and that makes further archeological digs worthwhile, too. The vaults of Paramount/Famous and Terrytoons is always worth mining, because such searches unearth a title or two that few people ever remember seeing. I wonder how lucrative TV stations are for such searches. It used to be, because local stations frequently aired classic theatrical cartoons of all these studios we mention, one could find a print of a cartoon or two that no one else at the station knew was valuable. of course, it is highly possible that technicians who had worked at the local stations were diligent enough to have scooped up the print, knowing that it would someday be valuable, but I mention this anyway…and (sigh) how many real “local” stations are there anymore? Once cable TV took over, genuine local TV time for reruns and creative programs compiling old comedies, dramas and cartoons had quickly become a thing of the past. That’s why we need smaller distributors who like to do the restorative work. Good luck, and I just had to once again lend my repeating voice to this discussion.
I’m surprised you didn’t have the Toby cartoons
in your list above.
The Emile Cohl films produced in Fort Lee, NJ.
Mostly stuff that exists, but just isn’t available:
Definitely Tex Avery.
Mr. Bug Goes to Town
Other Fleischer shorts and the remaining two-reelers
A few more sets of Popeye; the remaining decent ones at least
Scrappy, Krazy Kat, Fox & Crow and random Columbia oddities
A few good Terrytoons compilations, from Mighty Mouse up through John Doormat
Walt Kelly’s unfinished Pogo project, finished
The original Bugs Bunny Show
Likewise, the Disney TV shows with Von Drake and other new animation
The Gerald McBoing Boing Show
Samplers of The Alvin Show, The Hardy Boys, The Marvel Superhero serials, The New Adventures of Huck Finn, and The Beatles. Just enough to prove to younger generations they existed.
Most of these “existing” cartoons are on my list too. And I would add Crusader Rabbit.
The 2 lost Famous Studio cartoons. (don’t recall the titles at the moment – Jerry??) One of them is a Snuffy Smith cartoon.
Thad named them in a comment above – SPREE FOR ALL (Snuffy) and CAT O’NINE AILS (Buzzy). Those are my personal “Holy Grails” and the good news is materials are known to exist on both.
Another one I’m dying to see is The Space Squid (1967) – a Paramount Go-Go Toon directed by Shamus Culhane. I’m sure its awful. Somewhere Culhane wrote about that – or mentioned it – in an interview (and if anyone can locate the quote, I’d appreciate it) saying it was an experiment to try an “adventure cartoon” (I’m guessing like Rocket Robin Hood). I have the cue sheet from it, so I know it was made and its on the release charts. But Paramount couldn’t find any trace of the film when I looked for it there years ago. It was never in the “Cartoon Kablooey/Weinerville” package that Nickelodeon ran in the late 1980s-early 90s.
Any surviving material from the 1936 Mickey and Minnie porno that got the two animators fired by Disney at his birthday party.
More suggestions from me:
-Both of the Riki-Oh OVAs
-The ’80s Fist of the North Star series (all episodes along with a better dub)
-Roots Search
-Sazae-San
-Violence Jack
-Dragon Quest: Legend of the Hero Abel (all episodes along with a better dub)
-Time Bokan, Yatterman, and their successors
How about those lost Disney and Winkler Oswald cartoons
Yes, I’d love it if the rest of the Oswalds were found (as well as complete original prints of shorts with missing scenes). For some reason the Alice Comedies seem to get neglected though. Most of the earlier shorts survive, so maybe people think that we have a good representation of the series as a whole. However, a great deal of the later Alice Comedies are lost (and of the few entries from later 1926 – 27 that do survive, many of them are hard to see). For me, some of the most exciting finds in recent years were the discoveries of all the remaining Laugh-O-Gram fairytales.
Another early Disney cartoon I’d like to see is the ‘Noodles Fagan’ Mickey cartoon.
“The Space Squid” and “Halt, Who Grows There?”, both from the late 1960s when Shamus Culhane ran Paramount Cartoon Studios (Famous Studios). I know that “Halt” exists in 16mm form, but what about “Squid”?
Actually, it seems that “The Rocket Racket” (Honey Halfwitch) and “From Orbit To Obit” (Merry Maker) are also both missing. Were they ever made to begin with?
Halt Who Grows There does indeed exist because I saw it a few years ago. It was somehow left out of the Cartoon Kablooey/Weinerville package… but Paramount has a 16mm print in their vaults.
The Columbia Mintz Studios cartoon “Neighbors”. I’ve heard this one is lost unless you know better. Also the sound versions of the Barney Google cartoons.
So materials exist for “Spree for All” and “Cat O Nine Ails”. Where exactly are these materials and how did they turn up?
Re: “Spree for All” and “Cat O Nine Ails”
Let’s just say “loose lips sink ships” – and if we’re lucky we’ll all be seeing them someday soon.
I’m glad to hear that a copy of Spree for All has finally been found. Hopefully all works out so that it can be transferred and made available sometime soon.
I would love to be able to see a clean version of this commercial.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XJjyF6JJ_Y
I’d like to see the hours of excised finished scenes from The Simpsons Movie, of which only a small fraction appeared on the DVD.
Nice transfers (even “raw” ones with no digital restoration would make me happy) of good Technicolor IB prints of nitrate-era MGM cartoons (including Tom and Jerry shorts and others) are on my wish list. Such prints with rare original titles are especially desirable. While the best of the CRI negatives that Warner has look very nice, they are not Technicolor, and I believe good 35mm Technicolor prints would surpass them in picture quality (wear and tear aside). They are the real best surviving elements on many of these cartoons, as I see it. Sadly, Warner most likely wouldn’t seek to use such elements, though (they haven’t so far), and there seems to be little chance of the MGM cartoons being made available for licensing any time soon.
I’d especially like to see Puss Gets the Boot from a truly good picture element. Both the old Turner TV transfer and the “restored” version on the T&J Golden Collection (sourced from the same grade of CRI as the infamous 10 other cartoons on that set, with the titles modified to remove the “In Technicolor” tag) are sourced from inferior elements with the blacks blown way out (the background of the titles should be the brilliant blue seen on other MGM cartoons of the time, not the contrasty/dark blue in the available copies. Not to mention that parts of the red floor in the cartoon are blown out to blackness). This is an important film that needs to be seen in a copy reasonably close (if not accurate) to its original glory, and the available copies with their blown-out contrast aren’t it.
Cy Young’s Spring Song is a perfect example of how extremely rare or lost stuff can quite possibly still be out there within our reach, waiting to be retrieved by the right person. Check your local estate sales and flea markets if you can, folks; you never know what you might find!
Emile Cohl’s THE NEWLYWEDS cartoons. I understand one exists, but I haven’t seen it.
An Italian short from the early 1930s by the Cossio Brothers, ZIBILLO AND THE BEAR, which has been described as “an obvious imitation of John Foster & Geo. Rufle’s TOM & JERRY cartoons.
The 1912 OLD DOC YAK series.
All of Emile Cohl’s existing films were included in a 2-dvd set sold with the book “Emile Cohl ; l’inventeur du dessin animé.” They’re barely animated at all, basically just word ballons appearing over still figures interspered with odd morphing sequences. I believe 2 or 3 are on the disc.
What I what to find/see.
Sources.
http://www.pelleas.net/hm/28.shtml
https://web.archive.org/web/20100327092947/http://www.telecom-anime.com/telecom/sakuhinreki/nenpyo1_i.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20100327093120/http://www.telecom-anime.com/telecom/sakuhinreki/nenpyo2_i.html
1.The 1978 Little Nemo pilot by Sadao Tsukioka; The 1984 pilot by Yoshifumi Kondo & the 1987 pilot by Osamu Dezaki have been uploaded and are on the US Little Nemo Blu-Ray, but the first pilot by Sadao Tsukioka has not been uploaded or had been released in any format, the Kondo & Dezaki pilots have got a Japanese LaserDisc & DVD release before the North American Blu-Ray came out, but still nothing on the Tsukioda pilot, if anyone can upload the pilot, that will be great.
2.The Blinkins; 4 specials were made based on the 4 seasons but only one of them got a VHS release (The winter special, The Bear And The Blizzard) as the other 3 only got aired once back in 1983, ( http://famihamu64.tumblr.com ), some screen shots from the other specials were placed on foreign toy box art (in this case Brazil) but the other specials never got a video release of any kind, I did see The Bear And The Blizzard when someone uploaded it to You Tube, but the video was removed and what I do know is that it was TMS’ way of getting Ganba into the states (he was given proper construction and was renamed Moe, but it’s 100% Ganba); No DVD release was ever made of this, let alone a upload to someplace like CrunchyRoll, Hulu and/or NetFlix, so a modern release is needed.
3.The Adventures In The Magic Kingdom pilot; Before Disney open up their own Japanese studio, they did one last project with TMS and that was a show based on their theme parks, the only thing that came out of it was a NES game from Capcom and the pilot never aired, let alone got any DVD release, please release this in some form.
4.The other 3 shorts of Sonic Man Of The Year; Telecom said on their site before redoing it that they were 4 Sonic shorts and were listed apart from Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog, the first short was released as extra content on the Sega Saturn game Sonic Jam but the other shorts never came out, a upload will be great.
5.Sweet Sea; A VHS release was made back in 1985, but no DVD or streaming release, TMS owns the rights to it so a CrunchyRoll release is needed ( http://www.tms-e.co.jp/english/search/introduction.php?pdt_no=179 ).
Also there is some stuff listed on Telecom’s site that I just can’t find, they did a Bugs Bunny Mitsubishi ad (2 of them), some Japanese Tiny Toons ads (some are on You Tube, others are not, heres one that can only be find in katakana http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Tr-lw7dDcs ) a special Animaniacs bumper when the show got a emmy in 1996 (the only thing I can find is a shot of it from Tom Rugger’s Blog, http://cartoonatics.blogspot.com/2011/10/blog-post.html ) and some Cartoon Network bumpers (which ones? I don’t know, it might be just for CN Japan); Some pilots that never came up when searching like Ata~tsu Q/Hit Q & Garden Gang that also popped up on Telecom’s site, which I will like to see.
If anyone whats to give said projects a DVD/Blu-Ray release, I will be my honor.
Here’s a few things I want to see:
The Tiny Toon Spring Break and Night Ghoulery specials
“Mr. Bug Goes To Town” with its original titles
“Christmas Comes But Once a Year” with its original titles and Paramount logos
The Technicolor Dr. Seuss Ford commercials – I read in “The Seuss, the Whole Seuss, and Nothing But the Seuss” that some of the commercials were done in Technicolor.
And to add to that:
The Winnie the Pooh featurettes in their original versions
It’s Tough To Be a Bird
and the Fox and Crow cartoons
Five Finds:
1. Down on Phoney Farm (1915) Farmer Alfalfa’s debut…co-found/identified with David Gerstein, of course!
2. Stung! (Circa 1920) A very weird, Starewicz-esque stop-motion film using realistic bugs and put out by “Witchcraft Films.” Found an original nitrate print.
3. Getting Together (ca1934) Live action/cel animation/stop-motion film about telephones by Seymour Kneitel and Frank Goldman, with no dialogue, just a musical score.
4. The Dummy (1920) One of the super rare Shenanigan Kids (Katzenjammers) done at Bray
5. How Animated Cartoons Are Made (1919) Steve and I both obtained ancient 28mm prints of this at the same time…wotta find!
(oh, I could list so many others…)
Five Holy Grails
1. Any “Trick Kids” cartoons…stop-motion films using dolls done at Bray in 1916.
2. Any “Miss Nanny Goat” cartoons (also 1916, Bray)…one rumored to exist in a private collection, but not sure if it will ever be accessed.
3. Percy, Brains He Has Nix (1916) a cartoon about a dumb robot
4. The Debut of Thomas Cat (1920) the first color cartoon!
5. Little Herman (1915) Paul Terry’s first cartoon
(and I could list hundreds more here, too!)
I love reading about about rare cartoons being found. Keep up the good work, guys. I hope you find many, many more.
These are such great lists! I’d never heard of a lot of these-
‘Getting Together’ from Tom’s list ‘Zibillo the Bear’ sound especially fascinating to me. Technicolor Dr. Seuss commercials? WOW! Now, those would be cool- I wonder if those were later than the original 1949 ones…
Kevin- I’d love to see some of those cut scenes too, and would especially love to see some of the Our Gangs in other versions….
I’d like to see the Star Wars animation done by Tokyo Movie Shinsha discussed in this video.
The Young Astronauts. 13 episodes were produced, but only one aired. The series was cancelled after the Challenger exploded.
I don’t even believe ONE episode of The Young Astronauts made it to air. (And considering that the show was delayed to mid-season and THEN scrapped after Challenger, I wonder how many of the 13 episodes were even finished.)
I’d be interested to see:
-the fabled Filmation Metamorpho pilot, just out of sheer curiosity. (At least a pilot short was done – I’ve heard a rumor, probably bogus, that 6 episodes were finished and ready to air when CBS got the Batman rights and ordered Filmation to halt the other DC projects they were working on.)
-the Chuck Jones and Abe Levitow animations from Curiosity Shop. One B.C. short showed up on eBay a few years back which may have come from that show.
-John Leach’s “Let’s Play Grown-Ups”, which was a follow-up to “The Gift of Winter” and “Witch’s Night Out” featuring the same characters. It was about male-female relationships, and supposedly much more adult and subversive. I’ve heard mentions of it being “controversial” and “ahead of its time.” It was completed, but I can’t find any evidence that it was ever released, so I’m assuming it never was. (Leach, now going by Jonathan Rogers, has said on Facebook that he has it transferred, but he hasn’t released it yet.)
-The Lee Mendelson/Bill Melendez special “The Fantastic Funnies,” featuring animated versions of several comic strips (including Garfield, NOT voiced by Lorenzo Music)
-The never-released TV special “Shamu: The Beginning”, which was the first major work by Bardel Animation in Vancouver – another one I’ve seen listed on people’s resumes, and another one I’d love to see simply out of curiosity (because I’m sure it was crap). When Barry Ward mentioned it on his blog, the implication was that it was completed. It was shelved by Anheuser-Busch management after they bought Sea World, and if I had to guess, it’s because the agreement they made to buy back the Shamu rights from the producers gave them half of all profits from the special.
Two more I forgot:
-The remaining unseen failed Nicktoons pilots. Colossal Pictures did a “Big Beast Quintet” pilot based on the singing monsters that appeared in one of the station IDs; there was also something called “Weasel Patrol”, and two Cosgrove-Hall pilots “The Crowville Chronicles” and “Trash”
-Geoff Dunbar and Oscar Grillo’s pilot film for The Hobbit; there are images in Walter Herdeg’s “Film + TV Graphics 2” which definitely seem to be completed animation. Dunbar told me that it was for an earlier iteration of the Rankin-Bass version, and this is confirmed by a mention of it in Bruno Edera’s “Full Length Animated Feature Films” (as having been cancelled).
The end of “The Heckling Hare” and “The Stupid Cupid”!
I would love to see the Hearst BRINGING UP FATHER cartoons from the 1910s.Sadly no prints survive at all of this series.
I think the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia’s find of the 1920 Mutt & Jeff cartoon “On Strike” is a pretty rare and great find; would love to see more of them come forth, especially some of the earlier work done under Raoul Barre.
My favourite finds:
-Alf Bill and Fred, 1964, early absurdist short from Bob Godfrey, from a good quality (paid) digital download off the Bob Godfrey website
-Shinsetsu Kachi Kachi Yama, 1936, one of the few existing cartoons by renowned Japanese director Kon Ichikawa (it appears an earlier one has been found: http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201404230050)
-The History of German Animation DVD set I bought off a site called the Book Depository (haven’t gone thru all of the discs but having a copy of Fischerkoesen’s “Verwitterte Melodie” with good colour is a highlight so far)
-Len Lye’s The Birth of a Robot (in HD!) on one of the BFI Blu-rays.
Most wanted:
-Disney’s Legends of the Ring of Fire shorts (watched this a long while back on Disney Channel Asia, unfortunately only 2 episodes (out of 11-ish) appear to be online, 1 dubbed in German)
-Any of George Pal’s European ads in good quality (other than the ones featured on the Puppetoon Movie set)
-The Wan Brothers’ earliest existing cartoon, The Mouse and Frog, shown once restored at the FIAF Congress in 2012 or so
I would love to see the deleted disco sequence from Disney’s The Fox & the Hound featuring two storks voiced by Phil Harris & Charo!
I would love to see the deleted disco sequence from Disney’s The Fox & the Hound featuring two storks voiced by Phil Harris & Charo!