Castle Films – Of Color
Castle Film’s distribution of cartoons to the home-viewer market helped African American parents to entertain their children in comfort for years.
Category Archives: Christopher P. Lehman
The Voice Above The Apron: Lillian Randolph
Ever since the 1930s African American vocal artist Lillian Randolph sang when performing for animated cartoons as a domestic servant.
“Scrub Me Mama With A Boogie Beat” (1941)
This year marks the seventieth anniversary of Universal Pictures withdrawing Walter Lantz’s cartoon Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat from distribution.
The Bronze Age 2
By looking at 1972 month by month, it becomes clear just how transitional the year was in moving animation from the Silver Age to the Bronze Age.
Rankin-Bass “The Jackson 5ive”
The Jackson Five tried to attract viewers to music as well as to the half-hour stories. Each episode of the 1971-72 season featured two recordings from the group’s albums.
Jasper and The Puppetoons – Part 5
Paramount Pictures released the last of the “Puppetoons” in 1947. Of the five releases, only one stars Jasper – and another featured Duke Ellington.
The George Pal Puppetoons and Jasper – Part 4
In 1946 Jasper recieved an Academy Award nomination – and one of Pal’s Puppetoons was an animated adaptation of the American folktale, John Henry.
Jasper and the Puppetoons – Part 3
“Jasper Goes Hunting” provided another first for George Pal – an animated short combining major characters from two competing Hollywood studios.
Puppetoons and Jasper – part 2
In 1943 Paramount Pictures realized that it had a popular hit character in producer/director George Pal’s animated African American figure “Jasper”.
The “Jasper” Puppetoons – Part 1
Jasper was part of a tradition in animation of casting African American boys as stars of series—from “Sammy Johnsin” in the Silent Era to L’il EIghtball from producer Walter Lantz.
