We’re skip what’s going on in Thunderbeanland this week — but if you’re in New York, I’ll be at the Film Forum on Sunday and Monday for the shows of restored cartoons, including the premiere of the restored Felix the Cat “Rainbow Parade” BOLD KING COLE from the original successive exposure negatives. Devon Baxter did a beautiful job on it! Information here:
• CARTOONS LOST AND FOUND – Sunday August 10 at 4:15pm [CLICK HERE for details]
• MUSICAL CARTOONS BEFORE THE CODE – Monday August 11 at 6pm [CLICK HERE for details]
I’m definitely dreaming of less hot weather here. It’s been hot as heck, and a few days of beautiful weather here reminded me of how much I enjoy it just a little milder than this overall hot summer has been. So – what’s better than a winter-themed Columbia cartoon to distract one from the weather?
The Columbia cartoons have never really been given a fair shake- and I think a huge piece of that is never getting a really good, restored release. The later UPA shorts have at least had a decent DVD release at this point. When I see a good IB Technicolor print of one, I’m still astonished that there has never been more consideration and exploitation by the Columbia.
While Snowtime (1938) isn’t the best of the Ub Iwerks Columbia Rhapsodies, it’s a pretty enjoyable little musical outing. The cartoon starts with a classroom full of grade school animals asking professor owl “why do we have snow?’ . This leads to professor owl spining a fantasy story of how things work at the North Pole. Maybe in this universe this actually exists. Anyway, this leads to a beautiful Technicolor excuse for lots of singing and color, including the four cheery winds and a bunch of elves.
I had never had a print of this particular one and had only seen it online from a broadcast. When I scanned this IB Technicolor print, it reminded me of what was so special about the process, and just how good one of these cartoons can look. And that said, sometimes the extravagance and music and fun is enough to make this a perfectly acceptable cartoon distraction from the depression and everything else going on in life in 1938.
So, enjoy a bit of Winter, if only on the screen. Some day, when these cartoons finally get a proper HD restoration, I hope these old IB Technicolor prints are referenced. This re-release print looks miles ahead of the version otherwise available. The Rhapsodies need a hero.
Have a good week all— and make sure to watch this one in HD!
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.
With all the Columbia movies available on DVD and now on Blu-ray, you think that the company would go to the expensive adding some of their theatrical cartoons as special features, similar to the beautiful job that the Warner archive is doing on there deep vault collections. It is true that the color Rhapsody could really use a sweet makeover. And these musical titles prove my point.
Regarding the Rainbow Parade’s, I’m very much looking forward to the release of that collection. I wish there were more than three Felix the cat cartoons, because I love those. Of course I was introduced to the character through the TV incarnation, you know the one with the magic bag of tricks. Imagine what that concept could have been with full animation, but I like those TV cartoons for what they are. Having said that, the three existing Felix the cat theatrical in the sound age are beautiful! “Bold King Cole“ is a very good example along with “Neptune‘s Nonsense“. It’s good that these are being shown on the big screen before they finally get released to Blu-ray by capital THUNDERBEAN. You guys do great work, and I know you’re doing all that good stuff with all of these cartoons. I look forward to the other projects that you are working on that you cannot discuss at this moment. I’m sure those will be wonderful! We all need more pre-code cartoons in our collections.
That screening sounds exciting, Steve. I congratulate you, Devon, and everyone else at Thunderbean for all that hard work.
A charming cartoon, reminiscent of Harman-Ising’s “To Spring” with its depiction of industrious elves effecting seasonal change through industrial mass production and rhyming verse. It also has a surprisingly broad colour palette for a cartoon set in the polar regions. And singing walruses! What’s not to love?
Charles Mintz gets a bad rap in animation history as the man who nearly ruined Walt Disney by poaching his staff. He was no Walt Disney, of course, but he seems to have been a better cartoon producer than he’s usually given credit for. Certainly the Screen Gems output became a lot more hit-or-miss after he died. If the Color Rhapsodies need a hero, as you say, then Mintz himself might also be due for a reappraisal.
Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising had already attempted to poach Walt’s entire animation team in 1926, with the aim of creating a new studio. Of course, their attempt ultimately failed, but Harman and Ising did manage to produce a pilot episode entitled “Aladdin’s Vamp”, which has been miraculously preserved and can now be viewed on Jerry Beck’s channel.
It’s a beautiful cartoon, and I really love the Iwerks studio’s character design. It’s a real shame that Ub Iwerks couldn’t save his studio from bankruptcy and eventually decided to return to Disney.