Some of you out there might remember UPA’s first television series The Boing Boing Show. It began airing on CBS in 1956, showing mostly new cartoons hosted by announcer Bill Goodwin and Gerald McBoing Boing (star of the famous Oscar winning film by the same name.) The new cartoons were largely one-shots, but there were a few mini-series-es within.
From “The Great Gildersleeve” that’s Walter Tetley at left, Harold Peary in center. We believe that’s Louise Erickson on the right.
Which brings us to our story…
Back in the late eighties, I was doing some informal research about UPA in general, and The Boing Boing Show in particular. Among the people I talked to was Herb Klynn, head of Format Films and production manager at UPA at the time the series was being made. I’d met Herb before, and we soon became good friends. Herb was very keen to talk about The Boing Boing Show. He invited me up to his house in Tarzana to show me some artwork and files pertaining to the show.
When we went into the room that was his home office, I immediately noticed a small circus train. It was made out of cardboard and looked exactly like Dusty’s train in the cartoons. The train was sitting on a film can that was sitting on top of a filing cabinet.
I asked Herb about the train. He said that Gene Deitch had constructed it. This was the first time that I’d heard Gene’s name in connection with Dusty. I did know that Gene had left UPA shortly before the studio began to ramp up for production on The Boing Boing Show.
It was then that Herb told me that Gene had made the train back in the late forties. He further explained that a pilot film had been made at that time, and Gene had designed the picture.
Then Herb told me that the pilot was in the can beneath the train.
Suddenly, I wanted to see the film very desperately. Being the (often) shy and (usually) polite young man that I was, I did not drop to my knees and grab the bottom of his jacket while yelling, “Herb! You must show me this film now!”
Instead I quietly said, “Boy, I’d sure like to see that film.”
By this time Herb was pulling out some documents pertaining to The Boing Boing Show, and he wanted me to see them. The documents were a real eye-opener alright, going into detail about who worked on what picture. I eagerly read the papers, but nothing more was said about the Dusty pilot film.
On subsequent visits to his home, I would steal glances at the cardboard train and the film can, wondering if I should say anything more about them. But I don’t think I ever did.
Herb passed on in early 1999.
Fast forward to 2022. Our own Jerry Beck was in contact with the film archivist at USC HMH Foundation Moving Image Archive, where Herb Klynn’s films now reside. Jerry asked me if there was anything in his collection that we should be on the lookout for. The first thing that came to mind was Dusty pilot film (I also mentioned a few other rare and unusual films that may hopefully be the subjects of some future posts.)
The Dusty of the Circus film was in fact located. The archivist at USC said it was going vinegar, but managed to get a decent transfer anyway. As it turns out, this test film appears to have been made without sound. It is not actually animated, but filmed using cardboard cut-out puppets photographed in real-time. It also appears to have been shot in color, although it is extremely faded now. So after a wait of three decades, I finally got to see the film. Now you can see it, too!
ADDENDUM: Since we initially made this post, a Kodachrome 16mm print had been discovered by USC. The color in Kodak reversal stock is very stable compared to Kodak’s negative-based print system, and consequently this print had much better color. This version is now embedded below.
When UPA revived the Dusty character for The Boing Boing Show in 1956, it is striking to see how closely they kept to the design motif of the 1949 pilot film, a testament to the forward thinking visual sense of Gene Deitch. Walter Tetley, a radio veteran (The Great Gildersleeve, The Phil Harris-Alice Faye show) and cartoon star (Andy Panda, Reddy Kilowatt, and UPA’s own Georgie and the Dragon) was the perfect choice to voice Dusty. Writer Bill Scott must have been taking notes, for a few years later Tetley would be cast as Sherman on the Mr. Peabody cartoons produced by Jay Ward. Other voices in the Dusty cartoon series include cartoon legends Stan Freberg, Daws Butler and Shep Menkin. Here they are in the order we believe they were produced:
The Sad Lion (Director: Gerry Ray)
The Five Cent Nickel (Director: Gerry Ray)
Turned Around Clown (Director: Alan Zaslove – with Stan Freberg using his Clowny voice!)
The Bear Scare (Director: Alan Zaslove)
Lion On The Loose (Director: Alan Zaslove)
The Elephant Mystery (Director: Alan Zaslove)
Mike Kazaleh is a cartoonist and animator whose work can be seen in comic books like Bongo’s The Simpsons, Futurama and Papercutz’ Gumby – and on screen in Warner Bros. Tiny Toon Adventures, Ralph Bakshi’s Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures and Cool World.
WGR-TV (Ch. 2 in Buffalo, NY) ran some of these UPA “Boing-Boing” cartoons as early morning fillers around 1967-68, IIRC.
That station never seems to cater to kids, but I’m guess they fell back-assward into this material and decided it would be good counter-programming to “Agriculture U.S.A.”
For decades I didn’t know the origin of those “Dusty Of The Circus” cartoons. Thanks for the additional info!
Thank you! It’s amazing to see these. I’m always interested in seeing more UPA cartoons especially things from the Boing Boing Show.
Pretty cool. Deitch was a better animation personality than the UPA people that nurtured him. His Tom and Jerrys are actual favorites of mine.
These are very interesting cartoons. If they were showing on WPIX in the 1960s, I was unaware of them. However, I know I’ve seen them on television years and years and years ago. Walter Tetley did do voice work for cartoons as far back as the 1940s. He did the voice of the mouse in the Warner Bros. cartoon “the haunted mouse“. I wonder what his first cartoon voice actually was.
They are rumors that he voiced Felix in the three Van Beuren color shorts from the mid-1930’s, but I don’t think that has ever been confirmed. It does sound like him though.
Seconding Craig Bostick, especially the songs and the artist whose paintings came to life. Or show whole “McBoingBoing” episodes; I wouldn’t mind.
i can never (ever) understand why there are never (EVER) any snippets of CBS’ “Gerald McBoing Boing” show…..ANY where?? Anyone??
Wow! Thanks so much for posting this.
As a huge UPA fan (from the Bosustow era) this pilot of “Dusty of the Circus” has always been one of the studio’s things I most wanted to see! I know the “Dusty” series from the old VHS tapes and I always found it charming and underappreciated. I love its witty naivety, expressed in both plots and visual style. The incredible work of the voice cast perfectly match the proposal.
I see a lot of Bobe Cannon in the series (in the thematic, the way of conducting the narrative, the frozen poses and the stylization of the movements), and I imagine that, although he didn’t directly direct the episodes, maybe acted as a supervising director. In this sense, it is curious to note that the episodes were directed by Gerald Ray and Alan Zaslove, who were animators of some of Cannon’s most typical works (Fudget’s Budget, How Now Boing Boing, The Jaywalker, Christopher Crumpet’s Playmate).
Gene Deitch’s pilot is surprising in the way it presents itself as a proposal and it’s interesting how this idea was transposed into animation while maintaining the visual integrity of his idea and expanding it in narrative terms (with the addition of new characters and a characteristic for Dusty to motivate the narrative plots – the fact that he talks to animals). I imagine that T. Hee (another Cannon collaborator) may have had a role in this expansion of Dusty’s narrative universe.
Unfortunately we don’t have access to the full credits of the cartoons made for the Boing Boing Show to be sure.
The Herb Klynn pilot I’d like to see is Format’s proposed series “The Mamas & the Papas” based on and using the voices of the 1960’s folk rock group. Herb used to keep a cel set-up of the four main characters on a wall in his office at Format. I asked him about it and he said (if I remember correctly) that they produced half of one half hour (probably 12 minutes?) because of the success of the Beatles animated series but none of the networks went for it.