It’s fascinating when an early color cartoon shows up in color when it was only available for many years in black and white. Finding out one exists and can be accessed can be one of the most fun things about hunting for materials.
There’s a whole series of reasons why color versions been missing from public view for the better part of the century, but that’s one of the interesting things about the search. I thought I’d write briefly about some of these films this week, and I’m looking forward to continuing the hunt for the best versions sometime soon! In the meantime, here are the ones I consider at the top of the list. If there’s any you’re thinking of that I’ve missed, please add them in the comments!
1) The top film currently on the ‘color’ wish list is Ted Eshbaugh’s Goofy Goat. IT was one of three Eshbaugh films that were impossible to find. At one point, film collector Tom Toth scanned his color 16mm print of Wizard of Oz that had belonged to producer and film historian Bill Everson, who had worked with Eshbaugh. Having both ‘The Snowman’ and “Wizard of Oz” from good 35mm prints now for some time has been nice, but the three would be so happy together. I’m looking forward to having a little bit more of a cleaned off plate at some point to pursue this particular film again. Here is the usual black and white print:
2) The second set of films that top my list are the two color Flip the Frogs that have only shown up in black and white up until now. I’m still hoping someday we’ll get lucky enough to see them. It’s honestly pretty unlikely they exist at all since we spent many years searching already, and have exhausted known sources. But you never know…
3) The Gran’ Pop Monkey cartoons: These three shorts, produced in 1939 and 1940, have been favorite oddities of many over the years. 16mm has shown up on all of them, and several color prints have show up on two of them. It would be great to have all three from 35mm prints in color some day.
10 years back we put up Beauty Shoppe, from my back and white print and Collin Kellogg’s combined:
About six years back we put up A Busy Day scanned from a Cinecolor print:
And the final one, Baby Checkers, has only emerged in a black and white version that we put up four years back.
Finding a good color print of the Bubble and Squeek cartoons was high on my list for a while. I’ve had a 35mm print of Old Manor House for years that is so warped and has so many broken sprockets that we couldn’t get it to scan some years back… it might do better on the newer scanners though. Here is a 16mm print in color though. I’m not sure of the source, but I bet I know them….
4) Famous Studios’ Spree for All from 1946, has recently been unearthed from a nice 35mm print, but finding it in color is still one of the holy grails.
5) An honorable mention: t would be amazing to find a complete print of Mendelshonn’s Spring Song (1931) by Cy Young. We were lucky enough to find this one some years back now, almost complete, but with splices and missing the ending (the ending is from a black and white 16mm print here);
What other color prints should we be looking for? The Fox and Crow in Mysto Fox? The Columbia Barney Googles? An original 3-strip Polacolor of a A Wolf In Sheik’s Clothing?
What else can you think of?
Have a good week all!
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.
I’m not aware of any other lost colour prints other than those you mentioned, but the one I’d really like to see is “Goofy Goat Antics”. It’s such a weird little cartoon, cute in a grotesque way, and to see it in full colour would really be something special.
Or wait, wasn’t Hoppin and Gross’s 1934 cartoon “La joie de vivre” originally in colour? If so, put that one at the top of the list.
Then there’s the matter of cartoons with lost soundtracks. I for one would love to have the sound restored to the racier sections of Les Elton’s “Monkeydoodle”, for example the entire scene where Simon the Monk crashes into the treehouse of the topless female monkey, and she tries to seduce him. In another scene, an Irish monkey’s single remark has been expunged, but whatever he said, it was shocking enough to make Simon faint!
Better quality version of Old Manor House here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTetxnJuJpk
Noted and replaced. Thanks Mejo!
Anytime!
It would be great to see more Twinkles the Elephant cartoons in color
I have the reverse request. I’m seeking an original black & white print of a famed color cartoon: Disney’s Flowers And Trees (1932).
The cartoon was first created in black and white; inked, painted and shot in black & white. A black and white print was sent to United Artists in New York to screen for the trades and exhibitors. It was then pulled off the release schedule, to be re-painted in color (and the rest is history). But where is the original black and white version? The version NOT designed for color. Does it exist in Disney’s vaults? The Library of Congress? Where is the original b/w camera negative? It seems doubtful Disney would have destroyed it. They saved everything else!
Was the original b/w version (perhaps unintentionally?) used on the 1950s Disneyland show – or on The Mickey Mouse Club – the studio maybe thinking a b/w version in the vault was a ‘b/w of the color cartoon’ – when it could have been the original b/w version? Many questions remain – Research that still needs to be done.
Jerry—A good request. It doesn’t exist in Disney’s vaults. The survival rate of the original negatives on Mickey and Silly Symphonies is frighteningly low through Disney’s black-and-white years. Remember how small Disney really was in those days so archival upkeep was not a top priority. It doesn’t improve until United Artists became the distributor and color cartoons were regularly made. So if there is an actual B/W version of Flowers and Trees (NOT just a b/w of the color version), it’d have to be out there in another archive or collection.
(Personally, Mysto Fox is my #1. Its color version being at large makes Screen Gems’ sole entertaining series incomplete.)
I wouldn’t rule out the Disney vault just yet. There is much there that THEY (the current caretakers) do not know.
Here’s a story you’ll enjoy: When I worked for Disney back in the 90s, I requested a screening of a CinemaScope print of Toot Whistle Plunk And Boom. It had occurred to me then, that I’d never actually seen the original CinemaScope presentation. I (and everyone else then) accepted the widely available “flat” print of “Toot” as THE FILM. Period. I explained what I was looking for and they then scoured their vaults and finally sent me a print of: “Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom” (an hour long compilation that originally aired on Walt Disney Presents 3/27/59; and later in color as an episode of Disney’s Wonderful World of Color (on 4/19/64).
I explained again what I was looking for… they then found the ONLY print the studio had at that time: a faded “pink” 35mm print – with an unplayable magnetic sound track! This was a print struck for the premiere back in ’53 by DeLuxe (Fox’s lab) – due to the arrangement to use Fox’s CinemaScope lenses, they had to use their lab for the first prints (despite the Technicolor credit).
Ultimately this led to Scott MacQueen (at the time) to strike a NEW Scope print from the original negative. He did it for me! Luckily, a few years later the print was put into use – as part of the Walt Disney Treasures DVD set “Disney Rareties” – so the cost did not go to waste.
Back to Flowers and Trees – it was shown in b/w on The Mickey Mouse Club on the March 11th 1958 episode. Anyone have that specific show? I don’t. There is a slim chance that maybe – just maybe – when they were looking for b/w Silly Symphonies to for the “MouseKartoon Time” segments (they seemed to run them all) and perhaps they noticed back then, that they had a b/w neg for Flowers and Trees. And maybe that version was telecast on the MMC. Maybe – maybe not. But that needs to be checked. The Disney vaults still need to be checked. I don’t believe anyone has ever looked for this specific version of this film. It’s something that needs to be definitively researched.
It definitely (if it even exists) wasn’t used for the Disneyland show. The only episode that Flowers and Trees appears in was The Story of the Silly Symphony, I have a print of that and the short was the color print. As for The Mickey Mouse Club, I don’t have a print of that episode, but I DO know that the short was also included in the syndicated version (alongside Part 2 of the newsreel Get that Story).
(Also, thanks for sharing that Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom story. I really like it when you tell us stories like that!)
(if it even exists)
*if it still existed at disney
Nobody has mentioned One Hundred and One Dalmatians–one of the TV viewing scenes includes a black and white clip from “Flowers & Trees”. I always figured it was taken from the original black and white version.
That’s actually from Springtime (1929)
I like Jerry Beck’s request regarding “Flowers And Trees”. Another “reversal” I would be interested in seeing is the original black & white Version of Audio Productions “Once Upon a Time”.
In regards to “Goofy Goat”, I’m convinced a color print is out there somewhere, probably mislabeled. Eshbaugh’s “Goofy Goat” is credited by several trade ads as being the first color sound cartoon, and it appears to be a film that Eshbaugh was proud of as it’s always mentioned in trade ads/interviews with him. Seeing how “The Snowman” and “The Wizard of Oz” were saved, I find it hard to believe that a color version of the cartoon would intentionally be discarded.
A question for Mr. Stanchfield: Above, in part, you write
“2) The second set of films that top my list are the two color Flip the Frogs that have only shown up in black and white up until now.”
But weren’t there _three_ other color “Flip the Frog cartoons – besides the first one, “Fiddlesticks”? According to J. B. Kaufman’s liner notes in the booklet insert in your Blu-Ray “Flip the Frog” DVD set (2023),
“While only ‘Fiddlesticks’ is known to survive in color at this writing, ‘Little Orphan Willie’, ‘Puddle Pranks’, and ‘Flying Fists’ were originally produced in color as well.”
That’s near the end of the entry for “Little Orphan Willie.”
Clarify? Thang queue…
I don’t know that I’ve heard of a color print of the Technicolor Krazy Kat “The Merry Cafe” (1936) ever surfacing, but I’d love to see one.
Mark Kausler has said before that color film elements of Goofy Goat (one that I too would LOVE to see in its color form for how odd it is) exist at the USC film collection. Have you asked Mark or USC yet about these materials?
He also said artwork was also on display at the Natural History Museum circa 1969.
The first two Noveltoon sing alongs need to be seen in Technicolor! Too many faded prints!
I really want to see color versions of the Columbia shorts Kickapoo Juice, River Ribber, Dreams on Ice, The Greyhound and the Rabbit and a bugless version of Cockatoos for Two (by that I mean the only print online is a copy of Thad’s print with a dumb Movavi watermark).
And also the inverse: I really want to see the original b/w prints of The Mail Pilot (1927), Felix the Cat Misses his Swiss, Felix the Cat Braves the Briny, Jack From All Trades that were redrawn in the 1970s.
The top treasure would be an original silent copy of Plane Crazy. I wonder if it had different title cards originally.