The Cubby Bear Project
I was hoping this week to write a little about how the Cubby Bear set is going, but it’s complicated to get all the pieces together – so maybe that’ll be next week’s post! The cleanup is progressing quite well on the title, and even though we’re a little behind (sigh!) we’re moving forward and closer to finish.
There’s a few things I hope happen before the set goes to press: a few years back one collector said he had a unique print of Gay Gaucho with original titles, So far, that ons hasn’t shown up anywhere with the original titles, but now that collector has lost the print! So if you have a Gay Gaucho with original titles or a great print of Bubble and Troubles let me know please!
Today was a banner day for the project, with an excellent transfer session of better elements on many of the films. I was pretty thrilled at how beautiful some of the prints are-way better than I thought I’d have on many of them. Here’s a few quick stills (click to enlarge):
Cubby has become sort of the main project here at the moment, but there’s others well in progress. The very last elements of the Abbott and Costello ‘Rarities’ were transferred today as well, including a really cool Kinescope of a super rare Colgate Comedy Hour from 1953. It features Martin and Lewis and Bud Abbott – Lou was sick that week. Other work this week includes finishing touches on a few friend’s projects and greeting a giant package of Nitrate containing original camera negatives from Flip the Frog cartoons.
Joop Geesink’s DOLLYWOOD
Another project that’s been coming along fairly slowly is a set of stop motion animated films. It’s a sort of sequel to the now out of print Stop Motion Marvels set Thunderbean released. I’ve been trying to track down especially rare things for the HD / DVD set. I’ve been debating doing another ‘special’ set with some of these things on it as well as other rarities since it will be a while before the ‘real’ sets are actually finished. For now, here’s a few curios I thought everyone would enjoy from the Joop Geesink studio.
Geesink, who worked with George Pal, continued to operate a stop motion studio in Holland after George Pal left to come to the USA. Geesink’s studio continued to make theatrical commercials for Phillips. Collector and patron film preservation saint Dennis Atkinson lent me a reel of really amazing Phillips ads, some in cel animation and some in stop motion. Here are two from that reel: Joop Geesink’s Dollywood presents Phillip’s Light Show and The Interesting Guest. These date from just after World War 2 and were made for theatrical showing. Light Show is a late 40s British IB Technicolor print (with a little water damage in the titles) and The Interesting Guest appears to have been distributed in black and white.
The Geesink studio work is some of the hardest to see, and often only the most die-hard of animation fans even know of the studio. I absolutely love the color design on Light Show – and the beautiful Technicolor reproduction. Clearly Geesink’s studio continued to make shorts with high production quality. These both a lot of fun and I bet you haven’t seen these before!
Have a good week everyone!
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.
Oh no! I don’t know how I missed the STOP MOTION MARVELS set, but I did! Oh well, thanks for these small posts, and yes, these are pretty close to the George Pal PUPPETOONS. I hope you do put together more of these things.
Cubby looks great!
Has anybody noticed when looking at the different screenshots of Cubby Bear, they could easily tell which one was done by Harman and Ising?
I can only see one (The Gay Gaucho , second set to the right).
Looking at the Cubby stills and the difference in his appearance in Van Beuren cartoons and the Harman/Ising version is kind of like Hanna/Barbera’s Tom and Jerry and Chuck Jones’ version of Tom and Jerry. They’re the same characters but the different studios put their visual stamp on their work. Of course, we’ve seen these kinds of things a lot over the years especially with all the reboots of old characters these days. Reboots, hmm, almost sounds like a disease. “That’s Superman but, well, he’s got reboots. Poor guy”.
Actually, it’s “Philips” spelled with one “L.”
For anyone interested, there’s an entire channel dedicated to Joop Geesink’s Dollywood films on YouTube.
There’s a whole Dutch site dedicated to Joop Geesink, luckily also in English: http://www.dutch-vintage-animation.org/index.php/en/
The Abbott and Costello set sounds amazing. I have all the Martin & Lewis Colgates… but not the one with Bud Abbott! Can’t wait – please be sure to announce it here even though it isn’t animation.
It’s interesting that, as late as the 60s, Geesink was doing PHILIPS ads that were virtual remakes of the 30s ones! What was really weird was when his Dutch TV bumpers got onto American UHF TV(The Field Communication channels).
Anyone interested in the extensive oeuvre of Joop Geesink’s Dollywood is cordially invited to view the Joop Geesink Tribute website:
https://dutch-vintage-animation.org/en/start
Many films and stories about the making of these films.