The Little King’s Christmas short is odd, but it’s one of my favorites to watch each year!
First, small Thunderbean news:
This week (my first off from the school) is all about sending orders and five of the new special sets. They’re happily dubbing and going out the door, including Sam Bassett and Public Domain Mouse Adventures, finally. The coming weeks have more good news, finally— let’s hope sooner than later!
And, onto Pals (aka Christmas Night), 1933
Growing up, when the oldest cartoons were on, I always knew somehow — and those were always the ones I liked best, from the B/W Popeyes (the last of the black and white cartoons that were on any of the channels in Detroit at that point) to the early color Lantz cartoons, to the handful of black and white Mickeys that were on the Mickey Mouse club. The show Matinee at the Bijou that featured a sort of reconstruction of going to the movies in the 30s, introduced me to so many more cartoons, including the first time I actually saw any of the Van Beuren shorts. I think The Ball Game was the first I saw, then most likely “Christmas Night” With the Little King. Right around that time I had started collecting films in Super 8. After collecting Super 8 for a handful of years, I bought a 16mm print of Christmas Night from Clifford Thomas, a longtime collector who would out these giant, 2 page ads in The Big Reel, a film collector’s magazine. I bought that cartoon for $5, before I had my own 16mm projector. I ran that print at the high school I was going to, and remember being transfixed at how much sharper 16mm was compared to Super 8!
Otto Soglow’s Little King is kind, compassionate and strange. Those traits work so well in the best of the Little King shorts that Van Beuren did, and maybe work best is this entry. The Little King, bored at watching everyone else having a good time at Christmas (including a dead ringer for Columbia’s Oopy), enjoys window shopping for toys, where he meets two hoboes. Then he visits a department store Santa, who tells him he’ll bring him some toys. The Little King then sneaks two hoboes into the palace with him, and, like childhood siblings, they all take a batch together, with one of the Hobos ingesting a bar of soap and hiccuping bubbles through the rest of the picture.
The three hand their stockings. When Santa comes he destroys the Little King’s palace floor to plant a Christmas tree, then gives them all small toy cars and a plane. After some enjoyment destroying parts of the palace, they all crash into each other.
I think “Pals” is a perfectly realized little film. It’s a pretty well animated and executed film, and still feels pretty Christmasy all these years later.
This print here combines several of the best prints I’ve seen of the title, including that very first 16mm print I bought back in 1983. It’s from the Little King Blu-ray set.
Happy Holidays all, and see you here next week!
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.
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