Mr. Bug Goes to Town

Mr. Bug Goes to Town:

Release date(s): 12/5/1941

Distributed by: Paramount Pictures

Studio: Fleischer Studios

Running time: 78 minutes

Director: Dave Fleischer

Producer: Max Fleischer

Writers: Kenny Gardner, Gwen Williams, Jack Mercer, Tedd Pierce, Carl Meyer, Stan Freed, Pauline Loth

Inspired by Maurice Maeterlinck's The Life of the Bee

Music: Leigh Harline, Frank Loesser

Country: United States

Language: English

Background:

Mr. Bug Goes to Town, also known as Hoppity Goes to Town and Bugville, is an animated feature produced by Fleischer Studios and released to theaters by Paramount Pictures on December 5, 1941. It was originally meant to be an adaptation of Maurice Maeterlinck's The Life of the Bee, but the Fleischers were unable to get the rights to the book, and the studio came up with its own story inspired by The Life of the Bee instead. The film was produced by Max Fleischer and Dave Fleischer, who was credited as director. The sequences for the film were supervised by Willard Bowsky, Shamus Culhane, H.C. Ellison, Thomas Johnson, Graham Place, Stanley Quackenbush, David Tendlar and Myron Waldman.

Plot:

The plot describes the return of Hoppity the Grasshopper, after a period spent away, to an American city. He finds that all is not as he left it, and his good insect friends (who live in the "lowlands" just outside the garden which belongs to a songwriter and his wife) are now under threat from the 'human ones', who are trampling through the broken down fence which prefaces the property, using it as a shortcut.

Insect houses are being flattened by their feet, and are also often burned by cast away cigar butts and matches. Old Mr. Bumble and his beautiful daughter Honey (Hoppity's childhood sweetheart) are in grave danger of losing their Honey Shop to this threat.

To compound their problems, devious insect "property magnate" C. Bagley Beetle has romantic designs on Honey Bee himself, and hopes, with the help of his henchmen Swat the Fly and Smack the Mosquito, to force Bumble to give him her hand in marriage.

Voice Cast:

Dick: Kenny Gardner

Mary: Gwen Williams

Mr. Bumble/Swat: Jack Mercer

C. Bagley Beetle: Ted Pierce

Smack: Carl Meyer

Hoppity: Stan Freed

Honey: Pauline Loth

The Four Marshals (Mute)

The Royal Guards (Mute)

Production:

Mr. Bug Goes to Town was beset by problems early on. To produce their first animated feature, Gulliver's Travels, the Fleischers had moved their studio from New York City to Miami, Florida, and expanded their staff, at great expense. Immediately after Gulliver was completed and released, the studio began development on a second feature, eventually going into production on Mr. Bug. The studio was already deeply in debt from the expense of "Mr. Bug" and the expensive costs of the Superman shorts which were in production around the same time. The Fleischers were forced to sell their studio to Paramount mid-way through production on Mr. Bug, on May 24, 1941. Paramount kept the Fleischers in production, but they were required to deliver unsigned letters of resignation to Paramount, to be used at the studio's discretion, as the brothers were growing apart.

Release:

Mr. Bug was originally going to be released in November 1941, but since the Fleischers' rival, Walt Disney Productions, had its film Dumbo released weeks earlier in October and was already a success, Paramount changed the date to December. Having the misfortune of opening two days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Mr. Bug was a financial disaster (although having slightly positive reviews) and led to the ousting of Max and Dave Fleischer from the studio they had established in 1919.

Paramount reorganized the company as Famous Studios.  Max and Dave had not spoken to each other since early in 1940 due to personal and professional disputes. Apart from this, before Mr. Bug 's release, Walter Lantz, Paul Terry and Leon Schlesinger were considering producing animated feature films, but after responding to the disappointing results of this film and the initial failures of Walt Disney's other own two films Pinocchio and Fantasia, the projects were later eventually canceled.

Paramount later re-released Mr. Bug as Hoppity Goes to Town; the original title is a parody of the title of the 1936 film Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. The film cost $713,511 to make, and had only made $241,000 back by 1946, the year it was withdrawn from circulation. The film had apparently failed at the box office. Under the reissue title, Hoppity has had multiple re-releases on home video (with inferior image quality) throughout the 1970s to its recent DVD release by Legend Films, in which the studio re-titled the film again to Bugville. The film has now become a cult favorite with a younger generation of animators and animation buffs.

The film was acquired by U.M. &M. T.V. Corp. in 1955, which was later bought out by National Telefilm Associates (which became Republic). The film (as Hoppity Goes to Town) was officially released by Republic Pictures on VHS and laserdisc in May 1989. While NTA failed to renew copyrights to many of the films they acquired, Mr. Bug Goes to Town was one of the only few films that did get its copyright renewed. Despite the fact that the film is still copyrighted (by Republic successor Melange Pictures, managed by parent company Viacom, which also owns Paramount Pictures), public domain companies have released the film on VHS and DVD.

In Japan, the movie was released on December 19, 2009 as part of Studio Ghibli's Ghibli Museum Library. A DVD was released on April 2010 by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment in Japan, and it has been reported to be a restoration of an NTA re-releases print. Recently, Mr. Bug, along with many other Fleischer-produced cartoons (including the Fleischers' previous film, Gulliver's Travels), was restored from the original three-strip negatives by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Though a few art-house theaters have recently screened the restoration which features the original titles, there are currently no plans to release it on DVD or Blu-ray.

On October 21, 2012, the Turner Classic Movies channel debuted the film, transferred from an original 35mm Technicolor release print owned by the Museum of Modern Art Department of Film, for the first time on television in a special hosted by Robert Osborne and Jerry Beck dedicated to rare animated films, including Gulliver's Travels, Lotte Reiniger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the UPA cartoons and the silent cartoons of 1907 to 1932 of the New York Studios.

Movie Links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vCe-DKKK-8

Dumbo

Dumbo:
Release date(s): October 23, 1941
Distributed by: RKO Radio Pictures
Studio: Walt Disney Productions
Running time: 64 minutes

Director: Ben Sharpsteen

Producer: Walt Disney

Writers: Otto Englander/Joe Grant/Dick Huemer

Based on Dumbo by Helen Aberson

Music: Frank Churchill/Oliver Wallace

Country: United States

Language: English

Background:

Dumbo is a 1941 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released on October 23, 1941, by RKO Radio Pictures in the Sonovox sound format.

Dumbo, the fourth animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, is based upon the storyline written by Helen Aberson and illustrated by Harold Pearl for the prototype of a novelty toy ("Roll-a-Book"). The main character is Jumbo Jr., a semi-anthropomorphic elephant who is cruelly nicknamed "Dumbo". He is ridiculed for his big ears, but in fact he is capable of flying by using his ears as wings. Throughout most of the film, his only true friend, aside from his mother, is the mouse, Timothy — a relationship parodying the stereotypical animosity between mice and elephants.

Dumbo was made to recoup the financial losses of Fantasia. It was a deliberate pursuit of simplicity and economy for the Disney studio, and at 64 minutes, it is one of Disney's shortest animated features.

Plot:

While circus animals are being transported, Mrs. Jumbo, one of the elephants, receives her baby from a stork. The baby elephant is quickly taunted by the other elephants because of his large ears, and they nickname him "Dumbo".

Once the circus is set up, Mrs. Jumbo loses her temper at a group of boys for making fun of her son, so she is locked up and deemed mad. Dumbo is shunned by the other elephants and with no mother to care for him, he is now alone. Timothy Q. Mouse, who feels sympathy for Dumbo and becomes determined to make him happy again, appoints himself as Dumbo's mentor and protector.

The circus director makes Dumbo the top of an elephant pyramid stunt, but Dumbo trips over his ears and misses his target, injuring the other elephants and bringing down the big top. Dumbo is made a clown as a result, and plays the main role in an act that involves him falling into a vat of pie filling. Despite his newfound popularity and fame, Dumbo hates this job and is now more miserable than ever. To cheer Dumbo up, Timothy takes him to visit his mother. On the way back Dumbo cries and then starts to hiccup, so Timothy takes him for a drink of water from a bucket which, unknown to them, has accidentally had a bottle of champagne knocked into it. As a result, Dumbo and Timothy both become drunk and see hallucinations of pink elephants.

The next morning, Dumbo and Timothy wake up in a tree. Timothy wonders how they got up in the tree, and concludes that Dumbo flew up there using his large ears as wings. With the help of a group of crows, Timothy is able to get Dumbo to fly again, using a psychological trick of a "magic feather" to boost his confidence.

Back at the circus, Dumbo must perform his stunt of jumping from a high building, this time from a much higher platform. On the way down, Dumbo loses the feather; Timothy quickly tells him that the feather was never magical, and that he is still able to fly. Dumbo is able to pull out of the dive and flies around the circus, finally striking back at his tormentors as the stunned audience looks on in amazement.

After this performance, Dumbo becomes a media sensation, Timothy becomes his manager, and Dumbo and Mrs. Jumbo are given a private car on the circus train.

Voice Cast:

Dumbo: (Mute)

Edward Brophy: Timothy Q. Mouse

Verna Felton: Mrs. Jumbo, Dumbo's mother/Elephant Matriarch

Herman Bing: The Ringmaster

Margaret Wright: Casey Junior

Sterling Holloway: Mr. Stork

Cliff Edwards: Jim Crow

The Hall Johnson Choir: Crow Chorus

Noreen Gammill: Elephant Catty

Dorothy Scott: Elephant Giddy

Sarah Selby: Elephant Prissy

Malcolm Hutton:  Skinny

John McLeish:  The Narrator

Development:

Dumbo is based upon a children's story written by Helen Aberson and illustrated by Harold Pearl that was prepared to demonstrate the prototype of a toy storytelling display device called Roll-A-Book, which was similar in principle to a panorama. It involved only eight drawings and just a few lines of text, and had Red Robin as Dumbo's ally instead of Timothy Mouse.

Dumbo was first brought to the attention of Walt Disney in late 1939 by Disney's head of merchandise licensing Kay Kamen, who showed a prototype of the Roll-A-Book that included Dumbo. Disney immediately grasped its possibilities and heartwarming story and purchased the rights to it.

Originally it was intended to be a short film; however, Disney soon found that the only way to do justice to the book was to make it feature-length. At the time, the Disney Studio was in serious financial trouble due to the war in Europe, which caused Pinocchio and Fantasia to fail at the box office, so Dumbo was intended to be a low-budget feature designed to bring revenue to the studio. Storymen Dick Huemer and Joe Grant were the primary figures in developing the plot. They wrote the script in chapters, much like a book, an unusual way of writing a film script. Regardless of this, very little was changed from the original draft.

Casting:

None of the voice actors for Dumbo received screen credit, much like in Snow White and Pinocchio. Timothy Mouse was voiced by Edward Brophy, a character actor known for portraying gangsters. He has no other known animation voice credits. The pompous matriarch of the elephants was voiced by Verna Felton, who also played the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella, the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, and Flora of the Three Good Fairies in Sleeping Beauty. Other voice actors include the perennial Sterling Holloway in a cameo role as Mr. Stork, Cliff Edwards, better known as the voice of Jiminy Cricket, as Jim Crow, the leader of the crows, and John McLeish, best known for narrating the Goofy "How To" cartoons, providing the opening narration.

Animation:

When the film went into production in early 1941, supervising director Ben Sharpsteen was given orders to keep the film simple and inexpensive. As a result, Dumbo lacks the lavish detail of the previous three Disney animated features (Fantasia, Pinocchio, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs): character designs are simpler, background paintings are less detailed, and a number of held cels (or frames) were used in the character animation. Although the film is more "cartoony" than previous Disney films the animators brought elephants and other animals into the studio to study their movement.

Watercolor paint was used to render the backgrounds. Dumbo and Snow White are the only two classic Disney features to use the technique, which was regularly employed for the various Disney cartoon shorts. The other Disney features used oil paint and gouache. 2002's Lilo & Stitch, which drew influences from Dumbo, also made use of watercolor backgrounds.

Distribution:

Completed in fall 1941, Disney's distributor RKO Radio Pictures initially balked at the film's 64-minute length and wanted Disney to either make it longer, edit it down to a short subject length, or allow them to release it as a B-movie. Disney refused all three options, and RKO reluctantly issued Dumbo, unaltered, as an A-film.

Songs and Performers:

"Baby Mine" (Betty Noyes)

"Casey Junior" (The Sportsmen)

"Look Out for Mr. Stork" (The Sportsmen)

"Song of the Roustabouts" (The King's Men)

"The Clown Song" (A.K.A."We're gonna hit the big boss for a raise") (Billy Bletcher, Eddie Holden and Billy Sheets)

"Pink Elephants on Parade" (The Sportsmen) (preceded by two minutes of music on soundtrack version)

"When I See an Elephant Fly" (Cliff Edwards and the Hall Johnson Choir)

"When I See an Elephant Fly" (Reprise)

On Classic Disney: 60 Years of Musical Magic, "Pink Elephants on Parade" is included on the green disc, "Baby Mine" is on the purple disc, and "When I See an Elephant Fly" is on the orange disc. On Disney's Greatest Hits, "Pink Elephants on Parade" is on the red disc.

Awards and nominations:

Dumbo won the 1941 Academy Award for Original Music Score, awarded to musical directors Frank Churchill and Oliver Wallace. Churchill and lyricist Ned Washington were also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song for "Baby Mine" (the song that plays during Dumbo's visit to his mother's cell), but did not win for this category. The film also won Best Animation Design at the 1947 Cannes Film Festival.

Allegations of racial stereotyping:

Writer Richard Schickel charged that the crow characters in the film are African-American stereotypes in his 1968 book, The Disney Version. The leader crow, played by Cliff Edwards, was originally named "Jim Crow" for script purposes, and is listed as such in the credits. However, all of other crows are voiced by African-American actors, who were all members of the popular all-black Hall Johnson Choir. Despite suggestions by writers such as Schickel who have criticized the portrayal as racist, others reject these claims. Defenders note that the crows form the majority of the characters in the movie who are sympathetic to Dumbo's plight, that they are free spirits who bow to no one, and that they are intelligent characters aware of the power of self-confidence, unlike the Stepin Fetchit stereotype common in the previous decade. Furthermore, the crows' song "When I See An Elephant Fly", which uses intricate wordplay in the lyrics, is oriented more toward mocking Timothy Mouse than Dumbo's large ears.

Funny Tidbits You Didn’t Know:

 -- During the production of Dumbo, Herbert Sorrell leader of the Screen Cartoonists Guild, demanded Disney sign with his union. Disney declined saying that he would put it to a vote. Sorrel again demanded that Disney sign with his union, but Disney once again refused. On May 29, 1941, shortly after rough animation on Dumbo was complete, much of the Disney studio staff went on strike. A number of strikers are caricatured in the feature as clowns who go to "hit the big boss for a raise". The strike lasted five weeks, and ended the "family" atmosphere and camaraderie at the studio.

Movie Links:

http://www.sockshare.com/file/862FA40636CB8CCC

http://www.putlocker.com/file/DB433FA65524A3AE

The Adventures of Prince Achmed

The Adventures of Prince Achmed:

Directed by: Lotte Reiniger/Carl Koch(Uncredited)

Written by: Lotte Reiniger

Cinematography: Carl Koch

Distributed by: Comenius-Film GmbH/Milestone Films

Release date(s):  July 1926 (France)

Running time: 65 minutes (at 24 frames/s)

Country: Weimar Republic

Language: German

Historical Significance:

- First use of silhouette animation
- Oldest surviving animated feature film

Background/Animation Style/Production:

The Adventures of Prince Achmed, transalated in German as Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed, is a 1926 German animated fairytale film by Lotte Reiniger. It is the oldest surviving animated feature film; two earlier ones were made in Argentina by Quirino Cristiani, but they are considered lost. The Adventures of Prince Achmed features a silhouette animation technique Reiniger had invented which involved manipulated cutouts made from cardboard and thin sheets of lead under a camera. The technique she used for the camera is similar to Wayang shadow puppets, though hers were animated frame by frame, not manipulated in live action. The original prints featured color tinting.

Several famous avant-garde animators worked on this film with Lotte Reiniger. These included Walter Ruttmann, Berthold Bartosch, and Carl Koch.

Plot:

The story is based on elements taken from the collection 1001 Arabian Nights, specifically The Story of Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Paribanou featured in Andrew Lang's The Blue Fairy Book. With the assistance of Aladdin, the Witch of the Fiery Mountain, and a magic horse, the title character reclaims the magic lamp and conquers the African sorcerer. The culminating scene in the film is the battle between "die Hexe" (the witch) and "der afrikanische Zauberer" (the African sorcerer), in which those characters undergo fabulous transformations. All is well in the end: Aladdin marries Dinarsade (Achmed's sister and daughter of the Caliph); Achmed marries Pari Banu; the African sorcerer is defeated; and the foursome return to the Caliph's kingdom.

Restoration:

No original German nitrate prints of the film are known to still exist. While the original film featured color tinting, prints available just prior to the restoration had all been in black and white. Working from surviving nitrate prints, German and British archivists restored the film during 1998 and 1999 including reinstating the original tinted image by using the Desmet method.

Score:

The original score was composed by German composer Wolfgang Zeller in direct collaboration with the animation of the film. Reiniger created photograms for the orchestras, which were common in better theatres of the time, to follow along the filmic action.

The Silk Road Ensemble accompanied the film with a live improvised performance on Western strings and instruments such as the oud, ney and sheng in October 2006 at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York, NY. The Silk Road Ensemble repeated the performance at the Avon Cinema in Providence, RI, in February 2007.

The British film composer Geoff Smith composed a new score for the film in 2008, which he performed live as an accompaniment to screenings of the film.

An alternative score was written and presented to the public December 16, 2009 by Indian composer and guitarist, Rahul Roy (not to be confused with an actor of the same name). The authorized screening was presented at Forbes Library in Northampton, Massachusetts on that date, with over fifty people in attendance.

Another alternative score was conceived and performed by the British-Asian clarinettist and composer, Arun Ghosh and featured Adriano Adewale, Shabaka Hutchings, Jenny Adejayan, Corey Mwamba and Liran Donin to a packed house at the Albany in Deptford, the main space being transformed into a Bedouin lounge, as part of the Future Fusions Takeover festival on 18th March 2010. Arun Ghosh's score was presented as a live-action silhouette film with the musicians seen by the audience as shadows behind a screen in homage to Lotte Reiniger's cinematic style.Seattle composers David Miles Keenan and Nova Karina Devonie, aka "Miles and Karina", were commissioned by the Northwest Film Forum in 2007 to compose a new score to be performed live for its annual Children's Film Festival '08 and again in '09. The duo continue to perform their score with the film and have done so at Australia's Woodford Folk Festival '09/'10; The Tucson Fox Theater Nov. 2010; Denver Film Society's Starz Cinema Mar. 2010; Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema Nov. 2008; St. Louis Art Museum Sept. 2008; Seattle International Film Festival April 2011; Bainbridge Performing Arts April 2011 and others. Their score uses accordion, guitar, banjo, glockenspiel, viola, percussion, slide whistle and other contraptions.

Movie Links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mulqoZ2LXeM