![]() (Hopefully these videos won't be taken down anytime soon, but you never know how long stuff like this will last.) The first of each pair is a cartoon from 1947, and the second is a cartoon from about ten years later, starring the same character(s) as the first. To help us get an idea of how UPA changed the animation game, let's do a compare/contrast exercise.īelow are three pairs of video links. (I do believe Madeline appeared on Nickelodeon's Pinwheel during the 1980s, though.) As far as I can tell, they weren't rerun on TNT, TBS, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, or any of the usual outlets for pre-1960 animated shorts. You've probably seen none of them, though. Seuss's Gerald McBoing-Boing (1950), and of short stories such as Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart (1953) and James Thurber's The Unicorn in the Garden (1953). And UPA produced wonderful adaptations of children's books like Ludwig Bemelmans's Madeline (1952) and Dr. ![]() The studio's two feature-length productions were 1001 Arabian Nights (1959) and Gay Purr-ee (1962), which, as far as I know, aren't on the Criterion Collection's shortlist. Magoo, who isn't exactly in the same league as Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, or even Betty Boop chances are, you're only aware of him because of the seasonally recurring TV special, Mr. Its films, sadly, are just invisible, period. I have to thank the enigmatic Taras Tymoshenko (who made one of my favorite webcomics ever) for introducing me to United Productions of America (UPA), the most important cartoon studio you've never heard of.įormed in the aftermath of a strike at Walt Disney Studios and active in the animation business from 1943–1964, UPA's influence has become so ubiquitous as to be invisible. First up, we've got Rooty Toot Toot, United Productions of America's Oscar-nominated 1951 short. So! Instead of National Poetry Month, this year we'll be observing ANIMATION APRIL, starting today. Also, my wristwatch tells me it's been far too long since I've taken a break from whatever it is I usually write about to dissect some fun pop culture artifact or other. Coming up with, say, fifteen meaty, worthwhile NPM posts this April (one every other day) would require me to find fifteen authors, poetic themes, forms, or traditions that we haven't already covered, and I'm just not up to it.īut I do miss dedicating an April's worth of updates to celebrations and expositions of an art form. I've virtually exhausted my repertoire of favorite poems and poets. But a fan isn't necessarily qualified to be an anthologizer. This isn't because I've lost interest in poetry-that's not the case at all. If you've been slavishly checking this URL for updates for the last six years (and I hope you have!) you might have noticed that our annual National Poetry Month festivities have dwindled in scope.
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