Title: The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (in original, but no The in the viewed retitle)
Studio: George Pal
Date: 04/30/43
Credits:
An Animated Puppetoon
Produced and Directed by
George Pal
Based Upon a Story by Dr. Seuss
Series: Madcap Models/Puppetoons
Running time (of viewed version): 8:24
Commercial DVD Availability: -
Synopsis: Boy has many hats, irritating king.
Comments: I know the narrator from WB cartoons? Maybe Tex Avery MGMs? No, wait, it's from the Goofy shorts. And the king voice is his Pegleg Pete voice. Pan flute. Sounds like it's playing Barnacle Bill the Sailor. The soundtrack feels like it's for a WB cartoon too. The pauses are in places for visual jokes that don't come. The look of this is less Seussy than the last non Seuss cartoon. Willoughby's Magic Hat was also a hat based cartoon. Odd. Executioner has a Batman nippled body armor deal going on. Long guillotine raising section. I'm not sure if the political subtet of the cartoon is that you cannot force people to do things, but they'll do it for money. The hats and executioner looks great in this, the king is good, Bart is ok, but everyone else is kinda bleh. None has stock expressions like George Pal did (later note: what do I mean by this?). I should probably cap every hat, but I'm not doing it now. Some hats seem recycled (the venetian hat seems to be, so who knows what else).
(edit: title cards added from BCDB; thanks Mr. Cro; also name changed, same thanks)
BCDB has the original titles of this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bcdb.com/cartoon_pictures/36548-500_Hats_Of_Bartholemew_Cubbins.html
I would love to see it in Technicolor!
Pal's audio/music tracks, down to using Raymond Scott music, did have more in common with the WB cartoons than the Famous Studios shorts being done on the East Coast (which didn't make those audio/music tracks bad, just different from what was being done in California).
ReplyDeleteBTW, Ted, you should now edit the title (it does have "The").
ReplyDelete