Filmography: Al Falfa in Pink Elephants

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 7 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great cartoons to study.

It's easy to think that the cartoons we see on television and home video are pretty much all that exist. But even the most seasoned "cartoon buff" will admit that there are whole chunks of animation history that fans have never had the opportunity to see. Foremost among these forgotten films are the B&W cartoons from the Paul Terry Studios.



Back in the day, Paul Terry was the acknowledged "Dean of American Animation". He was one of the earliest pioneers of the animation business, and his studio remained intact well into the TV era. So it's ironic that Terrytoons have become the most misunderstood and least appreciated cartoons today.



When the first few animation histories were being written in the late 1970s, only a handful of Terrytoons were syndicated on television. They weren't well presented, and the titles in circulation didn't fairly represent the quality and depth of the studio's output. Critics tended to unfairly dismiss Terry as a third-rate studio, because they were comparing the handful of Heckle and Jeckyl and Mighty Mouse cartoons in TV circulation to the entire output of the Disney and Warner Bros studios. While other studios enjoyed popular revivals in the 80s through home video releases, the Terry cartoons remained on the shelf gathering dust. Today, most people only know these cartoons as dim memories from seeing them on TV as a child, or through the short shrift they receive in books and articles on animation history.



Film collectors, however know the real story. The Terry cartoon library was marketed extensively in the home movie market. A huge proportion of the studio's output still exists on 16mm films, traded among collectors. Serious film collectors have catalogued, preserved and digitized these films to prevent them from being forgotten forever. The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive is fortunate enough to have received a donation which included many of these rare films from film collector Mark Kausler and animation historian Jerry Beck.



These cartoons may never be available for syndication or home video again. But they are available for viewing at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive in Burbank. As an example of the undiscovered gems included in this donation, we present "Pink Elephants", a Farmer Al Falfa cartoon produced in 1937. This cartoon has not been seen in nearly fifty years.



The original 35mm camera negatives of the Terrytoons were recently donated to the UCLA Film & Television Archives. However, funding to preserve these cartoons is short and there's a lot of material to be restored. If you would like to contribute to "Adopt A Cartoon", please see the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Preservation page.



The animation in this short is very interesting. It's timed with snaps from pose to pose very much like a Flash cartoon. The quality of the drawings overcomes the relatively small drawing count. There are several scenes in this film that are masterfully posed, with clear silhouettes and funny expressions. Check it out...

Paul Terry's "Pink Elephants"
(Quicktime 7 / 12 MB)

We have a good strong server, but we occasionally experience traffic spikes. If the movie doesn't stream smoothly, please bookmark us and check back later. It should be back to normal in a day or two. In the meantime, there's a LOT more low bandwidth info of interest to look at on this site. Visit the Archive Homepage, or click on MEDIA in the masthead above for galleries of amazing sketches...



If you would like to see more Terrytoons, stop by the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive during office hours. Thanks again to Mark Kausler and Jerry Beck for their generosity.

PLEASE NOTE The text and media files on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Blog are not to be duplicated, redistributed or hosted on other websites without the prior written permission of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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