Puppetoons

Puppetoons is a series of animated puppet films made in Europe (1930s) and in the United States (1940s) by George Pal. They were made using replacement animation: using a series of different hand-carved wooden puppets (or puppet heads or limbs) for each frame in which the puppet moves or changes expression, rather than moving a single puppet, as is the case with most stop motion puppet animation. They were particularly made from 1932-1948, in both Europe and the US.

History

The Puppetoons series of animated puppet films were made in Europe in the 1930s and in the United States in the 1940s. The series began when George Pal made an advertising film using "dancing" cigarettes in 1932, which led to a series of theatrical advertising shorts for Philips Radio in the Netherlands. This was followed by a series for Horlicks Malted Milk in England. These shorts have an art deco design, often reducing characters to simple geometric shapes.

Pal arrived in the U.S. in 1940, and produced more than 40 Puppetoons for Paramount Pictures between 1941 and 1947.

Seven Puppetoons received Academy Award nominations, including Rhythm in the Ranks (for the year 1941), Tulips Shall Grow (1942), The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (1943), And To Think I Saw it On Mulberry Street (1944), Jasper and the Beanstalk (1945), John Henry and the Inky-Poo (1946) and Tubby the Tuba (1947).

The series ended due to rising production costs which had increased from US$18,000 per short in 1939 (equivalent to $394,278 in 2023) to almost US$50,000 following World War II (equivalent to $781,229 in 2023). Paramount Pictures—Pal's distributor—objected to the cost. Per their suggestion, Pal went to produce sequences for feature films. In 1956, the Puppetoons as well as most of Paramount's shorts, were sold to television distributor U.M. & M. TV Corporation. National Telefilm Associates bought out U.M. & M. and continued to syndicate them in the 1950s and 1960s as "Madcap Models".

Pal also used the Puppetoon name and the general Puppetoon technique for miniature puppet characters in some of his live-action feature films, including The Great Rupert (1949), Tom Thumb (1958), and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1963). In these films, the individual wooden figures were billed as The Puppetoons.

Technique

Puppetoon films used replacement animation with puppets. Using a series of different hand-carved wooden puppets (or puppet heads or limbs) for each frame in which the puppet moves or changes expression, rather than moving a single puppet. A typical Puppetoon required 9,000 individually carved and machined wooden figures or parts. Puppetoon animation is a type of replacement animation, which is itself a type of stop-motion animation. The puppets are rigid and static pieces; each is typically used in a single frame and then switched with a separate, near-duplicate puppet for the next frame. Thus puppetoon animation requires many separate figures. It is thus more analogous in a certain sense to cel animation than is traditional stop-motion: the characters are created from scratch for each frame (though in cel animation the creation process is simpler since the characters are drawn and painted, not sculpted).

Jasper

Some controversy exists in modern times, as the black character, Jasper, star of several Puppetoons in the 1940s is considered a stereotype today. The Jasper series of shorts relied on a small, consistent cast. The titular character was a playful pickaninny, his mother a protective mammy, Professor Scarecrow being a black scam artist, and the Blackbird serving as his fast-talking partner-in-crime. Pal described Jasper as the Huckleberry Finn of American folklore. Already in 1946, an article of the Hollywood Quarterly protested that the Jasper shorts presented a "razor-totin', ghost-haunted, chicken-stealin' concept of the American Negro".

A 1947 article in Ebony pointed out that George Pal was a European and not raised on racial prejudice: "To him there is nothing abusive about a Negro boy who likes to eat watermelons or gets scared when he goes past a haunted house". The article, though, pointed that this depiction touched on the stereotypes of Negroes being childish, eating nothing but molasses and watermelons, and being afraid of their own shadows.

Jasper's full name is Jasper Jefferson Lincoln Washington Hawkins.

At one point, Jasper's popularity was on par with Mickey Mouse's and Donald Duck's.

Legacy and preservation

In 1987, film producer-director-archivist Arnold Leibovit, a friend of George Pal, collected several Puppetoons and released them theatrically and to video as The Puppetoon Movie reintroducing them to contemporary audiences. A feature-length documentary on the life and films of George Pal followed, The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal. In 2020 and 2023, The Puppetoon Movie Volume 2 and The Puppetoon Movie Volume 3 was released on Blu-ray and DVD, featuring 17 shorts and over 30 shorts on the latter not included on The Puppetoon Movie original film release. The Puppetoon Movie Volume 3 is a Rondo Award Winner for Best Blu-ray Collection of 2024.

The Academy Film Archive preserved several of the Puppetoons in 2009, including Jasper and the Beanstalk, John Henry and the Inky Poo, and Rhythm In the Ranks.

Filmography

European shorts

1932

• Midnight

1934

• Radio Röhren (Valve) Revolution, a hand-drawn cel-animation advertising short for Philips
• The Ship of the Ether
• A Fairy Tale About a Melancholic King

1935

• The Magic Atlas
• World's Greatest Show
• In Lamp Light Land
• Ali Baba and The Forty Thieves

1936

• Ether Symphony
• Charlie's World Cruise
• On Parade!

1937

• What Ho, She Bumps (March 11, 1937)
• The Reddingsbrigade (a.k.a. Rescue Brigade) (May 11, 1937)
• Philips Broadcast of 1938 (October 20, 1937)

1938

• South Seas Sweethearts (April 21, 1938)
• The Ballet of Red Radio Valves (June 5, 1938)
• Sky Pirates (August 7, 1938)
• How An Advertising Poster Came About (October 16, 1938)

1939

• Aladdin and the Magic Lamp
• The Sleeping Beauty
• Love on the Range
• Philips Cavalcade (a.k.a. Cavalcade of Music)
• The Queen Was In The Parlour

1940

• Friend in Need
• The Good Bear and The Bad Bear
• The Old Woman Who Lived in A Shoe

American shorts

1940

• Western Daze
• Dipsy Gypsy

1941

• Hoola Boola
• The Gay Knighties
• Rhythm in the Ranks
• The Sky Princess

1942

• Jasper and the Watermelons
• Mr. Strauss Takes a Walk
• Tulips Shall Grow
• Jasper and the Haunted House

1943

• Jasper and the Choo-Choo
• Bravo, Mr. Strauss
• The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins
• Jasper's Music Lesson
• The Truck That Flew
• The Little Broadcast
• Jasper Goes Fishing
• Goodnight Rusty

1944

• Package for Jasper
• A Hatful of Dreams
• Say Ah, Jasper
• Jasper Goes Hunting
• And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street
• Jasper's Paradise
• Two-Gun Rusty

1945

• Jasper's Booby Traps
• Hotlip Jasper
• Jasper Tell
• Jasper's Minstrels
• Jasper's Close Shave
• Jasper and the Beanstalk
• My Man Jasper

1946

• Jasper's Derby
• Jasper in a Jam
• Olio for Jasper
• Together in the Weather
• John Henry and the Inky-Poo
• Wilbur the Lion

1947

• Shoe Shine Jasper
• Date with Duke (featuring Duke Ellington) - October 31, 1947
• Rhapsody in Wood (featuring Woody Herman)
• Tubby the Tuba
• Romeow and Julicat (shown in the film Variety Girl)

1948

• Sweet Pacific

1971

• The Tool Box (broadcast on Curiosity Shop) - September 2, 1971

Cancelled projects

• Sinbad
• Three Little Princes
• Gulliver's Travels
• Casey Jones
• Davy Crockett
• Johnny Appleseed

See also

• The Puppetoon Movie

Sources

• Cripps, Thomas (1993), Making Movies Black: The Hollywood Message Movie from World War II to the Civil Rights Era, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-536034-9
• Cohen, Karl F. (2004), "Racism and Resistance: Stereotypes in Animation", Forbidden Animation: Censored Cartoons and Blacklisted Animators in America, McFarland & Company, ISBN 978-0786420322

External links

• Puppetoons at Internet Animation Database
• "The George Pal Site". Animation World Network.
• "George Pal's Puppetoons". Don Markstein's Toonopedia.