Big Horn Backgrounds

A noise-making child alienates spaghetti-limbed adults and is ostracised only to become a hero to the adults thanks to his noise.

No, it’s not “Gerald McBoing Boing.” It’s yet another UPA cartoon that ploughs the same ground, “Little Boy With a Big Horn.”

As usual, the designs are the stars and they’re by Thornton Hee this time. Let’s look at some of the backgrounds. Jules Engel worked on those. The swirls on the last frame represent fog.








And being directed by Bob Cannon, there has to be abstract geometry in there somewhere. The circles represent sound waves.



Cannon does a couple of things I really like. The opening titles are treated like a slide show at an old-time movie theatre, which nicely fits the era the cartoon is set in. And he symbolises how loud the kid’s tuba-playing is by having the dialogue drop out during part of one scene.

Marian Richman and John T. Smith, not sounding like his gruff characters at Warner Bros., play the parents.