UPA at 10

Film critics of the 1930s were ga-ga over Walt Disney’s “realistic” animation. Critics of the 1940s were hip to the irreverence of Bugs Bunny. But critics of the 1950s were tired of both. They wanted something more sophisticated, kind of like how they praise art-house feature films over populist ones even today.

Enter UPA.

Gerald McBoing-Boing was the first to catch their attention. Mr. Magoo was next. Why? Because they weren’t animals trying to be sedate and cute, or running around and lippy. They were humans who were reminiscent of something you’d find in panel cartoons in magazines like the Saturday Evening Post. In other words, they weren’t children’s fare, therefore they were far superior.

But like Bambi and Bugs Bunny, the heaps of praise on the UPA characters abated after an initial burst of enthusiasm. Perhaps it was because any interest in new cartoons was drying up, including by the studios themselves. Less money was being spent on them, except at MGM where no money was being spent on them after mid-1957. Meanwhile, kids ate up Disney and Warner Bros. cartoons whenever they appeared on television.

Here’s a feature story from the praise days of UPA. It comes from Richard Dyer MacCann’s “Hollywood Letter” column in the Christian Science Monitor of November 17, 1953. Technically, I suppose it’s correct about the studio being 10 years old, but it really never released anything for mass consumption until 1948.

UPA Cartoons 10 Years Old
Hollywood
It was just 10 years ago that Stephen Bosustow embarked on an independent course as an artist and founded the company which has for so long been referred to as “that new cartoon studio where ‘Gerald McBoing-Boing’ was made.”
Mr. Bosustow feels pretty sure that UPA is now becoming a quality trade-mark for American movie-goers—even if some of them don’t realize that the initials stand for United Productions of America.
UPA is now known also as the studio that makes the “Mr. Magoo” series, and lately there has been interest in an experimental subject based upon Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

“Christopher Crumpet,” in which a youngster turns into a chicken whenever he doesn’t get his own way, is another recent release. Furthermore, Mr. Bosustow has at last achieved the beginning of his ambition to put James Thurber’s drawings on film: “The Unicorn in the Garden” is a brief transcription of a Thurber fable.
* * *
Things are moving right along at UPA, what with precedent-breaking plans for three cartoons produced especially for television, a third story about the cacophonous Gerald McBoing-Boing, and (as usual) something just a little different, called “Fudget’s Budget.”
That last item is a simple tale about two people who live very carefully within “a vine-covered budget,” but gets overconfident when the boss grants a raise in pay. Robert Cannon, the director of this sadly ironic piece, has planned a constant, unobtrusive background of column-ruled paper and scrawly arithmetic for everything that goes on.
Mr. Cannon’s second sequel to the Academy Award-winning “Gerald” consists of an attempt to get the precocious little fellow (who can’t talk, you know, but goes “Boing! Boing!” instead) to learn, after all, to talk.
His parents take Gerald to Professor Joyce to see what can be done about his voice, but even shock treatment can’t get the woeful child to say “How now, brown cow?” Suddenly the professor remembered that the telephone company has a wonderful scrambling and unscrambling device for overseas calls. They try a phone call to Gerald—via Paris. What a surprise to hear the elaborate electronic equipment come forth with Gerald’s solemnly intelligible address to the aforesaid cow!
* * *
Perhaps the biggest new at UPA is the company’s imminent TV debut. It will take place on the Ford Foundation’s Sunday program, “Omnibus,” some time in December. First of a series of three films optioned by “Omnibus”—all of them to be made available to theaters later—it is a story by Heywood Broun called “The 51st Dragon.”
In this symbolic adventure, Gawaine Le Coeur-Hardy is a cowardly young lad who is taking courses at knight school “He was tall and sturdy, but lacked spirit. He would hide in the woods when the jousting class was called. Even when they told him the lances were padded, the horses just ponies, and the field unusually soft, he wasn’t enthusiastic.”
Nevertheless, Gawaine is persuaded to undertake training as a slayer of dragons. Fortified with the knowledge that he has a “magic word” to protect him, he wields his enormous ax with abandon. As to what happens when he confronts his fifty-first victim, that is for you to find out.
* * *

Mr. Bosustow is very much wrapped up in his TV dragon project, and takes keen delight in explaining how the ax is a key element in the design, how the wallpaper pattern sets the mood for each episode, and how the set pieces that stand for the mountains are not unlike the scenic technique of Oriental theatricals. Sterling Sturtevant is the designer of this one; Herbert Klynn is the associate producer and Art Heinemann the director.
“Mr. Magoo Goes Skiing” is the straightforward title of that near-sighted old gentleman’s newest escapade, and it need hardly be said that he and his nephew and a large bear all manage to get onto his pair of skis at once as he goes over a cliff.
Another item now being pencilled in on the story board is a promising cartoon called “Cine-magoo” in which Mr. Magoo mistakes an airline marquee for a movie entrance. When he leaves his first seat to get a better view of the show somewhere else, he manages to pop out the door of the airplane and discovers how really tremendous the new wide screens can be.