Dad's Troublesome Tuba

The gentle Southern father has bought his son Ollie a tuba in Little Boy With a Big Horn, a 1953 UPA cartoon. He regrets it after hearing the boy’s loud practices. He tells the child it’s a nice horn, then yells “But don’t play it when I’m home!” He leaps up and down and becomes split (in outlines; it is a UPA cartoon after all). His wife has to pull him together.



Bobe Cannon loved kids in cartoons. He directed Gerald McBoing Boing. He directed this one. Gerald becomes a radio star despite his noisy handicap. In this cartoon, the noise simply has Ollie banished from his home town. He seems rather nonplussed about the whole thing as the cartoon ends with his puffing on his tuba at a music school (with no teacher in sight).

Bill Melendez, Frank Smith and Tom McDonald are the animators, with George Bruns handling the music score.