Who Needs Spinachk?

“If it’s good enough for that sailor man,” declared an explorer in Frank Tashlin’s The Major Lied Till Dawn at Warners, “it’s good enough for me.” That’s the attitude taken in the first UPA cartoon for Columbia, Robin Hoodlum (released Dec. 23, 1948).

The Merry Men realise Robin must have been captured because he missed tea time. To the castle they go to rescue him. Arriving at the door of the dungeon, there is a polite knock.



The executioners shoot their arrows at Robin.



Little John bursts into the room with a tea cart. Robin drinks the tea. It gives him strength to break the ropes holding him and jump out of the way of the arrows.



It’d be funny if the Popeye theme was scored under the tea drinking, but UPA never went in for laughs like that.

Those arrows had to be the world’s slowest for all this business to happen before they reached Robin.

Phil Eastman and Sol Barzman came up with the story for this Oscar-nominated short, directed by John Hubley. It certainly won’t remind you of a conventional Fox and Crow cartoon that Columbia made on its own.