Coronet Films is known best known for films telling weenie-roast-loving “swell” teenagers to change their behavior, maybe using a list. But social guidance wasn’t their only interest.
Here’s a Christmas short from 1955. Reader Jim Engel points out “Mrs. White” is actually Fran Allison, which is why the performance is very professional (she’s no Nick Baxter in Coronet’s What To Do on a Date).
This may be a little sugary for some viewers, but you can’t disagree with messages like helping the less fortunate. If you do, maybe one of those kids can treat you like a piñata.
If you’re going to hire someone to play a cartoon Santa, who would hire? At one time, the answer was likely Hal Smith.
He was Santa on the Flintstones Christmas episode in 1964. He was Santa in Tony Benedict’s Santa and the Three Bears.
It also turns out he is Santa—and the narrator, along with other male voices—in a 1959 animated short from the Soviet Union called A Christmas Tree.
It’s possible this got TV airplay. Shows like Captain Sailorbird and the The Nutty Squirrels filled half-hours with cartoons from eastern Europe, dubbed into English. Sorry for the battered print.
Interestingly, this Cartoon Research post (here: https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/christmas-eve-with-the-kausler-collection/) claims that Gilbert Mack is doing the narration in the latter short you posted. Is it really Hal Smith and not Gilbert?
ReplyDeleteIt's possible, but Mack was on the East Coast, and Smith was on the West Coast. Why they'd spring not only for two male voices, but two male voices in separate recording sessions in different parts of the country, makes no financial sense.
ReplyDeleteAh! Thank you. Yeah, when you put it like that the idea that both could have done voices on this short doesn’t really make that much sense considering their placement in the states.
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