Gremlin 101

It’s part of animation lore that the Disney studio was working with author Roald Dahl to produce a film on gremlins, the imaginary creatures blamed for all kinds of trouble with wartime British aircraft. Dahl’s book was published in 1943. The film never came about.

Evidently around Christmas-time 1942, the project was still a go. The studio churned out somewhat-veiled advance publicity for the movie, giving an introductory course on the various members of the gremlin family via Walter Winchell’s column. Normally, Winchell spewed one or two-line blurbs on the celebrity world. However, Winchell gave his column over to others when he was away and one of those others was Walt Disney, or someone in the Disney PR department who wrote under Walt’s byline.

The column was accompanied by appropriate illustrations, marked ©WDP (in the version below, most of the credit notations were deleted). It appeared in papers starting December 28, 1942. You’ll notice the resemblance to the gremlins in the Warners cartoon “Russian Rhapsody” (1944) in which the little creatures were caricatures of Leon Schlesinger, Friz Freleng, Tubby Millar, Artie Davis and others at the studio.

BATTING FOR WINCHELL
Lt. Com. Walter Winchell of the U.S. navy is temporarily unable to produce his column, which is being handled by guest columnists.
Pukka Gen* on Gremlins
*(RAF Slang for “the real low-down”)
By WALT DISNEY
Ever seen a real Gremlin? No?—Well, maybe it’s because you haven’t been up in a British Spitfire swapping bullets with a Messerschmitt, or dodging German flak in a bombing raid over Hamburg.
RAF fighter pilots and members of bomber crews who have seen real action are the only ones eligible to see real Gremlins.
Of course, lots of others think they’ve seen them, but they’ve only seen the imitations:—Gound Wallopers the pilots call them.
* * *
Ever since the Gremlins were discovered, the press has been deluged with drawings of grotesque hobgoblins, bearded dwarfs, misshapen elves, pixies, spooks and what-not, all trying to pass themselves off as Gremlins.
But don’t let them kid you. The real Gremlins, discovered by the RAF are a distinctively individual race; and are by no means ugly. They have their own original characteristics, and bear no resemblance to the outlandish monstrosities and gruesome nightmares cooked up by artists of the past.
* * *
How are we going to make a picture and write a book about them if we can’t see them?
That’s where we get a real break. Thanks to the British air ministry, all the RAF pilots who have seen Gremlins have promised to give us first hand information on them.
They’ve already supplied us with plenty of Gen to get started on, and letters are coming in every day filled with blow-by-blow accounts of the latest contacts with these remarkable little guys. The general consensus is that they’re less than a foot high and built on the chunky side. They wear zippered flying suits and their horns grow right thru their helmets.
Some affect green bowler hats and all have black suction-boots for walking on wings at 300 miles an hour.
After all, the RAF feels responsible for its Gremlins and wants them pictured just as they really are. And that puts us on a spot. They warned us that if we fall down on the job or put up any blacks they’d take a dim view of our efforts and probably tear us off a colossal strip, which we assume means pinning our ears back.
Only last month the British embassy sent one of the foremost Gremlinologists out to the studio; a flight lieutenant who has been on speaking terms with every known type of Gremlin.
He put us straight on lots of things. We found out, for instance, that Gremlins never operate higher than 30,000 feet. It’s the Spandules who take over above this altitude.
They hang on to the leading edge of your wing and slowly exhale, forming a nice thick coating of ice. Spandules are flat rug-like individuals covered with fur and have large pockets for storing hailstones, which they chew constantly.
* * *
From all reports, the Fifinella (that’s the female Gremlin) is a honey. They tell us her face is fizzing’ and she has wizard curves, all in the proper places. Nothing ropey about this little crumpet. We gather
from this that she’s really an eyeful. The boys tell us that you’ll never catch a Fifinella drilling holes in your wing, cutting your parachute straps or draining the alcohol from your compass. All a Fifinella has to do is hop aboard a plane for a joyride and the Gremlins will follow her in droves. (Statistics show one Fifinella to every 12 Gremlins.)
By the time they've chased her back and forth from one wing-tip to the other, wiggling your wing flaps, swinging on your aerial wire and playing see-saw on your elevators, you’ll wish she'd stayed at home to mind the Widgets.
* * *
Widgets?—They’re the new born Gremlins that appear in nests hidden in the dark corners of your aircraft. In every batch of Widgets you’ll find a Flibberty-gibbet. She’s the one who eventually becomes a Fifinella. Before they’re a day old, Widgets are up to mischief.
They have very high baby voices and chatter incessantly. Since they're not equipped with suction boots like older Gremlins, they usually concentrate on the instrument board and have a marvellous time putting all the gauges out of whack.
* * *
The fact that Gremlins have become so real and play such an important role in the thoughts and conversations of the flyers is really a tribute to the courage, morale and sense of humor of the RAF.
And when the gong sounds ending the final round of the war, the chances are that the Gremlins will be entitled to a large slice of credit for making their appearance during England’s darkest hour and carrying on in their mischievous way until victory was certain.

To be honest, I’m not a Disneyphile. And I don’t need to be because there are many animation fans out there who are, and have expertly studied the minutiae involving the studio. Wade Sampson has an excellent posting about Disney and gremlins at MousePlanet that you can read.

Sleeping Beautyland

Ah, there’s nothing like a good Disney bashing and one of the funniest had to be “Sleeping Beauty” (1960), written by George Atkins and directed by Bill Hurtz. Doesn’t the prince look familiar?



There are a lot of subtle things going on in this cartoon, not the least of which is Walt Disney had laid off a whole pile of animators at the completion of the feature “Sleeping Beauty” only months earlier. Is it any wonder that “Sleeping Beauty” was the basis for this satire? Doubly delicious is the fact that the basic animation produced by Ward is the very opposite of the “illusion of life” that Disney strove for. The characters are rudimentary, the kind that appeared on TV commercials in the ‘50s.



The stand-in Disneyland is shown to be trite, with attractions that are little more than obvious ideas. And the Walt Disney stand-in is not only greedy, he’s a train lover, just like the real Walt. Notice the railway tracks.



Daws Butler uses his Phil Silvers voice in this cartoon. June Foray plays the wicked fairy and Sleeping Beauty.

I Eats My Spinach Backgrounds

Here are pieces of a background drawing that opened the Fleischer cartoon “I Eats My Spinach” (1933). Note the cat under the sandwich board advertising beer in the first frame grab. The buildings are in the order they appear in the right-to-left pan as Popeye walks down the street. The Brooklyn-ese on the sign post (on an overlay) is a nice touch.









The name “Mills Hotel” isn’t random. It was the moniker put on three New York City hostels put up by a D.O. Mills for the poor. They were controversial because there were claims Mills built them for a profit. A New York Times reporter went in cognito to do a story about one of them in 1908. You can read it HERE.

Here’s Popeye with a saloon and barber shop behind him.



As usual, the background artist at Fleischer who came up with these was not identified on screen. Seymour Kneitel and Doc Crandall get the animation credits.

The Wickedest Wicked Witch

Anyone who wants to see a perfect performance on film need only watch Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West in “The Wizard of Oz.”

She was scary. We’ll tell you how scary in a minute.

In honour of frightening witches on this Hallowe’en, I’ve dug up an old newspaper story about Hamilton’s career. It’s funny to see her associated with comedy—she worked with both W.C. Fields and Percy Kilbride in features—because her role in “Oz” is really her defining one, despite her coffee commercials on TV many years later. This is from August 1, 1941 in the Daily Kennebuc Journal of Augusta, Maine, where Hamilton was performing in summer theatre with four-year-old son Toni in tow.

Margaret Hamilton Got Start in High School Senior Play
Lakewood Actress Who Has Played In 43 Movies Tells of Road to Footlights
Like the heroines in all the best theater novels, Margaret Hamilton finally had her chance on the New York stage after several years of hounding agents and tramping from one theater to another. Miss Hamilton, who is a member of the Lakewood company this Summer, got her first real shove toward the stage in a high school senior play.
Brought up in Cleveland, our heroine had serious leanings toward kindergarten teaching until the annual senior play came along. Cast as a man in the production, Miss Hamilton wowed the audience and received such hyperbolic praise for her acting that she realized at once that kindergarten idea was a mistake and it must be the stage for her.
Her sensible parents raised no strenuous objections to the notion, only insisting that first she learn the fundamentals of teaching so that she could earn her living, and then, if the urge were still upon her, she might try her hand in the more artistic and possibly less lucrative field.
Followed several years of both teaching and acting, Miss Hamilton became a member of the Cleveland Theater group and taught in a kindergarten on the North Shore while acting in one of the two groups at the theatre afternoons and evenings. Although she never attended a dramatic school, a great deal of practice, experience in every phase of the theatre was available with the Cleveland group. Even in those first years, she play the character parts for which she has since become so well known, and during that period took over 60 character roles.
After a summer at the Dennis Theater on Cape Cod and a try-out of “Another Language” in Greenwich, Conn., Miss Hamilton’s father staked her to a year in New York during which time she could discover whether or not New York producers were clamouring for her presence.
That year consisted chiefly of pounding the pavements and dropping in to see people who, because of her summer experience, had told her to come around in the Fall. It was odd, Miss Hamilton, said, how they had all forgotten her and couldn’t even recollect the type of part she played. The $100 a month which her father sent her supported a friend as well as Miss Hamilton, and they were on pretty slim rations most of the time.
At the end of the year, nothing had happened, not even a walk-on and Miss Hamilton was on the verge of accepting a permanent position as teacher of five-year old when the long awaited break came. Backers had been found for “Another Language” and the show was about to open in Washington.
“I shall never forget that opening night,” Miss Hamilton said. The Washington try-out was over, and funds were so scarce that the company had to waive their bond in order to get to New York. The entire cast felt that a run of two weeks would be a miracle and were tightening their belts in anticipation of more job hunting. “Another Language,” however, ran 50 weeks and was the entering wedge for several of the young actors in the group, including Miss Hamilton.
Her past six years have been spent in Hollywood where she has been in 43 pictures, including the fantastic “Wizard of Oz.” “The Wizard” was the screen version of a popular children’s book, and in it Miss Hamilton was cast as a witch. On the surface of it, being a witch seems a mild enough assignment and one would hardly expect a children’s story to furnish dangers and thrills. However, the making of the film was not a tame or easy period for Miss Hamilton.
Many of the scenes in which Miss Hamilton flew through the air with the greatest of ease on her brook-stick were done in miniature, but an occasional close-up to give authenticity was necessary. During the shooting of one of those scenes, Miss Hamilton received a first degree burn on her arms and hands, and a second degree burn on her face. After six weeks of hospitalization, she returned to the set and was told they were ready to shoot another sequence in which smoke would pour forth from the brook-stick.
Upon learning that the costume designed for her was fireproofed, in spite of the fact that the smoke bomb was guaranteed to be harmless, Miss Hamilton refused to be part of parcel to the scene. Her stand-in was used, and inside of a few seconds, the bomb exploded, severely injuring the stand-in. Seldom a dull moment in making a picture, Miss Hamilton says.
Like all performers who have had both legitimate and screen experience, Miss Hamilton much prefers the stage. Movie-making is such a hodgepodge with the end of the film often being shot first, that it is almost impossible to sense the continuity of the picture. The appreciable lift that an audience gives an actor, and the applause or laughter that greets him, is the biggest possible stimulus to a good performance, according to Miss Hamilton.
Nearly all tragedians long to do comedy, and most comedians have a secret desire to have a crack at a serious role. Miss Hamilton, having made a name for herself in character parts, all of a humorous nature, is automatically cast in those roles. But, like all of her colleagues, she would like a straight part, and at the Lakewood Theater during the week of August 4, that long awaited opportunity will be given her. In “Lady in Retirement,” Miss Hamilton will, for the first time in her long career, have a straight lead.
Embryonic actors seeking advice from Miss Hamilton as to how they may further their careers, receive discouraging but sane advice. “Don’t do it, my dears,” she says.

Just how scary, just how convincing was Hamilton in the role? Well, there were parts of the movie I simply couldn’t watch (when I was a kid, “Oz” was seen only once a year on TV). But here’s a better example from Hedda Hopper’s column from November 4, 1941.

TAKING NO-CHANCES
When Margaret Hamilton played the wicked witch in “Wizard of Oz,” she had to frighten Toto, the little dog, in many scenes. Yesterday she was on the set of “Twin Beds” in a maid's costume, when Toto saw her, tucked his tail between his legs, ran under the couch and howled dismally. He remembered her, and wanted no more abuse.

That’s right. Margaret Hamilton was so scary, she frightened people. And a little dog, too.

Buccaneer Bunny Teeth Grind

Seagoin’ Sam almost shoots himself in the head, thanks to Bugs Bunny trickery in “Buccaneer Bunny” (released 1947). Then he realises. And he looks toward Bugs.







Frustration gag.




Manny Perez, Gerry Chiniquy, Virgil Ross and Ken Champin are the credited animators.

She Sends Me Back a Wire

David Germain writes that we should check out the walk cycle by the messenger in Tex Avery’s “Symphony in Slang.”

It’s not an actual cycle in that the same drawings are sequentially used over and over again. Tex or his animator varies the drawings so different ones pop up, making the walk jerkier and funnier. Here are ten consecutive frames to give you an idea of the kind of drawings that were made.












We’re back to drawings one and two in the next frames but then the animator starts tossing in different leg positions that you see don’t see above.

This is Avery’s version of limited animation, though there’s still a different drawing per frame of film. And the fact the messenger’s completely stiff other than his rubbery legs makes it funnier than if the rest of his body were animated.

Avery’s regular crew of Mike Lah, Walt Clinton and Grant Simmons receive the animation credits.

Memories of Vaudeville

Fewer and fewer people are left who would have seen vaudeville. The best taste we can get of it is from remembrances of former vaudevilleans written many years ago.

Here’s a very brief taste. This interview from the Associated Press appeared in newspapers starting November 23, 1974, not many weeks before Jack Benny died.

Jack Benny-George Burns Friendship Flourishing
EDITOR’S NOTE — Jack Benny and George Burns have had audiences laughing for 50 years, since their vaudeville days. In an exclusive interview, the comedians discuss their lives, the way comedy has changed and the often arduous task of making jokes.
By BOB THOMAS
Associated Press Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) — In a town where friendship is as fleeting as a starlet's fame, the 50-year association of Jack Benny and George Burns is legendary.
They are legends themselves.
Benny, 80, entertainer of three generations, was one of vaudeville’s smoothest funnymen. He starred in radio—ever stingy, ever 39. His films ranged from “To Be or Not to Be,” to “The Horn is as Blows at Midnight.” One of the few radio comics to succeed in television, he continues to appear in his own specials.
Burns, 78, is best known for his cigar and rakish humor. For 36 years he played the patient straight man for scatter-brained Gracie Allen.
They, too, starred in vaudeville, radio, films and television. But Gracie retired in 1958 and died in 1964. And Burns created a new role as a successful standup comedian.
The Benny-Burns friendship has flourished in the often competitive world of show business.
Nearly every day when they’re in town, they meet for lunch at the Hillcrest Country Club, joining a comedian’s round table for the latest jokes and gossip. Recently they lunched with a reporter for a session of reminiscence. Both seemed fit considering their recent hospitalizations. Burns underwent open-heart surgery two months ago. Benny canceled a performance in Dallas because of stomach pains but was declared well after hospital tests here.
Was it fun playing vaudeville — or just work?
Benny. “Oh, it was fun. I’ll tell you why: you didn't have to worry about writing all the time. If you got a good act together, you could play it for seven years. Because you were in a different town every week, you know?”
Burns: “And another thing: nobody could steal your jokes, the way they do today. If you caught somebody using your material, you could send your original act to Pat Casey (Labor executive for the theater owners) and he’d make the guy stop. Nowadays if other comics don’t steal your jokes, you fire your writers.”
Benny: “But they never stole from George and me. We don’t use one-liners.
We’re story tellers; we start talking and one line leads into another.”
Was vaudeville really as good as people's memories of it?
Benny: “Sure it was. Every city in America had a big-time vaudeville house, and they had top performers. Of course there were small-time houses, too, and that’s where the talent had a chance to train. You know, George Jessel is always saying that there’s no place for talent to be lousy any more. It’s true. All of us had a chance to be lousy in small-time vaudeville and gradually we learned how to be good.”
Burns: “That's right. We all built our acts gradually, learning what would get laughs and what wouldn’t.”
Benny: “You learned what were things you did best, and bit by bit you developed your own style. You ended up with 17 minutes of surefire material.”
Burns: “That was how you determined how successful an act was. The smaller acts did 10-12 minutes. You’d ask a vaudevillian how he was doing, and he’d answer ‘Seventeen minutes.’ That meant he was playing next to closing (the star’s position on the bill).”
Were there times when that “surefire material” didn’t get laughs?
Burns: “Sometimes. There were some routines that you were sure of, like when Gracie kissed me and asked, ‘Who was that?’ And sometimes you’d do your act at Monday matinees and nothing happened. Then Monday night you'd get big laughs. Why? I don’t know.”
Benny: “The only time I found when my act wouldn’t work was when I was following another comedy act, particularly knockabout comedy. One tune I had to follow the Marx Brothers for 13 weeks in a row. It was just murder. The bad thing is that the minute you lay an egg it hurts your timing.”
Did you change your material when you played “the sticks?”
Burns: “Never. We never knew what ‘the sticks’ were. Audiences were the same everywhere.”
Benny: “Every town had its sophisticated audience, whether it was New York City or South Bend.”
They could tell, Banny added, when vaudeville started dying.
“Gradually the audiences got smaller. The people just weren't coming in,” Benny said.
Burns: “Vaudeville couldn’t compete with talking movies. For a dollar you could go to the Roxy Theater in New York and see 70 musicians, 60 Rockettes kicking in unison, a feature movie — and on the way out they pressed your pants and did your income tax for you. Vaudeville never changed.”
Benny: “And radio killed vaudeville. People stayed home to hear it. Here’s a funny thing. In theaters all over the country they would stop the movie and play the Amos ‘n’ Andy radio show!”
When vaudeville died, Benny and Burns changed gracefully to radio, worrying initially if they could produce enough material for a weekly show. They were successful.
Burns: “We were blessed with some great writers. They’d come to you with four-five pages of jokes. If you didn’t like them, they’d go into the next room and write four-five more pages. In vaudeville, we’d go to Altoona to try out one joke.
Comedy, the pair agrees, has changed over the years.
Benny: “Well, we’re all more sophisticated than we used to be. In the last five or six years I have been telling risque stories that I would never have done before. People expect it nowadays. But George and I would never use four-letter words.”
Will they ever retire?
“Never,” said Burns.
“Well,” said Benny, “It’s tough not to retire. Sometimes I think ...”
Burns: “What would you do — stay home with Mary?
How long have you been with her?”
Benny: “Almost 50 years.”
Burns: “Well isn’t it nice to get out of town?”

Willy Pogany Makes a Cartoon

He was paid $5,000 for every cover he drew for a newspaper magazine supplement, so there could only be one possible explanation why he’d accept a $300-a-week job drawing backgrounds at a cartoon studio. He was broke and needed the money.

Well, that’s not quite the explanation Willy Pogany gave at the time about why he accepted a job at the Walter Lantz studio. But’s what Lantz said in his biography, albeit published some time after Pogany’s death.

Pogany wasn’t just going through money troubles. He had marital troubles, too. Pogany’s wife Lillian got a Mexican divorce the previous year and Pogany immediately married a woman 21 years his junior. But the legality of the divorce was questioned, so the semi-former Mrs. Pogany got a California divorce and Pogany waited until July 1939 to marry Elaine Cox again just to make sure it was legal.

And Pogany had another well-publicised problem, referred to in this October 22nd United Press story about his new job at the Lantz studio.

With the Hollywood Reporter
By FREDERICK C. OTHMAN
U.P. Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD—Willy Pogany, the internationally known painter, who tangled in court last year with Miss Constance Bennett over how thick her thighs should look, has some clients who couldn’t possibly register any complaints about his art.
He was working at Universal studios, in charge of the color department of Walter Lantz’ cartoon factory, and enjoying to the fullest the painting of birds and animals and fawns, who did funny antics on the screen—but never made any kicks to the artist.
Pogany is one of the greatest portrait artists. His standard fee is $3,500 per picture. He is in the midst of decorating William Randolph Hearst's San Simeon home with murals—a task which so far has taken four years—and his portraits hang in many of this country’s largest homes.
Everything is okay, so far as Pogany is concerted, except his portrait of Miss Bennett. He spent a year working on it and when he delivered it, his client said he’d made her thighs too big, her hips too round, her mouth too wiggly, her waist too thick and her fingernails too pale. She said she wouldn’t pay a cent more than $500. Pogany sued her for the $3,000 balance. The jurors agreed the portrait was worth every cent Pogany asked, but the judge threw his suit out of court on the ground that he had guaranteed Miss Bennett satisfaction, and she most emphatically was not satisfied with his version of her thighs.
“I have her picture at home in my living room," Pogany said. “I have had several offers for it, but I have refused them all. I think it is a beautiful picture: I just try to forget that it is a portrait of that woman.”
Furthermore, Pogany said he’d rather not talk about his court appearance. He’d rather discuss animated cartoons.
“For years,” he said, “I’ve been trying to get one of the studios to hire me to make them. I talked to Walt Disney and all the others, and they thought I was fooling.
“But I finally persuaded Lantz that I meant it when I said I believed cartoons were an important segment of the artistic world, and destined to become important, Anyhow, he let me go to work on them.”
Pogany unreeled for us his first color cartoon, entitled “Peterkin.” We never saw a reel like his before. The backgrounds were painted with all the skill and detail that Pogany possesses. The colors were magnificent.
Net effect was that of the birds and beast cavorting before a series of beautifully painted landscapes. The principal character was a baby fawn, with human face, shaggy legs, and pink bottom.
“That bottom was something of a problem," Pogany said “I’ve always loved to paint fawns. The first picture I ever did was when I was 14 and it was of a fawn. Fawns don't wear pants. I was worried about the censors in connection with this one, but I took it up with the Hays office and explained what I was trying to do, and they finally said go ahead, so long as I kept it artistic. That I tried to do.”
He did, too. Nobody will take offense at Pogany’s pantless fawn.
Speaking of censorship, consider Edith Head, dress designer at Paramount, who was assigned to make 200 lava-lavas, or long sarongs, for the dancing girls in a movie called “East of Singapore.” She looked up the facts, and produced 200 lava-lavas, designed to leave the right sides of 200 feminine abdomens authentically bare.
The girls tried on their costumes. More than half of them had scars from appendicitis operations, which no amount of body make-up would cover, so Miss Head re-designed all the lava-lavas.
When you see the picture, take particular notice that the left sides of 200 dancing girls are bare; the right sides demurely covered.

Lantz said he never had more beautiful backgrounds than the ones created by Pogany for this cartoon. Pogany also came up with the character designs which were modified by Alex Lovy. Peterkin has the big two buck teeth when he smiles, just like Andy Panda.

Here are some of the backgrounds. The cartoon opens with a pan of the forest. It has trees in the foreground on an overlay that you can’t really see in a still photo.






Here’s that mischievous Peterkin.




And there’s a checking error. A couple of birds disappear for two frames. The credited animators, incidentally, are Frank Tipper (Lovy’s brother-in-law) and Hicks Lokey.




One wonders if Pogany insisted that that hiring him also meant buying film rights to his new wife’s book “Peterkin.”

Pogany didn’t last long at Lantz. There never was a Peterkin series; “Scrambled Eggs” (released in November 1939) bore production number 984. Only three more cartoons (985-986-987) were completed before the Lantz studio closed in January 1940 in a money dispute with Universal. Boxoffice announced on August 31, 1940 that the first of a series of 13 new Lantz cartoons for Universal would be in theatres on September 9th with new characters supplementing the old. In the meantime, Pogany went back to magazines. You can see some of his art HERE and HERE.

Hound Fights Fox

The best part of the 1937 Harman-Ising cartoon “The Hound and the Rabbit” is something the audience never really got to see. There are some great individual abstract drawings during the climax when the hound beats up a bunny-stealing fox (played by Billy Bletcher).









Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising are the only ones who were credited on the cartoon. The animators remain anonymous. Interestingly, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera had the same kind of scene more than 20 years later in the Yogi Bear cartoon “Bear on a Picnic,” including characters trying to get away only to be pulled back into the fight. Hanna was at Harman-Ising at the time this short was made.

The cartoon’s another example of the H-I studio’s Disney-obsession. It features:

● Cute fuzzy bunnies.
● A Goofy-like comic relief character (who even sounds like Pinto Colvig).
● Pluto-like pantomime involving an object (Speedy the bunny almost loses his hat, hat gets stuck on branch, hat gets stuck on head, hat still stuck on head).

I’d mention the Seven Dwarf-like names of the bunnies but “Snow White” hadn’t been released yet.

Boxoffice magazine praised the cartoon for its “bright coloring and roguish characters.” Unfortunately, the home video release of this one is larded with DNVR on the roguish characters.