John Sutherland Productions was an off-shoot of a company Sutherland and fellow ex-Disneyite Larry Morey set up that made “Daffy Dittys” shorts for United Artists in the ‘40s. They were mainly stop-motion (the final one was a cartoon and released in 1947). Morey went back to Disney, so Sutherland started a new company to make animated films for business and educational clients.
Among his early successes were a series of Chiquita Banana commercials shown in movie theatres and a number of cartoons for Harding College that got theatrical releases from MGM, which had dismantled its Preston Blair/Mike Lah unit.
The Sutherland films, in my estimation, were wonderfully-designed and animated, and it’s a shame so few of them are available for viewing. Where Sutherland’s archives are today is anyone’s guess, so it’s impossible to know how many films he made.
Sutherland was still in operation in the ‘60s and still producing award-winning industrial cartoons. One of them has a title that anyone who grew up then will recognise as a spoof—
The Man from A.U.N.T.I.E. It was Sutherland production no. 1599, and
Back Stage magazine from New York indicates it was released in June 1967.
A copy of it recently sold on an on-line sales site and the seller graciously put up some frame grabs on-line.
Unlike some of the earlier Sutherland shorts, this one did not appear in theatres but was broadcast on TV. Sterling Movies’ TV department made other Sutherland industrial cartoon available for stations starting in 1958, including
What Makes Us Tick and
Working Dollars.
The
Business Screen Magazine issue of July 1967 gave
A.U.N.T.I.E. a short review:
Underwriters’ Cartoon Fantasy Shows Origins, Use of Insurance
A new cartoon film, The Man from A.U.N.T.I.E., is now playing extensively on television public service time via Sterling Movies, Inc.
John R. Galaxy, the man from the Association of Underwriters Needed to Insure Earthlings, visits our planet in his flying saucer. His task: discover how Earthlings use insurance. Animation and a clever story line maintain a swift, active pace throughout the film.
Meanwhile, the quarter-hour explains the origins of insurance and how it grew to meet demands of the times, various kinds of insurance and the protection each one offers, how rates are determined, and the role insurance plays in our economy.
The Man from A.U.N.T.I.E. was produced by John Sutherland Productions, Inc.
The Weekly Underwriter magazine went into it in a little more depth in an edition in 1970. We’ve omitted the reference to a second film.
I.I.I. Films Get Wide Exposure
New York—A green-complexioned, pointed-eared character from outer space named John R. Galaxy has helped to bring the serious story of property and liability insurance in an entertaining way to an “astro”-nomical audience of earthlings.
The elfin Mr. Galaxy is the pivotal actor in an animated color film presented by the Insurance Information Institute which has been seen by 8.7 million people over a three-year period....
“The Man From A.U.N.T.I.E,” a 14-minute animated film, stars Mr. Galaxy as a saucer-flying agent from Venus assigned to investigate terrestrial insurance practices.
While Mr. Galaxy carries out his mission, the film achieves its objective of painlessly teaching a few basic facts — the different types of policies, what determines costs and a brief, amusing insight into the origins of property and liability insurance. ...
Of the 19,416 bookings, “A.U.N.T.I.E.” has received, 62 per cent have been in public schools at all levels, colleges and universities. ...
The total audience for “A.U.N.T.I.E.” includes 1.6 million persons at live showings and 7.1 million television viewers in 48 states and the District of Columbia. An evaluation of 19,181 reports on viewer attitudes toward this film revealed that 65.8 per cent rated it “excellent” and 25.3 per cent considered it “very good.”
Subsequent evaluations continue to show mostly “excellent” ratings for this free-loan, award-winning film produced for I.I.I. by John Sutherland Productions and distributed by Association Films, Inc.
The cartoon won the gold medal for insurance films at International Film and TV Festival Awards in New York in October 1967; several other Sutherland films were honoured as well. It also received a Chris Certificate at the Columbus Festival.
Director George Gordon had been a fixture at Sutherland. He began his career at the Paul Terry studio in 1930, writing and directing more than 50 Terrytoons. In 1937, he moved to California to join the new MGM cartoon studio and eventually became a director on the first Barney Bear series.
He left MGM during the war and worked for Hugh Harman and Sutherland on at least two occasions, sandwiching in a stint with Mike Lah’s Quartet Films. Eventually, he headed to Hanna-Barbera where he freelanced on storyboards and direction for many of its TV shows. He died May 24, 1986 in Apple Valley, California, after a six-month illness.
Unfortunately, the seller didn’t provide a frame listing the animators on this particular cartoon. Oh, and to know who provided the voices.
Sutherland chugged along in 1967, coming out with an animated short for the Office of Economic Opportunity called
The Owl Who Gave a Hoot. Among its other films in distribution that year:
The Modern Corporation (Alfred P. Sloan Foundation);
Buy Wise (Office of Economic Opportunity);
The Text Case and
More Than a Living (both for A.T. and T.);
Make a Mighty Reach (Charles F. Kettering Foundation) and
Lexicon (UCLA). It’s unclear how many were animated.
Perhaps some day we’ll see a full Sutherland filmography as well as the company’s animated films current resting in 16mm cans, and forgotten.
