It’s fascinating when an early color cartoon shows up in color when it was only available for many years in black and white. Finding out one exists and can be accessed can be one of the most fun things about hunting for materials.
There’s a whole series of reasons why color versions been missing from public view for the better part of the century, but that’s one of the interesting things about the search. I thought I’d write briefly about some of these films this week, and I’m looking forward to continuing the hunt for the best versions sometime soon! In the meantime, here are the ones I consider at the top of the list. If there’s any you’re thinking of that I’ve missed, please add them in the comments!
1) The top film currently on the ‘color’ wish list is Ted Eshbaugh’s Goofy Goat. IT was one of three Eshbaugh films that were impossible to find. At one point, film collector Tom Toth scanned his color 16mm print of Wizard of Oz that had belonged to producer and film historian Bill Everson, who had worked with Eshbaugh. Having both ‘The Snowman’ and “Wizard of Oz” from good 35mm prints now for some time has been nice, but the three would be so happy together. I’m looking forward to having a little bit more of a cleaned off plate at some point to pursue this particular film again. Here is the usual black and white print:
2) The second set of films that top my list are the two color Flip the Frogs that have only shown up in black and white up until now. I’m still hoping someday we’ll get lucky enough to see them. It’s honestly pretty unlikely they exist at all since we spent many years searching already, and have exhausted known sources. But you never know…
3) The Gran’ Pop Monkey cartoons: These three shorts, produced in 1939 and 1940, have been favorite oddities of many over the years. 16mm has shown up on all of them, and several color prints have show up on two of them. It would be great to have all three from 35mm prints in color some day.
10 years back we put up Beauty Shoppe, from my back and white print and Collin Kellogg’s combined:
About six years back we put up A Busy Day scanned from a Cinecolor print:
And the final one, Baby Checkers, has only emerged in a black and white version that we put up four years back.
Finding a good color print of the Bubble and Squeek cartoons was high on my list for a while. I’ve had a 35mm print of Old Manor House for years that is so warped and has so many broken sprockets that we couldn’t get it to scan some years back… it might do better on the newer scanners though. Here is a 16mm print in color though. I’m not sure of the source, but I bet I know them….
4) Famous Studios’ Spree for All from 1946, has recently been unearthed from a nice 35mm print, but finding it in color is still one of the holy grails.
5) An honorable mention: t would be amazing to find a complete print of Mendelshonn’s Spring Song (1931) by Cy Young. We were lucky enough to find this one some years back now, almost complete, but with splices and missing the ending (the ending is from a black and white 16mm print here);
What other color prints should we be looking for? The Fox and Crow in Mysto Fox? The Columbia Barney Googles? An original 3-strip Polacolor of a A Wolf In Sheik’s Clothing?
What else can you think of?
Have a good week all!
