It’s definitely a Van Beuren sort of day here….

Cubby Bear cartoons are some of my favorite cartoons from Van Beuren. It was one of the first DVDs we did (back in 2004) and the Blu-ray set was in the works from pretty early on. It’s been out of print for a while now, and we hope to have it back in print this year.

First — a little news from the Thunderbean trenches:

While we wait to see if the Rainbow Parade cleanup drive can somehow be saved (we lost six cleanups, and have since redone one), we’ve been moving forward with the other things to finish on the set. One of them was combining the successive exposure negative for Bold King Cole (1936). I put it together last night with some excellent technical advice from Thad Komorowski, who’s been doing an excellent job of working on restoring the Color Classics and other great cartoons from Paramount’s master materials for the Fleischer restoration project.

It was amazing to see one of the films from this series from the negative. I just wish the master materials for all these had survived. Here’s some stills from the recombination. I can’t wait to get this set finished!

And — onto Love’s Labor Won:

This is one of my favorite Cubby Bear cartoons— and the second in the series. while I wouldn’t rank it among the best cartoons ever made, it’s a solid piece of joyful, musical cartooning, meant for enjoyment rather than any scrutinizing.

Cubby is introduced to a cheerful song touting his flute playing skills, sung by some birds sitting on a fence (I always wondered if these are supposed to be caricatures of people that worked at the studio- I bet they are. This sequence of cubby playing the flute and cheering all around him goes on for about 2 minutes— 1/3 of the cartoon, before Cubby makes his way to Honey bear’s house. After a parrot and chair join into the song, Cubby calls for Honey, who is taking a shower. He plays the piano and hen tries to spy on Honey through a keyhole. I don’t know how that isn’t a dealbreaker.

Cubby and Honey sing a song together, then they find a plant that looks enough like a microphone to make it act like one. He sings a cute depression-themed song called ‘“Get yourself a Girl and Fall in Love”. You can’t hate a song with lyrics like “Now if you’re worried ‘cause the rent is due… invite the landlord over, and let him worry, too” and “You should never worry, if times are hard…. You can plant potatoes and tomatoes in your yard”

Their song makes everyone happy, except for wolf, who Cubby fights (in a sequence animated by Jim Tyer) for several seconds before winning. The little cartoon ends and everyone forgets it.

While we don’t learn a lot about Cubby’s personality in this little cartoon, there’s enough fun music and action to make it an enjoyable cartoon. I really like the scruffiness of Van Beuren’s product at this point— and it’s a surprise that the studio’s output would change so drastically over the next few years.

The print of the film is from Chris Buchman, who purchased it from Keith Smith at Modern Sound Pictures. It was struck from their 35mm negative in the 60s. There was a tiny piece of the RKO logo fading out on Chris’ print of Opening Night, the cartoon before this one, so I made the guess that the RKO logo appeared on some of the first of the series besides just the first one.

Have a good week all, and I hope you enjoy this cartoon!