Frame Grabs &UPA 06 Mar 2008 09:11 am
The King and Joe
- The Gerald McBoing Boing show aired in 1956. This program collected many new shorts hinged with some small bits featuring the title character. Many of the shorts were built around themes such as artists or inventors or even circuses. Some of these shorts were collected onto vhs tapes. To my knowledge, they haven’t been released in dvd.
Many of the shorts were inspired by different artists’ work, even if they had no real relevance to the story. The short, The King & Joe tells the story of the invention of the game of chess. The design style was pulled from some of Paul Klee’s work, and I’ve always found this short curious. It’s a bit long and it feels longer to sit through (as do many of the films in this series), but the artwork sometimes is inspired.
Mind you, this is not a great short; as a matter of fact, I’m not sure it’s really even good. However, it’s stuck with me for years.
Maybe as a way of exorcising it from my brain, I decided to look at it a bit closer. I’ve chosen to pull some frame grabs to show off this short. The color of the print is quite deteriorated; I’ve tried to enhance the images displayed here. Hopefully, my choices are close.
_________________(Click any image to enlarge.)
__They use the device wherein the story starts with current day characters playing chess,
__and we go back in time to reveal the history of the game.
__Basically it’s the story of warring Arabic nations who ultimately play a game to
__conclude the endless battles.
__Elements in the design of this piece remind me of work UPA would do later in
__1001 Arbian Nights with Mr. Magoo.
__This BG pan is more like one of Klee’s paintings than anything else in the short.
on 06 Mar 2008 at 11:10 am 1.Stephen M said …
Do you know how close the colors are to the original? I love the limit use of color but still making it feel so rich at the same time.
on 06 Mar 2008 at 11:41 am 2.Michael said …
The 16mm film print I have is lavender; the dvd copy I have is almost completely red. Using photoshop, without changing more than the exposure, I saw some pale yellows come out. I brought it somewhere between the two.
on 06 Mar 2008 at 12:44 pm 3.Jez Hall said …
Another great post Michael. Thank you.
on 08 Mar 2008 at 4:42 am 4.Amid said …
Page 144 of Cartoon Modern has a background painting from King and Joe which offers a better sense of the wide range of colors used in this film. I have another background painting in my files (unfortunately inaccessible at the moment) of the scenes around image 8 and 9 of this post, and as I recall, there’s a much wider range of colors than this red print. The backgrounds for the film were painted by Ervin Kaplan.
on 24 Nov 2009 at 4:29 pm 5.peter henderson said …
My father wrote the whole thing, music and lyrics, story and dialogue. He was a chess nut, so this was a labor of love. I have a 16mm copy which I haven’t seen in years so I can’t say how the colors have fared. I remember the original as being lacking in greens.
Pete Henderson