Disney &Frame Grabs 23 Aug 2008 08:27 am
Lullaby Land – the movie
- Following the pattern I followed with the post of The Robber Kitten, here are frame grabs from the 1933 Disney Silly Symphony short. It’s worth comparing to the illustrated book I posted yesterday. The animation drawings, I think, are better (though not by much.)
It’s amazing how round everything was back then. It’s even more amazing how angular everything is today – I’m not sure that’s an improvement. Somehow those circular shapes are just so much more appealing. I suppose a pleasing drawing isn’t the approach these days. The Cal Arts style seems to have taken over everything. No one seems capable of a Flash drawing without angling it.
Lullaby Land was one of the first of the many animated baby shorts. Everything from Merbabies to three little kittens scouring the Milky Way were given to the adult audiences watching films like The Petrified Forest and The Grapes of Wrath. I am certainly curious about the audience that was a sucker for these overly cute films. After all, many of these shorts were nominated or won the Oscar.
Per the Merritt & Kaufman book, Silly Symphonies, the film had Layouts by:
__Charles Philippi, Hugh Hennesy,
__Ferdinand Horvath
It was Animated by:
__Ham Luske (baby at home in cradle, baby ____and dog with Sandman)
__Art Babbitt (baby and dog in the Land of ____Nowhere)
__Ben Sharpsteen crew: Leonard Sebring, __Louie Schmitt, George Drake, Ed Love, __Bob Kuwahara, Roy Williams, Marvin __Woodward (They did: the parade of dream
____objects; baby in Forbidden Garden)
__Dick Huemer (baby with matches, the ____Bogey Men)
(Click any image to enlarge.)
on 23 Aug 2008 at 10:18 am 1.Thad said …
You know what would make this cartoon better? More shading and texture!!
on 23 Aug 2008 at 10:28 am 2.Michael said …
I think it’d be a horror film if it were done in cgi. Imagine the scissors chasing the baby or the fire lighting up the box of matches. Maybe it’d be a better film for our times.
on 23 Aug 2008 at 12:28 pm 3.Dave Levy said …
I’m a sucker for these Silly Symphonies. I’ve grown to appreciate them more and more. They are just so sincerely sweet and crafted with love. I like to imagine an audience of the time watching a black and white movie, newsreel, etc… and then this little short flickers on. It must have been pure eye candy.
on 23 Aug 2008 at 12:59 pm 4.J Lee said …
As far as the audience reaction of the time to these movies, I would guess that the initial Technicolor releases were greeted in the same way audiences today are impressed by new technological breakthroughs, and that the initial stories using this type of plot were new enough to hold the crowd’s attention. But you can see in the reaction it created from Avery and the other directors at Warners, and the theater audience’s reaction to those cartoons, that after a while, the overly-sweet nature of the Symphonies and Disney’s imitators started to get on the nerves of at least some segment of moviegoers by the late 1930s.
on 23 Aug 2008 at 1:28 pm 5.Tom Sito said …
I think the reaction of audiences to these kind of cutsy films goes to the Great Depression. When events trouble people’s minds, there is this yearning for simpler times, when we were all a little more innocent ( or we like to think we were). During the urban blight and war of the 1930′s, people dreamed of the Gay Nineties and never-never lands like Babes in Toyland and Oz. Just like the tail end of the Vietnam War and Watergate got audiences dreaming of simpler times like the 1930s! Witness the success of 70s movies like Paper Moon and the Sting. To sleep, perchance to dream…and in sepia!
on 23 Aug 2008 at 1:53 pm 6.J.V. said …
I never knew Dick Huemer animated the Bogey Men. Perhaps I should have guessed since it’s my favorite part of the picture. This must have been one of his first assignments at Disney after leaving Mintz. Thanks for the info!
on 26 Aug 2008 at 12:12 pm 7.Eddie Fitzgerald said …
Wow! I have new respect for this cartoon!
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