Hubley 15 Oct 2009 07:38 am
We Learn About the Telephone
– In 1965, John Hubley directed animation inserts for an educational film for Jerry Fairbanks Productions and AT&T. It’s the story of the history of the telephone and how it works. The story, such that it is, tells about two kids visiting their uncle, an animator (actually, an actor playing an animator). He gives them an animated lecture on the story of the phone.
The film reminds me very much of another film done by the Hubley studio. UPKEEP was the history of the IBM repairman. We travel through history to see how the repairman has worked over the years. It’s a successful device that works in John’s hands.
The film is available to view on the Prelinger Film Archives. I’ve made some frame grabs to post to give an idea of the style. The characters seem to shift a bit stylistically from the humans at the beginning to those later at the circus. From Hubley to Jay Ward. This was a period where John Hubley was beginning to experiment with more expeditious styles for the jobs that came in. The more artful Maypo style was a bit complicated to pull off. The cels, here, are cel-painted traditionally. (I actually have a hard time believing the date on this film – 1965. It feels more like late 50′s.)
The backgrounds are all by John Hubley, and they remind me of those he would do for UPKEEP and PEOPLE PEOPLE PEOPLE. Lots of white space and soft images. The animation looks like it was done by several people. I recognize Emery Hawkins‘ style, and I also can see Bill Littlejohn in there.
1The animator’s studio.
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Kids are always fascinated when an animator draws.
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The character goes from this . . .
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. . . to this.
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The caveman has to deliver a message.
This is the full length of his run, the pan wherein the character
runs from being a caveman to an Egyptian to a Roman.
Here’s the same BG broken into four parts:
A
B
C
D
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Once on horseback, man travels through
the middle ages to the pony express.
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Man turns to smoke signals to communicate.
8a
8b
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Then flashing lights.
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Morse invents the telegraph.
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Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone.
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Now the animator explains how the telephone works
to two very interested children. .
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We get the fable about the lion who calls . . .
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. . . a raven.
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Though he shouts too loudly into the phone.
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Then there’s the squirrel who can dial the phone . . .
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. . . and the bear who answers the phone too late.
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No one there.
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Then there’s the elephant who dials the wrong number.
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Finally there’s the pig who won’t get off the phone
so the fox can make an important call.
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Next the animator takes the kids to the police station.
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This way the cop can tell the kids how to make emergency calls.
The End. Too bad Hubley didn’t write it.
on 15 Oct 2009 at 8:11 am 1.Aneke said …
Hi there!!! I am an Illustrator/drawer from Spain, Recently found your blog and I wanted to thank you for your beautiful images, above all the Bambi´s ones, you helped me a lot with the model sheets!!
Greetings and love from Madrid
on 15 Oct 2009 at 8:14 am 2.david e said …
It wasn’t until I got to the bear ignoring the ringing phone that I realized… I was shown this back in 1968 when I was in the the third grade! It was part of an instructional unit and the film came with a phone system that kids could practice on in class – two working phones that would ring each other and work like real phones.
How strange to have a piece of childhood unearthed after all these years.
on 15 Oct 2009 at 12:04 pm 3.joecab said …
Man, this was a longtime staple of NYC school assemblies in the 1960′s and 1970′s. I still remember that line, “Rudolph, that’s the wrong note!”
The other biggie was the wonderful Hemo the Magnificent.
on 15 Oct 2009 at 12:21 pm 4.Mike Kazaleh said …
I remember seeing this film in school too. After showing it, the teacher handed out folded paper “directories” where we were supposed to write in our phone number, and our friends phone numbers. They were professionally printed, and may have been provided with the film. I loved the animated parts of the film. I was also fascinated with electronics and machinery at that age, so I liked hearing about how the gadgets worked.
There’s a reference to Telstar near the beginning of the film, so it couldn’t have been made earlier than 1962.
The animators I can spot are Phil Duncan, Bill Littlejohn (these two did the most footage) Don Towsley (the lion and the raven), Emery Hawkins (the beaver and the bear), Ben Washam (the elephants) Tom Ray (the fox and the pig), and one other person I can’t identify (the Samuel Morse sequence.) Some of the stuff Duncan animated were the opening section, and the scenes of the ringmaster. Littlejohn animated the messenger traveling through time, and the two musicians.
on 10 Jul 2015 at 9:54 am 5.Richard Riis said …
The film was distributed to schools beginning in September 1965, but judging by the age of actress Pamelyn Ferdin (not Ferden as the credits say), the live-action portions must have been filmes rather earlier, perhaps as early as 1964.