Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- This week I’d received an interesting comment on my “Splog” about Michael Myerberg‘s puppet feature, Hansel & Gretel. Since this post was done a time back, the comment could be easily missed. I’d like to draw some attention to it, since I rather enjoyed it:

I saw this movie during it’s initial run in 1954. I was three years old. The experience made such a lasting impact that it led me into a career in sculpting.

In 1999 I had the opportunity to take molds off the last known remaining puppet. It was of Rosina the Witch and the armatures designed by Jim Summers still worked as beautifully as they must have when the film was being shot.

In the early 1970’s I worked for one of the animators, Sky Highchief, who relayed a lot to me about the actual filming. The original plan had been to do an animated version of Aladdin, but this was dropped in favor of doing Humperdink’s opera as Hansel and Gretel was considered a better commercial risk. The film was shot in sequence. As money started running out for Myerberg and the release date loomed the push was on to complete the project in time. This accounts for the fluid animation at the front end of the film and the rather “muddy”, jerky movements of the characters at the end. Also all the Enchanted Children and Angles in the Dream Sequence have the faces of Hansel and Gretel. There was no time to do original sculpting for these puppets so they just pressed what had already been done into service. According to Highchief the New York studio was vandalized shortly after the film was completed and many of the remaining sets and props simply consigned to the trash bins. The film was not a success for Myerberg and plans for other stop-motion films abandoned.

I talked with members of the Myerberg family in early 2000 and they claim that all the original elements of the film are still intact. Considering the awful DVD currently available and knowing it’s place in stop-motion animation history I am amazed that nobody has taken it upon themselves to do a restoration.

from: David Robert Cellitti

As I wrote in response, I do have some information about the Aladdin feature that Myerberg had explored. Here’s the document:

(Click on any image to enlarge.)

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