Articles on Animation &Hubley &UPA 19 Dec 2008 09:07 am
Retreads – Rooty Toot Toot
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- In 2006 I posted this LIFE Magazine story on Rooty Toot Toot from a March, 1952 issue. They obviously enjoyed the UPA films back then, and luckily for us they posted it on something concrete – like paper.
My reason for posting it, originally, was a UPA celebration that was being screened at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. That’s long past, now, but Rooty Toot Toot lives on. I think of this as one of THE greatest animated films of all time. I doubt a month goes by without my watching it anew for inspiration.
The story goes that Stephen Bosustow was furious with John Hubley for taking so long on the storyboard and development of this short. Hubley eventually locked himself in his office and finished the prep to his own satisfaction. That’s how they finished the film. Needless to say, it went over budget.
The 1951 film obviously had world wide resonance. The story of a murder as told from different perspectives took the idea from the 1950 Kurosawa film Rashomon, wherein several people around a campfire tell different versions of a story. Of course, the premise dates all the way back to Chaucer, but there weren’t many film makers doing it at the time. Interestingly enough, Rooty Toot Toot was nominated for an Oscar the same year that Rashomon won a special award for Best Foreign Language film.
After seeing the short for the first time at a special UPA program in 1974, when I was working for the Hubley Studio, I told John that I’d just seen it and was blown away. He gave a short smile, turned and walked out of the room. He obviously didn’t want to talk about it. I guess the thorny years of the McCarthy era forced him to deny his own work of genius from a hellish period.
Just prior to the Egyptian screening, Amid Amidi posted some UPA crew photos on the Cartoon Modern site.
Amid has also posted some great art from the film on that same Cartoon Modern site.
part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4
on 27 Dec 2008 at 10:30 am 1.Lorelei said …
wow- thanks so much for posting those pages. It also changes what I thought I was seeing when I have watched the film. I was never sure if the color palette had been affected by age and that the pinks and reds were part of that 70′s film aging process. These stills show otherwise- that it was part of the original design.