Well, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve arrived at 1947 in our ongoing series here, and the Hollywood cartoon is still in peak form. Studios like Warner Bros. and MGM are consistently turning out excellent films, and Disney is keeping things afloat with some high-quality short films and the feature cartoon
Fun and Fancy Free, which includes the classic
Mickey and the Beanstalk sequence, along with the forgettable
Bongo segment.
Even frequently derided studios like Terrytoons and Columbia/Screen Gems have some interesting releases this year thanks to newly arrived talent like Jim Tyer at Terrytoons (whose zany, erratic animation served as a saving grace to a great many Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle cartoons) and Bob Clampett at Columbia (who very briefly served as a story editor / creative consultant, giving way to unusually inspired, if not wholly successful, shorts like
Cockatoos for Two and
Up n’ Atom).
In regards to new stars, Warner Bros. debuted some of my favorite minor characters in the Looney Tunes stable: the Goofy Gophers (who showed up in the appropriately titled
The Goofy Gophers, directed by Arthur Davis) and Charlie Dog (who debuted in Chuck Jones’
Little Orphan Airedale, although a precursor to the character appeared in the 1941 Bob Clampett short
Porky’s Pooch). The studio also launched one of the most famous cartoon series ever by pairing Tweety and Sylvester in
Tweetie Pie, for which Friz Freleng won the Academy Award. Other studios didn’t have as much luck with new characters and series this year; the only one I could dig up was Buzzy Crow, a Rochester approximation who appeared in this year’s enjoyable
The Stupidstitious Cat over at Famous Studios.
On this list, you’ll find the usual suspects (Warner Bros. and MGM), along with a Disney cartoon, a post-apocalyptic stop-motion short and an abstract piece.
Take a look:
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