Gay Purr-ee was a 1962 animated feature film that was made by UPA. It was directed by Abe Levitow and controversially produced by Chuck Jones, who was sacked by Warner Bros. due to his secret involvement with this film. It features the voice talents of Judy Garland, Robert Goulet, Red Buttons, Paul Frees and Mel Blanc and music by Arlen and Harburg.
This clip looks at various arts styles, and which I guess makes the point that animation too can be considered a work of art.
This would be one of the weirder comic book advertisements.
This 1951 UPA cartoon is one of my favourites. Whilst it does not have as many laugh out loud moments as the best Warner Bros. or MGM cartoons of the 50s I think that it is quite cute and that their is always something new to discover somewhere in the cartoon. (I don’t think I articulated myself too well there!) It one the 1952 Academy Award for best animated short film. It was adapted from a story by Dr Seuss and directed by Robert ‘Bobe’ Cannon.
This is one of the few UPA cartoons that is available on DVD. None of the Magoo cartoons are available on DVD, whilst Gerald can be found on Cartoon Adventures With Gerald McBoing Boing and on the Hell Boy dvd. The 1952 Academy Award nominated cartoon Madeline, which is a straight forward retelling of Ludwig Bemelmans’ classic story, can be found on the Madeline live action film as an extra.
This is the first Mr Magoo cartoon and the third commercially released cartoon from United Productions of America (UPA), that was released in 1949. UPA cartoons are usually not very well regarded by classic cartoon fans. Many people claim that UPA with their use of flat, limited animation ruined cartoons for everyone and they also accuse UPA of being pretentious and boring. I think that this is only partially true. UPA used the limited animation as their form of artistic style and as a way of setting themselves apart from the other studos that used full animation. They were not the first studio to use the limited animation, but they were the first ones to use it exclusively. Other studios followed their lead, but did not do so for artistic reasons, but as a way to cut corners and budgets. During the 1950s theatrically released animated short films started to disappear thanks to the new found popularity of television. Studios gave their animators less and less money to spend on their dying art form. Cartoons that were being made for TV had even smaller budgets than the cinematic ones, which meant that cutting corners became a necessity.
As for UPA cartoons being pretentious, that was probably more true of the later cartoons that were made after John Hubley left the studio. I find the Hubley made UPA cartoons in particular, and many of the early UPA cartoons to be as strong as anything made by the other studios.
