A blog reviewing all the available American animated cartoons of 1939, in approximately release order (or reverse order from the perspective of someone reading the blog after it is done).
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
080 Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Title: Goldilocks and the Three bears
Studio: MGM
Date: 6/15/39
Credits: (A Hugh Harman Production)
Series: -
Running time (of viewed version): 10:16
Synopsis: One girl. Three bears. You do the math.
Comments: A rather lion tailish G in the title card. Pa is somewhat similar to Barney, but not exactly. Goldilocks has some of that creepy rotoscope feel, like it's trying to be like Snow White. They're fake classy bears (peasants who wrongly think they are refined). Pa is a coward (they all are). There's a more adult sense of humor (or maybe it's just more modern) than in the Barney Bear cartoon. Not enough to save it tho.
Sigh. It looks like another of Harman's "See? We can do Disney artwork better than that jerk Walt" cartoons.
ReplyDeleteGraham Webb credits the backgrounds to someone named John Meandor. I've heard of Josh Meador but this is apparently a different guy. Have you heard of him?
Yowp
No, but I'm not particularly good with remembering people's names. Both look like misspellings to me, as I'm more familiar with the Indo Greek kings named Menander...
ReplyDeleteThis is a pretty skitzoid cartoon that's either at a loss as to what it want to be, or had its creators fighting against each other (which wouldn't be surprising, since Michael Barrier said Fred Quimby was pushing Harman to do more Warner Brothers-tyle comedy shorts, while Hugh's goal was to still out-Disney Disney).
ReplyDeleteSo you get a Disney-like narrator and girl mixed in with a pale imitation of the slapstick indignities Pa went through in Chuck Jones' Three Bears series. But since Harmon did two more of these cartoons, someone at MGM or Lowes must have liked the thing.
Those bears look like Barney Bear.
ReplyDelete