Monday, October 30, 2006

Professor Small and Mr. Tall

For Halloween this week, here's a clip from one of my favorite Columbia cartoons, Professor Small and Mr. Tall (1943), directed by John Hubley and Paul Sommer. This one got a pretty harsh review in Maltin's book, and I can't really see why. That ghost is funny as hell!



The most eerie aspect of this clip is how the characters resemble something out of Chuck Jones' The Dover Boys (1942) (John McLeish even doing a voice), and both cartoons came out within a few months of each other. We know Jones was moonlighting with the UPA guys for Hell-Bent for Election (1944), but was he also doing some work on these Screen Gems shorts?

You can watch this great cartoon (minus the bit with the ghost as Hitler shooting himself... Hmm, guess they predicted the future...) at Pietro's great site.

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