YouTube provides:
John [and Faith!] Hubley’s 1959, Academy Award-Winning “Moonbird”. I don’t know much about it, except that they obviously constructed an ingenious and charming piece of animation on top of an audio recording of their two young sons, talking and singing.
Here’s a surprisingly progressive, “Brotherhood of Man” (part 1, part 2) educational cartoon from 1946, directed by Robert Cannon. (Scripted by Ring Lardner [jr.!], apparently.)
And another Hubley. “Soothing, instant money” – a classic Bank of America ad. Ironically, I take it this was done just a few years after Hubley was blacklisted for refusing to testify to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. So he had been forced to leave UPA and take work making commercials.
Hubley and Cannon, if you don’t know, are probably best known for their work together at UPA on such classics as “Gerald McBoingBoing” and “Mr. Magoo”.
Here’s a fun, if somewhat uncertainly-sourced story about how Hubley and co-creator Millard Kaufman invented Magoo, from Wikipedia:
The Magoo character was originally conceived as a mean-spirited McCarthy-like reactionary whose mumbling would include as much outrageous misanthropic ranting as the animators could get away with. Kaufman had actually been blacklisted, and Magoo was a form of protest. Hubley was an ex-communist who had participated in the 1941 [Disney] strike. Both he and Kaufman had participated in the blacklist front and perhaps due to the risk of coming under more scrutiny with a hit character, John Hubley, who had created Magoo, handed the series completely over to creative director, Pete Burness. Under Burness, Magoo would win two Oscars for the studio with When Magoo Flew (1955) and Magoo’s Puddle Jumper (1956). Burness scrubbed Magoo of his politicized mean-ness and left only a few strange unempathic comments that made him appear senile or somewhat mad. This however was not entirely out of line with the way McCarthy came to be perceived over that same era.
{ 10 comments }
Henry (not the famous one) 09.05.09 at 3:57 pm
Fascinating. If only someone had told Justice Scalia that “race” and “blood” aren’t related. In the oral argument involving a mild FCC racial preference –Metro Broadcasting, I think — Scalia hectored the attorney defending the preference by asking “It’s all about blood isn’t it?” or words to that effect.
Yes, I know in his calmer moments Scalia would say he wa s only being metaphorical. It was probably some intrinsic trait, rather than a choice on his part, that caused him to invoke that particular metaphor at that time.
BTW, it’s Ring Lardner, Jr. (makes a difference).
John Holbo 09.05.09 at 4:25 pm
Ah, now I see. I was a bit confused about the Ring Lardner business. Yes, that makes a difference.
Jared 09.05.09 at 7:55 pm
John Hubley is also the father of Georgia Hubley, of Yo La Tengo fame, who had similar roles in some of his other animated shorts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cit6iUEEdyo&feature=related
Bloix 09.05.09 at 11:36 pm
Moonbird was made by the team of John and Faith Hubley, see, e.g., http://www.pbs.org/itvs/independentspirits/filmography.html, who worked together from their marriage in 1955 until John Hubley’s death in 1977. Faith Hubley continued as as a solo animator for many more years.
John Emerson 09.05.09 at 11:46 pm
And Lucille Ball, a card-carrying Communist, wore the pants in her interracial family. Look it up.
Bloix 09.06.09 at 3:40 am
In 1980 or thereabouts I went to an animation festival at which Faith Hubley introduced a number of films she had made with John. In retrospect it was one of the highlights of my college career. If I recall correctly one of the films was Eggs, a dystopia in which Life and Death travel the globe together in an enormous convertible. Death, a crochety old fellow who speaks in a Brooklyn accent, says to Life, “Haven’t you heard of birth control?”
Eggs is on Youtube at about 7 minutes into this interview program, in which poor Faith literally gets only a single word in – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRN1SGFBD74
Twisted_Colour 09.06.09 at 11:36 am
Ring Lardner
I used to use that, but after a disturbing incident involving a clowder of alley cats I changed over to a water based product.
lisa 09.08.09 at 3:40 am
Thanks for these. I’m always on the lookout for interesting animation for the kid. Copyright expired .99 DVDs at the local dollar store have great 40s cartoons (but have to be vetted for racism beforehand). So far, Mr. Magoo hasn’t made an appearance in the dollar store but he might before long.
And damn, that would be fabulous if true about Lucy. Does that explain the chocolate factory scene where the pace of production increased and she and Ethel couldn’t keep up (so they tried eating the chocolates)?
Henri Vieuxtemps 09.08.09 at 7:29 am
Hey John, any thoughts on the growing scandal over Ikea’s switch from Futura to Verdana?
John Emerson 09.08.09 at 3:33 pm
In 1953, Ball was subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities because she had registered to vote in the Communist party primary election in 1936 at her socialist grandfather’s insistence (per FBI FOIA-released documents in a declassified FBI file).[40] Immediately before the filming of episode 68 (“The Girls Go Into Business”) of I Love Lucy, Desi Arnaz, instead of his usual audience warm-up, told the audience about Lucy and her grandfather. Arnaz quipped: “The only thing red about Lucy is her hair, and even that’s not legitimate.” Then, he presented his wife and she received a standing ovation from the audience.[17] Documents were discovered that showed Ball had in fact registered to the Communist Party[41]
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