Someone posted the complete version of Professor Small and Mr. Tall on YouTube (the version for the syndicated Totally Tooned In! package removed the foreboding scene of the gay ghost as Hitler shooting himself).
The short has a lot going for it as far as laughs (more than what Leonard Maltin says anyway, whose panning of it has been burnt into everyone’s memory for thirty years), but at the same time, when you look at it from a technical standpoint, the short is sort of a mess. For starters, the animation is pretty bad. Obviously, John Hubley and his crew were excited over the stylized animation that Jones was establishing in his 1942 shorts at Schlesinger’s, but it looks like they either didn’t have the time or money to perfect doing it themselves. The animation tries to pop/settle from pose to pose, but it just ends up looking stiff. It also looks as though the characters were designed without much thought of how they’d play out in animation.
That’s par for the course with the 1940s Columbia cartoon output though. Some of the animation can be on the level of the average Warner short (when Emery Hawkins, Don Williams, Ray Patterson, Grant Simmons, or NY import Morey Reden are behind it); a lot of it is as bad as the average Terrytoon or worse. A very schizophrenic studio for sure.
You can see a much funnier and better animated UPA cartoon that tries this style, The Miner’s Daughter at Kevin’s site.
I didn’t know Ed Wynn was gay. That’s whose voice the ghost is supposedly doing.
So-oo-ooo-ooo!
Indeed, this is a very strange cartoon even by Columbia/Screen Gems standards, but I still manage to laugh every time the Hitler-impersonating ghost shoots himself!!
The follow-up to this short, 1945’s “River Ribber” is even stranger, and not just because the two main characters were completely redesigned…
“(…)more than what Leonard Maltin says anyway, whose panning of it has been burnt into everyone’s memory for thirty years.”
I first bought Maltin’s book when I was 9 or 10 years old, shortly after it was first printed. It is an invaluable work of animation history, however, anyone who bases their judgement of a cartoon on the basis of Maltin, Barrier, et al, is a complete fool. In fact, anyone so patently academic and trusting in these so called critics should question their relationship to cartoons in general. Facts are interesting. Subjective assertions are, well, subjective.
I agree. But the best subjective assertions (like Barrier’s) make you rethink your own. Maltin (in not just his writing of animation but of live-action) always struck me as lighter.. i.e. “this is animation at its best” but without the ‘why’.
I dunno, Thad. On this subject, I’d rather listen to the opinions of a homeless man doing the St. Vitus dance than a stuffy former senatorial litigator.
Given the Screen Gems/UPA/Format Films ties, someone at the studio must have liked the basic concept 17 years down the line, since it was reworked and improved into the Clyde Crashcup shorts for “The Alvin Show” (complete with retaining the Dan Backslide/Ken Harris rip-off design for the bombastic title character).
I love this cartoon. It achieves a droll, off-beat style of humor that could have easily failed. I’m super-fond of Mr. Tall’s repetition of the last two words of any sentence.
This has much in common with Bob & Ray’s comedic sensibilities.
Bold graphics have massive eye-appeal. Some of the animation is clumsy-looking, from a character design standpoint, but the motion is unusual and refreshing.
I find Leonard Maltin’s writing in general fannish and of little substance, beyond his gee-whillikers enthusiasm. There are worse film writers–he’s probably done a lot to sustain interest in animation and older film in general, so I’ll give him perks for that.
That Professor Small sure looked a heluva lot like Clyde Crashcup’s illegitimate father.
The film definitely has interesting aspects. I liked the design of the ghost. He had a Henry Syverson feel to him. The graphics and the backgrounds were very nice to look at, and I can see gags that would have been a lot funnier had they been under a more capable director. I think the animation gets a bit better as the short progresses. Anyway, that’s my two bits.