It’s fitting that the curtain on Paramount’s fifty-plus year association with animated shorts was brought down by Ralph Bakshi, who would usher in a wave of animated works the old-timers he apprenticed under never dreamed of. More fitting that it escalates the studio’s timeless (?) association with cat-and-mouse cartoons to astronomic proportions, serving as a commentary on the shifting political climates in the late 1960s. A bumpkin who enjoys being a tyrant is taken to a foreign land where he is pitted against a scourge beyond his control. He is given accolades for his failures. He finally seals his own doom with a nuclear quasi-holocaust. Is it any wonder this made during Nam?
Thad’s Books
In the short time Bakshi had to run Famous, he basically turned it into Terrytoons 2.
The ending was a scary finish for the entire studio.
Perhaps a primer for the Cold War/environmental parable, the cartoon-within-the-cartoon, in Traffic!
The title of the cartoon is pretty much the lone benefit the cartoon studio saw out of the Gulf + Western buyout of Paramount and Desilu. Given the atmosphere in the U.S. in 1968 (which, despite what people might say, makes today’s politics look like an episode of “My Little Pony” by comparison) and where Bakshi would go with his work in the 1970s, it would have been interesting to have seen what type of cartoons Paramount would have been turning out in ’68, and if Mr. Bluhdorn would have had a better tolerance of controversy than the ones who ran Howard Post off because of “Two by Two” in 1966.
That cat is pretty much one of Sad Cat’s brothers. I believe that’s even Bob McFadden doing the voices.
I have a soft spot for those sixties Paramount cartoons, the ones made under Shamus Culhane and Ralph Bakshi. They did some great stuff (and some crap) and those cartoons had some edge that I love. It’s my most wanted on 16mm (and even have some).
And I can’t believe that’s Winston Sharples doing all the music. It’s so out of the field from the stuff he was doing in the ’50s. I guess the change in the studio’s management had something to do with it. Compare Phil Scheib’s music from the Paul Terry era to the Gene Deitch era at Terrytoons.
Bakshi revisited the idea of doing political commentary with cats and mice 20 years later in that episode of “New Adventures of Mighty Mouse” which parodied fascism and represented cartoon cat and mouse antics as the struggle between social classes and values. I believe he actually directed that segment, as its got his drawing style all over it (which is very apparent in “Mouse Trek” as well).
Nick’s referring, I think, to Day of the Mice– I remember seeing it when it was first broadcast. Floored that such a thing slipped into the lame morass of Saturday Morning.
A nice reel: all the soapbox fascist rants from: Russian Rhapsody, the Ducktators, the Teutonic fable from Education for Death, (the closest to Warner Disney ever came, no? This is the cartoon where Germany’s maidenhead get’s bumped pretty hard,-and from behind! Meanwhile Leonard Maltin sweats bullets and makes excusatory preamble!), Petey Pate from Day of the Mice,… any others?
Not a bad cartoon. Bakshi got a lot better as a director when he moved to features though. Nice post.
Nick’s referring, I think, to Day of the Mice– I remember seeing it when it was first broadcast. Floored that such a thing slipped into the lame morass of Saturday Morning.