ComiColor Cartoons

ComiColor Cartoons is a series of twenty-five animated short subjects produced by Ub Iwerks from 1933 to 1936. The series was the last produced by Iwerks Studio; after losing distributor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1934, the Iwerks studio's senior company Celebrity Pictures (run by Pat Powers) had to distribute the films itself. The series was shot exclusively in Cinecolor.

Most of the ComiColor entries were based upon popular fairy tales and other familiar stories, including Jack and the Beanstalk, Old Mother Hubbard, The Bremen Town Musicians, and The Headless Horseman.

Production

Grim Natwick, Al Eugster, and Shamus Culhane were among the series' lead animators/directors, and a number of the shorts were filmed using Iwerks' multiplane camera, which he built himself from the remains of a Chevrolet automobile.

Filmography

Film	Release date	Original work
Jack and the Beanstalk[1]	November 25, 1933	"Jack and the Beanstalk", an English fairy tale
The Little Red Hen[1]	February 17, 1934
The Brave Tin Soldier[1]	April 7, 1934	"The Steadfast Tin Soldier", by Hans Christian Andersen, 2 October 1838
Puss in Boots[1]	May 19, 1934	"Puss in Boots", an Italian fairy tale
The Queen of Hearts[1]	June 22, 1934
Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp[1]	August 10, 1934	"Aladdin", a Middle-Eastern folk tale
The Headless Horseman[1]	September 29, 1934	"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", by Washington Irving, 1820
The Valiant Tailor (The King's Tailor - Castle Films)[1]	October 27, 1934
Don Quixote[1]	November 24, 1934	Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes, 1605–1615
Jack Frost[1]	December 22, 1934	Jack Frost and Old Man Winter, the latter from ancient Greek mythology and Old World pagan beliefs
Little Black Sambo (Little Black Sambo - Castle Films)[1]	February 2, 1935	The Story of Little Black Sambo, a children's book by Helen Bannerman, 1899
The Bremen Town Musicians[1]	March 2, 1935	"Town Musicians of Bremen", a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm
Old Mother Hubbard (Old Mother Hubbard - Castle Films)[1]	March 30, 1935	"Old Mother Hubbard", an English-language nursery rhyme
Mary's Little Lamb[1]	April 27, 1935
Summertime[1]	June 15, 1935
Sinbad the Sailor[1]	July 26, 1935	Sinbad the Sailor, Middle Eastern origin, 8th and 9th centuries A.D.
The Three Bears[1]	August 30, 1935
Balloon Land (The Pincushion Man - Castle Films)[1]	September 30, 1935
Simple Simon[1]	November 15, 1935	"Simple Simon", an English-language children's song
Humpty Dumpty[1]	December 27, 1935
Ali Baba[1]	January 31, 1936
Tom Thumb[1]	March 27, 1936
Dick Whittington's Cat (Dick Whittington's Cat - Castle Films)[1]	May 29, 1936
Little Boy Blue (The Big Bad Wolf - Castle Films)[1]	July 31, 1936
Happy Days[1]	September 25, 1936	Reg'lar Fellers, a newspaper comic strip by Gene Byrnes, 1917

Copyright status

Even though Metro Goldwyn Mayer published some of the shorts,The Comicolor cartoons are public domain due to copyright not being renewed so that means that copyright is non-existent in the cartoons.

Home media

All of the ComiColor cartoons are now available in the 2004 Region 2 ComiColor DVD set released by Mk2/Lobster in France. Many are available in Region 1, in particular on the Cartoons That Time Forgot series.

Steve Stanchfield of Thunderbean released the restored versions of the shorts on a Blu-ray/DVD set called ComiColor Cartoons Collection.^[2]

See also

• Golden Age of American animation
• Color Classics – a series of animated short films produced by Fleischer Studios for Paramount Pictures from 1934 to 1941
• Color Rhapsody
• Happy Harmonies
• Merrie Melodies
• Noveltoons
• Phantasies
• Rainbow Parade
• Silly Symphonies
• Swing Symphony
• Modern Madcaps
• Puppetoons

References

1. Leonard Maltin, Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons, Penguin Books, 1987)
2. ""Jack Frost" (1934) from the Original Camera Negs |".

Other sources

• Leslie Iwerks and John Kenworthy, The Hand Behind the Mouse (Disney Editions, 2001) and documentary of the same name (DVD, 1999)
• Jeff Lenburg, The Great Cartoon Directors (Da Capo Press, 1993)