Saturday, December 20, 2008

A Very Fleischer Christmas

here's an old Christmas cartoon that I hadn't seen as a child -- and it holds up remarkably well. starring Grampy of the Betty Boop series, it involves a group of orphans that have all their toys break and start to cry, when Grampy passes by. he's a really insane character. my favorite part is when he spits out nails...



Christmas Comes But Once a Year was part of the Fleischer Brothers Color Classics series, which was a competing entry to Disney's Silly Symphonies. originally done in the two color CineColor process, and then later the two-color Technicolor process, the Color Classics weren't allowed to license the three-color version until Technicolor's exclusive contract with Disney expired at the end of 1935. this 1936 cartoon makes use of both the three-color Technicolor process and Max Fleischer's invention of Setback or Tabeltop -- this allowed animation cels to be photographed against 3-D backgrounds as seen at the beginning and end of the short.

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