Color Classics

Color Classics are a series of animated short films produced by Fleischer Studios for Paramount Pictures from 1934 to 1941 as a competitor to Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies. As the name implies, all of the shorts were made in color format, with the first entry of the series, Poor Cinderella (1934), being the first color cartoon produced by the Fleischer studio. There were 36 shorts produced in this series.

History

The first Color Classic was photographed with the Two-Color, two strip Cinecolor process. The rest of the 1934 and 1935 cartoons were filmed in Two-Color Technicolor, because the Disney studio had an exclusive agreement with Technicolor that prevented other studios from using the Three-Color process. That exclusive contract expired during September 1935, and the 1936 Color Classic cartoon Somewhere in Dreamland (1936) became the first Fleischer cartoon produced in Three-Color Technicolor.

The first cartoon in the series, Poor Cinderella, featured Betty Boop (with red hair and turquoise eyes); future shorts usually did not have familiar or recurring characters.

Many of the Color Classics entries make prominent use of Max Fleischer's Stereoptical process, a device which allowed animation cels to be photographed against actual 3 dimensional background sets instead of the traditional paintings. Poor Cinderella, Somewhere in Dreamland, and Christmas Comes But Once a Year all make prominent use of the technique. Disney's competing apparatus, the multiplane camera, would not be completed until 1937, three years after the Stereoptical Process's first use. The Color Classics series ended in 1941 with Vitamin Hay, featuring characters Hunky and Spunky. A similar series would be started by Fleischer's successor Famous Studios during 1943, with the name Noveltoons.

Later statuses

During 1955, Paramount sold all rights to the Color Classics cartoons to television distributor U.M. & M. TV Corporation. U.M. & M. altered the original beginning credits sequences for some of the shorts, to remove all references to the names "Paramount Pictures" and "Technicolor", and to add their own Copyright notices. Before the re-titling could be finished, U.M. & M. was bought by National Telefilm Associates (NTA). Instead of re-filming the openings, NTA obscured the references to the Paramount and Technicolor names by placing black bars over the original title cards and Copyright notices. Only a few Color Classics had their title cards redone by U.M. & M., among them Greedy Humpty Dumpty, Play Safe, Christmas Comes But Once a Year, Bunny Mooning, Little Lambkins, and Vitamin Hay.

NTA distributed the Color Classics to television, yet allowed the Copyrights on all of the shorts to lapse except The Tears of an Onion. Many public domain video distributors have released television prints of Color Classics shorts for Home Video. The UCLA Film and Television Archive has, through the assistance of Republic Pictures (successor company to U.M. & M. and NTA), retained original theatrical copies of all of the shorts, which have periodically been shown in revival movie houses and by Cable Television.

Ironically, original distributor Paramount has, through their 1999 acquisition of Republic, regained ownership of the Color Classics, including the original elements. Olive Films (current licensee for Republic, and which currently has home video rights) has, to date, not announced any plans to release the Color Classics officially to DVD or Blu-Ray.

During 2003, animation archivist Jerry Beck conceived a definitive DVD box set of all the Color Classics, excluding The Tears of an Onion, and tried to enlist Republic Pictures' help in releasing this set. After being refused, Kit Parker Films (in association with VCI Entertainment) offered to provide the best available 35mm and 16mm prints of the Color Classics from Parker's archives to create the box set Somewhere in Dreamland: The Max Fleischer Color Classics. These "interim restored versions" contain digitally recreated Paramount titles; the U.M. & M.-modified prints had to have their title cards as well as their Animator Credits recreated. The Tears of an Onion was not included in the set, as it remains Copyrighted by Republic successor Melange Pictures.

In 2021, after decades of being shown in altered, worn, and "beet-red" prints, the Fleischer estate (in co-operation with Paramount Pictures) launched an initiative to formally restore the entire classic animation library from the surviving original negatives, beginning with Somewhere In Dreamland, which has had its restored World Premiere on the MeTV network in December of said year as part of the Toon In With Me Christmas special, presented uncut with its original front-and-end Paramount titles.

Filmography

Many of the cartoons do not have recurring characters, but Poor Cinderella featured Betty Boop, while Christmas Comes But Once a Year featured Grampy and Tommy Cod. Towards the end, Hunky and Spunky were featured characters.

All cartoons released during 1934 and 1935 were produced in Two-Color Technicolor, except for Poor Cinderella which was produced in Cinecolor. All shorts from 1936 and onward were produced in Three-Color Technicolor.

No.	Title	Original release date	Animation	Story	Music
1	Betty Boop in Poor Cinderella	August 3, 1934	Character animation: Roland Crandall Seymour Kneitel William Henning		Murray Mencher Jack Scholl Charles Tobias Phil Spitalny (director, uncredited) Sammy Timberg (director, uncredited)
2	Little Dutch Mill	October 26, 1934	Willard Bowsky Dave Tendlar		George Steiner (uncredited)
3	An Elephant Never Forgets	January 2, 1935	Seymour Kneitel Roland Crandall		Sammy Timberg Jack Scholl
4	The Song of the Birds	March 1, 1935	Seymour Kneitel Roland Crandall		Sammy Timberg
5	The Kids in the Shoe	May 19, 1935	Seymour Kneitel Roland Crandall		George Steiner (uncredited)
6	Dancing on the Moon	July 12, 1935	Seymour Kneitel Roland Crandall		Charlie Tobias Murray Mencher
7	Time for Love	September 6, 1935	Willard Bowsky Nicholas Tafuri		Sammy Timberg
8	Musical Memories	November 8, 1935	Seymour Kneitel Roland Crandall		Sammy Timberg
9	Somewhere in Dreamland	January 17, 1936	Seymour Kneitel Roland Crandall		Murray Mencher Charles Newman
10	The Little Stranger	March 13, 1936	Dave Tendlar Eli Brucker		Sammy Timberg
11	The Cobweb Hotel	May 15, 1936	David Tendlar William Sturm		Sammy Timberg Bob Rothberg
12	Greedy Humpty Dumpty	July 10, 1936	David Tendlar William Sturm		Sammy Timberg Bob Rothberg
13	Hawaiian Birds	August 28, 1936	Myron Waldman Sam Stimson		Sammy Timberg
14	Play Safe	October 16, 1936	David Tendlar Eli Brucker		Sammy Timberg Vee Lawnhurst Tot Seymour
15	Christmas Comes But Once a Year	December 4, 1936	Seymour Kneitel William Henning		Sammy Timberg Bob Rothberg Tot Seymour
16	Bunny Mooning	February 12, 1937	Myron Waldman Edward Nolan		Sammy Timberg
17	Chicken a La King	April 16, 1937	David Tendlar Nicholas Tafuri		Sammy Timberg Bob Rothberg
18	A Car-Tune Portrait	June 26, 1937	Character animation: David Tendlar Nicholas Tafuri Herman Cohen (uncr.) William Sturm (uncr.) Eli Brucker (uncr.) Joe Oriolo (uncr.) Jack Rabin (uncr.)	Uncredited story by: Dave Fleischer Isadore Sparber and David Tendlar	King Ross
19	Peeping Penguins	August 26, 1937	Myron Waldman Hicks Lokey		Sammy Timberg Bob Rothberg
20	Educated Fish	October 29, 1937	Myron Waldman Hicks Lokey		Sammy Timberg Bob Rothberg
21	Little Lamby	November 12, 1937	David Tendlar William Sturm		Sammy Timberg
22	The Tears of an Onion	February 26, 1938	David Tendlar Joseph Oriolo		Sammy Timberg
23	Hold It!	April 29, 1938	David Tendlar Nicholas Tafuri		Sammy Timberg Vee Lawnhurst Tot Seymour
24	Hunky and Spunky	June 24, 1938	Myron Waldman Graham Place		Sammy Timberg
25	All's Fair at the Fair	August 26, 1938	Myron Waldman Graham Place		Sammy Timberg
26	The Playful Polar Bears	October 28, 1938	Myron Waldman Graham Place		Sammy Timberg
27	Hunky and Spunky in "Always Kickin'"	January 29, 1939	Myron Waldman Arnold Gillespie		Sammy Timberg
28	Small Fry	April 21, 1939	Willard Bowsky Orestes Calpini		Sammy Timberg
29	The Barnyard Brat (Hunky and Spunky)	June 30, 1939	Myron Waldman Tony Pabian		Sammy Timberg
30	The Fresh Vegetable Mystery	September 29, 1939	David Tendlar William Sturm	Joe Stultz	Sammy Timberg
31	Little Lambkins	February 2, 1940	Character animation: Dave Tendlar Nelson Demorest (credited as N. Demorest)	Joe Stultz	Sammy Timberg
32	Ants in the Plants	March 15, 1940	Myron Waldman George Moreno	George Manuell	Sammy Timberg
33	A Kick in Time (Hunky and Spunky)	May 17, 1940	James Culhane Alfred Eugster	George Manuell	Sammy Timberg
34	Snubbed by a Snob (Hunky and Spunky)	July 19, 1940	Stan Quackenbush Arnold Gillespie	Joe Stultz	Sammy Timberg
35	You Can't Shoe a Horse Fly (Hunky and Spunky)	August 23, 1940	Myron Waldman Sam Stimson	William Turner	Sammy Timberg
36	Vitamin Hay (Hunky and Spunky)	August 22, 1941	David Tendlar Otto Feuer	Bob Wickersham	Sammy Timberg

See also

• Phantasies
• Noveltoons
• Modern Madcaps
• Animated Antics
• ComiColor Cartoons
• Happy Harmonies
• Merrie Melodies
• Rainbow Parade
• Silly Symphonies
• Swing Symphony
• Puppetoons
• Color Rhapsody

References

General

• Barrier, Michael (1999). Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press. .
• Maltin, Leonard (1980, rev. 1987). Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. Penguin Books. .