Charley Says
Encyclopedia
Cutout animation
Cutout animation is a technique for producing animations using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or even photographs...
cartoon Public Information Film
Public information film
Public Information Films are a series of government commissioned short films, shown during television advertising breaks in the UK. The US equivalent is the Public Service Announcement .-Subjects:...
s for children, shown in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
in the 1970s and 1980s for London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
's Central Office of Information.
Overview
Most of the topics dealt with everyday safety issues children face, such as not going off with strangersStranger danger
Stranger danger describes the danger to children presented by strangers. The phrase is intended to sum up the danger associated with adults who children do not know. The phrase has found widespread usage and many children will hear it during their childhood lives...
or not playing with matches. They featured a little boy called Tony (voiced by the seven-year-old son of one of the neighbours of producer Richard Taylor) and his cat, named Charley, voiced by Kenny Everett
Kenny Everett
Kenny Everett was an English comedian, radio DJ and television entertainer. Born Maurice James Christopher Cole, Everett is best known for his career as a radio DJ and for the Kenny Everett television shows.-Early life:...
, who would "miaow" the lesson of the episode, which the boy would then translate and explain. Often Charley served as the boy's conscience, similarly to Davey and Goliath
Davey and Goliath
Davey and Goliath is a 1960s stop-motion animated children's Christian television series. The programs, produced by the Lutheran Church in America , were produced by Art Clokey after the success of his Gumby series.Each 15-minute episode features the adventures of Davey Hansen and his "talking"...
or Jiminy Cricket
Jiminy Cricket
Jiminy Cricket is the Walt Disney version of "The Talking Cricket" , a fictional character created by Carlo Collodi for his children's book Pinocchio, which was adapted into an animated film by Disney in 1940...
of Disney
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
's film Pinocchio
Pinocchio
The Adventures of Pinocchio is a novel for children by Italian author Carlo Collodi, written in Florence. The first half was originally a serial between 1881 and 1883, and then later completed as a book for children in February 1883. It is about the mischievous adventures of Pinocchio , an...
. When Charley and the boy did the right thing, they were rewarded with something for the boy and a fish for Charley, which he ate rapidly. However, on other occasions, Charley suffered the consequences of doing the wrong thing (e.g., in Charley's Tea Party he pulled a tablecloth and a teapot fell on him and scalded him).
Production details
The films were produced by Richard Taylor Cartoons who also produced Crystal Tipps and AlistairCrystal Tipps and Alistair
Crystal Tipps and Alistair was a British cartoon produced for the BBC featuring a girl and her dog as well as their friends Birdie and Butterfly....
. They also produced the controversial Protect and Survive
Protect and Survive
Protect and Survive was a public information series on civil defence produced by the British government during the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was intended to inform British citizens on how to protect themselves during a nuclear attack, and consisted of a mixture of pamphlets, radio broadcasts,...
series, narrated by Shakespearean actor Patrick Allen
Patrick Allen
John Keith Patrick Allen was a British film, television and voice actor.-Life and career:Allen was born in Nyasaland , where his father was a tobacco farmer. After his parents returned to Britain, he was evacuated to Canada during World War II where he remained to finish his education at McGill...
.
Six films were produced:
- Charley – Falling in the Water (60 s)
- Charley – In The Kitchen (45 s)
- Charley – Matches (30 s)
- Charley – Mummy Should Know (60 s)
- Charley's Tea Party (45 s)
- Charley – Strangers (60 s)
Video release
The Charley Says films have been released in the UK (along with other public information films) as both a DVDDVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
-video and a two-volume set of VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
tapes.