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Gulliver's Travels (1939 film)
Encyclopedia
Gulliver's Travels is a 1939 American
cel-animated
Technicolor
feature film
, directed by Dave Fleischer
and produced by Max Fleischer
for Fleischer Studios
. The film was released on Friday, December 22, 1939 by Paramount Pictures
, who had the feature produced as an answer to the success of Walt Disney
's box-office hit Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
. The sequences for the film were directed by Seymour Kneitel
, Willard Bowsky
, Tom Palmer
, Grim Natwick
, William Henning, Roland Crandall
, Thomas Johnson, Robert Leffingwell, Frank Kelling, Winfield Hoskins, and Orestes Calpini.
Gulliver was the second cel
-animated feature film ever released, and the first produced by an American studio other than Walt Disney Productions. The story is based upon the Lilliput
ian adventures of Gulliver depicted in Jonathan Swift
's 18th century novel Gulliver's Travels
.
), comes across Gulliver's unconscious body and takes him as a giant, so he rushes off to warn the ruler of Lilliput, King Little . At this time, Little and his friend, King Bombo of the neighboring and equally minuscule island of Blefuscu, are planning a wedding between their children: Princess Glory of Lilliput and Prince David of Blefuscu. Things turn sour between the kings, however, when they argue over which song to play at the wedding (Little wants to play the song Faithful while Bombo wants Forever), and Bombo soon declares war.
Gabby manages to tell King Little about the "giant" (i.e. Gulliver) on the beach and is sent to capture him. Gabby leads a mob to the beach but is surprised to find Gulliver is not there; the mob begins to scorn Gabby until they all realize that they are standing on Gulliver's belly. The Lilliputians tie Gulliver down to a wooden platform and wheel him into the village—a task that takes them until daybreak. By then, Gulliver awakens and manages to break free which frightens everyone away, but when they see that the invading Blefuscuians are also intimidated by his size, the Lilliputians decide to enlist his help to fight against their rival neighbor, treating him with hospitality and making him a new set of clothes.
King Bombo, who has sent three spies, Sneak, Snoop, and Snitch, into Lilliput, realizes the threat that Gulliver will pose to him, so he leaves them to find a way to kill Gulliver. The spies steal Gulliver's flintlock pistol, confiscated by the Lilliputians and dubbed "Gulliver's Thunder Machine", and prepare to use it against him. Meanwhile, Gulliver learns from Glory and David, who are still deeply in love with each other, that their people are fighting because of their disagreement over two songs, so he proposes they create a new song that combines the two.
The spies assure King Bombo that they will kill Gulliver, so Bombo sends a message that says he will attack at dawn. Gabby intercepts this message before it reaches the spies and rushes to warn the Lilliputians. As he tries to find Gulliver, however, he is captured by the spies by putting him in a bag, and they prepare the pistol. As the Blefuscuian fleet of ships makes its way to Lilliput, Gulliver manages to reel all the ships in and pull them to shore. Gabby is still in the bag but runs from the house to try to warn Gulliver but is unable to see. At this time, the spies prepare to fire at Gulliver from atop a cliff, but Prince David grabs onto the gun's barrel just in time, only to fall off the cliff to his apparent death.
Using David's body to illustrate a point, Gulliver rebukes both Lilliput and Blefuscu for fighting over the songs they wish to sing. However, it is revealed that David is alive and well, and he and Glory sing their combined song to the two peoples. The three spies decide to set Gabby free by cutting the bag open, but he attacks them, not knowing the war is now over. King Little and King Bombo reconcile and work together to build a new ship for Gulliver, which he uses to depart from the now unified islands.
"All's Well", "It's a Hap-Hap-Happy Day", and "Faithful Forever" all later became standards of Fleischer cartoon scores. The film's song "I Hear a Dream" was also very popular as well http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,763175,00.html.
, Betty Boop
, and Screen Songs
cartoon shorts, vetoed the idea. However, after the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Paramount agreed to allow the Fleischers to make a feature. Paramount offered to build the New York City
-based Fleischers a new state-of-the-art animation studio in Miami Beach, Florida
, away from the union influence which had polarized the Fleischer Studio after a bitter 1937 labor strike. The Fleischers agreed, and began development on Gulliver's Travels in spring 1938 as construction began on the Miami studio. The Miami Fleischer Studio opened in fall 1938, and the Fleischer staff moved their production headquarters there. A few individuals, including voice actor Mae Questel
, opted to remain in New York and did not follow the Fleischers to Miami.
Paramount wanted Gulliver ready for a Christmas 1939 release, meaning that the film would have to be produced on a timetable that was one-third of that for the production of Disney's Snow White. To meet this deadline, the Fleischer staff was greatly expanded, to the point that the once-spacious new building was overcrowded with employees. Local Miami art schools provided graduates to be trained as ink-and-paint artists and in-betweeners. Animators were lured from the Hollywood animation studios, including Cal Howard
, Virgil Ross and Tedd Pierce
from Leon Schlesinger Productions
, and former Fleischer employees Grim Natwick
, Al Eugster
, Frank Smith
and James Culhane, who had all migrated over to the Disney studio. Factions developed between the East and West Coast animators, who were unaccustomed to each others' habits. The two sides grew further apart after Howard, Pierce, and the other Hollywood storymen decided to discard the New York regime's storyboard
s, crafting the film's plot over again from scratch.
Rotoscoping, an animation technique originally developed by the Fleischer Studios, was used throughout Gulliver's Travels to animate Gulliver. The process involves tracing live-action footage frame-by-frame; Sam Parker, the actor who performed the voice of Gulliver, also modeled as the character's live-action reference. Popeye the Sailor had originally been planned to "portray" Gulliver, but these plans were scrapped during pre-production.
. However, business-related problems which arose during the production of Mister Bug would result in Paramount's absorption of the Fleischer Studio in 1941, as the studio was in debt from unsuccessful cartoons and the simmering feud between Max and Dave reached new heights, as Dave had wanted to write the score for the filmhttp://madeofpenandink.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-two-brothers.html. Gulliver's Travels is now in the public domain
, because its copyright was not renewed, and is widely available on home video and DVD. E1 Entertainment released the film on Blu-ray Disc
March 10, 2009, but received strong criticism for presenting the movie in a stretched and cropped 1.78:1 format.
:
cartoons starring the Pinto Colvig
-voiced Lilliputian sidekick of the film, and the Sneak, Snoop and Snitch (Animated Antics) cartoons starring the three villains from the film.
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
cel-animated
Traditional animation
Traditional animation, is an animation technique where each frame is drawn by hand...
Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
feature film
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...
, directed by Dave Fleischer
Dave Fleischer
David "Dave" Fleischer was an American animator film director and film producer, best known as a co-owner of Fleischer Studios with his two older brothers Max Fleischer and Lou Fleischer...
and produced by Max Fleischer
Max Fleischer
Max Fleischer was an American animator. He was a pioneer in the development of the animated cartoon and served as the head of Fleischer Studios...
for Fleischer Studios
Fleischer Studios
Fleischer Studios, Inc., was an American corporation which originated as an Animation studio located at 1600 Broadway, New York City, New York...
. The film was released on Friday, December 22, 1939 by Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
, who had the feature produced as an answer to the success of Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
's box-office hit Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film based on Snow White, a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, as well as the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full...
. The sequences for the film were directed by Seymour Kneitel
Seymour Kneitel
Seymour Kneitel was an American animator. He is best known for his work with Fleischer Studios and its successor, Famous Studios.-Early years:...
, Willard Bowsky
Willard Bowsky
Willard Bowsky was an American animator best known for his work at Fleischer Studios.Bowsky was born in 1907 in New York City and spent his childhood either living in Manhattan or across the Hudson River in New Jersey...
, Tom Palmer
Tom Palmer (animator)
Anthony "Tony" Pipolo, known professionally as Tom Palmer was an Italian-American animator who was active in the 1930s and worked at several animation studios. He was born with the surname of "Pipolo" but changed his name to Palmer...
, Grim Natwick
Grim Natwick
Myron "Grim" Natwick was an American artist, animator and film director. Natwick is best known for drawing the Fleischer Studio's most popular character, Betty Boop.-Background:...
, William Henning, Roland Crandall
Roland Crandall
Roland Dimon "Doc" Crandall was an American animator. He is best known for his work at Fleischer Studio, especially on the Betty Boop version of Snow White....
, Thomas Johnson, Robert Leffingwell, Frank Kelling, Winfield Hoskins, and Orestes Calpini.
Gulliver was the second cel
Cel
A cel, short for celluloid, is a transparent sheet on which objects are drawn or painted for traditional, hand-drawn animation. Actual celluloid was used during the first half of the 20th century, but since it was flammable and dimensionally unstable it was largely replaced by cellulose acetate...
-animated feature film ever released, and the first produced by an American studio other than Walt Disney Productions. The story is based upon the Lilliput
Lilliput and Blefuscu
Lilliput and Blefuscu are two fictional island nations that appear in the first part of the 1726 novel Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. The two islands are neighbors in the South Indian Ocean, separated by a channel eight hundred yards wide. Both are inhabited by tiny people who are about...
ian adventures of Gulliver depicted in Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...
's 18th century novel Gulliver's Travels
Gulliver's Travels
Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, better known simply as Gulliver's Travels , is a novel by Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of...
.
Plot
On November 5, 1699, Gulliver (voiced by Sam Parker) washes up on a mysterious island after his ship sinks on a stormy night. It is revealed that the island, Lilliput, is inhabited by very small people. While scouting the forest, the town crier, Gabby (voiced by Pinto ColvigPinto Colvig
Vance DeBar "Pinto" Colvig was an American vaudeville actor, radio actor, newspaper cartoonist, prolific movie voice actor, and circus performer whose schtick was playing clarinet off-key while mugging....
), comes across Gulliver's unconscious body and takes him as a giant, so he rushes off to warn the ruler of Lilliput, King Little . At this time, Little and his friend, King Bombo of the neighboring and equally minuscule island of Blefuscu, are planning a wedding between their children: Princess Glory of Lilliput and Prince David of Blefuscu. Things turn sour between the kings, however, when they argue over which song to play at the wedding (Little wants to play the song Faithful while Bombo wants Forever), and Bombo soon declares war.
Gabby manages to tell King Little about the "giant" (i.e. Gulliver) on the beach and is sent to capture him. Gabby leads a mob to the beach but is surprised to find Gulliver is not there; the mob begins to scorn Gabby until they all realize that they are standing on Gulliver's belly. The Lilliputians tie Gulliver down to a wooden platform and wheel him into the village—a task that takes them until daybreak. By then, Gulliver awakens and manages to break free which frightens everyone away, but when they see that the invading Blefuscuians are also intimidated by his size, the Lilliputians decide to enlist his help to fight against their rival neighbor, treating him with hospitality and making him a new set of clothes.
King Bombo, who has sent three spies, Sneak, Snoop, and Snitch, into Lilliput, realizes the threat that Gulliver will pose to him, so he leaves them to find a way to kill Gulliver. The spies steal Gulliver's flintlock pistol, confiscated by the Lilliputians and dubbed "Gulliver's Thunder Machine", and prepare to use it against him. Meanwhile, Gulliver learns from Glory and David, who are still deeply in love with each other, that their people are fighting because of their disagreement over two songs, so he proposes they create a new song that combines the two.
The spies assure King Bombo that they will kill Gulliver, so Bombo sends a message that says he will attack at dawn. Gabby intercepts this message before it reaches the spies and rushes to warn the Lilliputians. As he tries to find Gulliver, however, he is captured by the spies by putting him in a bag, and they prepare the pistol. As the Blefuscuian fleet of ships makes its way to Lilliput, Gulliver manages to reel all the ships in and pull them to shore. Gabby is still in the bag but runs from the house to try to warn Gulliver but is unable to see. At this time, the spies prepare to fire at Gulliver from atop a cliff, but Prince David grabs onto the gun's barrel just in time, only to fall off the cliff to his apparent death.
Using David's body to illustrate a point, Gulliver rebukes both Lilliput and Blefuscu for fighting over the songs they wish to sing. However, it is revealed that David is alive and well, and he and Glory sing their combined song to the two peoples. The three spies decide to set Gabby free by cutting the bag open, but he attacks them, not knowing the war is now over. King Little and King Bombo reconcile and work together to build a new ship for Gulliver, which he uses to depart from the now unified islands.
Cast
- Gulliver - Sam Parker
- Gabby - Pinto ColvigPinto ColvigVance DeBar "Pinto" Colvig was an American vaudeville actor, radio actor, newspaper cartoonist, prolific movie voice actor, and circus performer whose schtick was playing clarinet off-key while mugging....
- King Little, Sneak, Snoop, and Snitch - Jack MercerJack MercerJack Mercer was an American animator, storyman and voice actor. He is best known as the voice of cartoon character Popeye the Sailor...
- King Bombo - Tedd PierceTedd PierceTedd Pierce , was an American animated cartoon writer, animator and artist. Pierce spent the majority of his career as a writer for the Warner Bros. "Termite Terrace" animation studio, working alongside fellow luminaries such as Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese. Pierce also worked as a writer at...
- Princess Glory - Jessica DragonetteJessica DragonetteJessica Dragonette was a singer who became popular on American radio and was active in the World War II effort.-Early life and career:...
- Prince David - Lanny RossLanny RossLanny Ross was an American singer, pianist and songwriter.-Biography:Lancelot Patrick Ross was born in Seattle, Washington. He graduated from Yale University in 1928, where he was a member of Zeta Psi and Skull and Bones. He later studied classical vocal technique at the Juilliard School of...
Soundtrack
- "Faithful/Forever" (Music by Ralph RaingerRalph RaingerRalph Rainger was an American composer of popular music principally for films.-Biography:Born Ralph Reichenthal in New York City, Rainger embarked on a legal career before escaping to Broadway where he became Clifton Webb's accompanist...
, lyrics by Leo RobinLeo RobinLeo Robin was an American composer, lyricist and songwriter. He is probably best known for collaborating with Ralph Rainger on the 1938 Oscar-winning song "Thanks for the Memory," sung by Bob Hope in the film The Big Broadcast of 1938.-Biography:Robin was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and...
) - "I Hear a Dream (Come Home Again)" (Music by Ralph Rainger, lyrics by Leo Robin)
- "We're All Together Now" (Music by Ralph Rainger, lyrics by Leo Robin)
- "Bluebirds in the Moonlight (Silly Idea)" (Music by Ralph Rainger, lyrics by Leo Robin)
- "All's Well" (Music by Ralph Rainger, lyrics by Leo Robin)
- "It's a Hap-Hap-Happy Day" (Written by Sammy TimbergSammy TimbergSammy Timberg was an American musician and composer who was perhaps most famous for the music he wrote for the cartoons of the Fleischer Studios, such as Popeye, Betty Boop, and Superman...
, Al Neiburg and Winston SharplesWinston SharplesWinston Singleton Sharples was a composer known for his work with animated short subjects, especially those created by the animation department at Paramount Pictures...
)
"All's Well", "It's a Hap-Hap-Happy Day", and "Faithful Forever" all later became standards of Fleischer cartoon scores. The film's song "I Hear a Dream" was also very popular as well http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,763175,00.html.
Production
Max and Dave Fleischer had wanted to produce a feature as early as 1934 (shortly after Disney announced it was to produce a feature film), but Paramount, who distributed Fleischer's PopeyePopeye
Popeye the Sailor is a cartoon fictional character created by Elzie Crisler Segar, who has appeared in comic strips and animated cartoons in the cinema as well as on television. He first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929...
, Betty Boop
Betty Boop
Betty Boop is an animated cartoon character created by Max Fleischer, with help from animators including Grim Natwick. She originally appeared in the Talkartoon and Betty Boop film series, which were produced by Fleischer Studios and released by Paramount Pictures. She has also been featured in...
, and Screen Songs
Screen Songs
Screen Songs is the name of a series of animated cartoons produced by the Fleischer Studios and distributed by Paramount Pictures between 1929 and 1938. They were revived by Famous Studios in 1945 starting with the Noveltoon Old MacDonald Had a Farm....
cartoon shorts, vetoed the idea. However, after the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Paramount agreed to allow the Fleischers to make a feature. Paramount offered to build the New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
-based Fleischers a new state-of-the-art animation studio in Miami Beach, Florida
Miami Beach, Florida
Miami Beach is a coastal resort city in Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States, incorporated on March 26, 1915. The municipality is located on a barrier island between the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay, the latter which separates the Beach from Miami city proper...
, away from the union influence which had polarized the Fleischer Studio after a bitter 1937 labor strike. The Fleischers agreed, and began development on Gulliver's Travels in spring 1938 as construction began on the Miami studio. The Miami Fleischer Studio opened in fall 1938, and the Fleischer staff moved their production headquarters there. A few individuals, including voice actor Mae Questel
Mae Questel
Mae Questel was an American actress and vocal artist best known for providing the voices for the animated characters, Betty Boop and Olive Oyl. She began in vaudeville, and played occasional small roles in films and television later in her career, most notably the role of Aunt Bethany in 1989's...
, opted to remain in New York and did not follow the Fleischers to Miami.
Paramount wanted Gulliver ready for a Christmas 1939 release, meaning that the film would have to be produced on a timetable that was one-third of that for the production of Disney's Snow White. To meet this deadline, the Fleischer staff was greatly expanded, to the point that the once-spacious new building was overcrowded with employees. Local Miami art schools provided graduates to be trained as ink-and-paint artists and in-betweeners. Animators were lured from the Hollywood animation studios, including Cal Howard
Cal Howard
Cal Howard was an American cartoon story artist, "mostly remembered for his work at Walter Lantz and Warner Bros.".-External links:...
, Virgil Ross and Tedd Pierce
Tedd Pierce
Tedd Pierce , was an American animated cartoon writer, animator and artist. Pierce spent the majority of his career as a writer for the Warner Bros. "Termite Terrace" animation studio, working alongside fellow luminaries such as Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese. Pierce also worked as a writer at...
from Leon Schlesinger Productions
Warner Bros. Cartoons
Warner Bros. Cartoons, Inc. was the in-house division of Warner Bros. Pictures during the Golden Age of American animation. One of the most successful animation studios in American media history, Warner Bros. Cartoons was primarily responsible for the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical...
, and former Fleischer employees Grim Natwick
Grim Natwick
Myron "Grim" Natwick was an American artist, animator and film director. Natwick is best known for drawing the Fleischer Studio's most popular character, Betty Boop.-Background:...
, Al Eugster
Al Eugster
Alfred Eugster was an American animator, writer, and film director, regarded as one of the greatest of all time...
, Frank Smith
Frank Smith (animator)
Frank A. Smith was an American cartoon animator and film director. He was the father of actor Charles Martin Smith, and the brother of animator/director Paul J. Smith and animator Hank Smith....
and James Culhane, who had all migrated over to the Disney studio. Factions developed between the East and West Coast animators, who were unaccustomed to each others' habits. The two sides grew further apart after Howard, Pierce, and the other Hollywood storymen decided to discard the New York regime's storyboard
Storyboard
Storyboards are graphic organizers in the form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence....
s, crafting the film's plot over again from scratch.
Rotoscoping, an animation technique originally developed by the Fleischer Studios, was used throughout Gulliver's Travels to animate Gulliver. The process involves tracing live-action footage frame-by-frame; Sam Parker, the actor who performed the voice of Gulliver, also modeled as the character's live-action reference. Popeye the Sailor had originally been planned to "portray" Gulliver, but these plans were scrapped during pre-production.
Release
Like Snow White before it, Gulliver was a box-office success, and led to the production of another Fleischer/Paramount feature, Mister Bug Goes to TownMister Bug Goes to Town
Mr. Bug Goes to Town, also known as Hoppity Goes to Town and Bugville, is an animated feature produced by Fleischer Studios and released to theaters by Paramount Pictures on December 5, 1941...
. However, business-related problems which arose during the production of Mister Bug would result in Paramount's absorption of the Fleischer Studio in 1941, as the studio was in debt from unsuccessful cartoons and the simmering feud between Max and Dave reached new heights, as Dave had wanted to write the score for the filmhttp://madeofpenandink.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-two-brothers.html. Gulliver's Travels is now in the public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
, because its copyright was not renewed, and is widely available on home video and DVD. E1 Entertainment released the film on Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
March 10, 2009, but received strong criticism for presenting the movie in a stretched and cropped 1.78:1 format.
Awards
The film was nominated for two Academy AwardsAcademy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
:
- Victor Young for Best Music, Original Score
- Ralph Rainger (music) and Leo Robin (lyrics) for Best Music, Original Song for the song "Faithful Forever"
Spin-off cartoons
The film was spun off into two short-lived Fleischer cartoon short series: the GabbyGabby (cartoon)
Gabby was a Max Fleischer animated cartoon series distributed through Paramount Pictures. Gabby was the town crier in the 1939 animated feature Gulliver’s Travels produced by Fleischer. Paramount and Fleischer saw fit to give Gabby his own Technicolor cartoon series, eight entries of which were...
cartoons starring the Pinto Colvig
Pinto Colvig
Vance DeBar "Pinto" Colvig was an American vaudeville actor, radio actor, newspaper cartoonist, prolific movie voice actor, and circus performer whose schtick was playing clarinet off-key while mugging....
-voiced Lilliputian sidekick of the film, and the Sneak, Snoop and Snitch (Animated Antics) cartoons starring the three villains from the film.
External links
- Gulliver's Travels at Guba.com