The Tracey Ullman Show shorts - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Simpsons shorts are a series of 48 one-minute shorts that ran on the variety show The Tracey Ullman Show
The Tracey Ullman Show
The Tracey Ullman Show was an American television variety show, hosted by British comedian and onetime pop singer Tracey Ullman. It debuted on April 5, 1987 as the Fox network's second primetime series after Married... with Children, and ran until May 26, 1990. The show blended sketch comedy shorts...

for three seasons, before the characters spun off into The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...

, their own half-hour prime time show. It features the Simpson family

Simpson family

The Simpson family is a family of fictional characters featured in the animated television series The Simpsons. The Simpsons are a nuclear family consisting of the married couple Homer and Marge and their three children Bart, Lisa and Maggie. They live at 742 Evergreen Terrace in the fictional town...

, which consists of Homer

Homer Simpson

Homer Jay Simpson is a fictional character in the animated television series The Simpsons and the patriarch of the eponymous family. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta and first appeared on television, along with the rest of his family, in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...

, Marge

Marge Simpson

Marjorie "Marge" Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons and part of the eponymous family. She is voiced by actress Julie Kavner and first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...

, Bart

Bart Simpson

Bartholomew JoJo "Bart" Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons and part of the Simpson family. He is voiced by actress Nancy Cartwright and first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...

, Lisa

Lisa Simpson

Lisa Marie Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons. She is the middle child of the Simpson family. Voiced by Yeardley Smith, Lisa first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987. Cartoonist Matt Groening...

, and Maggie

Maggie Simpson

Margaret "Maggie" Simpson is a fictional character in the animated television series The Simpsons. She first appeared on television in the Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987. Maggie was created and designed by cartoonist Matt Groening while he was waiting in the lobby of James...

. The series was created by Matt Groening

Matt Groening

Matthew Abram "Matt" Groening is an American cartoonist, screenwriter, and producer. He is the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell as well as two successful television series, The Simpsons and Futurama....

, who designed the Simpson family and wrote many of the shorts. The shorts first aired on April 19, 1987 starting with "Good Night

Good Night (The Simpsons short)

"Good Night" is the first Simpsons short that appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show. It originally aired April 19, 1987, during the third episode of The Tracey Ullman Show and was the first appearance of the Simpson family on television. After three seasons on Tracey Ullman, the shorts would be...

". The final short to air was "TV Simpsons", originally airing on May 14, 1989. The Simpsons later debuted on December 17, 1989 with the Christmas special "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire

Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire

"Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", also known as "The Simpsons Christmas Special", is the first full-length episode of The Simpsons to air despite originally being the eighth episode produced for season one. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on December 17, 1989...

".

Only a few of these shorts have been released on DVD. "Good Night" was included on The Simpsons Season 1 DVD. Five of these shorts were later used in the clip show episode "The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular

The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular

"The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular" is the tenth episode of The Simpsons seventh season. It originally aired on Fox on December 3, 1995. As the title suggests, it is the 138th episode and the third clip show episode of The Simpsons after "So It's Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show" and...

" on the half-hour show, which was released on the Season 7 DVD. These five shorts were "Good Night", which was featured in its entirety, and portions of "The Perfect Crime", "Space Patrol", "World War III", and "Bathtime". In "You Kent Always Say What You Want

You Kent Always Say What You Want

"You Kent Always Say What You Want", formerly known as "Kent State Massacre", is the twenty-second episode of The Simpsons eighteenth season, airing on May 20, 2007 as part of the one-hour season finale, alongside the episode "24 Minutes"; a repeat took place on August 19, 2007. It was the...

", the short "Family Portrait" replaces the entire opening sequence in celebration of the 400th episode. Groening has announced that all of the shorts will be available on mobile phones.

Development

The shorts were created by cartoonist Matt Groening

Matt Groening

in the lobby of James L. Brooks

James L. Brooks

James Lawrence Brooks is an American director, producer and screenwriter. Growing up in North Bergen, New Jersey, Brooks endured a fractured family life and passed the time by reading and writing. After dropping out of New York University, he got a job as an usher at CBS, going on to write for the...

' office. He had been called in to pitch a series of animated shorts, and had intended to present his Life in Hell
Life in Hell
Life in Hell is a weekly comic strip by Matt Groening. The strip features anthropomorphic rabbits and a pair of gay lovers. Groening uses these characters to explore a wide range of topics about love, sex, work, and death...

series. When he realized that animating Life in Hell would require him to give up publication rights for his life's work, Groening decided to go in another direction. He hurriedly sketched out his version of a dysfunctional family

Dysfunctional family

A dysfunctional family is a family in which conflict, misbehavior, and often abuse on the part of individual members occur continually and regularly, leading other members to accommodate such actions. Children sometimes grow up in such families with the understanding that such an arrangement is...

, and named the characters after his own family. Bart was modeled after Groening's older brother, Mark, but given a different name which was chosen as an anagram

Anagram

An anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once; e.g., orchestra = carthorse, A decimal point = I'm a dot in place, Tom Marvolo Riddle = I am Lord Voldemort. Someone who...

of "brat". The stories were written and storyboarded by Matt Groening. The family was crudely drawn, because Groening had submitted basic sketches to the animators, assuming they would clean them up; instead they just traced over his drawings. The animation was produced domestically at Klasky Csupo

Klasky Csupo

Klasky Csupo, Inc. is a multimedia entertainment production company located in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, founded by artist/producer, Arlene Klasky and animator, Gábor Csupó.- History :...

, with Wesley Archer, David Silverman

David Silverman

David Silverman is an animator best known for directing numerous episodes of the animated TV series The Simpsons, as well as The Simpsons Movie...

, and Bill Kopp

Bill Kopp

Bill Kopp is an American animator and film director who animated the Whammy on the 1980s game show Press Your Luck, and voiced the title character on Nelvana's Eek! The Cat and Kutter in The Terrible Thunderlizards, which he created with Savage Steve Holland...

being animators for the first season. After season one it was animated by Archer and Silverman. Georgie Peluse was the colorist and the person who decided to make the characters yellow.

The actors who voiced the characters later reprised their roles in The Simpsons. Dan Castellaneta

Dan Castellaneta

Daniel Louis "Dan" Castellaneta is an American actor, voice actor, comedian, singer and screenwriter. Noted for his long-running role as Homer Simpson on the animated television series The Simpsons, he voices many other characters on The Simpsons, including Abraham "Grampa" Simpson, Barney Gumble,...

performed the voices of Homer Simpson

Homer Simpson

, Grampa Simpson, and Krusty the Clown. Homer's voice sounds different in the shorts compared to most episodes of the half-hour show. In the shorts, his voice is a loose impression of Walter Matthau

Walter Matthau

Walter Matthau was an American actor best known for his role as Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple and his frequent collaborations with Odd Couple star Jack Lemmon, as well as his role as Coach Buttermaker in the 1976 comedy The Bad News Bears...

, whereas it is more robust and humorous on the half-hour show, allowing Homer to cover a fuller range of emotions. Castellaneta had been part of the regular cast of The Tracey Ullman Show and had done some voice over work in Chicago alongside his wife Deb Lacusta

Deb Lacusta

-Personal life:Lacusta is the wife of The Simpsons star Dan Castellaneta...

. Voices were needed for the shorts, so the producers decided to ask Castellaneta as well as Julie Kavner

Julie Kavner

Julie Deborah Kavner is an American film and television actress, comedian and voice artist. Noted for her role as Marge Simpson on the animated television series The Simpsons, she also voices other characters for the show, including Jacqueline Bouvier, and Patty and Selma Bouvier.Born in Los...

to voice Homer and Marge, rather than hire more actors. Nancy Cartwright

Nancy Cartwright

Nancy Campbell Cartwright is an American film and television actress, comedian and voice artist. She is best known for her long-running role as Bart Simpson on the animated television series The Simpsons...

and Yeardley Smith

Yeardley Smith

Yeardley Smith is a French-born American actress, voice actress, writer and painter. She is best known for her long-running role as Lisa Simpson on the animated television series The Simpsons....

performed the voices of Bart Simpson

Bart Simpson

and Lisa Simpson

Lisa Simpson

respectively. The recording of the shorts was often primitive; according to Cartwright, the dialogue for the Ullman shorts was recorded on a portable tape deck in a makeshift studio, which consisted of the video engineer suite, above the bleachers on the Ullman show set. While most of the characters' personalities are similar to what they are in the series, Lisa is portrayed as a female version of Bart without the intelligent nature that she possesses in the half-hour series.

The shorts were featured on the first three seasons on The Tracey Ullman Show. By the fourth and last season of The Tracey Ullman Show the first season of the half-hour show was on the air. In the two first seasons the shorts were divided into three or four parts, but in the third season they were played as a single story. Tracey Ullman

Tracey Ullman

Tracey Ullman is a British stage and television actress, comedienne, singer, dancer, screenwriter and author ....

later filed a lawsuit, claiming that her show was the source of The Simpsons success and therefore should receive a share of the show's profit. Eventually the courts ruled in favor of the network.

Season 1: 1987

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