A Thousand Attempts and One Invention

***A Thousand Attempts and One Invention*** (or ***Anteojito*** in some countries) is a 1972 American-Argentinian animated musical fantasy comedy-drama film produced by DW-Go Fish Pictures. It was written and directed by Manuel García Ferré, loosely based on his comic strip *Anteojito*. It is the first DreamWorks animated film to be produced and animated by the studio's Argentina animation house.

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## Plot

Anteojito (or shortly "Ant") is a poor orphan 10-years-old boy who lives with his Uncle Antifaz in an apartment house in New York City. Uncle Antifaz tries to invent an invisibility formula with Anteojito's help, and Cachavacha, a witch and Uncle Antifaz's neighbor who lives in the apartment right under his, tries to steal it as revenge for to his explosions destroying her apartment's roof. Anteojito sells some balloons and meets his friend Mailboxie, a little red mailbox. The balloons he was selling escape when he argues with a trio of bullies. The circus comes to town and he helps out a friendly clown and his sick daughter by posing as a second, singing, clown. Two con men named Bodega and Rapiño are impressed by Anteojito's singing and pose as talent agents who can get him lucrative theatrical and operatic engagements, being hired by Cachavacha to have him away from Uncle Antifaz. Bolaño, a good-natured cat (tall with funny hat), takes him to Master Meethoven, a Beethoven-esque feline music teacher. Anteojito becomes a star, but he unknowingly lets success go to his head, as he snubs Uncle Antifaz, and dismisses Bodega and Rapiño, who begin to fight over the money. The distraught Antifaz gives up his experiments, which are immediately continued disastrously by Cachavacha, who ultimately ends up being killed in an explosion as a result. Anteojito is told a story within the film (based on a separate book by García Ferré, *El Pararrayos o Historia de una Ambición*) and at last realizes that wealth is worthless without true friendship. He returns to being a little boy living with Uncle Antifaz, who throws away the invisibility formula he has finally invented.

## Characters and cast

* **Anteojito** - voiced by Gary Dubin.
* **Uncle Antifaz** - voiced by Danny Kaye.
* **Witch Cachavacha** - voiced by June Foray.
* **Pajarraco** - voiced by Don Messick.
* **Bolaño** - voiced by Dick Van Dyke.
* **Mailboxie** - voiced by José Oliveira.
* **Bodega and Rapiño** - voiced by Alan Sues and Paul Frees.

## Songs

* **My Uncle is a Great Inventor**
* **Uncle, Uncle, Uncle**
* **Let It Dance!**
* **I'm Falling**
* **Ay, My Uncle**
* **For a Chesse**
* **The Sad Mailbox Song**
* **The Little Orphans' Song**
* **Uncle, Uncle, Uncle (reprise/finale)**

## Production

After Dora Wilson decided to add animation houses in other countries, she chosed Argentina as one of them and contacted the studio's veteran animator Manuel García Ferré, who lived on Argentina at the time, to be the chairman and supervisor of the Argentina animation house.

Various of the Argentina animation house's first productions were commercial shorts featuring the *Dreamtoons* characters and the popular animated series *The Adventures of Hijitus*. Dora Wilson then decided that the Argentina animation house was ready to produce an animated feature film. García Ferré then pitched a film adaptation of his well-known comic strip *Anteojito*, published on the Argentine newspaper Clarin, which Dora Wilson liked it and greenlight it.

To adapt his comics to a film, García Ferré decided to adapt two series of strips he made back in the 1960s, one involving Uncle Antifaz trying to create science formulas which originally ran between January 1 and January 10, 1960; and one involving Anteojito becoming into a famous singer which originally ran between March 10 and March 20, 1964. For the antagonist, García Ferré and several of the storymen had the idea of using Ruin de Servin and Mala-Pala (the villains of the comic strip), until Wilson convinced them to use Witch Cachavacha from *The Adventures of Hijitus*, as she felt that Cachavacha seemed to be a more diabolical villain.

## Re-releases

Over the years, the film was re-released on theaters many times like most DreamWorks animated films at the time. In various countries outside America and Argentina (mainly Spain), the film is known as *Anteojito*, naming it after both the comic strip and the film's main character.

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* July 12, 2001 (in Argentina; in a double feature with *Headin' South*)

## Trivia

* To this day, it remains debatable who is the main antagonist: Witch Cachavacha or Bodega & Rapiño.
* The score "The Old Bench's Waltz" (heard while Anteojito starts to talk with the Talking Bench) would later be used in other DreamWorks animated films.
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