Puppetoons
Puppetoons is a series of animated puppet films made in Europe (1930s) and in the United States (1940s) by George Pal. They were made using replacement animation: using a series of different hand-carved wooden puppets (or puppet heads or limbs) for each frame in which the puppet moves or changes expression, rather than moving a single puppet, as is the case with most stop motion puppet animation. History. The Puppetoons series of animated puppet films were made in Europe in the 1930s and in the United States in the 1940s. The series began when George Pal made an  advertising film using "dancing" cigarettes in 1932, which led to a series of theatrical advertising shorts for Philips Radio in the Netherlands. This was followed by a series for Horlicks Malted Milk in England. These shorts have an art deco design, often reducing characters to simple geometric shapes. Pal arrived in the U.S. in 1940, and produced more than 40 Puppetoons for Paramount Pictures between 1941 and 1947. Seven Puppetoons received Academy Award nominations, including "Rhythm in the Ranks" (for the year 1941), "Tulips Shall Grow" (1942), "The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins" (1943), "And To Think I Saw it  On Mulberry Street" (1944), "Jasper and the Beanstalk" (1945), "John Henry and the Inky-Poo" (1946) and "Tubby the Tuba" (1947). The series ended due to rising production costs which had increased from US$18,000 per short in 1939 () to almost US$50,000 following World War II (). Paramount Pictures—Pal's distributor—objected to the cost. Per their suggestion, Pal went to produce sequences for feature films. In 1956, the Puppetoons as well as most of Paramount's shorts, were sold to television distributor U.M. & M. TV Corporation. National Telefilm Associates bought out U.M. & M. and continued to syndicate them  in the 1950s and 1960s as "Madcap Models". Pal also used the Puppetoon name and the general Puppetoon technique for miniature puppet characters in some of his live-action feature films, including "The Great Rupert" (1949), "Tom Thumb" (1958), and "The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm" (1963). In these films, the individual wooden figures were billed as The Puppetoons. Technique. Puppetoon films used replacement animation with puppets. Using a series of different hand-carved wooden puppets (or puppet heads or limbs) for each frame in which the puppet moves or changes expression, rather than moving a single puppet, as  is the case with most stop motion puppet animation. A typical Puppetoon required 9,000 individually carved and machined wooden figures or parts. Jasper. Some controversy exists in modern times, as the black character, Jasper, star of several Puppetoons in the 1940s is considered a stereotype today. The Jasper series of shorts relied on a small, consistent cast. The titular character was a playful pickaninny, his mother a protective mammy, Professor Scarecrow being a black scam artist, and the Blackbird serving as his fast-talking partner-in-crime. Pal described Jasper as the Huckleberry Finn of American folklore. Already in 1946 , an article of the "Hollywood Quarterly" protested that the Jasper shorts presented a "razor-totin', ghost-haunted, chicken-stealin' concept of the American Negro". A 1947 article in "Ebony" pointed out that George Pal was a European and not raised on racial prejudice. "To him there is nothing abusive about a Negro boy who likes to eat watermelons or gets scared when he goes past a haunted house". The article, though, pointed that this depiction touched on the stereotypes of Negroes being childish, eating nothing but molasses and watermelons, and being afraid of their own shadows. Jasper's full name  is Jasper Jefferson Lincoln Washington Hawkins. At one point, Jasper's popularity was on par with Mickey Mouse's and Donald Duck's. Legacy and preservation. In 1987, film producer-director-archivist Arnold Leibovit, a friend of George Pal, collected several Puppetoons and released them theatrically and to video as "The Puppetoon Movie" reintroducing them to contemporary audiences. A feature-length documentary on the life and films of George Pal followed. In 2020, "The Puppetoon Movie Volume 2" was released on Blu-ray and DVD, featuring 17 shorts not included on any of the "Puppetoon Movie" releases and "The Ship  of the Ether". The Academy Film Archive preserved several of the Puppetoons in 2009, including "Jasper and the Beanstalk", "John Henry and the Inky Poo", and "Rhythm In the Ranks". Filmography. European Shorts. 1932 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 American Shorts. 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1971