"The Tears of an Onion"

"The Tears of an Onion" is a Fleischer Color Classic released on 02/26/1938. This cartoon is notable for several reasons. First, it's the only Color Classic still protected by copyright. Because of that, it couldn't be included on "Somewhere in Dreamland" DVD collection, and it is relatively rare and unknown to many fans.

Another curiosity is the connection with a Harman-Ising cartoon "Poor Little Me" released three years earlier. Both cartoons share essentially the same plot and both have protagonists with "odor" problem (in H-I cartoon, main hero is a skunk). Even more interesting is the fact that one of the credited animators Joe Oriolo co-created Casper the Friendly Ghost several years later. "The Tears of an Onion" serves almost as a blueprint for all the typical Casper cartoons produced in late 40s and 50s. Most of the basic ingredients for Casper are already here, minus the ghost/horror component.

The main animator and de facto director of this cartoon, Dave Tendlar was responsible for some of the strongest entries in Color Classic series (including "Play Safe" presented here last week). According to animation historian and Fleischer expert Mark Langer, this cartoon persuaded Paramount executives that the Fleischer Studios had the talent to make a feature film that could compare with Disney's Snow White.

We are presenting this rare cartoon with the screenshots from an excellent quality print that has the original Paramount opening and closing titles.

"Play Safe"

Many cartoon fans consider Color Classics as the minor works in the Fleischer opus. In some way, this is true. With this series, Fleischer brothers tried to compete with Silly Symphonies, and Disney influence really overpowers the typical Fleischer style in most of the cartoons. Often criticized as being too sappy or sentimental, these cartoons still have lot of qualities to recommend. Animation is often on very solid level, and the use of color could sometimes be quite extraordinary. The best few entries in this series are genuine Fleischer classics that could compare with many of their better known earlier works. Sadly, these cartoons have been available for decades mostly in bad quality TV prints, with faded or red tinted color. We are going to present the screenshots from some rare superior quality prints, to demonstrate how these cartoons were supposed to look some 70 years ago.

The first cartoon I'm going to present here is "Play Safe", released on 10/16/1936. This cartoon about a boy obsessed with trains and the dog who saves his life has a nightmare sequence that evokes the spirit of the earlier Fleischer cartoons, and also contains some of the most beautiful scenes with 3-D sets in the entire series. Many of you have already seen this cartoon, but rarely in such good quality.