Thanks to the folks at Cartoon Brew, I caught a John and Faith Hubley film festival at the Museum of Modern Art last night. This was accompanied by a small exhibit of paintings from their movie The Story of *. I saw a few Hubley films when I was in college and loved them. Rather than trying to recreate the seamlessness of live action film, the Hubley's quirky movements are free and loose and comfortably fall in and out of abstraction.The half-dozen movies shown were good natured, poignant, funny, and beautifully, beautifully drawn. Truly, they were an experience that was only possible through animation -- these were not stories that could have been told in words, pictures, or music alone.
When I was a kid, I watched all the same cartoons as anyone in single digits throughout the 70s did, but the ones I still remember where the one-offs, not so much the regular series characters. Gerald McBoing Boing was a favorite, I vaguely remembered something called Rooty Toot Toot, which, much later in life, I realized came from the song "Frankie and Johnny," and a bunch of others that I have partial memories of. Tonight, while poking around Youtube, I was only half surprised to see the Hubleys' name attached to many of these films.
Below is The Tender Game, my favorite from tonight's screening. Hubleys + Ella Fitzgerald = much to love. Sadly, this version literally pales in comparison to the beautifully restored version at MoMA.
And, since we were near the Warwick Hotel, here's a little Dean Cornwell bonus:
