Monday, June 11, 2007

The Lost Columbia Cartoons - Tetched In The Head

Tetched in the Head (released October 24th 1935) marked the debut of comic-strip character Barney Google, created by Billy DeBeck. Charles Mintz had high hopes that his transfer to the animated screen would be a big success, but that did not happen. The character did not have the qualities to be an animated cartoon star, and was quickly retired after just four cartoons. Watching this and his later cartoons, it's not hard to see why. They're just not funny.

This cartoon apparantly only survives in the Columbia archives as a 16mm B&W copy, but it also exists in the collectors'/traders' circuits as an experimental redrawn colourised short (without any sound) and several truncated B&W silent prints.

Using the redrawn version as a template, I've managed to reconstruct the cartoon using three different silent prints. It's almost complete (at least one very-brief scene is missing, during the introduction of Barney). I've decided not to add a music sound track, as I don't think it's really necessary.

Hope you like this version. Enjoy!



Barney Google - Tetched in the Head
Uploaded by ldglover

This video will be available for the next four weeks.

I'll be making posts of the other three Barney cartoons in the near future.