Monday, August 27, 2007

The Lost Columbia Cartoons - Spark Plug

It's been a very busy couple of months for yours truly, hence the irregular posting, for which I apologise. But over here in Blighty, we had a bank holiday weekend, which allowed me the time to do something special - another cartoon reconstruction!

This "lost" Columbia cartoon (released 12th April 1936) features Barney Google's attempt to win a derby with his horse, Spark Plug (ain't that a great name?). It is the third of the four Barney Google cartoons that Charles Mintz produced, and is IMHO the best one the Screen Gems studio did.

This apparantly survives in the Columbia archives as a 16mm B&W print, but I was able to do a virtual reconstruction using three silent home-movie prints, using the redrawn version as a template. A few brief missing scenes here and there, but nothing greatly vital to the story. In fact, the redrawn version also has a few missing scenes that are present in my version.

This version will be available on this blog for two months. Yep, you read that right (lol!). Enjoy!


Spark Plug
Uploaded by ldglover

4 comments:

Craig D said...

Wow! They really put a lot of effort into that one, what with the crowd scenes, galloping horses and what have you.

Will these resurface, intact, in our life times? I sure hope so.

As always, thanks for sharing these, Lee!

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Lee! Man, was Art Davis a great director!

Sarah said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sarah said...

I am a filmmaker who has just recently started collecting 16 mm film. I bid on a bundle on ebay and recieved it today. One of the films was this one. Could you tell me anything about this film? I would be interested in knowing more about it. Is it a rare find?