COLOURED CARTOONS

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 27 June 1935, Page 10

COLOURED CARTOONS

VENTURE IN LONDON YOUNG MAN’S ENTERPRISE The strangest film studio in London is near Seven Dials, right in the centro of the theatre belt. It is on the top floor of a building which houses ono of the most fashionable restaurants in the town, where the society tittiotattlers cluster like grapes, and theatrical stars kiss each other with tune-honoured enthusiasm. The owner of this studio has been working quietly at a pioneer job for same months. He is making the first coloured talkie cartoons ever attempted in what is somewhat brightly dosuribed as tho Old World.

In America, led by Mickey Mouse uind spoilt by countless imitators, coloured cartoons are as common as blondes on Hollywood Boulevard. In England, they are a novelty. Several attempts to produce them

have been made. All have failed. The experiment was started by a Mr Dennis Connolly, who started lire as a newspaper cartoonist. His work, in the dim and distant past, has graced the pages of Suiulay newspapers. Mr Connolly had ambition. He was determined to become Britain’s first film cartoonist, and he. finally formed a company. That was Six months ago.

The business of assembling a staff capable of handling the intricate and laborious job of compiling film cartoons took him many weeks. When lie finally settled down to make his first cartoon—-he is now on his third—lie had nearly 50 girls, all artists, mostly emanating from Chelsea and looking it, working for him. His greatest problem was to create a character. Every cartoon since Felix the Cat has had a liero, whether it has been Flip the Frog, Mickey Mouse or Uncle Tom C°bley. So,Connolly finally evolved a pair of ’ bears, Billy and Tilly. Billy is the larger of tho two; Tilly handles the romance. Having bit on the idea, Connolly proceeded to make his first picture. It was just a “short” of ordinary cartoon length, hut by the time he had finished it, literally thousands of drawings had been made. In one large room in his studio Connolly has his animation artists, the people who work out the actual draftsmanship of the cartoons. Each one sits at a desk with a number and a name, and each one specialises in some particular phase of a cartoon’s action. In a corner of the main studio is a letter-box. Every member of the staff is ah enthusiastic “gagman”; ideas are dropped into the box.