Tubby the Tuba | |
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Directed by | Alexander Schure |
Written by | Paul Tripp and George Kleinsinger |
Produced by | Barry Yellin Steven Carlin Alexander Schure |
Starring | Dick Van Dyke Pearl Bailey Ruth Enders Jack Gilford Hermione Gingold Ray Middleton Jane Powell Cyril Ritchard David Wayne |
Edited by | Phillip Schopper |
Music by | George Kleisinger |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Avco Embassy Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 81 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Tubby the Tuba is a 1975 animated musical-comedy film, based on the 1945 children's story for concert orchestra and narrator by Paul Tripp and George Kleinsinger. It was released on April 1, 1975 by Avco Embassy Pictures. [1] The film was produced by the New York Institute of Technology, under the supervision of its founder, Alexander Schure, who was the project's director. [2]
Nearly three decades before the release of this adaptation, stop-motion innovator George Pal made a 1947 Puppetoon version also based on Tripp and Kleisinger's work, which was nominated for a Best Animated Short Oscar, but lost to Warner Bros. Cartoons' Merrie Melodies short, Tweetie Pie .
A young tuba named Tubby sets off on a quest to find a song of his own. He visits a circus and ventures into the forest while on the way to Singing City. [2]
Tubby the Tuba had his start as the main character in a 1945 children's story for orchestra and narrator, by Paul Tripp and George Kleinsinger, originally performed by Tripp himself, and recorded most famously by Danny Kaye, though many other actor-narrators have performed the piece on record as well, including David Wayne (who also provided a voice for the '71 feature film). The success of the Decca Records track encouraged George Pal, the Puppetoon artist, to make a 1947 short based on it. It would later receive an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short.
A full-length version of Tubby the Tuba was announced in 1974 by Alexander Schure, the millionaire founder of the New York Institute of Technology. He set up the production at its Westbury, New York facilities, in the Animation Department, Visual Arts Center and Tech Sound Lab of that campus. In order for it to compete with the works of children's film leader Disney, he rounded up a celebrity cast (led by Dick Van Dyke and Pearl Bailey), as well as Tripp, the librettist, and a man known as "the dean of Broadway musical directors", Lehman Engel.
Schure, however, did not know anything about the animation process at the time he started working on it. Because of this, he hired the industry's best artists from the Eastern Seaboard, among whom were Sam Singer from Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse , and John Gentilella from the classic Popeye series.
Schure found the progress on the new Tubby was very slow, hindered by the tedious frame-by-frame process occasionally encountered in the hand-drawn art. In response, he turned to an interest in the then-young field of computer graphics, and recruited several consultants and scientists from NYIT so that the project could go on. Two of the later crew members were Edwin Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith, the future founders of Pixar Studios.
Thus, it should have marked the first time that computers were ever used in the making of an animated feature, but it ended up being done the conventional way after all. When the film wrapped up production, the first test screenings did not do as well as the crew had hoped it would. As a result, Catmull removed Sam Singer's name from the final prints, taking a credit in Singer's place. He later went on to say about the initial reaction to Tubby:
It was awful, it was terrible, half the audience fell asleep at the screening. We walked out of the room thinking 'Thank God we didn't have anything to do with it, that computers were not used for anything in that movie!'
Of director Schure, Catmull's partner Smith observed: "We realized […] that he really didn't have what it takes to make a movie". Neither of the duo were satisfied with what the finished film had to offer. [2]
In 1974, some time after the end of its production, independent distributor Avco Embassy acquired the rights to release Tubby worldwide. The film came out in select U.S. markets during the following Easter holiday. [2]
The feature-length Tubby has been generally forgotten in the annals of animation history since its original run, [2] but on September 11, 2006, a small label called Pegasus brought out a Region 2 DVD in the United Kingdom. To date, it has only received minor VHS releases in North America, including:
Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames is played back. Any kind of object can thus be animated, but puppets with movable joints or plasticine figures are most commonly used. Puppets, models or clay figures built around an armature are used in model animation. Stop motion with live actors is often referred to as pixilation. Stop motion of flat materials such as paper, fabrics or photographs is usually called cutout animation.
Pixar Animation Studios, known simply as Pixar, is an American animation studio based in Emeryville, California, known for its critically and commercially successful computer-animated feature films. Since 2006, Pixar has been a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, a division of Disney Entertainment, a segment of the Walt Disney Company.
Edwin Earl Catmull is an American computer scientist and animator who served as the co-founder of Pixar and the President of Walt Disney Animation Studios. He has been honored for his contributions to 3D computer graphics, including the 2019 ACM Turing Award.
George Pal was a Hungarian-American animator, film director and producer, principally associated with the fantasy and science-fiction genres. He became an American citizen after emigrating from Europe.
The Computer Graphics Lab is a computer lab located at the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT), founded by the late Dr. Alexander Schure. It was originally located at the "pink building" on the NYIT campus. It has played an important role in the history of computer graphics and animation, as founders of Pixar and Lucasfilm, including Turing Award winners Edwin Catmull and Patrick Hanrahan, began their research there. It is the birthplace of entirely 3D CGI films.
The Works is a shelved animated feature film, partially produced from 1979 to 1986. If it had been finished as intended, it would have been the first film that was entirely 3D computer-animated. It included contributions from individuals who would go on to work at digital animation pioneers Pixar and DreamWorks Animation.
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Geri's Game is a 1997 American animated short film produced by Pixar and written and directed by Jan Pinkava. The film, which shows an elderly man named Geri who competes with himself in a game of chess, was Pixar's first film to feature a human being as its main character; Geri later made a cameo appearance in Toy Story 2 as "The Cleaner", where he was voiced by Jonathan Harris instead of Bob Peterson.
John Alan Lasseter is an American film director, producer, and animator. He has served as the Head of Animation at Skydance Animation since 2019. Previously, he acted as the chief creative officer of Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and Disneytoon Studios, as well as the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering.
Puppetoons is a series of animated puppet films made in Europe (1930s) and in the United States (1940s) by George Pal. They were made using replacement animation: using a series of different hand-carved wooden puppets for each frame in which the puppet moves or changes expression, rather than moving a single puppet, as is the case with most stop motion puppet animation. They were particularly made from 1932-1948, in both Europe and the US.
The Manhattan Transfer Meets Tubby The Tuba is a children's studio album released by The Manhattan Transfer in 1994 on the Summit Records label. It features music by George Kleinsinger and stories by Paul Tripp. This is the group's only children's recording, offering a rendition of the 1945 children's classic that teaches the important lesson: "Be yourself; you can't be anybody else!". This album was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Musical Album for Children.
Tubby the Tuba may refer to:
Tubby the Tuba is a 1947 American animated short film from Paramount Pictures, directed by George Pal as part of his Puppetoons series. It was based on the original song by Paul Tripp and George Kleinsinger. The film features narration by Victor Jory.
"Tubby the Tuba" is a 1945 song with lyrics written by Paul Tripp and music composed by George Kleinsinger. The original 1946 recording featured Victor Jory's narration. A second recording, released on the Decca label in 1947, was played by Hollywood Musician Tuba Soloist, George F. Boujie and was narrated and sung by Danny Kaye and later featured on his Hans Christian Andersen album, along with the sequel, Tubby the Tuba at the Circus.
Paul Tripp was an American children's musician, author, songwriter, and television and film actor. He collaborated with a fellow composer, George Kleinsinger. Tripp was the creator of the 1945 "Tubby the Tuba", a piece of classical music for children that has become his best-known work. He authored several books, including Rabbi Santa Claus and Diary of a Leaf.
George Kleinsinger was an American composer most known for children's compositions, Broadway scores, and film/television scores. He is best known for a string of children's compositions in collaboration with lyricist Paul Tripp and a series of works in collaboration with Joe Darion based on Don Marquis' archy and mehitabel columns.
The Puppetoon Movie is a 1987 animated film written, produced, and directed by Arnold Leibovit. It is based on the Puppetoons characters created by George Pal in the 1930s and 1940s which feature the eponymous Puppetoon animation, and features Gumby, Pokey and Arnie the Dinosaur, who host the framing story. Its framing story stars the voices of Dick Beals, Art Clokey, Paul Frees and Dallas McKennon as the main characters.
The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal is a 1985 American documentary film about Academy Award-winning producer/director George Pal. It was written, directed, and produced by Arnold Leibovit.
Alexander Schure was an American academic and entrepreneur. Schure founded the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) in 1955. He also served as the Chancellor of Nova Southeastern University (NSU) from 1970 until 1985.
A Computer Animated Hand is the title of a 1972 American computer-animated short film produced by Edwin Catmull and Fred Parke. Produced during Catmull's tenure at the University of Utah, the short was created for a graduate course project. After creating a model of his left hand, 350 triangles and polygons were drawn in ink on its surface. The model was digitized from the data and laboriously animated in a three-dimensional animation program that Catmull wrote.