Studio: Van Beuren Studios (Cubby Bear series)
Distributor: RKO Radio Pictures
Short Synopsis
Cubby Bear, Van Beuren's round-eared answer to Mickey Mouse, takes his girlfriend on a picnic. The outing goes the way cartoon picnics go: ants and other insects march on the food, the weather turns, the basket and blanket take on lives of their own, and the romantic afternoon becomes a battle with the countryside, with Cubby's attempts at gallantry undone by every creature in the meadow. The gags run to Gene Rodemich's jaunty score, and the drawing is the studio's rough, big-footed style. A shot-by-shot account of the film is not in the sources used here, and the outline follows the premise and the series' habits; the film survives in television prints under the title The Picnic, which it was given for its 1950s syndication.
Why It Matters
- Cubby's series was Van Beuren's attempt at a star character in the Disney manner, and the picnic is exactly the sort of situation Mickey had already played; the interest is in how different the result is, cruder, odder and more frantic, with the insects given more personality than the hero. Steve Muffati's animation has a bounce that the studio's earlier Fables lacked.
- The Cubby Bear cartoons ran for only two years, 1933-34, eighteen films in all, and were the last series Van Beuren made before Burt Gillett arrived from Disney and replaced them with the colour Rainbow Parades. Disney sued the studio over Cubby's resemblance to Mickey, one of the first such cases in animation.
Notes and Trivia
- Three Cubby Bear cartoons were subcontracted to Harman and Ising after they left Warner Bros., which gave the character a brief Hollywood polish.
- The TV retitling to The Picnic has caused the film to be catalogued twice in some filmographies.
- See also: The Gay Gaucho (1933), Goode Knight (1934), Cubby's Stratosphere Flight (1934).