Studio: Van Beuren Studios (Cubby Bear series)
Distributor: RKO Radio Pictures
Short Synopsis
Cubby Bear goes up in a balloon. The stratosphere flights of the early 1930s, the Piccard brothers in Europe and the Settle and Fordney ascent of 1933, were front-page news, and Van Beuren's cartoon sends its bear after them in a gondola of his own, up through the clouds into a cartoon stratosphere where the air is thin, the stars are close and the Moon and the planets can be met face to face. The comedy is in the ascent, the tangle of ropes and gas bags, and the strange company at the top, before the descent brings Cubby back to earth. A scene-by-scene account is not in the sources used here; the outline follows the title, the topical reference and the series' habits. The film survives in television prints.
Why It Matters
- Topical science was a favourite subject of the New York studios in 1933-34, and the stratosphere balloon let the animators draw a sky full of faces and a hero in an absurd machine; Stallings, who had co-directed the Tom and Jerry series, brings its loose fantasy to Cubby. The outer-space gags are an early example of the cartoon moon as a place with inhabitants.
- The film comes from the last months of the Cubby Bear and Aesop's Fables lines, just before Burt Gillett's arrival ended them; with Fiddlin' Fun it marks the end of Van Beuren's black-and-white period. It also records a moment when real ballooning records were as exciting to the public as rocket flights would be thirty years later.
Notes and Trivia
- Jean Piccard and his wife Jeannette set a balloon altitude record in October 1934, six months after the cartoon.
- Stallings was credited as "Geo. Stallings" on the Van Beuren films; his first name was Vernon.
- See also: Cubby's Picnic (1933), Goode Knight (1934), Fiddlin' Fun (1934).