Studio: Paramount Cartoon Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Short Synopsis
Plot documentation for this short is scarce, and this summary is based on the surviving film, which is the only source this book could check. Honey Halfwitch is a young witch still learning her trade, whose spells, though well meant, never come out quite as planned. In this episode the action involves a castle and its king, a jolly, red-bearded monarch in a crown who peers out through a little window in the castle's heavy wooden door, and a sad, scrawny old horse, the "nag" of the title, collapsed across a battered sofa. A figure in a tall black hat, with a shock of orange hair, appears as well. The title plays on "from rags to riches", turning it into a joke about nags and witches. How the story ends is not described in any source this book could check.
Why It Matters
- The film is a good example of the angular, loose, thinly coloured style of Paramount's last cartoons in the mid-1960s, influenced by UPA and by television animation. Its characters are flat, sketchy shapes against minimal backgrounds, with a sharper, more ironic sense of humour than the studio's 1950s films.
- Honey Halfwitch was one of the last new characters created by Paramount's cartoon studio, during the brief period in 1965 and 1966 when Shamus Culhane ran it and tried to modernise its output. The studio closed in 1967, ending the line that had begun with the Fleischers in the 1920s.
Notes and Trivia
- Honey's adventures were released as part of Paramount's late Modern Madcaps-era output, in the studio's final two years.
- See also: Houndabout (1959), Swab the Duck (1956).