Studio: Van Beuren Studios (Cubby Bear series)
Distributor: RKO Radio Pictures
Short Synopsis
Cubby Bear in the Middle Ages: a knight in armour at a cartoon castle, where a damsel is in distress, a dragon or a villainous rival is the cause, and the hero has to joust, climb and fight his way to the rescue. The pun of the title, on "good night", is the level of the humour, and the film runs through the stock of the storybook castle, the drawbridge, the moat, the tournament and the tower, with Cubby's armour as a source of clanking slapstick and Gene Rodemich's score keeping the time. The Cubby Bear films were rarely documented in detail, and no scene-by-scene account of this one has been found in the sources used here; the outline follows the premise, the title and the series' usual shape. The film survives in television prints.
Why It Matters
- The medieval parody is a reliable cartoon setting, and the Van Beuren version has a scruffy energy that suits it: the castle and its inhabitants are drawn with the studio's lumpy line, and the armour gags, a knight who cannot move or who falls apart at the joints, are played at speed. George Gordon, who co-directed, would later direct at MGM and on Hanna-Barbera's The Smurfs.
- Goode Knight is among the last Cubby Bear cartoons, released in the series' final year, when the studio was about to be taken over by Burt Gillett and turned toward colour. It is a sample of the New York studios' last black-and-white season before the Rainbow Parades, and of a star character who never caught on.
Notes and Trivia
- Cubby was first called Brownie, and the name was changed after a few films.
- Van Beuren settled Disney's lawsuit over Cubby's resemblance to Mickey by altering the character's ears.
- See also: Cubby's Picnic (1933), The Gay Gaucho (1933), Cubby's Stratosphere Flight (1934).