Studio: Van Beuren Studios (Rainbow Parade)
Distributor: RKO Radio Pictures
Short Synopsis
In a town made entirely of pastry, where the houses are cakes, the streets are iced and the citizens are gingerbread and sugar figures, a bride and groom are to be married. The pastry chefs prepare the feast, the whole town turns out for the ceremony, and the wedding becomes a musical procession of cakes, tarts and candies, with the cutting of the wedding cake as its climax. The film has no villain and little plot; it is a confectionery pageant in two-colour Cinecolor, the first colour cartoon the Van Beuren studio made and the first of its Rainbow Parade series. It was later reissued as an advertising film for Cushman's bakery, with new scenes and a remade wedding, which is the version most often seen today; the original has less commerce and the same cake.
Why It Matters
- Colour is the point: Van Beuren could not get Disney's exclusive three-strip Technicolor, so the first Rainbow Parades used Cinecolor's two colours, red-orange and blue-green, and a town of pastel pastries was chosen to make the most of a limited palette. Ted Eshbaugh, who had made the first colour cartoon tests in 1930, co-directed.
- The film marks the arrival of Burt Gillett at Van Beuren. Gillett had directed Three Little Pigs for Disney and was hired away in 1934 with a free hand to remake the studio in Disney's image; he scrapped Cubby Bear and the Fables and launched the Rainbow Parades, 26 colour cartoons in two years. The experiment produced some charming films and bankrupted the studio by 1936.
Notes and Trivia
- The Cushman's reissue added scenes of the bakery's delivery vans and a new title; it circulates widely, and no renewal was filed for it in the Catalog of Copyright Entries for 1960-63, so it is in the US public domain.
- Gillett's temper and firings at Van Beuren became an industry legend.
- See also: Parrotville Fire Department (1934), Fiddlin' Fun (1934), Three Little Pigs (1933).