Studio: Van Beuren Studios (Rainbow Parade)
Distributor: RKO Radio Pictures; reissued by Borden in 1940
Produced by: Amadee J. Van Beuren
Short Synopsis
Five cheerful gnomes in red come out of their houses singing a hymn to the sun and march up a hill, where they bottle sunlight into a kind of milk. One of them drives a cart pulled by a cricket to deliver the bottles. A grumpy goblin in blue, with a top hat and a bow, shoots the gnome's hat off; the gnome throws a bottle, and the goblin, hit with sunshine, flees to his swamp, where his fellow goblins sing their anthem, "We're happy when we're sad, we're always feeling bad." The two tribes go to war, the goblins with sprayers of gloom, the gnomes with their bottled sunshine, and the sunshine wins: every goblin hit by it turns bright, dances and smiles against his will, until the whole swamp is converted and the goblins join the song.
Why It Matters
- It is the best of the Rainbow Parades and the one everyone has seen: the gnomes' march, the goblins' gloomy chorus and the conversion of the swamp are drawn in bright, flat Cinecolor with a design sense the Van Beuren studio had never shown before, and the joke of the goblins forcibly made happy has a strange edge. Winston Sharples's songs are genuinely catchy.
- The film became famous twice, first in cinemas and then in 1940 as an advertising short for Borden's milk, with the sunshine bottles standing for the product, and because it was never renewed it has been on television, in compilations and online for seventy years; it is probably the most-seen Van Beuren cartoon. It is in the public domain.
Notes and Trivia
- Gus Wickie, the goblins' bass voice, was the voice of Bluto in the Fleischer Popeye cartoons at the same time.
- Jack Zander and Bill Littlejohn, among the uncredited animators, went on to MGM and to the founding of the animators' union.
- See also: Pastry Town Wedding (1934), Parrotville Fire Department (1934), Funny Little Bunnies (1934).