Studio: Ub Iwerks Studio (ComiColor Cartoons)
Distributor: Celebrity Productions
Produced by: Ub Iwerks
Short Synopsis
A childless couple wish for a son even if he is no bigger than a thumb, and get one. Tom Thumb is born full-grown and thumb-sized, and the film follows his adventures at that scale: he is lost in the kitchen among utensils that tower over him, falls into the batter and is nearly baked into a pudding, is swallowed by a cow when he hides in the hay and has to shout his way out, and is carried off by a bird. Each escape is a matter of wit, since he has no strength to speak of. He comes home at last, is welcomed by his parents, and the film ends with the tiny hero safe on the table, no bigger than before but a good deal wiser. Documentation is thin, a stub on Wikipedia and little else, and the synopsis follows the folk tale as the cartoon retells it.
Why It Matters
- The tale is a gift to an animator, since a thumb-sized hero makes every kitchen object a landscape, and the Iwerks studio plays the scale gags for all they are worth, with the cow's interior a particular set piece; it is one of the last ComiColors with Carl Stalling's music, before he left for Warner Bros.
- The film is in the public domain in the United States, its copyright never renewed, and it circulates in public-domain fairy-tale collections; it belongs to the ComiColor series' final year, when the studio's money was running short and the fairy-tale formula was being stretched to its end.
Notes and Trivia
- George Pal filmed the tale at feature length, with Russ Tamblyn, in 1958.
- The Iwerks studio closed its doors in 1936 after Pat Powers withdrew his backing.
- See also: Ali Baba (1936), Little Boy Blue (1936), Happy Days (1936).
