Movies - Flip the Frog

Home > Listing Index > Movies > Flip the Frog

	Movies - Flip the Frog

Flip the Frog is an animated cartoon character created by American cartoonist, Ub Iwerks. He who starred in a series of cartoons produced by Celebrity Pictures and distributed through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1930 to 1933. Aside from Flip, the series also had many recurring characters including Flip's dog, the mule Orace, and a dizzy neighborhood spinster.

History

Flip's origins are said to have been rooted in the Silly Symphony cartoon, Night. The short was animated by Ub Iwerks while working for his colleague and friend Walt Disney in 1930. After a series of disputes between the two, Iwerks left Disney and went on to accept an offer from Pat Powers to open a cartoon studio of his own and receive a salary of $300 a week, an offer Disney at the time, couldn't match. Iwerks was to produce new cartoons under Powers' Celebrity Pictures and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The first series he was to produce was to feature a character called Tony the Frog, but Iwerks disliked the name and it was subsequently changed to Flip.

Flip's debut short was Fiddlesticks (released on August 16, 1930). Although the short looks to be very much like one of Iwerks' Silly Symphoney endeavors, it attracted public attention by being the first full-length color sound cartoon ever produced. The short was produced in two-color Technicolor and is the only Flip cartoon known have been processed in color. However, some evidence points to the second Flip short, Flying Fists to have been produced in Technicolor as well and some have speculated that the later Techno-Cracked (1933) may have been photographed in Cinecolor. The Cinecolor process was a new two-strip color process came out in 1932 and was considered superior to the two-strip Technicolor process. Iwerks would go on to make extensive use of this process with his ComiColor Cartoon series.

Iwerks studio quickly began accumulating new talent such as animators Fred Kopietz, Irv Spence, Grim Natwick, and Chuck Jones (who worked at the Iwerks studio as a cel-washer before going on to inbetweening and then animating at the Leon Schlesinger studio). After the first two cartoons, the appearance of Flip the Frog gradually became less frog-like. This was done under the encouragement of MGM who thought that the series would sell better if the character were more humanized. Flip's major redesign is attributed to Grim Natwick who made a name for himself at the Fleischer Studios with the creation of Betty Boop. Natwick also had a hand to changing Flip's girlfriend. In earlier films, she was consistently a cat. Natwick, however, changed that. Flip's new girlfriend, Fifi was now a human who shared distinct similarities with Betty (even down to her spit curls).

The frog's personality also began to develop. As the series progressed, Flip became more of a down-and-out, Chaplin-esque character who always found himself in everyday conflicts surrounding the poverty-stricken atmosphere of the Great Depression. Due to the influx of New York City animators to Iwerks' studio, such as Natwick, the shorts became increasingly risqué. In Room Runners (1932), Flip, out of cash and luck, attempts to sneak out of his hotel in order to avoid paying his past-due rent. One of several gags has Flip watching a girl taking a shower through a keyhole in the door. In The Office Boy, released the same year, Flip tries to secure a low-level office job and meets a shapely secretary. At one point in the short, a mischievous mouse which Flip tries to apprehend scoots up the secretary's skirt! In A Chinaman's Chance (1933), Flip and his dog track down the notorious Chinese criminial, Chow Mein. While investigating in a Chinese laundry, Flip stumbles into an opium den, inhales the stuff via opium pipe, and begins hallucinating.

The character eventually wore out his welcome at MGM. His final short was Soda Squirt, released on October 12, 1933. Subsequently, Iwerks replaced the series with a new one starring an imaginative liar named Willie Whopper. Flip became largely forgotten by the public in the coming years. However, the character would make a small comeback when animation enthusiasts and historians began digging up the old Iwerks shorts. Most of the Flip cartoons are now available on DVD, in particular, on the Cartoons That Time Forgot series.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Flip the Frog ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Flip the Frog; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Movies - Flip the Frog

History

Searches on eBay

Related searches on eBay