Tracking Another Cartoon Obscurity

What Looks Like a Tire with Hubcap in The Water Is Actually
Early Go at a Raindrop By Effects Innovator Cy Young

Jingles (1931-2) Offers Early Color and Animated Effects

Another cartoon lost, then found. This one's so obscure, there's even debate as to its title. So why bother? Well, reason one might be Walt Disney's close inspect of this early 30's animated reel meant to boost the "Brewstercolor" process, limited to two essential hues and effort to simulate others (Disney kept an eagle eye on rival cartoons). But color wasn't what intrigued Walt about Jingles, or Mendelssohn's Spring Song, as it would become better known. What he went for was effects work with raindrops, blooming flowers, other captures of nature by Cy Young, a Chinese artist said to have pioneered cartoons in his native country before emigrating to the US. Young gave life to inanimate objects and made flora, fauna breathe in ways Disney liked and wanted to co-op for his own Silly Symphony group. He'd hire Young on basis of Jingles and put him to effects work on shorts, then ambitious features Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia ... wherever fires licked or floods came, you could be assured Cy Young was back of the magic.

I read of Young's productive, and ultimately tragic, life/career in an outstanding chapter of  just-published Walt's People: Volume 15, another from editor Didier Ghez's sterling series made up of interviews with past Disney staff. Steven Hartley wrote the piece, a beautiful job of research and insight (he has a webpage as well, devoted to WB cartoons). Here is where I learned of Jingles, and was guided yet again to newest of Thunderbean's treasure groups, Technicolor Dreams and Black-and-White Nightmares, where the short is part of a Blu-Ray line-up. It's a color print, the lone survivor as rescued by historian Steve Stanchfield from a private collection. Like previously covered Goofy Goat by Ted Eshbaugh, Jingles floated for years as black-and-white only, one of those cartoon oddities no one could quite figure origin of. The only theatre playdate I found was May 1932 at Manhattan's Little Carnegie Playhouse. Otherwise, it seemed a goner other than 16mm monochrome for later TV or sale as home movies. Jingles' inclusion on Technicolor Dreams and Black-and-White Nightmares is another reason to relish this Blu-Ray collection of rarities, and opportunity to glimpse a Disney artist at career beginning.