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8Of all the classic theatrical animated cartoons, those released by Creator/ColumbiaPictures during UsefulNotes/TheSilentAgeOfAnimation and UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfAnimation are perhaps the most overlooked by the general public today. This is unfortunate because some of the most significant endeavors in the medium's history emerged from the collective works of Charles Mintz, Screen Gems and UPA. It is difficult, for example, for one to think of the history of animation without films like "The Little Match Girl", "The Fox and the Grapes", "WesternAnimation/GeraldMcBoingBoing" or "WesternAnimation/RootyTootToot" that, in so many ways, redefined what a cartoon was. The only short they did that's still somewhat famous today is their adaptation of Creator/EdgarAllanPoe's ''The Tell-Tale Heart'', which is often played in schools.
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10While the history of Columbia's animation output is marked by hits and misses, experimentation is a constant. It was the early Charles Mintz/Screen Gems studio that produced some of the most groundbreaking cartoons of the 1930s, outside the [[WesternAnimation/ClassicDisneyShorts Disney]] and Creator/FleischerStudios. Initially formed via the absorption of Ben Harrison and Manny Gould's smaller studio (producing a series of shorts based on ''ComicStrip/KrazyKat'' for Columbia), Mintz subsequently expanded his staff by hiring Fleischer veterans Dick Huemer, Art Davis and Sid Marcus. Following an unsuccessful series of shorts centering on the anthropomorphic dog Toby the Pup, Huemer created Scrappy, a BrattyHalfPint inhabiting a world of exaggerated, abstract designs and bizarre characters. Possibly owing to its unique aesthetics, the Scrappy series, while mostly forgotten in the present day, became an overnight success with a popularity surpassed only by Mickey Mouse. Scrappy's success did not, however, subsume the Krazy Kat series, which continued in a form [[InNameOnly increasingly diverging from Herriman's strip]].
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12By the late 1930s, however, things began to change. Huemer had long-since departed, Scrappy and the long-running Krazy Kat series were both fading in popularity, Disney's "Snow White" appeared in theaters, and a newer, zanier approach to animation was being developed at Warner Bros. Then, in 1939, Mintz became indebted to Columbia and lost his studio to them, and died by the end of the year.
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14Following the death of Mintz, his production manager, Jimmy Bronis, became his successor. After Bronis came Mintz's brother-in-law, George Winkler. Meanwhile, the studio was scrambling for a new star, as Scrappy was being phased out around this time. Later, Columbia got rid of Winkler and brought in former Disney storyman and Warner Bros. cartoon director, Creator/FrankTashlin. Under Tashlin, the studio experienced a considerable talent boom. Many of the studio staffers were former Disney employees, fresh off the picket line from the 1941 strike at that studio, leaving Tashlin with a lineup of talent including John Hubley, Zack Schwartz, Emery Hawkins, [[WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry Ray Patterson]], Phil Duncan and [[WesternAnimation/TexAveryMGMCartoons Louie Schmitt]]. The drive to experiment and employ new, innovative ideas was strong and led to the emergence of a handful of highly-stylized cartoons as well as the successful ''WesternAnimation/TheFoxAndTheCrow'' series, pitting a refined, sophisticated Fox against a chiseling, street-wise Crow. Unfortunately, Tashlin's stay was short-lived and he was replaced by Dave Fleischer. Fleischer too would depart and his other successors would make little impact on the studio. The quality of the cartoons, meanwhile, began to deteriorate and finally, in 1946, Screen Gems closed. However, they had produced enough cartoons to be released through 1949.
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16The void left by the closure of Screen Gems was filled by "United Productions of America" or UPA. This occurred when Steve Bosustow and his creative staff, including many alumni of Tashlin's avant-garde ensemble at Screen Gems, approached the studio. In 1948, Columbia tentatively agreed to distribute UPA's theatrical shorts, a decision that would quickly prove to be the studio's wisest, animation-wise. Throughout the late 1940s and the 1950s, UPA would earn several Academy Awards and nominations for the fruits of their efforts. In the process, they brought to the screen such endearing characters as the nearsighted WesternAnimation/MrMagoo (voiced by Jim Backus) and WesternAnimation/GeraldMcBoingBoing. In 1959, however, UPA ceased production of theatrical cartoon shorts and Bosustow ended up selling the studio to Henry G. Saperstein. After a short-lived deal in the 1960's to distribute theatrical shorts by Creator/HannaBarbera, which was mostly involved in television, the era of classic animation at Columbia came to a close in 1967.
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18Two new DVD sets, containing the UPA oneshots and WesternAnimation/MrMagoo theatrical shorts. were eventually released; "UPA Jolly Frolics Collection" is now available exclusively on the Creator/TurnerClassicMovies online shop [[http://shop.tcm.com/upa-jolly-frolics-dvd/detail.php?p=364906 here]], and a definitive history of the studio was compiled into a book in 2012.
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20The Screen Gems name would later be reused by Columbia in several fields- it was the name of their TV production firm from 1948 to 1974; their 1965 logo became infamously known as the "S from Hell". Columbia revived the name again in 1999 for genre films and continues in that capacity. The studio itself would later receive several successor firms, including Adelaide Productions (which mainly handled 2D animated series, often based around Columbia and Creator/TriStarPictures movies), and Creator/SonyPicturesAnimation, which mainly makes 3D animated movies.
21----
22!!Notable Columbia Cartoons:
23[[index]]
24* Color Rhapsody (1934-1949): Screen Gems.
25** "WesternAnimation/HolidayLand" (1934)
26** "WesternAnimation/{{The Little Match Girl|1937}}" (1937)
27** "WesternAnimation/{{Imagination}}" (1943): Produced by [[Creator/MaxAndDaveFleischer Dave Fleischer]].
28** "WesternAnimation/DogCatAndCanary" (1945)
29* "WesternAnimation/HowWarCame" (1941): Current-events animation about the start of World War II featuring Creator/MelBlanc as Hitler.
30* WesternAnimation/TheFoxAndTheCrow (1941-1950): Screen Gems, taken over by UPA when Screen Gems closed in 1946.
31** "WesternAnimation/RobinHoodlum" (1948): First ever theatrical feature by UPA.
32** "WesternAnimation/TheMagicFluke" (1949): Second of three Fox and Crow shorts by UPA before the series was discontinued.
33* WesternAnimation/MrMagoo (1949-1959). UPA.
34** "WesternAnimation/TroubleIndemnity" (1950)
35** "WesternAnimation/WhenMagooFlew" (1955)
36** "WesternAnimation/MagoosPuddleJumper" (1956)
37* "WesternAnimation/GeraldMcBoingBoing" (1950) UPA.
38* "WesternAnimation/RootyTootToot" (1951) UPA.
39* "WesternAnimation/{{Madeline|1952}}" (1952) UPA.
40* "WesternAnimation/ChristopherCrumpet'' (1953) UPA.
41* "Literature/TheTellTaleHeart" (1953) UPA.
42* ''Frosty the Snowman'' (1953) UPA.
43* "WesternAnimation/GeraldMcBoingBoingOnPlanetMoo" (1956) UPA.
44* "WesternAnimation/TheJaywalker" (1956) UPA.
45* "WesternAnimation/TreesAndJamaicaDaddy" (1957) UPA.
46[[/index]]
47----
48!!Tropes:
49* AnimationBump: The studio overall had a big bump after Tashlin took over, due to the influx of Disney-trained animators, then again when Columbia began releasing the UPA films.
50* BittersweetEnding: "The Little Match Girl" ends with the girl freezing to death in the street, but her soul is carried off to Heaven by an angel.
51* {{Bowdlerize}}: The Totally Tooned In! version of "The Little Match Girl" completely removed the entire sequence where [[spoiler:the girl's dream falls apart and she freezes to death on-screen]], completely ruining the story's tragic emotional impact.
52* BreakoutCharacter:
53** Mr. Magoo obviously is the best known character. Had many different shows and a live action film and plenty other media and merchandise.
54** The Fox and the Crow became Screen Gems' most popular characters, so much that they had spin off their own shorts, had a very notable comic book series and even exist in the DC multiverse. They were also intended to appear in ''Film/WhoFramedRogerRabbit'' before they were cut.
55** Although he only has 4 shorts, Gerald Mc-Boing Boing became one of the best known characters from Columbia, and had his own compilation series and an actual show in 2005.
56* FurriesAreEasierToDraw: The UPA films are a major aversion. The UPA animators felt that FunnyAnimal characters were too cliché, and chose to use humans instead. They worked around this by making the humans as simplistic as possible, so they would both be easy to animate and avoid falling into the UnintentionalUncannyValley. [[invoked]]
57* HatOfPower: "Willoughby's Magic Hat" is about a meek little guy who acquires a cap woven from Samson's hair, giving him the Biblical hero's legendary SuperStrength.
58* InNameOnly: Their cartoon adaptations of Krazy Kat (at least during the 1930s) have absolutely nothing in common with George Herriman's classic comic strip, turning the title character from an elfin, innocent, ambiguously-gendered creature into a shameless WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse copycat with a [[DistaffCounterpart lookalike girlfriend]] in the vein of Minnie; the signature brick gags, bizarre desert settings and the entire remainder of Herriman's cast (including co-protagonist Ignatz) were likewise unceremoniously dropped. The sole exception is a 1936 short "Lil Anjil", which, at the insistence of storyman Izzy Klein, at least tried to capture the art direction and basic plot elements of the comic, alongside prominently featuring Ignatz and Offisa Pupp and depicting the Kat as potentially-female.
59* LimitedAnimation: Not just UPA, which was one of the {{Trope Maker}}s, but some of the cartoons of the Tashlin regime experimented with stylized designs. Not surprising, since most of the Tashlin animators later went on to help found UPA. [[Literature/TheTellTaleHeart The Tell-Tale Heart]] adaptation takes this to the level of having almost ''no animation at all''.
60* LorreLookalike: The ''Color Rhapsodies'' MissingEpisode "Cockatoos for Two" features one as the antagonist, who conspires to cook and eat the title bird.
61* {{Minimalism}}: UPA championed a minimalist apporach to animation. Every element of production - design, color, setting, movement - was boiled down to the bare essentials.
62* {{Remake}}: Creator/UbIwerks did a semi-remake of his earlier Disney work "WesternAnimation/TheSkeletonDance", called "Skeleton Frolic", for Columbia's "Color Rhapsodies" series.
63* WhamEpisode: "The Little Match Girl" is a very distinctive short of the Mintz era cartoons; it adapts the Creator/HansChristianAndersen [[Literature/TheLittleMatchGirl story]] and plays it completely straight, with all that entails, with no gags or usual musical romps of his shorts.
64** Even within UPA's remarkably diverse output, their adaptation of Creator/EdgarAllanPoe's ''Literature/TheTellTaleHeart'' stands out.
65* WormInAnApple: In the short "Crop Chasers", a murder of crows steal all of the crops a farmer has. The only resistance comes from a worm that protects its apple by means of a BlindingCameraFlash. He gets overwhelmed when the crows steal the whole apple tree.

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