Sidney's Family Tree is a 1958 animated short film (six minutes) by the Terrytoons studio, directed by Art Bartch, supervising direction by Gene Deitch.
It stars Sidney the Elephant, one of the running characters invented by Deitch when he took over the studio after Paul Terry retired. Sidney, the perpetually nervous, jittery elephant, is feeling down in the dumps in this one because his parents ran off and joined a circus. Despite the fact that he is 44 years old, Sidney goes off in search of a mom. A hippo and a giraffe laugh him off, but when he finds a female monkey without a child, he's adopted...much to the displeasure of his new adoptive father.
Tropes:
- Coconut Meets Cranium: Sidney tries to help his new dad by shaking the coconuts out of a tree. This could have worked, but Sidney gets overenthusiastic and winds up dumping all the coconuts on Pa Monkey's head.
- Happily Adopted: As far as Sidney and his mother are concerned. His father wouldn't agree.
- Hope Spot: When Sidney gets distracted by a female elephant named Hortense, his father is delighted, thinking that Sidney will finally be gone for good. Then Sidney and Hortense both move into the tree. The branch breaks off from their weight and the four crash to the ground.
- Limited Animation: Done in the then-fashionable UPA style of simple drawings against casually sketched backgrounds, as opposed to the more detailed animation that Terrytoons had typically done before Deitch's arrival.
- Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Sidney is colored blue as usual. When he gets a girlfriend in the person of Hortense, she's colored pink.
- Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Both Hortense and Ma Monkey have the typical long eyelashes that are code for "female".
- Thick-Line Animation: Drawn with thick lines as part of the whole Limited Animation vibe.
- Vine Swing: Pa Monkey does this, thinking that he will surely lose Sidney. But to his horror, Sidney does manage to swing on the vine, eventually crashing into Pa and the tree with all his bulk.
