All posts tagged: Capra

Puppets of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Charles Dickens & Edgar Allan Poe Star in 1957 Frank Capra Educational Film

Puppets of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Charles Dickens & Edgar Allan Poe Star in 1957 Frank Capra Educational Film

Published by José

Pro­duced between 1956 and 1964 by AT&T, the Bell Tele­phone Sci­ence Hour TV spe­cials antic­i­pate the lit­er­ary zani­ness of The Mup­pet Show and the sci­en­tif­ic enthu­si­asm of Cos­mos. The “ship of the imag­i­na­tion” in Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Cos­mos reboot may in fact owe some­thing to the episode above, one of nine, direct­ed by none oth­er than It’s A Won­der­ful Life’s Frank Capra. “Strap on your wits and hop on your mag­ic car­pet,” begins the spe­cial, “You’ve got one, you know: Your imag­i­na­tion.” As a guide for our imag­i­na­tion, The Strange Case of the Cos­mic Rays enlists the humanities—specifically three pup­pets rep­re­sent­ing Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dick­ens, and, some­what incon­gru­ous­ly for its detec­tive theme, Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky, who plays the foil as an incu­ri­ous spoil­sport. The show’s host, Frank Bax­ter (“Dr. Research”) was actu­al­ly a pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at UCLA and appears here with Richard Carl­son, explain­ing sci­en­tif­ic con­cepts with con­fi­dence. The one-hour films became very pop­u­lar as tools of sci­ence edu­ca­tion, but there are good reasons—other than their dat­ed­ness or Dr. Baxter’s expertise—to approach them crit­i­cal­ly. At times, the degree of spec­u­la­tion indulged …

Private Snafu: The World War II Propaganda Cartoons Created by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel Blanc

Private Snafu: The World War II Propaganda Cartoons Created by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel Blanc

Published by José

Pri­vate Sna­fu was the U.S. Army’s worst sol­dier. He was slop­py, lazy and prone to shoot­ing off his mouth to Nazi agents. And he was huge­ly pop­u­lar with his fel­low GIs. Pri­vate Sna­fu was, of course, an ani­mat­ed car­toon char­ac­ter designed for the mil­i­tary recruits. He was an adorable dolt who sound­ed like Bugs Bun­ny and looked a bit like Elmer Fudd. And in every episode, he taught sol­diers what not to do, from blab­bing about troop move­ments to not tak­ing malar­ia med­ica­tion. The idea for the series report­ed­ly came from Frank Capra — the Oscar-win­ning direc­tor of It’s a Won­der­ful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Wash­ing­ton and, dur­ing WWII, the chair­man of the U.S. Army Air Force First Motion Pic­ture Unit. He want­ed to cre­ate a car­toon series for new recruits, many of whom were young, unworld­ly and in some cas­es illit­er­ate. Capra gave Dis­ney first shot at devel­op­ing the idea but Warn­er Bros’ Leon Schlesinger, a man who was as famous for his hard-dri­ving busi­ness acu­men as he was for wear­ing exces­sive …