There were a trio of capitalist-friendly cartoons Warner Bros. produced with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation- By Word of Mouse, which featured a mouse commenting on economics, Heir Conditioned, which featured Elmer Fudd teaching Sylvester to invest his inheritance in business, and the one I remember the most, Yankee Dood It, a play on the Shoemaker and the Elves story in which Elmer Fudd teaches a shoemaker to put his money into improvements for his factory while Sylvester attempts to get the shoemaker to say “Jehosaphat” so Elmer will turn into a mouse. It’s as bizarre as it sounds.
Two pages and nobody’s mentioned Owl Jolson?
“I love to singa, about the moon-a, and the June-a, and the springa … .”
Those cartoons were so different than the usual Looney Tune/Merrie Melodie fare that I wondered if they weren’t sponsored by some outside source. Now, I know who it was: the foundation started by the President and CEO of General Motors.
Anyway, if I may draw this thread a little more off-topic, were those cartoons aimed more for kids than adults (like Disney’s “Donald in Mathmagic Land”)? When I was 8-years old, I found those cartoons incredibly boring because they mostly consisted of an illustrated lecture on some principle of the “dismal science” with maybe one minute gags at the beginning and end. I wonder if Disney would’ve done a better job introducing kids to the world of economics?
I don’t think it was ever aimed at 8 yos when it was written/produced. Certainly as a young teen I found them fairly clear, and interesting. Of course I’m the sort who will watch science and history shows on TV for pleasure, so I can’t claim my experience was representative.
I also wonder how these were released: Were they sent to schools, placed as teaser features like most WB cartoons, or some other method?
I believe the Sloan cartoons were considered regular Warner Bros. cartoons: there is no mention of the Sloan Foundation in the credits, IIRC, Beck and Friedwald list them in the main part of their WB cartoon book (and also make a joke about if there were cartoons in Russia about communism starring Comrade Cat and Bolshevik Bunny), and they were part of the WB syndication package (I saw Yankee Dood It on Nickelodeon a lot as a kid). However, it is true that Warners produced a few cartoons for the U.S. government that were not part of the standard cartoon package which are listed in the back of the Beck-Friedwald book, a good number of these which appear as special features on Warner’s Golden Collection DVDs. These featured cartoonish-realistic depictions of human beings (sort of how humans were drawn in most WB cartoons), not the familiar Warner characters- although two U.S. Army cartoons by Chuck Jones involved a civilian named Ralph Phillips, possibly a young adult version of Jones’s kid character of the same name. The “Private Snafu” cartoons done during WWII would probably fall into this category, too, although they were more filled with humor than facts- but did teach soliders, basically, don’t do what Snafu does.
Thank you Pochacco! I had totally forgotten that cartoon but remembered it the minute it started. I think a lot of the Warners parodies of celebrities of the time were wonderful.