When I was like five or six, we (meaning me, my folks, and Grandma) went to visit my Aunt Nettie for a week. She had three girls who were more or less my age, give or take, and we’d watch cartoons together in the morning.
There was a series I’d never seen before that was folk and fairy tales broken into episodes (with things like Popeye or Harveytoons in between). I seem to remember them as very nicely done, as good as Disney or Warner Bros --one was a sad and stately version of Beauty And The Beast, and one which the faint memory of has been working on my mind the last couple of weeks. It was about a young man and his pet bull or ox or water buffalo or cariboo and their adventurous conflict with a pair of ogres who looked like giant ugly cavemen. One ogre was a lot bigger than the other, I think, and very mean to him. I think it might’ve had a sad or bittersweet ending with the big bovine dying heroically – but maybe not. We went hoe before the end of the story and i never did find out what became of the brave boy, his hoofed and horned amigo, and the two ogres.
It’s something I have wondered about ever since.
Poking around online, I found out that such a cartoon, titled either *Tiny Oxen *or Omar And The Ogres, did indeed exist. It was produced early in the 1960s by a company with the generic sounding name, Cartoon Classics – and that’s the extent of what I can find. They haven’t been shared online, or sold as videos (at least Ihaven’t found them, not even a synopsis of the story that would tell me how it all turned out.
Thus I cast myself to the mercy of the mavens here at Cafe Society. Is anyone out there aware of the cartoon series I’m talking about, and either remember how the story went or know how/where I could maybe view a copy of it myself? I’d also love to see the *Beauty And The Beast *one again, too.
It looks like it was released on VHS back in 2001, so if you hunt around on the internet, I bet you can snag one eventually if you really want one (leave it as a search on eBay, eh).
ETA: The stories are originally by Rudyard Kipling and are likely available for free thru Gutenberg Press.
I believe you’re referring to “Tales of the Brothers Grimm” (I think that was the title), a Russian (Soviet) series that was marketed internationally. They were produced by Gorky Studios in Moscow, which is known for many other cartoons (e.g., “Grandfather Frost and the Snow Maiden”). Despite the title “Brothers Grimm,” I think they were actually more Russian fairy tales than Danish or German.
I remember watching these in the afternoon on WGN the summers I spent as a kid in Joliet, IL. They were featured on The Garfield Goose Show, as I recall.
I say “Danish or German” because I think one of the stories was “The Little Mermaid” (*Rusalka *in Russian), which is from Hans Christian Andersen, not the Brothers Grimm.
It would be real nice if things were actually that simple and straightforward, but they’re not. I already tried that route, and the Fucknugget site your link goes to is screwed up and useless. I signed up, joined up, registered, created a free account – but no matter how many times I tried to watch the content I kept getting sent back to the page demanding i register with Fucknugget before I could watch. So much for German efficiency and competence.
Been doing that already ,to no avail. That’s why I asked for help.
Again, there’s a discrepancy between what you’re quoting to me and the reality of the situation. I already checked out that connection, consulted a list of Kipling’s works for young people, and found he hadn’t written any such story; or at least if he did it’s not available online or indeed credited to him anywhere except wrt the cartoon in question. Believe me, I tried every lead that presented itself before I bothered you people.
It sounds like Forever Fairytales (some of which I’ve seen) and yes, they were Russian-animated fairy tales dubbed into English. I think they came from the Soyuzmultfilm animation studio, which was the Soviet Union’s answer to Disney. They were dubbed into English sometime in the fifties or sixties and shown on TV under the Forever Fairytales name as part of certain kids’ shows. (In the original versions, many had songs, but the Forever Fairytales dubs took them out.) If it’s what I’m thinking of, the version of Beauty and the Beast was called The Scarlet Flower in its Russian version.
Soyuzmultfilm also brought us the 1957 animated version of The Snow Queen, which was dubbed into English by Sandra Dee, Tommy Kirk, Paul Frees, and others, with an intro by Art Linkletter. They ran that on TV a couple times when I was a kid.
The interesting thing is that these same fairy tales were dubbed into English AGAIN, with fairly big-name actors, for a series that Mikhail Baryshnikov produced called Stories From My Childhood. (This also included a new dub of The Snow Queen. That’s how I found out about Russian animation–I stumbled across this series on PBS one Christmas day, recognized The Snow Queen, looked up Soyuzmultfilm and found out about the earlier dubs.) It was pretty cool, but to me, the newness of the voiceovers and the new music soundtracks seemed to contrast too much with the old style of the animation.
I believe you’re referring to “Tales of the Brothers Grimm” (I think that was the title), a Russian (Soviet) series that was marketed internationally. They were produced by Gorky Studios in Moscow, which is known for many other cartoons (e.g., “Grandfather Frost and the Snow Maiden”). Despite the title “Brothers Grimm,” I think they were actually more Russian fairy tales than Danish or German.
I remember watching these in the afternoon on WGN the summers I spent as a kid in Joliet, IL. They were featured on The Garfield Goose Show, as I recall.
Here’s an example of a Gorky cartoon:
[/QUOTE]
I'd love to get a look at those. They were presented as serials, of course, due to their length. This seems to be one of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=206KOLJ8Txg I remember the (redubbed) pillars chanting at the end, "Goodbye, Cesar. Goodbye, Cesar."
I also vaguely remember “The Tinder Box” and “The Firebird”. The latter did not use Stravinsky’s music.
Might’ve been both. I do believe Soyuzmultfilm was responsible for most of the Disney-like, fairy-tale animation (there were several different styles from what I’ve seen so far–some more stylized, and others much more realistic as far as human figures go).
Hmm. Seems like you should have provided some more details in the OP then, to prevent people from posting things you’ve already eliminated. You don’t seem too grateful for the effort, so I’ll stop making one.
The one I remember really well is called Zolotaya ryba (“The Goldfish”) in Russian. I think the English title was “The Old Fisherman,” or something like that. I remember it because the old man’s wife had only one tooth in her mouth, and a cart was missing a rear wheel in one scene (by accident, not by design).
I think so, yeah! The animation’s sumptuous and I do believe I remember that one brief glance at the Beast which showed the long curly arms and slopey shoulders. Thanks for the lead, Hermione.
