Light Touch

Some of TV's best shows are the bright little animated-cartoon commercials that charm the viewer into yielding to Madison Avenue's "soft sell." The best of them, such as the Harry and Bert beer ads, come from Hollywood's UPA Pictures, Inc., whose booming output has not only rescued it from the theater slump but spawned branch studios in Manhattan and London. Last week, acting on the obvious conclusion, CBS began showing UPA's cartoon artistry strictly for its own entertaining sake. Aglow with ingenuity as radiant as its Technicolor, the Boing-Boing Show (Sun. 5:30 p.m., E.S.T.) became the first weekly all-cartoon revue to reach the home screen.

The half-hour show takes its name and its animated M.C. from the 1950 Oscar-winning cartoon, Gerald McBoing-Boing, a moppet who cannot speak words but emits "boi-i-i-n-n-g-g-s" and other sound effects. Still mute except for an occasional train whistle, drum roll or dynamite blast, M.C. Gerald devotes six minutes of each program to showing a UPA (United Productions of America) film already seen in theaters, the rest to new material. This week little Gerald ran off UPA's version of Ludwig Bemelmans' picture tale, Madeline, putting his twelve little Parisian schoolgirls into animation that catches not only the image but also the spirit of the original. Fresh from the drawing board came The Twelve Days of Christmas, an imaginatively designed illustration of the old song; Alouette, a gentle fable about a bird that blossoms only uncaged, and Freezeyum, the story of an ice-cream salesman with a weakness for changing the tune played by the bells on his truck.

Etiquette & Fables. The Boing-Boing Show probably makes the most artful use of color yet seen in television; the reason is that the palette is in the hands of artists. Even though it loses much as black-and-white viewing, the show's appeal is unique in current programing. Its light comic touch, in both content and style, keeps the most fragile whimsy aloft and should start adults elbowing children for space in front of the set. In fact, its one flaw may be that in reaching adults it loses the younger of the young set.

UPA's technique of cartooning takes especially well to TV. The artists tackle any and all subjects with simple, stylized line drawings, airy design, and a sense of caricature that shows up in backgrounds and movements as well as in the characters. The very simplicity of the technique puts a high premium on the cartoonist's imagination, but makes the cartoon better suited to the small TV screen.

One Thing Lacking. CBS thought well enough of the prospects to buy 25% of UPA's stock for about $1,000,000 and to order a 26-show series for the current season. The network also has an option to keep the series going for seven years beyond that. In future weeks Gerald will preside over the same lively blend of the whimsical and the wacky. There will be cartoons on such artists and inventors as Henri Rousseau, Robert Fulton and Samuel F.B. Morse: the adventures of Dusty, a circus boy; comic versions of famous historic moments (Nero Fiddles, The Trojan Horse); etiquette lessons by a well-meaning but maladroit fop named Mr. Charmley.

The show is a treat far costlier than its makers originally estimated; the rising cost of the laborious animating process pushed the price of the average half-hour to $60,000, more than that of some top-flight variety show's with expensive live performers. Mainly for this reason, UPA was placed in a strange position for a cartoon company that holds the best possible credentials from TV advertisers. It still lacks the one thing to make its new show complete: a sponsor.

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