Peace On Earth and Good Will To Men UPDATE

[captain_slinky]

Yes, I'm obsessed. There, I admitted it. Now...

Jeff Lenburg, in 'The Great Cartoon Directors', writes:

Late in 1954, Bill (Hannah) and Joe (Barbera) got permission from Fred Quimby to produce a serious cartoon, one that would "leave audiences thinking," Barbera said. Good Will To Men, released in 1955, was a chilling story told by animals about the destruction of the human race by the H-bomb. "No pun intended," Bill says, "It was a real bomb." The cartoon was actually a remake of Hugh Harman's award-winning MGM film, Peace on Earth, which won several honors, including a Parents' Magazine medal. Hanna and Barbera's effort was animated almost scene for scene like Peace on Earth but the actual story was much different. Bill and Joe were hoping this Cinemascope cartoon would make a statement that would stick in everybody's minds. The film was effective, but not effective enough, says Hanna.

While not actually ANSWERING any of my questions, this DID give me new layers of questions that are easy to *speculatively* answer, but nothing factual.

The Parents' Magazine Medal they speak of could be the origin of the Nobel Peace Prize rumors? Sounds like the type of misheard/misreported information that could easily spread in the 1930's.

The best lead I have here, though, is that it was Bill and Joe's idea to make this cartoon. Not a "Suit". Nobody in Marketing came to the boys and said "What we need is an Oscar-Winner, but we want it *cheap*". Was it really HB who also decided to force-feed the simple revelations to the audience in the remake?

Comments

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

The style used on Good Will To Men is most assuredly HB as produced by Fred Quimby. The characters are practically lifted directly from Tom & Jerry model sheets! It's from the time early enough in Hannah Barbera's careers that they still really cared about fluid motion and dynamic action in their animation instead of the "Talking Heads & Recycled Backgrounds" style there were ultimately famous for.

So there's the story of the actual Animation and the how/why... Bill & Joe wanting to be artsy, still working for Fred so they choose his artsiest cartoon to pay homage before Fred retires.

NOW I'm on the hunt for the writer, and for who made the changes to the script. Who changed it from a story about Critters developing Religion without knowing that it's Religion, in to a story about Christianity saving the Critters from a fatge similar to that of Man?

Most of my internal "Hunch" fingers are pointing towards The Billy Graham Crusades which were HUGE at that time, but I can't find a direct connection... yet.