Classic Cartoon: SAMETKA (1967, a.k.a. CATERPILLAR)

 

 A rosy-cheeked young boy with a pet caterpillar, who dances to the catchy music from the kid's harmonica, is discovered on the city sidewalk by a kindly entrepreneur, who is taking a stroll. Amazed by the charming performance of this unlikely duo, the businessman immediately convinces the boy to sign an exclusive contract. Almost immediately, the dancing caterpillar becomes a global success, and his popular likeness is mass-marketed to an eager public. 








 

The showbiz trio go on a worldwide concert tour, and even pay a visit to the moon. All goes well, and the boy prepares to shower his larval friend with a plethora of miniature gifts on Christmas Eve, only to find that his little pal has suddenly disappeared. As they frantically search for the caterpillar, it begins to dawn on the boy (and his partner/manager), that perhaps this train of fame, fortune and (assumed) lifelong friendship between boy and bug is about to come to a sad end...

Sametka, released in 1967, is based on an original story by Lucille Fletcher* (see update at the bottom of this article), adapted by eminent author, poet, screenwriter and radio storyteller, Norman Corwin, previously filmed as the Cary Grant feature, Once Upon a Time (1944). In that version, the caterpillar is never shown (it is always either in its box, or is reacted to, off-camera), its act left to the viewer's imagination. Cary Grant plays the entrepreneur/manager as a slick, fast-talking character; almost a scam artist.

In Sametka, the man is a more gentle, kindly sort. While he does basically bribe the kid into signing the contract, and enjoys the fruits of the caterpillar's fame, other than setting the duo up to approve a mass of merchandising licenses, he doesn't come across as particularly greedy or controlling. In fact, he acts more like a caring friend and substitute parental figure, as we are left to assume that the boy is an orphan and otherwise lives on the streets.

Double the length of a traditional Hollywood cartoon short, it fleshes out its simple story nicely, without padding it. It's also an example of "pure cinema", in that no intelligible dialogue is used, nor is necessary, so can be easily understood, regardless of age or nationality. The film aims to be a mild, genial satire of consumerism and the trappings of fame, but doesn't show the world suffering or learning a lesson from the onslaught of caterpillar-mania. Instead, it's about the boy learning a bit about how life can sometimes be about loss, and inevitable change.

It's not quite as serious and downbeat as that might sound, however. While not fall-down hilarious, it has some gentle, visual wit. A typical gag is when our enterprising trio, on their world tour, disembark from their airliner, to a throng of screaming fans waiting for them on the tarmac. Front and center in the crowd is a quintet of long-haired rock n' rollers (apparently stand-ins for The Beatles or The Rolling Stones... though they actually resemble The Ramones, in retrospect), all wearing caterpillar t-shirts. Put into the position of being just like their own typical screaming teenage fans, the group is barely able to contain its enthusiasm, and they make a rush toward our trio, who flee the area in a helicopter, the rockers hanging off the landing gear, in a scene that vaguely prefigures the abortive USO show in Apocalypse Now.

Sametka's director, Zdenek Miler (1921-2011), was born near Prague, in what is now the Czech Republic, and had a background in painting and illustration. During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, he was nearly sent off to a concentration camp, for taking part in anti-Nazi student demonstrations, but instead managed to continue to study and pursue a career in graphic design, and eventually, animation. By the mid-1940s, he was working for the Bat'a animation studio, under the famed Czech animator (and co-founder of the studio), Jiri Trnka, who himself was a skilled illustrator and cartoon animator, and who was beginning to branch off into the dimensional puppet animation he would become famous for.

Miler worked his way up to directing his own animated films by 1948, eventually became the head of the studio. He was best-known for his character Krtek, The Little Mole, who debuted in a theatrical short Miler directed in 1957, How the Mole Got His Pants, and continued on in 48 more short films, made over the course of 45 years. Though not very well-known in America, Krtek was otherwise seen worldwide, primarily on television. The series did well for the Bat'a Studio while under the communist regime, and eventually made Miler a wealthy man, after the fall of the Eastern Bloc. Miler also directed some individual cartoon films, as well as a brief 1960s series featuring a puppy character, and late-1970s series involving a cricket, before ultimately retiring from animation in 2001.

 

Some further images from Sametka:

"Why yes, my young friend would be only too happy to work full-time in all of your sneaker factories! Let's try to hammer out a coordinated schedule and make this happen!"

"Patience, gentlemen, patience... Kate Upton will be out here momentarily."

"Ahhhhh... nothing beats a Saturday night marathon of Faces of Death, eh, boy?"

"Good thinking there, using the super glue, kid... now my nose will never get cold!"

"Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Pryce... No, I'm sorry, but Mr. Draper is indisposed... can I take a message?"

Oh no! The twins were right! Seek cover immediately!!!

"Cool! Check it out-- Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve are having a cat-fight! I love Paris!"

"Mmmmm.... tantalizing treats galore... if I only had a can opener..."

"Gee, this symbiont trend is really taking hold!"

The Six Flags production of "Stop the Worm - I Want to Get Off"...

"It was a grand time for fishing on the Yangtze... live bait was cheap, plentiful and abnormally large..."

"That's right... lose yourself to the lilting music, my fuzzy little friend... a bit closer... closer... you're nearly in the Moon-beast's lair... you'll never know what hit you... damn, my exposed hands are frozen!"

"Excellent! I doubt The Borrowers will even notice the tiny explosives I've installed in each piece!"

"I want to ride my bi-cy-cle, I want to ride my bike... the next stage in my life-cycle, I'll tell them all to take a hike..."

"I've done it... now I just hope the arson investigators find no trace of accelerants..."

"--And the Road Warrior? That's the last I ever saw of him. He lives now, only in my memory..."

They all laughed when Bruce Banner sat down at the piano and started to play...

As you can see from the screen captures, this is an amazing-looking film... essentially like a top-level children's book brought to life, with a very strong sense of design. Everything has a stylized flatness, though with fairly smooth animation, where characters move either in a straight up-down, left-right plane, or in isometric perspective. A lot of it looks like vintage travel posters. It's difficult to get the theme music out of your head, once heard.

Imported  and distributed to U.S. classrooms in 1971 by Columbia Pictures' educational film division, Learning Corporation of America, Sametka ("The Velvet Caterpillar") was retitled as, simply, "Caterpillar". For me, this whimsical little animated tale is a very early memory from the beginning of my public elementary school years... back when the kindergarten teacher wanted to take a break (or give us a little classroom treat, on the eve of a holiday vacation) by wheeling out the 16mm sound film projector and having us watch something cute and harmless for 15 minutes. I saw it two or three times, at a couple of different schools (in different eastern U.S. states), between 1974 and 1976, enough to have it lightly burned into my brain, waiting as a latent, half-remembered recollection for several decades, until freed as a glorious nostalgia buzz, when I stumbled upon it on YouTube a couple of years ago... one of those things lost to time, that you assume you would never see again, if you even remember it at all.

As far as I can tell, from doing some searches, Sametka isn't available on home video in any of the Czech animation collections widely available, so YouTube is pretty much your only option, at this point....

Why not give it a look?

* Update (7/18/15): Reader rnigma correctly points out that, despite my initial solo crediting of the tale to Norman Corwin, the true creator of "Once Upon a Time" was actually author and fellow radio playwright, Lucille Fletcher. Fletcher was most famous for writing one of the greatest radio plays of all time, "Sorry, Wrong Number", performed perfectly by Agnes Moorehead in the long-running radio series, Suspense, and on the big screen by Barbara Stanwyck in the 1948 Paramount film. She also wrote the creepy cross-country tale, "The Hitch-Hiker", as well... which was performed on radio by Orson Welles, and later adapted (with some changes) for television by Rod Serling, as one of the more memorable episodes of the original Twilight Zone, with Inger Stevens encountering the same sinister, shabby man thumbing a ride. During the 1940s, Fletcher was married to the musical maestro of radio, film (and later, television), Bernard Herrmann.

Short: GRAND SLAM OPERA (1936)

 

After his triumphs in an incredible run of shorts and features during the 1920s, comedy superstar Buster Keaton hit hard times. His marriage to Natalie Talmadge was a rocky one. That, along with his unsatisfactory working relationship while under contract to MGM --which took away his creative control, insisting on downplaying his amazing physical comedy, making him a 'sad clown' character, then second fiddle to the brash, abrasive comedy stylings of a young Jimmy Durante-- drove him into an alcoholic haze in the early 1930s. His film career at a low ebb, and no longer at MGM, he got some work making a series low-budget two-reel short subjects for Educational Pictures --a company that had, long before, dropped their original 'Educational' mission statement, and focused squarely on entertaining ticket-buyers, on the cheap-- which were distributed to theaters by Twentieth Century Fox. As no-frills as they were, unlike MGM, they allowed Keaton the creative leeway to make comedies more along the lines of his earlier work.

Though several rungs below the high quality of his silent films, Keaton's Educational Pictures shorts nonetheless are a much better showcase for his talents than the bulk of his MGM output (not counting the early classics The Cameraman (1928) and Spite Marriage (1929), made before MGM really lowered the boom on him), and are also superior to the later series of shorts he made for Columbia. Arguably, the best of Keaton's shorts for Educational Pictures is Grand Slam Opera.

     We open with a small, hostile (though musical!) mob of rural townsfolk, who are sending Elmer Butts (Buster Keaton) away on a one-way train trip, which takes our hero from the hick town of Grover City, Arizona to New York City. It's not really made clear why... they just all hate him enough to give him the choice of either exile or death. Sounds fair enough. Incidentally, the sheriff in this scene is played by frequent Three Stooges nemesis, Bud Jamison.                 

                                     

After his brisk cross-country trip, and upon reaching Manhattan, Elmer attends the 'Colonel Crows' Amateur Night' radio program (spoofing 'Major Bowes' Amateur Hour', the popular, real-life granddaddy of 'The Gong Show', 'American Idol', etc)... and considering himself to be a man of many abilities, seeks a spot on the talent show, to prove that he's a master entertainer, and win some prize money. A cute gal (Diana Lewis), one of the contestants, is dancing an Irish jig for her performance, and she catches his eye.



Unfortunately for Elmer, all this happens just as that night's program is wrapping up...

"Well, I''m off to get plastered... Goodnight, America! --Security, please remove this non-entity from my environment."

Afterward, he sees a girl (guess who!) flipping pancakes in a restaurant window, and he's immediately smitten...

Edward Hopper's 'Nightgawks'

*Sigh* "She's an important part of my complete breakfast..."

"You want a side order of disdain-dipped-in-contempt with that, sir?"

He bumps into her (literally!) after she finishes her shift at the flapjack mill, and asks her out. As you can see, his approach isn't quite having the desired effect--

"Congratulations, Romeo... you just got yourself a blind date with my pepper spray!"

His initial attempt to ask her out on a date failing, Elmer --being Elmer-- doesn't give up. It helps that this woman is cursed to be somewhere near him at all times, including living in the hotel room below his, as he practices his act for the program, while striking out with her yet again.

"I meant to do that..."

Well, that didn't quite go as planned. Perhaps a display of terpsichorean prowess is the answer...

"Hmmm... if this strange alien creature can dance professionally, so can I!"

"Just call me 'Mickey Mantle'!"

"Olay!"

"Now, for my next trick, I'll-- N-n-n-nyaaaaah!"

Despite these setbacks, he goes to that night's broadcast.

"Bring on the trapdoor fodder!"

Ahead of him in the lineup of gifted hopefuls are The Hoboken Canal Boat Boys, who play an international medley...

"You are all still in a deep sleep... when I snap my fingers, you will be Dokken..."

"Too bad for them... I'm a Freddie & The Dreamers man. NEXT!"

Followed by Mrs. Van Ashbelt of 615 Park Ave, NYC --with chauffeur, maid and lapdog in tow-- singing 'My Old Kentucky Home'...

"Telepathically thinking the lyrics at you all should more than prove my supreme talent..."

They clearly weren't expecting her 20-minute foray into Tuvan throat singing in the middle...

"Maybe they weren't... but I was. NEXT!"

At last, Elmer's time has come. He finally manages to grab a bit of the limelight on the talent show... by juggling! Wait, what? Juggling... on the radio??

Elmer: "See, I've got it all figured out. I explain each trick to the radio audience as I do it!" 

"If you fail, my piranhas will grow fat tonight, Elmer."

"Folks... all I can say is that the next act promises to be filthy!"

*Whump!*

"What in Sam Hill--???"

*Thwack!*

"Augh! Surely, these are the end times... now where did I put my cyanide capsule?"

Both his efforts at romance and fame/fortune end in disaster... or do they?

Success!

 It's all a lot of fun. The emphasis is on visual gags and storytelling, rather than over-reliance on clever wordplay, and gives you a pretty good idea what Keaton's 1930s feature-length movies would've been like if MGM had left him alone, and if he had kept relatively sober. But here, take a look for yourself:

Keaton's co-star, Diana Lewis, came from a vaudeville family, and had made her film debut in 1934. That same year, she had a small part in the W.C. Fields classic, It's a Gift (1934), in the memorable scene (starting at the 7-minute mark in the linked YouTube clip) where Fields' attempts at getting some sleep on the front porch are derailed at every turn. She plays the teenage daughter who repeatedly asks her mother whether she should pick up either ipecac or syrup of squills from the drugstore. She'd join Keaton again in another of his Educational Pictures shorts, Love Nest on Wheels (1937).

A contract with MGM netted her co-starring roles in several higher-profile films, including the Marx Bros' comedy, Go West (1940); the title object of Mickey Rooney's interest, in Andy Hardy Meets Debutante (1940); with Red Skelton and Anne Rutherford in Whistling in Dixie (1942); a smaller role in the film noir, Johnny Eager (1942), and as one of the nurses in the female-centric WWII drama, Cry 'Havoc' (1943). Four years after this short's release, after a brief courtship, Lewis became Mrs. William Powell (who had suffered through the tragic deaths of wife Carole Lombard and finace Jean Harlow), and reportedly remained happily married to the Thin Man star for over four decades, until his death in 1984.

John Ince (Colonel Crow) was a prolific actor and director in the silent era. With the coming of talkies, he focused on acting, usually in uncredited character bits in scores of films, including The Whole Town's Talking (1935), The Little Colonel (1935), Les Miserables (1935), Barbary Coast (1935), Way Out West (1937), San Quentin (1937), Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), Pride of the Yankees (1942), The More the Merrier (1943), Voodoo Man (1944), Bedlam (1946), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and the Frank Capra classics Broadway Bill (1934), You Can't Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and Meet John Doe (1941). Incidentally, his younger brother, Thomas Ince, was a pioneer of early Hollywood, inventing the 'assembly line' method of film production, where all aspects of the film-making process were done under one roof (he also discovered cowboy star William S. Hart, and died under mysterious circumstances on newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst's yacht in 1924).

Harold Goodwin (the tuxedo-clad radio bandleader) already had excellent experience as Keaton's on-screen rival, well before this short; he performed similar duties in Keaton's classic silent features, College (1927) and The Cameraman (1928). He would work with Keaton again in further Educational Pictures shorts, and later, on Keaton's early-1950s TV series. Between the silents and Grand Slam Opera, Goodwin managed to score a supporting role in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), as one of the young German students/soldiers, "Detering". Beyond that, like John Ince, Goodwin mainly appeared in a multitude of smaller rolls and uncredited bits (often as tough guys), both in features and on TV, from the Teens through the late 1960s, as well as work as both a stuntman and as a dialogue coach.

YouTube embeds aside, the optimal way to see Grand Slam Opera these days is to buy or rent Kino International's DVD (or Blu-ray) collection, Lost Keaton: Sixteen Comedy Shorts (1934-37), released back in 2010 (and still available from the usual online retailers). It collects all of his Educational Pictures shorts in the best condition we're ever likely to see, given that the original negatives are long gone, and the films have been out of studio hands for eons. What's here is what was saved from Keaton's own archive, as well as what could be found from other private collectors, so the picture isn't razor-sharp, there are occasional jumps and splices, dirt/scratches on the prints, etc. Nothing pristine, but nothing especially jarring, either, and eminently watchable. All the screen-shots from the film on this blog entry are from my own DVD copy, so that's pretty much what you can expect these films to look like, overall.