Rooty Toot Toot (1951) stands as one of the high points of UPA's output and as one of the most highly-praised seven-minute cartoons ever made. It is in no way a children's film; it deals with strictly adult characters and situations. Gerald McBoing Boing and The Ragtime Bear had performed very well at the box office, so Columbia approved a larger budget for UPA cartoons--they would now be budgeted at nearly $35,000 each. Meanwhile, John Hubley was anxious to make his own definitive statement at UPA (he directed the first Magoo cartoon but would soon hand the character over to others). Hubley took the new budget allowance and ran with it, pulling out all the stops to make a thoroughly Modern and graphically exciting update on the old "Frankie and Johnny" story of jealousy and murder. Rooty Toot Toot would go over schedule and budget, but it earned nearly as much critical and press attention as Gerald.
Hubley brought in a number of interesting collaborators on Rooty Toot Toot. Dancer Olga Lunick was hired to choreograph the ballet-style dance moves. There was no rotoscoping involved; her moves were only referenced by the artists and animators, not slavishly traced. Paul Julian designed the backgrounds and utilized some non-typical techniques; in his essential history of UPA, When Magoo Flew: The Rise and Fall of Animation Studio UPA (Wesleyan, 2012), Adam Abraham quotes Julian on one of them: "'I found a kind of oddly corroded gelatin roller - an ordinary print roller that had been pitted and pocked in some way, chemically.' With this device, he produced distressed-looking backgrounds that suited the sordid tale." In addition, Hubley and the studio brought on jazz musician Phil Moore to write the score. Moore had done orchestrations for many MGM musicals in the 1940s, but uncredited--this would be a rare on-screen credit for the black musician. Legendary animator Grim Natwick also joined the crew. Natwick had been active since the silent era and had designed and animated Betty Boop for the Fleischer Studios. He went on to work on such key films as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Gulliver's Travels (1939). For Rooty Toot Toot Natwick animated the memorable shots of Nellie Bly on the witness stand.
Producer: John Hubley
Director: John Hubley
Story: John Hubley, Bill Scott
Color and Design: Paul Julian
Music: Phil Moore
Lyrics: Allen Alch
Choreography: Olga Lunick
Animation: Art Babbitt, Pat Matthews, Tom McDonald, Grim Natwick
Cast: Thurl Ravenscroft (Jonathan Bailey, Honest John the Crook, voice), Annette Warren (Frankie/Nelly Bly, voice)
C-7m.
FROM "Rare Animation, The Turner Classic Movie Web Site".
