Arthurian animation: a study of cartoon Camelots on film and television

Abstract

MICHAEL N. SALDA, Arthurian Animation: A Study of Cartoon Camelots on Film and Television. Jefferson, N.C. and London: McFarland & Company, 2013. Pp. 210. isbn: 978-0-7864-4. $45.Cinema Arthuriana has, in the wake of Kevin J. Harty's pioneering work, become a flourishing research area, within which Michael N. Salda has established himself over the last decade as the leading authority on Arthurian cartoons. With the present volume, he has now produced the definitive account of the genre.Arthurian Animation is clearly a labor of love, and written in a pleasantly witty jargon-free style, but Saida's scholarship is deep, and wide-ranging. While his initial approach is historical and factual, with full details of creators, companies, dates, and plot summaries, he also provides critical evaluations. His book is mainly concerned with cartoons in the United States, but includes, too, material from Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Hungary, Russia, China, Japan, and Australia.Arthurianimation (to use Saida's phrase) began in 1933 with Bosco's Knight-Mare, a short cartoon that has foint Arthurian allusions, and was probably prompted by the release of Warner's^ Connecticut Yankee (1933). A for more ambitious feature-length cartoon, King Arthur's Knights, was projected in the early 1940s by Hugh Harman, its quasi-Malorian martial ethos promoting a timely patriotic message. Sadly, this was never produced, but Saida supplies a close analysis of the evolving storyline and reproduces five character drawings that he deduces were done by Robert Stokes.When post-war film makers launched more 'historical' subjects, animators followed suit with a host of short cartoons, incorporating even Popeye, Bugs Bunny, and Huckleberry Hound within comic Arthurian settings. The Broadway success of Camelot then inspired Disney to create a long awaited full-length Arthurian cartoon, The Sword in the Stone (1963), but this proved to be a sanitized version that earned only moderate commercial and critical success. During the next decade a mass of shorter works appeared, but Arthurian legend received only frivolous attention therein, such as a section of Dasy Duck & Porky Pig Meet the Groovy Goolies (1972), which Saida concedes 'is painful to watch' (75).Despite the proliferation of major Arthurian features between 1975 {Monty Python and the Holy Grail) and 1981 {Excalibur), their improved quality was mirrored only fleetingly in cartoons, with the honorable exception of the Japanese anime series King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (1981), a thirty-part TV serialization that strove to impose coherence on diverse Arthurian traditions. …