Puppetoons

Hungarian-American filmmaker George Pal is perhaps best remembered today for producing several science fiction classics, including The War of the Worlds (1953), and for directing The Time Machine (1960), but prior to his feature-length genre work, Pal first made his cinematic mark with a series of animated short subjects called Puppetoons. Produced initially in Europe, and then later for Paramount in America, Puppetoons employed a novel stop motion technique pioneered by Pal called “replacement animation,” which involved swapping out an array of similar but distinct hand-carved puppets (or specific parts of them) for each individual frame, to simulate character movement and changes in expression. George Pal and his staff produced over sixty Puppetoons shorts between 1932 and 1947, seven of which were nominated for Academy Awards. The two Puppetoons programs showcased here demonstrate the breadth and depth of George Pal’s artistry across a selection of shorts.