The Enduring Legacy of George Pal and His Magical Puppetoons

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Get ready for an exhilarating journey into the world of George Pal and his Puppetoons, with Arnold Leibovit as our captivating guide! Leibovit is a renowned film historian and documentarian of George Pal, the innovative filmmaker who inspired industry legends like Walt Disney, Ray Harryhausen, Gene Roddenberry, and Steven Spielberg.

We explore the evolution of Puppetoon animation, uncovering how Pal’s creativity led him to animate cigarettes for a commercial, and craft breathtaking short stories for Philips in Europe. This episode will also highlight the significant roles Walter Lantz, Leon Schlesinger, and Walt Disney played in helping Pal escape the Nazi's and establish his studio in the US.  Leibovit also details the painstaking restoration process behind the Puppetoons, Volume 3 Blu-ray, discussing the challenges of restoring frame by frame, and the necessity for minimal compression for the best viewing experience.  And then we get into a discussion of specific Puppetoons, starting with the first US production, "Western Daze," then" Bravo, Mr. Strauss," "Together in the Weather," and "Jasper and the Beanstalk ." And no discussion of George Pal is complete without a detailed look at the enchanting music of Puppetoon films and its vital role in enhancing the story and atmosphere.

This episode is a must-listen for all animation collectors, George Pal fans, and film enthusiasts!

Purchase PUPPETOON VOL. 3
Purchase THE TIME MACHINE SOUNDTRACK (remastered)

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Episode Transcript

Tim Millard (00:05):
Hello and welcome to the Extras, where we take you
behind the scenes of yourfavorite TV shows, movies and
animation and their release ondigital DVD, blu-ray and 4K or
your favorite streaming site.
I'm Tim Lard, your host.
Well, I know we have a lot ofanimation fans who listen to
this show, so I'm excited tohave Arnold Liebelvit joining us
today to talk about GeorgePowell and his Puppet Toons,

(00:27):
volume 3 Blu-ray, which isreleasing on September 1st.
Arnold, it's good to finallyget you on the podcast.

Arnold Leibovit (00:34):
Hi, it's great to be here, Tim.
Good to see you.

Tim Millard (00:36):
Well, I know we first chatted kind of through
our Facebook connection a fewyears ago for your Volume 2
release and it just didn't quitework out for us to do a podcast
on that.
But I know it sold really welland it's had terrific reviews
and so when you reached out tome about this Volume 3, I was
like I'm so glad you did thatbecause we kind of missed that

(00:59):
opportunity.
But it's on physical media.
So even though we'll be talkingabout Volume 3, I want to let
the fans know there's a Volume 2out there as well.
I read the terrific booklet, bythe way, that full-color
booklet you have in this release.
I read it and you gave somebackground to your interest and
how you got involved with theestate and just your interest in

(01:21):
George Powell.
But maybe for our listeners youcan kind of paraphrase a little
bit about how you got startedin all of the restoration and
the interest in George Powell.

Arnold Leibovit (01:32):
Well, it really didn't just start with
restoration.
In the beginning I mean, it wasreally an accident I was
working on a monster film, aJaws on Land movie called the
Descendants, and I was going todirect this film and I became
friends with Dan O'Bannon, whowrote Alien, and he said you
know, you should take this toGeorge Powell and of course at

(01:53):
the time I didn't know Georgewas still around, it was close
to 1979.
Anyway, I was introduced to himand I went to see him at his
house in Beverly Hills,introduced myself and the
project and that was alife-changing moment for me
because growing up George wasone of my heroes, along with

(02:15):
Walt Disney and Ray Harryhausenand even Cecil B DeMille.
They were my heroes.
The interesting thing is thatall of my heroes all worked for
George Powell.
George was like the conduit.
He hired Ray Harryhausen forhis first job and of course I
got to know Ray Harryhausen.
Cecil B DeMille helped Georgewith World's Collide and War of

(02:36):
the Worlds at Paramount and WaltDisney and him worked very
close friends and he influencedWalt and the Walt Disney studios
enormously with his animation.
So George was like all bundledup into that one sphere, which
was quite amazing to me.
So getting to meet him andknowing these people and

(02:56):
everything was.
That was the way it all started.
It was meeting George.
A year later he passed away,which was a big blow to me, and
I became friends with Mrs Powellfor almost a quarter of a
century and we stayed friendsand it was a result of that that
I made my films about George'slife, my documentary which

(03:19):
showed at the Academy, thePuppetoon movie, the first one I
did, and eventually did theTime Machine.
Later on I did a remake of theTime Machine with Steven
Spielberg and Warner Brothersand so it sort of the linkage
was way back to that firstmeeting with George and he was
such a nice man, he was asweetheart and doing the

(03:43):
documentary and Mrs Powellopening the doors for me which
is what she really did I learnedalmost the birth of the movie
industry in terms of the fantasyand science fiction aspects,
animation, the linkage betweenall the famous icons of the

(04:03):
industry and how it related toGeorge and his influence in the
business, and it was enormous Imean it's enormous and so even I
didn't know I was learning as Iwas going all the linkage and
all the people and all thetalent and it was really a
journey of a lifetime.

Tim Millard (04:23):
So in 1985, that's when your documentary the
Fantasy Film Worlds of GeorgePowell came out right.

Arnold Leibovit (04:29):
That's right.

Tim Millard (04:29):
That's the one you're talking about and, for
those who are interested, you dohave that on YouTube so that
they can watch that, and I waswatching it recently and it's
terrific.
I mean, you have a ton of greatinterviews on there.
Who are some of the people youinterviewed for that one?

Arnold Leibovit (04:45):
Just about everyone that worked with George
.
You know it has Ray Harryhausen.
By the way, on the new release,several of those interviews are
excerpted in the extras whichare on there Ray Harryhausen,
hua Chang, roy Disney, joe Danty, russ Tamblin and so forth, and

(05:06):
the documentary had about 30,some people.
I just re-digitized about 36hours of material.
I have not re-released it yetand I'm contemplating the
possibility of incorporatingsome of these new interviews and
other releases.
But I would say Rod Taylor,alan Young, janet Lee, tony
Curtis, charlton Heston, rayBradbury, as they said, ray

(05:32):
Harryhausen, gene Roddenberry,and every one of these people
had linkage to George, which wasquite significant.
George was Gene's mentor,helped him when he was working
on Star Trek.
George had influences there.
Roy Disney talked about hisrelationship with Walt and the
relationship of the studio andthe nine old men who had all

(05:55):
seen the puppatoons.
And of course I met all theremaining living nine old men.
When I was doing this I becamefriends with Ward Kimball who
did Jimny Cricket, with MarkDavis who did Tinkerbell, with
Frank and Ollie who did Bambiand Dumbo and Fantasia.
They all saw the puppatoons atthe studio.

(06:16):
They were influenced by thepuppatoons.
Roy talked about them as beingthe precursor to audio
animatronics.
He said that it's a small world, is essentially a puppatoon and
is acknowledged by imaginingthe tremendous influence of
George.
So there's those aspects.
And the documentary has otherpeople.

(06:37):
It has Robert Block, who was awriter of Psycho he was a friend
of George and worked on someprojects with him.
Dan Forth, who did theanimation for Seven Faces of Dr
Lau and the Wonderful World ofBrothers Grimm.
Barbara Eden, who was in thefilm, russ Tamblin, as I
mentioned.

(06:57):
I can't remember everyone,there's so many people.

Tim Millard (07:00):
I guess the reason why I wanted to mention it was
that I mean, we have limitedtime here on a podcast to go
through a career like GeorgePowell's career and the impact
of him.
But your documentary kind ofputs it in a nice package and it
looks pretty good for beingthat old and I thought it was
great to have it on YouTube.
And then, as you mentioned, youput a number of those excerpts

(07:24):
of some of those interviews onthe extras for this Puppatoon
Volume 3 release.
So I watched all those and, toyour point, the Gene Roddenberry
one that was really fascinatingto me because I never thought
about any link to Star Trek buthe lays it out and, of course,

(07:44):
their friendship that developedout of meeting him.

Arnold Leibovit (07:49):
They've had a lot in common because George had
a lot of tribulations, ups anddowns in his career and Gene did
the same.
He had ups and downs.
He kind of related on thoselevels.
His offices were just down thehall from each other at
Paramount and so they were veryclose to where they're in and
they spent a great deal of timetogether.
Gene loved George.

(08:10):
I actually asked Gene to be oneof the speakers at the Academy
when we had the showing of thefilm in 1985.
Gene Roddenberry was one of theintroducers of the film, along
with Robert Wise, who I becamevery good friends with, who's
also in the documentary, and Bobwas a dear friend and helped me
enormously and he knew Georgeas well.

(08:32):
Of course, this is the story Ihave with the project, and the
subject is that I don't thinkthere was anyone during that
period that didn't have crosspaths with George.
There wasn't anyone quite likehim.
Nobody was doing fantasy andscience fiction in the industry
until George did it really inthe way that he did it,
certainly with the puppatoons.

(08:52):
No one had been able to set upa stop motion animation studio
facility until George came overfrom Europe and set up the
puppatoons in the 1940s and hewas the only one doing it and
what made it unique is that hewas so different than anyone
else.
Everyone was doing flat cartoonanimation and George was doing

(09:14):
this amazing three-dimensionalanimation, which today seems
more common because of CGI,which is influenced by the
puppatoons, by the way, but atthat time it was the only thing
there was and it was sodifferent.
And Disney people, differentstudios, worked at the
puppatoons studios.
Fred Moore, for instance, whois the cover of Judy on my

(09:38):
Puppatoon releases is a FredMoore design, and Fred Moore was
one of the great characteranimators and designers at
Disney, doing things like theSeven Dwarfs and Snow White and
the Seven Dwarfs and many, manyother animations that Disney
influences just all overpuppatoons, and that's what
makes it so great in terms ofthat.

(10:00):
And also Warner Brothers too,because Bugs Bunny appears in
Volume 2 in Half-Fill of Dreams,and it was the only time that
Bugs Bunny was ever loaned outto another studio individual
ever at that time, and LeonSchlesinger did that, and so
Bugs Bunny appears in the secondvolume and also Superman

(10:25):
appears.
Dc Comics loans the costume andthe look of Superman for one of
the subjects also, so it's kindof a combo.
Oh, I was wrong about it.
The Bugs Bunny was in JasperGoes Hunting, not Half-Fill of
Dreams.
I'm sorry, who's Superman is inHalf-Fill of Dreams?

Tim Millard (10:46):
And it was pretty interesting hearing Roy Disney
talk about how Walt would haveliked to have brought him in and
worked with him or had him workfor him or some kind of
partnership.
But it sounded like GeorgePowell really.
I mean he was a man who reallywanted to be on his own and do
his own thing and that's greatthat he did.

Arnold Leibovit (11:06):
I mean Willie was his own George Powell and
George being his own Walt Disneyin a sense.
You know films like 20,000Leagues Under the Sea.
I mean that was George'sproject and he was going to make
that film and Walt came toGeorge and during those days
they had a gentleman's kind ofagreement type thing and George

(11:26):
left Walt go ahead with doing itSomehow.
I wish George was involved init but that didn't happen.
But in any case there wasn'tanybody making these kinds of
films.
George was really the StevenSpielberg of his day.
He was the one that set thescience fiction and fantasy
movie on a platform for a massaudience at a time when there

(11:48):
was no mass audience.
He didn't just do small films.
When he made a film it was abig technicolor science fiction
movie when worlds collide.
They weren't making technicolormovies in science fiction, they
were making black and whitemonster bug movies.
You know, and here along Georgeis making with the help of
Cecil B DeMille.

(12:08):
He did a film like War of theWorlds or when Worlds Collide,
which had great scope andcharacter and technicolor and in
stereo.
I mean he was doing it in areally big way and so he made a
big impression in the industryand everyone is been influenced
by it and that's what got meinvolved with Steven Spielberg

(12:30):
and George Lucas and everyoneelse, because they were all
influenced by George Powell.
So it was relatively easy forme because George was sort of
the magic word.
I mean I always use thatexpression, you know the magic
two words was George Powell.
It opened the doors becauseeveryone loved him and respected
him.

Tim Millard (12:50):
Well, that's kind of the sci-fi influence which he
did kind of in the era.
If you were to break down hiscareer, kind of after the
puppatoons, right?
Let's go back for a second tothe puppatoons George Powell
created in his studio in Europebefore he came to the States,
right?

Arnold Leibovit (13:08):
Yes, that's true, he was, he was.
He was actually makingpuppatoons for 20 years before
he ever made a feature film.
Right, he started out inHungary.
He was born in Hungary.
He was born to an actor'sfamily, but he didn't want to be
an actor.
He says he didn't want to meanto do with the stage.
Believe me, the stage had a lotto do with George.

(13:28):
You know he was the greatestshowman of them all, but that's
what he says.
So he just he became acartoonist.
He started to do drawings, hestarted to do posters and
eventually did animated cartoonsflat animated cartoons in
Hungary and he met his wife,jocha there.
And then they moved to Germanyand he did films at Ufa, which

(13:49):
was the largest studio in inprobably in the world at the
time.
It was in Germany and Berlinand he made a lot of commercials
, mostly animated, flat cartoonanimation.
Then he came up with this crazyidea of animating cigarettes.
Mrs Powell told me the story.
He had a.
He was playing around with acigarette in his hand and he saw

(14:11):
it.
It was like she knew the momentit was born where he came up
with this idea of the cigarette.
So he was doing a commercialabout cigarettes for a sponsor.
He said to the sponsor insteadof flat animating it, why don't
we actually animate thecigarettes?
You'll get to see the trademarkon every frame.
It'll be there, and you know.
And they love the idea.
So then he started to movecigarettes to the rhythm of the

(14:33):
music and he started to justanimate three-dimensional
cigarettes.
So he basically turned the flatcartoon into three-dimension.
That was his thing.
And he did commercials whichwere then called.
They were really story films.
They weren't typical one-minutecommercials.
He did these five or six-minutestory films that happened to

(14:55):
have a brief mention of a, of acommercial like the Phillips
radio, and the rest of it was astory.
And that's what he did inEurope for a good 20 years.
He was doing commercials withall these stories and some of
them actually appear onPuppetoon Volume 3.
Four new cell animated filmsappear on Puppetoon Volume 3

(15:19):
that have probably never beenseen before.
They're in Technicolor, they'reflat animation, they look like
Disney animation, they'rebeautiful and I mentioned that
because it's a really highlight,in my opinion, of Puppetoon
Volume 3.
Anyway, he came to the UnitedStates.
He was always keeping one stepahead of the Nazis.
He had to leave Germany becausethe Nazis were coming in and he

(15:42):
had some riffs with the brownshirts and so he eventually went
to Paris, czechoslovakia, andeventually landed in Einhoven
with a Phillips company,sponsored a whole series of
commercials that he was doing,and then he always wanted to be
in America.
Mrs Powell and him lovedAmerica.
They wanted to be here, and sohe was able to leave Einhoven

(16:07):
and only two months later theNazis invaded Holland and he
made out.
He made it out of there beforethey were taken over by the
Nazis.
So that plays a big role inGeorge's perspective of the
world, because he was reallyunder that kind of pressure.
Yet he always kept a sunnydisposition, he was always

(16:29):
positive.
You would never know it lookingat him or talking to him or
seeing his films, you wouldnever know the amount of stress
and strain.
He always had this sunny viewof the world, always looking to
tomorrow, always looking for abetter world, a better life.
And he loved being an American.

(16:49):
He was so proud of being anAmerican, being getting his
citizenship papers.
Here Walter Lance was a verydear friend of his and he helped
him get his citizenship papersand it was a big thing for
George to be an American and allI can say is in today's world,
the way things are, I think hewould be a guest at some of the
things that are happening in theworld today, believe me, but

(17:12):
that's another story.

Tim Millard (17:14):
So he's doing the puppetunes there and he kind of
talked to the evolution.
When he came to the Statespeople already knew his work
right so he did have people kindof helping him establish his
studio over here and giving himsome support.

Arnold Leibovit (17:25):
Oh yeah, I mean he had various people like I
mentioned Walter Lance, leonSchlesinger, walt Disney but it
was really Paramount that did it.
I mean, paramount saw thepuppetunes and they offered him
a deal to set up doing them andhe did them for almost a decade
at his own facility.
It was on the Caddon Place inHollywood and he had a team of

(17:47):
animators, just like he had inEurope.
He had a team of animators theywere the first in Europe to
ever do it.
And then he comes to the UnitedStates and they're first in the
United States to do it, andthat those animators some very
famous Willis O'Brien, who didKing Kong worked at the
Puppetunes studios, rayHarryhaus and I may have

(18:07):
mentioned he got his first jobworking for George doing
puppetunes, and on PuppetuneVolume 3, we have a great, great
one it's Western Days, which isthe very first puppetune George
made in the United States andit's the one that Ray Harryhaus
and animated and that's veryimportant.
The first two or three years ofthe puppetunes Ray did

(18:28):
animation work and some of themare on this release.
So that's quite significant aswell.

Tim Millard (18:35):
Well, why don't we talk about Western Days?
Because I did want to.
I mean, I put in the disc and Ijust played the first one, you
know, that came up and that wasWestern Days and I was blown
away.
I mean the color reproductionand that might lead us a little
bit into a discussion of therestoration, but I was watching
that.
I'm like this does not feellike a 1940, yeah, 1940 cartoon

(19:02):
animation, whatever you want tocall it, because it's stop
motion, so it's got thatthree-dimensional.
But all of the you can see thesets right, the quality of the
image, you can see in detailthose sets and everything that
he did and it just looks great.
Tell us a little bit about therestoration of that.

Arnold Leibovit (19:21):
Well, there's a lot of elements going on there.
It's a good point.
I'm glad you were impressed byWestern Days.
I was waiting to do WesternDays for almost 35 years.
I was unable to get some ofthese films over the years
because they were owned bydifferent companies.
Nta and then Republic Pictureshad them.
We contacted them but theyweren't willing to let me do

(19:43):
anything with them.
I guess they felt they weregoing to be releasing these in
other ways or they were going tosell the library, and that's
what they did.
They eventually sold thelibrary to Paramount.
So what happened was it wentback to Paramount where it
started, and it wasn't until itgot back to Paramount that I was
able to actually do this.
And so Western Days was part ofthat early period of films that

(20:07):
I was unable to obtain, and soI was after it for years to get,
and it was such an importantsubject.
It had Andrew Costellanis doingthe music.
David Raxin, who won an AcademyAward for Laura, was the
composer.
I met David Raxin, by the way.
I had a class with him when Iwas at UCLA.
He was a great guy, but he didthe music, and Mel Blank is the

(20:31):
voice of one of the characters.
Mel Blank, by the way, did thevoices for Puppetunin's Right
from the very beginning he wasthe voice in many of the
subjects.
He's actually in Grab it andHide he's Hide.
So he's of the two characters,that's Mel Blank, and Billy
Bletcher is in it.
Pat McGeehan is Jim Dandy,who's the voice of Jim Dandy,

(20:54):
and Billy Bletcher is the voiceof the other, of the other, a
grab it, I think.
Anyway, it has a huge, hasscope to it.
It was shot with a large stageset, and it was.
It has a great sweeping vistasand animation to it and it
almost is shot like a John Fordmovie, the way it's done with
wide shots and it moves in andout.

(21:16):
It's really a spectacular, aspectacular subject and the
music is great.
So I'm very, yeah, I'm veryhappy you like that one, because
that that was a landmark, alandmark film, right?

Tim Millard (21:32):
Well, it's interesting because sometimes
people wonder well, why didn'tyou include this one on volume
one or volume two?
And you just kind of explainedthat, even though you wanted to
include these in an earliervolume due to legal reasons or
ownership or the time it took torestore or find things.
But that has a huge impact onwhy this is now on volume three.

(21:55):
I mean, for people who buyvolume three, it's terrific
because it gives you a reallygreat reason to buy it, even if
you own the others.
But talk a little bit about thepeople you had to work with in
terms of the actual restoration,like Paramount Library of
Congress, ucla.

Arnold Leibovit (22:11):
Everyone.
So many people were involved.
There are literally dozens anddozens of people from all over
the world.
I'm a perfectionist.
That could be one of myfailings, I guess, but I'm
really a perfectionist.
I wanted it to be the best itcould possibly be.
Number one I was dealing withthe source material of
successive negatives.
These are the successivenegatives.

(22:32):
The original negatives, thankGod, still exist on the
puppatoons, which is amazingunto itself.
Very rarely cartoons have thiskind of integrity and those
successive negatives existed.
Paramount had them, which werehanded down and we were able to
access those 4K.

(22:53):
Preservations were made andthen we were able to restore
from the 4K.
So seeing a successive negativepuppatoon is like something
you've never seen before.
It's unlike anything thatpeople have ever seen.
The few times they've been ableto see puppatoons which they
weren't widely exhibited inrecent years Just to see them.

(23:14):
One commentator said to me it'sTechnicolor in 3D.
He said it's almost likewatching a 3D film in 2D.
It says to him that's how heviewed it.
He couldn't believe.
The Technicolor is so vivid andit's so three-dimensional and

(23:35):
clear.
Everything is so clear.
It's almost like it was shotyesterday.
It's so believable.

Tim Millard (23:41):
That's why I'm really like I got to ask you
about this one, because it hitsyou right off the bat.
I'm kind of new to thispuppatoon world.
When I saw it I did not expectthat that kind of
three-dimensional element thatyou just mentioned, and how
vibrant the colors were.

Arnold Leibovit (24:01):
Well, technicolor was an amazing
process.
I think your viewers andlisteners should know how this
happened.
I'll get to that and I'll getback to some of these in a
minute.
In the restoration thepuppatoons are done in a unique
way.
They use a system that Powelldeveloped called the replacement
figure puppet.
What that means is that forevery frame of film a new puppet

(24:21):
or puppet part is replaced inthat frame.
It isn't like an armature likein King Kong where they have a
single armature puppet that isanimated by the animator.
In the puppatoons every frameis a new puppet head, body, leg.
You'd have, say, 100 differentheads, 100 different arms, 100

(24:42):
different legs, eyeballs, and onevery frame they would have to
be replaced, one frame at a time.
There were thousands of puppetsmade.
For a typical puppatoon therecould be up to 5,000 individual
wood, either hand ormachine-laved, carved puppet

(25:02):
part or puppet.
Then they had to be shot.
You had something like becauseof Technicolor.
Technicolor required a lot oflight and it was a beautiful
process.
The dye process isunsurpassable.
The puppet would be put inplace, that part, and it would
be shot.

(25:23):
It would take a full minute toexpose one frame of film because
of the light and because ofTechnicolor, but also because
you had to do three colors.
You had to do a red, a blue anda green.
Every frame of the puppatoontook three full minutes to
expose.
In a single day you were luckyto get 16 seconds of animation

(25:47):
and there were 12,000 to 15,000frames in a typical puppatoon.
It took literally six to eightmonths to do a typical puppatoon
.
Because of this incrediblelabor-intensive process, it's
unheard of, but because he didit this way, it gives a stylized

(26:08):
look and a reality that is notcomparable to any armature type
of animation.
You see, because everything waspreconceived, pre-designed and
pre-constructed.
It's almost like arithmetic.
It's like everything was doneto a science and those parts
were replaced.

(26:29):
It's amazing that they wereable to create them so perfectly
, to be able to blend together.
So the character lived.
He basically lived.
He was brought to life withnothing but pieces of wood that
were series together.
It's incredible.
Yeah, so that's a big part of it.

Tim Millard (26:49):
Yeah, I was watching some of the extras and
people were talking a little bitabout that, so I was piecing
some of that together in yourdocumentary as well, of just how
labor-intensive it was, howlong it took, and then how
George Powell his background asan architect he really every
morning he had this.

(27:09):
Actually I guess they weretalking about the night before
they would set up what was goingto happen in the morning,
because once they hit the groundrunning they needed to be sure
they got everything and didn'tmiss a step in the change out of
the face expression, the mouth,vocalization, all that stuff.
I mean it is a lot like math, Iguess, in that sense, or even

(27:32):
computers in a sense, but doneby humans.

Arnold Leibovit (27:36):
And the influence was great because the
only film that was done, thatequals that or you got close to
was influence, I should say wasNightmare Before Christmas and I
was there on the set when theydid it and my friends animated
it and I was there and I watchedthem do it.
They used the replacementfigure puppet for Nightmare,
which was what gives it thereality.
It has that illusion of realitybecause the puppets are

(27:58):
replacement heads.
Each head is a separate head inNightmare.
There aren't any other subjectsthat have done that, films that
have done that.
The puppatoons were theinfluence for Nightmare Before
Christmas because I know I wasthere, the animators all watched
it.
They told me when they saw thepuppatoon movie.
So there was a great influenceon that particular film.

Tim Millard (28:19):
There were a couple others I did want to talk about
.
One was Bravo Mr Strauss, from1943.
I was watching that and thecombination of the 3D animation,
the messaging, which is veryanti-war, and then the music, it
was a terrific one.
Maybe you could tell us alittle bit of background on that

(28:40):
one.

Arnold Leibovit (28:43):
Well, for George.
Holland was invaded by theNazis and it was deeply hurtful
to him because a lot of hisfriends, people he knew, were
either taken prisoners, somewere killed.
The country was overridden,things were destroyed by the
Nazis.
That's what World War II wasabout.
And so these were anti-warfilms, and he made three of them

(29:03):
.
Bravo Mr Strauss was one ofthree where the Scrooble Army is
featured, which are the Naziparody of the Nazis.
They called them the screwballs.
It was very, very smart andvery clever use of the parody,
and the Scrooble armies arefeatured in Bravo Mr Strauss,
tulip Chagrot and Rhythm in theRanks.
Rhythm in the Ranks was one ofthe Academy Award nominated

(29:27):
films and that appears on thisdisc as well.
Tulip Chagrot is in mypuppatoon movie and he all
feature the screwballs.
In this case it's Mr Strauss.
Mr Strauss was a symbol,according to George, of the will
of the people of Europe todefeat Hitler.

(29:48):
That's what Mr Straussrepresents, and he uses his
violin almost like a pipe-piper.
It leads the Scrooble Army intothe Danube River like Lemmings
into the river like the rats inPipe Piper, and they're all
destroyed.
And the theme that's used thereis the Radeski March.
And again, that's a subtleparody, because the key is that

(30:12):
no Nazi can possibly resist amarch.
So it's the Radeski March, sothey're marching to their deaths
really, and so there's a littlesubtle parody going on over
there.
It's very interesting, and soyou see this throughout Pau's
films, not just in thepuppatoons but even later on

(30:33):
when he made his features, whenhe made War of the Worlds and
the Time Machine.
They all have this subtleaspect of man overcoming
obstacles, of overcomingincredible odds, and it has a
lot to do with his view of whathappened to him with the Nazis,
and so it runs through a lot ofthe themes he has in his life.
But he's also, as I said, verypositive.

(30:54):
It was very positive lookingahead, always looking to
tomorrow, and so that was partof his personality.
I wanted to come back real quickto you.
If you don't mind, I completelyskipped the whole restoration
aspect.
The restoration this was a fouryear effort to do the Puppatune
Volume 3.
And probably a 30 year effortjust getting some of the films.

(31:14):
So it's literally a 35 yeareffort just to get to this place
, to be able to releasesomething like this.
And the restorations are very,very meticulous films to do
because of the amount of workinvolved in doing these.
This is not like doing Puppatune.
Restoration is unlike doingrestoration for almost any other

(31:37):
kind of film, whether it's liveaction or animation, even flat
animation, because in stopmotion every single frame has
its own nuances andpeculiarities.
Frame by frame by frame.
It picks up dust and dirt andspots and specs and there's all
kinds of nuances that have to bedone.

(31:57):
And you need various programsto be able to solve this.
And we use the variety ofdifferent restoration programs.
We didn't just use one.
Some people rely on, say,phoenix, some people use
Diamonds, some people use PFClean, some people use all sorts
of programming and we usewhatever was necessary to

(32:18):
accomplish or overcome aparticular artifact or nuance,
because we couldn't rely on justone program to do it.
And the same thing applied tothe grading of the film.
After you're done, cleaning,which could take let's say it
took, could take six weeks oreight weeks just to clean a
Puppatune, just to clean it,because it's so meticulous.

(32:39):
That's to be done frame byframe.
You can't use Auto Clean, youcan't just run through it in
Auto Clean, because you canactually erase pieces of the
Puppet, you can erase theeyeballs or the hands.
You have to go very slowly,frame by frame, very meticulous,
to clean it and in the gradingprocess I was very, very

(33:02):
particular about that.
I wanted a professional graderto do this and I hired a
professional grader, one of thegreatest.
His name is Joey.
He's with DC Color.
He's a very busy guy.
He does a lot of features.
He is a 20-year consummateprofessional in this field and
he teaches restoration to theworld with Dolby Vision and

(33:26):
other forms of platforms andworkflows.
He was the supervisor helpingme on this.
I also had a fellow down inPeru His name was Fabio Bedoya,
who was a young kid, but he isterrific and he has been helping
me straight through this.
I reached out to people in othercountries because the work

(33:46):
ethic of doing restoration is avery specific talent and it
requires a dedication thatpeople in this country don't
necessarily always have, ormaybe they don't have the luxury
to have.
It's also a cost factor as well.
The work ethic is different inforeign countries and it's more

(34:08):
of a college industry.
I was able to go to SouthAmerica, to England, to
Indonesia, to all sorts ofplaces to be able to accomplish
this, including the UnitedStates.
This was a world effort.
This was a world effort.
We would redo a subject severaltimes.

(34:29):
I get a subject back, we get itin pieces and we'd have to go
back and redo things or justtake time.
I was very slow and verycareful doing this.
There was no rush for me onthis.
As far as I was concerned, itcould take as long as it needed
to take.
I waited my whole life to dothis and I didn't care if it
took five years or ten years todo it.

(34:50):
I wanted to be sure that it wasabsolutely perfect.
I have to tell you, puppetoon 3, and I've been told this by
others rivals some of thegreatest restorations ever done
on a cartoon subject or anysubject, not alone makes it
stand out of anything that'sbeen done.
I think your viewers andlisteners will really appreciate

(35:13):
it when they see this.
It's a one of a kind.
It literally is a one of a kind.

Tim Millard (35:17):
That leads me to say that the volume two came out
in 2020.
When you released that, did youthen think, okay, I'm going to
immediately start on the rest ofthese?
Or is it just one continuousthing?
You just released what you hadavailable and you were working
on others and just hoping thatsomeday down the line you would

(35:39):
have all three.

Arnold Leibovit (35:39):
It was a part of that, part of that and part
of that.
I was doing two and I knew thatI would never be able to fit
all the things I wanted to ontwo.
Then it became three, but thenthree became this much bigger
entity Because Puppetoon 3 hasgot nearly 30 subjects on it.
It's five hours of content,whereas Puppetoon 2 is less than

(36:03):
half that amount.
That's one thing.
The other thing is thatPuppetoon 3 is a dual layer disk
.
It could literally be done as atwo disk set, but I decided to
do it as a dual layer so I wouldeconomize to save costs on
doing it.
Even so, a dual layer is morethan twice the cost of a single

(36:23):
layer Blu-ray.
It has a higher level bit rateand it has higher ability to get
more gigabytes on that disk.
It was very important to methat the compression rate be as
minimal as possible.

Tim Millard (36:37):
After all.

Arnold Leibovit (36:38):
I'm doing restorations, I want people to
see them the best way I possiblycould, next to a 4K UHD, which
is really not that much morethan a Blu-ray.
To be perfectly honest, youcan't get it to look any better.
That was really important, thatI had it done properly.
When I was doing 2, it evolvedthat, okay, this was going to.

(36:59):
I just had no idea what I wasgetting myself into when I got
into this, but I knew that ithad to be done.
One thing led to another.
The other thing is I wanted therestorations to be even better.
I went even further with therestorations on 3.
I advanced to the newprogramming, new talent, new
grading professionals.

(37:20):
I just decided, if I was goingto do these successive negatives
, they need to be done optimally, the best way, so the world can
see them.
Remember, these films haven'tbeen seen in nearly 100 years in
some cases.
In some cases, they've neverbeen seen in this quality in

(37:40):
history Never.
It was important to me thatwhen we exhibit these things and
my plan is that we'll haveshows at the academy and other
places to show them so thatpeople will see with their own
eyes what it looked like on amovie screen in Technicolor, on
a big screen, what these thingsactually look like.
It's not only a revelation,it's jaw dropping, literally.

(38:05):
That's really why I spent thetime to do it, because I know
how important these are.
They are important to a lot ofpeople.
I wanted to make them as goodas I possibly could.
That's how I did this.

Tim Millard (38:22):
If I'm hearing you right, it's not like hey, we
just restored these, we releasedthem previously on VHS or DVD
and we restored them now and youcan now buy them on Blu-ray.
We're talking about these werenot even available.
This is the first time you'reseeing these and you're getting
this kind of image quality andrestoration, Am I right?

Arnold Leibovit (38:41):
That's right.
This is the first time theywill have been seen in history,
except for there were sevenpuppatoons that were on volume
one that are on this.
I was never happy with thatrestoration.
I wasn't involved in thatrestoration, it was done by
another company and I was neverhappy with the quality and we
decided to upgrade theresolution to go back to the

(39:01):
original negatives.
Paramount helped me do that andwe did them in the current
technology.
We upgraded it to the currenttechnology so it vastly
surpasses what's on Puppatune 1.
That's this process.
Every time I do another one ofthese, it just gets better and
better and better, because thetechnology just keeps improving.

(39:24):
If, by some luck or miracle, Ido another one, it will be even
better, hopefully.

Tim Millard (39:35):
Let's go talk about a couple more of these before
we wrap up our conversation heretoday, and I think there are
two that I really just wanted totalk about because I thought
the music was so I don't knowjust enthralling.
One was Jasper and theBeanstalk from 1945.
While we all know the storythat roughly it's based on, I

(39:57):
love that music with Peggy Leeas the harp.
The other one was Date withDuke from 1947, where it's
basically this must be a veryearly example of live action and
animation together, becauseyou've got Duke Ellington live
playing and then you've got thePuppatunes.

Arnold Leibovit (40:17):
Talk about this .
Yeah, the Perfume, it does thePerfume Suite.
In that, actually it's 1947.
You're right, it's one of thefirst uses of live action
animation.
But the thing is, if you goback to George's animation in
Europe, he actually did somesubjects that had animation and
cell animation in the same film.
He was doing it in the 1930s.

(40:38):
So it's an evolution, but inTechnicolor, in this way, it's
probably one of the early usesof live action and animation.
Like a Roger Rabbit, let's say,and that's what he was really.
And even when Bugs Bunny was init, bugs Bunny was cell
animated and he had puppetanimation next to a cell
animated character that RobertMcKinson did the animation for

(41:00):
Bugs, the greatest bugs animator.
He did the animation in JasperGoes Hunting.
So he did combine live actionanimation and several of these.
So you have that element.
The use of music.
Well, that's a big subject.
Tim George really understoodmusic.
It's been toyed around, andeven as of today, the idea of

(41:24):
doing new puppatoons, like doinga new puppatoon movie.
Today you could say, well, toyStory is a puppatoon movie.
You could say, anything beingdone today is really a puppatoon
because it's all influenced byGeorge.
But doing a real new puppatoon.
What would it incorporate?
Well, music is one of the keyelements of the puppatoons Music
.
George understood music and heused it to great advantage.

(41:47):
He had big band sounds, he hadjazz, he had orchestral music.
He really understood music.
He was like a Stanley Kubrickin that respect.
He really understood the use ofmusic and how it implements
into a story or into a generaltheme and the music really

(42:08):
drives the puppatoons.
It's like another world, it'slike a flight of fantasy and
everyone goes into this flightof fantasy where it starts at
one place and then suddenly itgoes into another world and
music plays a huge part of thatnew world.
And that's the beauty of thepuppatoons.
And George is really smart inunderstanding the use of music

(42:31):
and he was, like I said, he wasa huge fan of these things.
Ward Kimball, for instance, hadhis Firehouse 5 band and when he
met with George, george didn'twant to talk about animation.
The two of them only wanted totalk about jazz and jazz music,
because George was so interestedin jazz and so was Ward in

(42:52):
music.
You see, music played a bigpart of it.
And the same thing with WaltDisney's films.
You see a lot of films.
Music plays a huge part of howthese films really played out
and a lot of the composers thatworked for George worked for
Walt Disney.
The biggest example would beLee Harleen, for instance, who
did the music in let's see, wasit Snow White?

(43:13):
I mean, lee Harleen was one ofthe great.
He did music for George in theseven faces of Dr Lau, people
that were in this field offantasy.
There were just certaincomposers, certain pieces of
music, and George tapped intothese people.
So that's the greatest thingabout the puppatoons is my

(43:34):
opinion, is the use of music.
Music and its period music,it's that time in history as I
call it a great.
It's like a great of wonder andmagic.
It's a magical period.
To me.
It's like a time machine.
You're going back in time andyou're seeing something that is
glorious in color, with musicthat just drives the image, and

(44:00):
it's just wonderful stuff.
It just feels so alive and inthis age of cynicism and
negative sentiment, when you goback to the puppatoons, you're
going back to a time of greatjoy, just wonderful joy and just
positive entertainment.
And that's the beauty of them.
It's just pure, positive,wonderful entertainment, just

(44:23):
pure joy.
Just what the puppatoons are.
Pure joy To me.

Tim Millard (44:28):
Yeah, and I think a great example was another one
that I wanted to ask you aboutand that was this Together in
the Weather from 1946.
And it has the characters ofPunchy and Judy, which I mean
George uses a lot of hischaracters over again in
different ones, but I thoughtthat had a lot of sweetness to
it and positivity to your point.

Arnold Leibovit (44:53):
Yeah, and I discovered through the help of
Keith Scott, who is a voice guy.
He knows character voice andByron Kane is the narrator of
Together in the Weather and itwas for many years.
I wasn't really sure thatthat's who it was.
I was in the liner notes that Iwrote for this.
One of the things that I did isI documented for the very first
time, almost like abibliography, the actual talent

(45:17):
that works and worked on thepuppatoons, because many people
as I could find in terms ofcamera voice work, I tried to
add as many new names as Ipossibly could and you'll see
that even in the credits becauseI have a credit roll.
If you go to the extras you'llsee a production credit roll and
I have every credit of everyanimator, music people.

(45:37):
But Byron Kane was the voice inTogether in the Weather and
that was a big discovery to beable to at least figure that out
.
And Robert C Bruce, by the way,is the voice in Bravo, mr
Strauss.
And Robert C Bruce was thevoice in a myriad of Warner Bros
cartoons during the periodLooney Tunes and Bugs Bunny
cartoons.

(45:58):
The voice that you hear inthose when you hear that
narrated voice in the 1940s,that's Robert C Bruce, and
Robert C Bruce did a slight kindof a twist of tenor on his
voice and he did this for Georgein Bravo, mr Strauss, together
in the Weather.
It's like toys in a toyland.

(46:20):
That's what it really is Rightexactly.
One of the reviewers I'vereviewed it recently in
CineSavante.
Charlie Lodge did this reviewand he called it a toyland and
he said that the colors were sovivid it was like watching 3D.
That's how he described it, andI said that earlier.
It's really a showpiece.
I think Together in the Weatherin its current form, restore,

(46:42):
restored, is a showpiece.
It's so beautiful in terms oflooking at it you can hardly
believe that it was shot in1940s, in the early 1940s.
It was actually 1946.
When you look at it it was likeshot yesterday.
It's so beautiful, yeah, yeah.
But it's a story of two clocks,weather clocks, and one clock

(47:06):
has punchy and one clock hasJudy, and Judy is luring punchy
with fragrances of perfume andtight sweaters, kind of luring
him in a romantic kind of youknow it's kind of a period idea,
you know to kind of cometogether, you know to marry
together, so they sort of livingin separate weather clocks,

(47:27):
they end up living in a singleweather clock, you see, and so
the story kind of goes alongthat way and it's a very funny,
very inventive, in my opinion,type of storytelling.
And you just don't seestorytelling like that.
To me today it doesn't exist.
So it's very, very funny, veryunique.
Judy is kind of the sexycharacter.

(47:47):
You know the period that youmight have seen.
You know Tex Avery do.
Judy is like the earlyincarnation of what Roger Rabbit
with Jessica became that GaryWolf created in Roger Rabbit.
I worked with Gary, by the way,on a couple of scripts, so I
know Gary very well and Judy isreally a precursor to Jessica

(48:12):
Rabbit and so that's a very,very good subject to highlight
and I think your people thatcome to the Puppet Toons will
really enjoy that film.
It's been released before andwhat's good is that now you get
to see it like it's never beenseen before, because it's a
success of negative and it looksso, so beautiful, just

(48:35):
beautiful.

Tim Millard (48:36):
Well, I mean, I kind of cherry picking some of
the ones that just popped out tome and everything, and I wanted
to talk more but kind of kindof wrap up our discussion.
I wanted to ask you about acell animation actually, which
you put on here and I thought itwas noteworthy because I think
you said that this was justrecently found and that's the, a

(48:59):
fairy tale about a melancholicking from 1934.
How did you go about, like,finding that and who had it and
how did that come about?
And obviously that's some earlywork.
That was 1934, I believe 1934.

Arnold Leibovit (49:16):
You did it in Paris he was working for.
He did it for the San MargerinCompany.
George did various commercialsfor different products, and it's
really it was an accident.
I was dealing with a fellow inHungary.
You know, george was born inBudapest, so the Hungarians are
very high on George over there,and so I was contacted by him

(49:40):
and was told of the discovery ofa number of different
puppatoons that seemed to beturning up in Europe, and the
reason they're turning up isreally an interesting story.
When the Nazis invaded Europe, alot of the spoils of war were
taken, whether it was paintingsand jewelry, and one of the
things that the Nazis took waswas film.

(50:02):
A lot of the films were werekind of left in a place, they
were left in archives, and whatactually happened is the
Russians came in, and when theRussians came in they got a lot
of the spoils of war, and sosome of these subjects started
to get dispersed in archives inthe Red Curtain.
Countries like Russia,czechoslovakia, you know,

(50:25):
countries that were, that werecommunist, that now have become
more democratic, and so some ofthese films are turning up in
those archives, and this was oneof them.
I found it in Czechoslovakia,and it was.
It was really a revelation.
It's, first of all, it looksamazing.
It's in.
It's in a gasper color, whichis an early form of technicolor,

(50:47):
and it's a cell animationBeautiful.
It's not a word spoken in thewhole film, it's all done with
just music, but it's very cute.
It has the characters in it andit's basically a story about a
king who's unwell and he's madewell by the use of this

(51:08):
margarine to cook with, so tospeak, and he's fed this new,
these foods by the chef of thecourt and he's made better.
So that one is the one, that onethere is a really interesting
film, and there's three others,by the way, that were discovered
the old woman who lived in ashoe, the let me see what are
they called, the queen was inthe parlor, and the good bear

(51:30):
and the bad bear and those wemade for the Rinso soap, and
they're.
The animation in those is equalto Disney animation in terms of
design.
They look like Pinocchio.
One of them looks likePinocchio style animation
backgrounds, and they all are.
They're all scored to JackHilton's music, so they have

(51:51):
wonderful scores to them, andthose were recently discovered
as well.
I got those at the British FilmInstitute in England.
They didn't even know they hadsome of these.
By the way, I call this, I callthis film archaeology.
That's how.

Tim Millard (52:06):
I characterize it.
Yeah, it's fascinating.
Yeah, it's really filmarchaeology.

Arnold Leibovit (52:11):
And it's so interesting is.
I'm getting them from worldarchives.
You know it was in just here.
It's coming from all over theworld and it's just.
I'm dealing right now withGermany, I'm dealing with the
Kinematic and in the Bundesarchive in Germany, and other
films are turning up there aswell.
So it's very exciting and all Ican say that on the horizon.

(52:32):
Just keep your eye out, becauseI think there's could be some
more coming, you know.

Tim Millard (52:39):
Well, that's always good to know.
I guess I was thinking about,as you were talking about these,
you know, fines in Europe andeverything.
What is the internationalappeal to George Powell?

Arnold Leibovit (52:52):
The international appeal is huge.
George was a European, he wasHungarian.
He is known, he was known inEurope as the Walt Disney of
Europe before he ever came tothe United States.
When he was making these films,they were shown in movie
theaters, just like commercialsare shown on television today,
and he was known all over theworld.

(53:12):
And that's how Walt Disney gotto know him, that's how
Paramount kind of defined him.
And George was very wellrecognized in Europe.
So, yes, the Europeans know him.
I'm working with a fellow nowthat's writing a book on the
puppatoons.
He's in England, he's beenworking on it for many years and
hopefully that book will comeout next year and will be a
tie-in to show puppatoons aswell.

(53:34):
And he's a European and so hehas access to a lot of the
European sources there.
But yes, george is very wellknown in England, in the
Netherlands, in France, inGermany, certainly now in
Czechoslovakia.
So, yeah, definitely has aninternational appeal.
And the disc, by the way, is aregion free.

(53:56):
It's a region free disc.

Tim Millard (53:57):
I was going to ask you that.
Okay, it is region free and, asfar as I could tell, you need
to go to puppatoonnet to orderthis volume three, correct, it's
not available anywhere else.

Arnold Leibovit (54:09):
No, I kept it exclusive.
I generally try to do that.

Tim Millard (54:12):
One of the main reasons I need to do it is I
need to recoup the expenses,which are enormous.
So for the shipping.
Are you able to do the shippingthen too?
We have a lot of listeners onthis podcast from the UK, europe
, of course, and then alsoAustralia.
Are they able to get shipping?

Arnold Leibovit (54:33):
Yeah, they get shipping.
It's added shipping.
It's its customary shippingcost.
Whatever it is, it's usuallyunder $20.
Generally it's under $20.
It's around $14 or $15 forCanada and it's around $20 for
Australia, for England, forFrance, norway, sweden, germany.
So it's an additional $20, but,yes, they can do that and they

(54:55):
can also get puppatoon two aswell, which I still have some
left, and so I'm selling out ofthose.
But I did this deliberatelywithout bringing it on Amazon
right away.
I do this because I want tokeep it exclusive.
I have to do it because I needto recoup.
I'm just one guy making this,I'm not one of brothers making
this, so I have to be able torecoup as much of the money I

(55:20):
can so I can pour it in tofurther restorations.
I mean, that's what it comesdown to for me and so, yeah, so
puppatoonnet is where you go toget it and I hope a lot of
people will enjoy it and hopewe'll get it and they can watch
the trailer, by the way.

Tim Millard (55:36):
I'll post the trailer on Facebook as well and
provide links to you and thepuppatoon so that people can
kind of just read on their ownObviously same with that your
documentary on YouTube, andwe'll get those links in the
podcast show notes for thoselistening or watching.
And then I'll also do someposting on Facebook and in our

(55:58):
group as well, so that peoplecan spend the time that they
want to learn about it andreally read through all the
stuff that you have on yourwebsite too for the releases
that you've done.
We didn't even talk about the500 hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.

Arnold Leibovit (56:13):
Oh, that's Dr Seuss.

Tim Millard (56:14):
I think it's kind of that's brilliant Dr Seuss.
George did the first.

Arnold Leibovit (56:18):
Dr Seusses, the first Dr Seusses, the very
first Dr Seuss was a WarnerBrothers.
It was about the elephant thatsat on the egg.
I forget the name of it.
Your listeners know.
Hi, Jerry was here.
Jerry Beck, he'd know rightaway and he would help me on
that.
He'll know that In dimensionalanimation the first puppatoons

(56:38):
Dr Seuss were the first onesthat were done.
It was the 500 hats ofBartholomew Cubbins, which is on
here as well as and to thinkthat I saw it on Mulberry Street
, which is also on here.
Right, that was the other one,so another bonus is that you're
seeing the first early DrSeusses both of them and there
Did you enjoy it.

Tim Millard (56:56):
Yeah, I did.
I mean the story is terrific,right, but I really enjoyed some
of the European feel to some ofthese pieces as well.
Our family lived in Europe fora little bit and I don't know it
felt very old school and it wasterrific.
And that story, of course, withthe King and everything, has a

(57:17):
real European feel to the story,but I mean it was very charming
.

Arnold Leibovit (57:21):
There's a wonderful sensibility that these
have that makes them unlikeanything else that you would see
.
They're just so unique becausethey have a feel, as I said,
it's a time and a place and asensibility of another era, but
they live today and they worktoday, which I think is very
interesting.
Here we are, what, 80, 90, 100years later and we're still

(57:45):
watching them and they're stillbeing enjoyed as they were when
they were originally were seenand, by the way, they were big
hits when these films came outin the 1940s, I should tell you
they were big hits.
I talked to people who saw them.
I have friends of mine whoseparents who now passed away, but
when they were alive they toldme that they saw these
puppatoons in the movie theatersin the 1940s and they were a

(58:09):
big hit.
People saw them and really lookforward to them.
They're watching some musicalor Western or some black and
white movie and here comes thistactic color puppatoon on the
screen in three dimension noless, and it was a big, big deal
to people who had never seenanything like this before.
And George was able to bringthat to the American population

(58:32):
to see that in the theater andpeople talk about today I still
have letters of correspondencefrom people you know when
they're no longer alive.
But they told me just seeingthose puppatoons when they were
younger in movie theaters in the1940s were life changing for
them, believe it or not.
Even at that time they werelife changing for those people

(58:55):
that saw it when they first cameout.
And here we get to see themagain, beautifully restored.
So I hope everyone will enjoyit.
I hope everyone will come toenjoy this and take the time to
really take your time and watchthese.
The way to watch thesepuppatoons is watch them one at
a time and really take them in.

(59:16):
Remember they didn't come outall at once.
It isn't like watching afeature film.
They came out with a movie andthen maybe six or eight months
later there'd be anotherpuppatoon and then maybe six or
eight months later there'd beanother puppatoon.
So they weren't designed to bewatched one after the other.
We can do that, but think ofyourself in 1940 and watching

(59:37):
them one at a time.
Imagine yourself in a movietheater and seeing that for the
very first time and justtransport yourself to that world
, and I think it's a very lifechanging experience if you put
yourself into that kind of timemachine.
When you watch these, I keepcoming back to time machine, of

(59:59):
course.

Tim Millard (01:00:01):
Well, yeah, I mean, it makes a lot of sense you put
in and you're watching 80 yearold films and they feel these
transfers, many of these feellike they could have been done
much more recently than that,that's for sure just because of
the style, the technicolor andjust the storytelling as well.

Arnold Leibovit (01:00:20):
Yeah, yeah, I really do appreciate your
interest and your enthusiasm,tim.

Tim Millard (01:00:25):
Well, I mean, I'm kind of watching that and I just
, you know, I'm coming as anovice and I'm just like, wow,
this is.
This is really neat to see.
You know, it's a great disc youput together and that's what we
talk about on this podcast, andso it's highly recommended and
I appreciate you coming on andexplaining you know some of the
stories behind it, because to methat always adds a lot, and I

(01:00:47):
think that's why people probablywill enjoy the booklet that you
include in there with this.
I don't know, it's like the 20page booklet or something.

Arnold Leibovit (01:00:54):
It's like the maximum.

Tim Millard (01:00:55):
Yeah, and those are not cheap to make.

Arnold Leibovit (01:00:59):
And I should add, by the way, jim Titus did
the graphics for me.
I must mention Jim.
Jim is one of the leadinggraphic designers in the
business.
He does a lot of work, for hedid ET recently Jurassic Park,
he did Superman, he did a lot ofthe big feature films for
Spielberg and Lucas and he justand the reason he did this

(01:01:21):
because he's not inexpensive hedid it as a favor at a much
reduced rate.
For me, because when he wasgrowing up, his father was a
huge George Powell fan and hethe time machine.
For his father, like for me,seeing the time machine, which
we didn't even talk about, was alife changing moment, and so he

(01:01:44):
was a kid and his father wastalking to him about George
Powell and the time machine, Imean.
So that's the reason he wasinterested in this is because of
the iconic nature of how itinfluenced his father and how it
now is a part of him.
So I just mentioned Jim becausehe's a great, great graphic

(01:02:06):
artist.
He's really one of the great,great graphic artists.
So I'm very, very lucky.

Tim Millard (01:02:10):
Yeah, I mean I worked at the studio and I saw
your packaging, your key artthere and I saw this booklet and
I was like, wow, that is studiolevel or better.
You look at the cover.
That's got such a terrificthree-dimensional look just to
that cover.

(01:02:30):
And that's also the cover ofthe booklet.
So Kudos to him and I'm glad hebrought his talents to you.
And it's great when people whoare in the industry bring their
talents and they know, hey look,this is not the studio, this is
just you and they're willing tohelp out because it really
makes this a great disc forcollectors to have on their

(01:02:52):
shelf and be very proud of howit looks as well.
And I know people are like it'sall about the film and that's
true.
But when you enjoy collecting,the packaging does add a lot,
and great artwork always adds alot.

Arnold Leibovit (01:03:10):
So I'm indebted to Jim and so many people that
helped me on this, that workedon this, the amount of effort
that was put in.
I'm just so much gratitude Ihave for so many people.
I don't know what to say, butit would never be possible
without a team of probablythere's got to be 100 people
easily that have worked on thisover the four years.

(01:03:31):
One other thing the companythat does one of the platforms
they're called Phoenix.
Phoenix is one of the cleaningprograms in Europe.
They actually are supporters ofthe project.
They became supporters andthey've been doing articles and
they just did a podcast as wellin England and next week, a week

(01:03:51):
after next, I'm doing one withthe Ray Harryhausen Foundation
in Europe because of George'sconnection to Ray and they've
been wanting to do one of thesefor a long, long time.
I was contacted in Glasgow,scotland, by a museum that was
doing a big Ray Harryhausenexhibit and they're going to be
doing other ones and they wantGeorge to be part of that

(01:04:16):
exhibit.
So there's all of thathappening.
A will happen, I hope, at somepoint, and the puppatoons.
The great thing about it is atleast this is something new.
In other words, we've seen hisfeature films.
They've come out, but thepuppatoons stand alone in my
opinion and many, as some of thegreatest works of animation in

(01:04:38):
the history of animation, and sothey have a place unto
themselves and in my view, itcould be George's greatest work.
The puppatoons could beGeorge's greatest achievement in
his whole career, and so that,I think, is important.
So that's a testament.
So here you are, in 2023,talking about what was made in

(01:05:02):
the 1930s and 40s.
It's unbelievable.

Tim Millard (01:05:07):
Well, arnie, it was a real pleasure having you on
the podcast and I hope that thissells very well and then does
very well for you, and that itcontinues to bring the world of
puppatoons and George Powell tothe public.
So thank you.

Arnold Leibovit (01:05:23):
Oh, thank you, Tim, it's been absolute joy.

Tim Millard (01:05:32):
For those who would like to learn more about George
Powell and puppatoons, I haveposted the link to the
documentary on YouTube and tothe Puppatoon website in the
podcast show notes.
This new Puppatoon movie,volume 3, blu-ray, is highly
recommended just on theentertainment value alone.
You don't need to be a GeorgePowell collector or animation

(01:05:52):
fan to enjoy these timelesstales, but if you are a fan,
you'll definitely want to addthis Blu-ray to your home
collection.
If this is the first timeyou've listened to the show, I
hope you enjoyed it and thatyou'll think about following so
that you get all of our podcasts.
And you can find us on socialmedia on Facebook, twitter or
Instagram.

(01:06:13):
So look for those links in thepodcast show notes as well.
Until next time you've beenlistening to Tim Mellard, stay
slightly obsessed.