The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican (1954) from Sam Singer
So bad it's almost good.
The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican was one of the first cartoons made for TV. It is featured on Jerry Beck's "Worst Cartoons Ever" and luckily, show may have never actually aired on television.
It's low quality, black and white, and honestly not very good. This show's creator, Sam Singer, was trying, though. He was an innovator. Animation for television had just a sliver of the budget of theatrical animation, which contributes to why this looks much older than, say the first Looney Tunes short (Sinkin' in the Bathtub) from 20 years previous.
From today's perspective, it looks almost comical. It's very amateurish, with a lot of needlessly looped animations and several scenes fade to black before the character is done talking. It comes off as being rebellious, punk, or intentionally bad. It's as if the animator doesn't care about following common practices, but really he just did not have any experience.
The voice acting is not bad, but the dialogue is. I think he was trying to avoid doing expensive action animation, so he used a lot of dialogue. It's like Sam Singer wanted someone to be talking constantly, but they didn't want to squeeze in too much story, so there is a lot repetition and rephrasing going on.
Opening theme music is a major part of the cartoon experience for me. It sets the tone for the coming experience and it's generally catchy and easy to listen to. The theme for Paddy the Pelican is terrible. It's just a man making squawking sounds. It's melodic, but the "instrumentation" is awful. I wish they had shortened it to a few seconds or, better yet, used a silent intro. This short also used no foley, which is weird, because that is a large part of most cartoons. The music consists of an organ playing notes, but it's not really a melody and it doesn't match up with the action. It's hard to listen to when compared to older Disney and Warner Brothers theatrical cartoons.
Innovators are absolutely necessary for progress. Unfortunately, their work is not always that good. Sam Singer broke new ground for the future of animation and he showed that it was possible to make animation on a television budget.
Not much is known about the creation of this show, just that Sam Singer created the show based on his comic strip of the same name. It's sad, but there is really not much information that I could find about Sam Singer. I would love to learn more about that guy and hopefully more details turn up over time.
My next post will be more enjoyable, I promise :)