Clutch Cargo

About forty years ago when I was a child in a Los Angeles suburb I recall seeing this odd cartoon, so different from the others where things moved. The creators seem to have had this process where they could put images of actors lips moving in the faces of the characters. Kinda' neat and kinda' not. After being exposed to the work of Disney, Lantz and others, this dialogue heavy, action off-stage with sound effects cartoon didn't seem so hot. Novel, though. Compare to others of the period. Almost anything on the idiot box could hold the attention of a little child. Some that came later were worse. Margaret Kerry was the voice of Paddlefoot? Well, whattaya know!

I remember watching Clutch Cargo every morning before school. It seemed very strange, but for some reason I couldn't stop watching those real human lips. It was on one of the cartoon channels recently, and my son thought it was the lamest thing he's ever seen and feels sympathy for how I grew up. I recently heard an explanation for the odd animation, other than it was low budget. The creator's child was deaf and could not understand regular cartoons, since she could not lip read the mouth movements of animated characters. So he came up with the idea of using real mouths so deaf children could enjoy cartoons. The story has a ring of truth to it, but it could very well be apocryphal. If anyone can verify this, it would go a long way to explaining such an odd idea for kids' entertainment.

Created by Charles Haas (for Cambria Productions) - "Clutch Cargo" (1959-1960) was a limited animation cartoon adventure story that I found to be entertaining mainly from a nostalgic perspective on things.

Using the novelty of Syncro-Vox (superimposing real human mouths onto the faces of the cartoon characters) - Clutch Cargo was an international globetrotter (on dangerous missions) who brought along with him his ward, Spinner and his pet dachshund, Paddlefoot.

All-in-all - I thought that this vintage cartoon was at least worth a view.

"An oxymoron. An animation of still pictures, with human lips" --not really, it's actually cognitive dissonance: two conflicting cognitive inputs can't be resolved...like Clutch Cargo's lips. Conan O'Brien must have been haunted by these images from his childhood. It would explain a lot about his sense of humor. It's amazing the stuff that was foisted on Baby Boomers like Clutch Cargo, Gumby and Davey and Goliath. It makes you wonder if the KGB hadn't infiltrated TV and come up with a way to warp our young minds. People think that video games and CG cartoons are bad today just imagine how these low-tech attempts at entertainment warped us...did I mention the Thunderbirds are GO!

I remember watching this show as a kid on WGN's Garfield Goose and Friends with Frazier Thomas. It was very different from anything else that was done at the time. I know compared with the animation of today it seems cheap and tawdry but now I watch these shows with the same fondness of watching old Andy Griffith Show reruns. The live action lips set against animated cells and other ways they had of reducing the need of actual animation were sometimes fascinating in their simplicity. If you saw these as a kid you will like them now. If not they may not be right for you. I totally enjoy watching these shows now as much as I did then.