The Opera Caper

Two crooks try to break into the Paris Opera and kidnap the star soprano in this Famous Studios cartoon.

It's a nicely written one, and under the direction of Shamus Culhane and Ralph Bakshi, nicely paced, even though the visuals elements are distressing. It's surprising to think that Paramount was still producing a few theatrical cartoons this late, but it was more of an afterthought to their attempts on the still healthy TV market for cartoons. I grew up in this era, and don't recall ever seeing a cartoon in theaters until the 1990s, when the animation revival was well underway. Newsreels had ended in 1963, live-action comedy shorts in 1959, and the format of a full movie program had vanished at the suburban theaters I attended.

It was a long run for the studio founded by the Fleischer brothers at the end of the First World War, but the world had changed vastly, as well as the movies. Too bad.