Marquis wrote a daily column on "archy and mehitabel" for the New York Post in the nineteen-twenties, as a defence against the bottle and a job as a sports reporter.I read the Penguin collection of his "a and m" stories in the fifties,as an animator at the Disney studio. I tried to get the studio interested, but they were not ready for the earthy humor, and the scandalous goings on of mehitabel. Later when I had started up my own studio, Fine Arts Films,I saw the Broadway production,with Eartha Kitt,which was brilliant.I had met Carol Channing,(who I saw as mehitabel,--perfect gravel voice),and she agreed to do it.With that start,I could not fail.I found a sympathetic ear of a friend,Preston(Sandy) Fleet,who was willing to invest in the production of SHINBONE ALLEY by my studio,Fine Arts Films.By 1969,we had a talented group of storymen,designers and artists,some ex Disney and Warners.Joe Darion and George Kleinsinger,(who had done the stage musical version),did the final script and music.Eddie Bracken and Alan Reed came aboard,and that was it,except we found John Carradine,a great actor,was willing to play the part of that old roue' actor-cat, Tyrone.T.Tattersall.We stuck faithfully to Marquis,and a stunning sequence,"archy declares war", in the middle of the film,we animated in George Herriman's cartoon style,(he illustrated Marquis' poems),creating a world that Marquis lived in. Our film "SHINBONE ALLEY" has been honored as one of the all-time great animated movies by The Museum of the Moving Image in New York,as well as winning the Golden Phoenix Grand Prize at the Atlanta Film Festival of 1971.
