Travelaffs

Famous Studios was nowhere near the top of heap (not that they'd ever been very close to start with) by the late 1950s. A prime example is this short.

While it's a cute cartoon and has its moments, it's a travelogue style cartoon. Tex Avery, who perfected the style, did Detouring America in 1939.

Even if this cartoon had been done ten years earlier, it would have been in the middle of the pack. There's nothing special here. Children will probably enjoy this, but there's a very quaint, "been there, done that" feel here for anyone who follows animated shorts. It's by no means a bad cartoon, but it's not a very good one either. Several days late and a great many dollars short. Good for kids and for completeists.

Here's a movie from Famous Studios in which bits and pieces from old cartoons are recycled to new purposes. Nominally a travelogue, it is a series of bits lifted from older cartoons in a blackout gag format, from Detroit's auto factories, to the Mississippi River, to Mexico, with stops in between.

It was a familiar format for cartoons for many years. Even though real travelogues were disappearing from new offerings by the studios, they persisted for a while as they were kept at exchanges for those shrinking number of theaters which offered a feature and selected short subjects.