caligari

While watching I kept thinking that this was a Van Buren cartoon. It is not. Ted Eshbaugh DID direct a handful of cartoons for Van Buren, including one of their best; "The Sunshine Makers". This cartoon rockets by in 8 minutes. The basic elements of the well-known story are here, the tornado, the scarecrow, the tin man. What is not here is the cowardly lion.

The cartoon IS in Technicolor, despite Disney's exclusive contract that prohibited other cartoon makers from using the three-strip color process. The other studios, Van Buren, Fleischer, etc. had to use the two-color Cinecolor process. Disney's 1st Technicolor cartoon came out in July 1932. The Wizard, copyright 1933, was never theatrically released. Maybe Eshbaugh thought that if he made it in Canada he could get past Disney's exclusive contract. Apparently that gambit didn't work.

read more about it at IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024779/

Overall, this is a nice cartoon, the first cinematic version to have Kansas in black and white, and the land of Oz in color. The production values are surprisingly good. The drawing looks like Van Buren. There is no dialogue, but the music is good. We all know the story, though to tell it in 8 minutes LOTS has to be left out. Kids unfamiliar with the MGM 1939 live action version will enjoy this. For those of us who grew up with Judy, and Ray, and Jack, and Burt (from 1939) this is just too brief to be really satisfying.
Saying that, I will say that this version of The Wizard of Oz IS a pleasant way to pass 8 minutes.