16mm OSWALD RABBIT Cartoon SICK CYLINDERS 1928 Harman Start Price USD 99.99 Current Price USD 99.99 Time Left - Bid Count 0 Buy It Now Price - Reserve Price - Start Time Tuesday, November 04, 2008 End Time Thursday, December 04, 2008 Location North Bergen, NJ See more about '16mm OSWALD RABBIT Cartoon SICK CYLINDERS 1928 Harman' Description COLLECTING • BUYING • SELLING • TRADING 16mm FILMS Specializing in Cartoons from the Golden Age of Animation SINCE 1978 ...like they're going out of style! NO RESERVE! 16mm B&W SOUND OSWALD RABBIT CARTOON -- SICK CYLINDERS (1928) -- DIRECTED BY HUGH HARMAN & BEN CLOPTON !!! Offered is a brand new mint condition 16mm black and white (the way it was originally made) sound print of a OSWALD THE LUCKY RABBIT cartoon titled SICK CYLINDERS (1928), directed by HUGH HARMAN & BEN CLOPTON. Produced by Charles Mintz & George Winkler.If you know your animation history, then you must realize that this cartoon was produced during that very brief and VERY RARE (film collecting-wise) period between when Charles Mintz caused Walt Disney to quit (and subsequently create Mickey Mouse to replace Oswald) and when Universal fired Mintz and set up the Walter Lantz studio to make Oswald toons. The Mintz studio only made 26 cartoons in 1928-29; some silent, most talkies. And even briefer still is the period that HUGH HARMAN made Oswald cartoons before he got ambitious to create a series on his own with Bosko for Leon Schlesinger and Warner Bros."Oswald wants to take his girl Kitty for a ride, but constant mishaps such as a pesky pooch and falling boulders prevent the time from being the least bit enjoyable. In the end, Oswald loses his girl to another character and in angry, kicks his car in the rear repeatedly." (BCDB)This print has the original Universal main and end titles. It is very clean looking and has excellent contrast, with no lines and no splices. It is about 300 feet long wound tight on a good 400 foot plastic reel with leaders at both ends of the film. There is no vinegar smell to this print.Buyer pays additional $6.00 for Media Mail/insured shipping or $7.75 for Priority Mail/insured shipping to U.S. destination. International shipping quoted when needed. Checks, money orders, or PayPal accepted.If you see a "Buy It Now" price and you are interested in this item, I suggest that you do one of two things: 1) Use "Buy It Now" and win instantly! -- or -- 2) Place a bid to erase the "Buy It Now" price (it disappears once a bid is placed). Otherwise someone else might use "Buy It Now" and you will not get a chance to win this item at all! "Buy It Now" will disappear with the first bid, so if you want to avoid a bidding war later -- use it now as it's a bargain. We reserve the right to end this auction, revise the opening bid or "Buy It Now" price at any time if we find there is lack of interest, so please make sure to place your bids early!Be sure to click on the link that says "View seller's other items" because I've got several more great old cartoons up on eBay right now. Also check out my other auctions for more great comic book and comic strip original art. Bid with confidence with "toonsgonewild" auctions on eBay. I've been a collector for over 35 years and a seller for at least 20 years! Be sure to add me to your favorites list! OSWALD THE LUCKY RABBIT Original Medium: Theatrical cartoons Produced by: Disney First Appeared: 1927 Creators: Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks Walt Disney's first successful animal star wasn't Mickey Mouse. It was a little guy few people today have ever heard of — Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. An earlier Disney series, the "Alice" comedies, was faltering, so the studio traded her in for a new character — one that, in appearance at least, differed from the Pat Sullivan Studio's Felix the Cat mainly in having long ears. The first Oswald cartoon was Trolley Troubles, released September 5, 1927. Between that year and the next, Disney's studio produced over two dozen black and white, silent Oswald cartoons, which were very favorably received by reviewers. Even then, however, Disney constantly strove for higher and higher quality, and as a result, the cartoons became more and more expensive to produce. In 1928, Disney went to New York to approach his distributor, Charles Mintz (representing Universal Studios), about an increase in his budget. Mintz not only refused — he actually told Disney to accept a 20% cut in the budget, or Universal, which was the legal owner of the series, would give it to another studio. Rather than accept the cut, Disney relinquished his creation, making Charles Mintz the first of many who thought, wrongly, that they could assume Disney's success simply by hiring or hijacking someone or something away from him. Mintz gave the series to his brother-in-law, George Winkler, who set up his own studio, manned by several ex-Disney animators, to produce new Oswald cartoons for Universal. Within a year, Disney was back on top with Mickey Mouse, and Winkler was out of the picture. Universal opened a studio of its own, headed by Walter Lantz, so it was Lantz who finally inherited the character. Lantz's first big change was to add sound. Mickey Rooney (who already had a toon connection — he'd played Mickey McGuire of Toonerville Folks in silent comedies) was the first to do the character's voice. An early highlight of Oswald's career in the talkies was in the live-action feature The King of Jazz (1930), which, by the way, was his first appearance in color. Oswald is a minor character in an animated song-and-dance number in which Paul Whiteman, who starred in the extravaganza, seizes a lion's crown to become the titular jazz king. Lantz turned out Oswald cartoons by the dozen, all through the early and middle 1930s. By 1936, however, the era of rubber-limbed, Felix-inspired characters had run its course, and Oswald was re-designed into a more complex figure. He did not make this transition very smoothly, however, and faded from view a couple of years later. He made an appearance in the first Andy Panda cartoon, starred in one cartoon in 1943, and was a supporting character in another in 1952 — but his regular series ended in 1938. In 1942, The Funnies, a comic book published by Dell Comics, changed its name to New Funnies and its content to stories about Walter Lantz's animation stars. Comics were thick in those days, so Woody Woodpecker and Andy Panda weren't enough to fill it. And so, Oswald the Rabbit — minus the appellation "lucky" — got a new lease on life. A year later, he began making sporadic appearances in Dell's Four Color Comics. These continued until the early 1960s. In the comic books, Oswald had a pair of sons, Floyd and Lloyd. Since the '60s, Oswald has been mostly dormant. As for his creator — Walt Disney seems to have done reasonably well without him. But maybe that wasn't enough. In 2006, as part of a deal that involved Olympics coverage, several golf tournaments, and an Emmy-winning sportscaster's contract, the Disney organization wheeled and dealed with Universal to regain rights to Oswald. He may be a worthless, washed-up old toon, they seem to have thought, but he's our worthless, washed-up old toon. — DDM Don Markstein's Toonopedia The success Oswald obtained encouraged Disney to push boundaries and make his films more technologically advanced. So, Disney asked Mintz to up the budget on the shorts. Mintz, however, made a much less tolerable offer instead – as well as a threat. If Disney did not agree to a cut in the budget, Mintz would cut Disney out of the production process. Mintz had already begun to offer Disney's animators and gagmen more promising contracts to work for a new studio of Mintz's own. Disney and Iwerks were frustrated with Mintz for having pulled the rug out from under them. The two rebuilt their studio from scratch and began creating shorts starring a new, more familiar character – in the form of a mouse. Mintz, meanwhile, consigned the new Oswald shorts to be produced under his brother-in-law, George Winkler. The first short released under Winkler was High Up, debuting July 23, 1928. Though lowered budgets were evident in a few ways, the Winkler Oswald shorts were not dramatically different from the product of Disney's. The films still had the traits of crude barnyard jokes and Iwerks mechanical humor. The Winkler cartoons were fairly successful themselves. In addition to the Disney refugees, Winkler expanded his staff further with a select handful of young gagmen from the Mack Sennett comedies, including the extremely talented Pinto Colvig (who would begin as an inbetweener) and unpaid intern Walter Lantz (who served as a director starting with Mississippi Mud). Meanwhile, Disney transformed the entire industry with just one film, 1928's Steamboat Willie, featuring the character he created and developed along with Ub Iwerks – Mickey Mouse. The idea of the animated film was a novelty as it stood, but the addition of sound broke endless boundaries, and now Winkler and Mintz had to catch up. So beginning in February 1929, Winkler began releasing his cartoons in optional sound and silent prints, starting with Hen Fruit. These early films have very crude soundtracks. Bert Fiske would provide the musical accompaniment and synchronization, while Winkler's staff would use the "pots and pans" method of creating sound effects; "It was funny how we did it," Lantz once recalled. "We had a bench with all the props on it—the bells, and so on. And we'd project a cartoon on the screen and all of us would stand there in front of the cartoon. As the action progressed, we'd take it and make sound effects, dialogue, and all. We never prescored these films. We did everything as we watched the picture. It was the only way we knew how to add sound." Oswald's voice was provided by a slide whistle. Things were going smoothly for Winkler as well as Mintz, but two former Disney staffers, Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising, had other plans. Harman and Ising decided to edge out Mintz in the same manner as he had previously done to Disney. They made a proposal to Universal to produce the films themselves. The two men also planned for an additional series to be produced with sound – that of their self-created character, Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid. Not only did Universal reject such offers, but company founder Carl Laemmle also terminated the Winkler-Mintz contract as well, preferring to have the Oswald films produced directly on the Universal studio lot. Historian Tom Klein speculates that Walter Lantz was actively involved in Laemmle's decision. Lantz was interested in controlling Oswald himself, and was not able to do so from within the Winkler studio framework. When the moment came, Lantz ultimately obtained the rabbit – and the studio that would eventually become Walter Lantz Productions – just by simply being at the right place at the right time. Lantz placed a bet in a poker game with Laemmle, with Oswald as the prize, and won. Lantz's first operation was to form his new studio. Some new staffers came and went rather quickly. Two Winklerites, Tom Palmer and R. C. Hamilton would leave for Disney and Harman-Ising in early 1930. Pinto Colvig would leave for Disney in 1931, making a name for himself there as a gagman and voice artist. The former Winkler musical director, Bert Fiske would remain aboard until he departed the studio in September 1929, when he was replaced by David Broekman. In February 2006, a number of minor assets including the rights to Oswald were acquired by The Walt Disney Company from NBC Universal, as part of a deal which sent sportscaster Al Michaels from Disney's ABC and ESPN to NBC Sports. At the time, ABC had lost its contract for National Football League broadcast rights, and despite recently signing a long-term contract with ESPN, Michaels was interested in rejoining broadcast partner John Madden at NBC for the Sunday night package. While popularly characterized in the media as a "trade", and a decidedly lopsided one at that, that characterization is faulty. The ownership rights to a cartoon character were transferred from NBC to Disney, and in exchange Disney simply released Michaels from his employment contract, allowing him to sign with NBC. The deal includes the rights to the character and the original 26 short films made by Disney (namely, most of the Oswald films produced from 1927 to 1928) Rights to the Universal-produced Oswald films and other related products were not included. Walt Disney's daughter, Diane Disney Miller, issued the following statement after the deal was announced: "When Bob [Iger] was named CEO, he told me he wanted to bring Oswald back to Disney, and I appreciate that he is a man of his word. Having Oswald around again is going to be a lot of fun." It was noted to Michaels that the Kansas City Chiefs gave the New York Jets a draft pick as compensation for releasing coach Herm Edwards from his contract. "Oswald is definitely worth more than a fourth-round draft choice. I'm going to be a trivia answer someday." A DVD featuring the Oswald shorts has been announced as a part of Wave Seven of the Walt Disney Treasures series. TOONSGONEWILD says: "PLEASE CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT ALL THE OTHER COOL AUCTIONS I HAVE UP ON EBAY RIGHT NOW! BID EARLY AND OFTEN!! (DON'T FORGET TO SNIPE!) THANKS FOR BIDDING AND GOOD LUCK!!" Place a Bid!