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The Last Days of UPA’s Mr. Magoo – 1959-1960
This post is the “flip-side” of an article I posted here a few weeks ago (The Last Five Screen Gems Cartoons 4/14/26) where I looked at transition of the outgoing Columbia’s Screen Gems releases and the incoming UPA cartoons. A real changing of the guard.
Roughly ten years later, the guard changed again. Things weren’t going well for UPA in the second half of the decade. Their satellite studios in New York and London closed; the Magoo feature was a troubled project; The Boing Boing Show was bombing; the Columbia contract for theatrical shorts had an expiration date: 1959.
The last of the 1958-59 season, released in July 1959, was Terror Faces Magoo. Produced in New York during the production crunch in Burbank on 1001 Arabian Nights, the Magoo feature.
By the end of the year UPA founder/producer Stephen Bousustow found a new financial “partner” to bail the studio out – Henry G. Saperstein – who essentially bought the studio and ultimately inched Bosustow out the door. Beginning in November, Columbia began releasing Hanna Barbera’s TV-styled Loopy DeLoop shorts as theatrical subjects (an arrangement that lasted through June 1965)!
Mr. Magoo was still extremely popular, if only as a short subjects star – and Bosustow knew that. Bosustow decided to keep making “UPA shorts” for theatrical release, and from this point on UPA itself would release them. Four new shorts were put into production.
The first one was Magoo Meets Boing Boing (The Noise Making Boy), directed by Abe Levitow, was given an Oscar qualifying release in late 1959. This cartoon was certainly a perfect idea to start with a ‘Bang-Bang’. I love how in the ‘UPA-niverse’, Magoo is on a short list of babysitters in the McCloy household. Magoo mistakes Gerald for his dog (and vice-versa) and “rescues” Gerald from a fire (actually just Gerald’s sound effects voice). The animation is no worse than the last few Columbia Magoo films – but at less than five minutes, it’s far from the heights of greatness both characters had previously attained just a few short years earlier. Note that the theatrical title for this film was Magoo Meets Boing Boing (The Noise-Making Boy), the TV version is retitled Magoo Meets McBoing Boing.
The second Magoo cartoon, released in 1960, was likewise submitted for Academy Award consideration – I Was A Teenage Magoo – this time directed by Clyde Geronimi. It’s an odd one. The most UPA aspect of it is the background designs by Tom Yakutis, which are very cool. The animation is up the theatrical standards of the last Columbia Magoo’s – but that’s not saying too much. Told in flashback, the plot has teenage (but still nearsighted) red-headed Magoo picks up his date “Melba” (a kangaroo) from her home (in a circus) and go on a picnic. Sort of a prequel of sorts to Magoo’s Young Manhood (1958). Bosustow’s attempt to self-distribute was a huge failure. This cartoon was ultimately released as part of the TV package – albeit cut by two minutes and shown under the title Teenage Magoo.
The third short produced by Bosustow for theatrical release was Bric’s Stew – directed by Harvey Toombs, and featuring a pair of new characters “Bric n’ Brac”. The negative was discovered among the film elements acquired by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from the defunct DuArt Laboratory in New York City. Why it was abandoned no one knows. Why there is a UA-TV logo at the end – no one knows. Asifa-Hollywood funded a preservation and I wrote about it in a post about this find in January 2019. I’m happy to present for the first time the entire cartoon below.
A fourth Magoo short intended for theaters – Magoo Meets Frankenstein – joined the other two in the Mr. Magoo TV package (130 cartoons made-for-TV). Bosustow finally sold his interest in UPA in June 1960. This wasn’t the end of Magoo – he would live on in his Christmas Carol TV special (a classic), a 26 episode series of Famous Adventures, as Uncle Sam, a GE light bulb salesman, in a Saturday morning DePatie Freleng series – and a live action movie (released by Disney)!
Despite a bittersweet fade-out, UPA was a historic game changer for animation during the 1950s. It was a studio – like Walt Disney’s – that is worth exploring with deeper dives.
For more information on UPA – I highly recommend Adam Abraham’s outstanding UPA history, When Magoo Flew: The Rise and Fall of Animation Studio UPA.
SPECIAL THANKS to Al Warner and Denis-Carl Robidoux for permission to share their transfers of the two UPA Magoo theatricals – and to ASIFA-Hollywood for letting us debut the complete “Bric’s Stew”.
