FALLS VILLAGE — Visitors to the David M. Hunt Library on Friday, April 18, were treated to a screening of somewhat obscure cartoon versions of Grimm’s fairy tales, based on Eric Carle’s Storybook and co-produced by Falls Village’s own C.B. Wismar in 1977.
Hunt Director Meg Sher said that Wismar showed up one day with a box of 16mm prints of the cartoons and donated them.
Thanks to a grant from the Northwest CT Community Foundation, the old reels of sound film were digitized.
The three on offer were “Seven with One Blow,” “The Fisherman and His Wife,” and “Three Golden Hairs.”
If the voices sounded familiar to some members of the audience, it’s because they were Hans Conried and June Foray, who were the voices of Snidely Whiplash in the “Dudley Do-Right” cartoons and Rocket J. Squirrel in “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.”
Eli Sher made some really good popcorn for the show. Bags were passed around, and everybody settled in for some fairly fractured fairy tales.
One featuring a talking golden flounder who gives a fisherman’s greedy wife everything she wants and then some.
There was a tailor who parlays prowess at swatting flies into power and fame.
And there was a malevolent queen who, angered at the effrontery of an upstart princess who has married her son, sends the girl off to prove herself by obtaining three golden hairs from the beard of the Devil, which in addition to being a tiresome process has little or nothing to do with creating a solid foundation for a successful marriage.
