Famous Studios (also known as Harvey) made a lot of relatively low- budgeted cartoons in the 1050s and 60s. There's no way you'd mistake them for Disney or Warner Brothers cartoons and their biggest claim to fame was Casper the Friendly Ghost. They had a few other repeating characters as well as some films like "Hysterical History"--stand- alone cartoons without these familiar characters. Well, I hadn't seen any of these cartoons since I was a kid and decided to try one...and I picked this one simply because it was free to download from archive.org.
The cartoon is a silly history of the United States. It repeats many of the familiar historical myths (such as Pocahontas saving John Smith and Columbus supposedly proving the world was round) and this didn't bother me too much because this certainly was NOT meant as a real history lesson. The jokes were all very corny but pretty much what you'd expect from that era. My quibble came late in the film...and this is why I gave it a 3. It ended with one of those god-awful sing-a-longs--the sort that Fleischer Studios loved in the 30s (and Famous Studio was descended from the Fleischers--when Paramount fired them and started making cartoons without them). Not a particularly brilliant or enjoyable cartoon overall---mostly because of that awful singing!!
The cartoon is a silly history of the United States. It repeats many of the familiar historical myths (such as Pocahontas saving John Smith and Columbus supposedly proving the world was round) and this didn't bother me too much because this certainly was NOT meant as a real history lesson. The jokes were all very corny but pretty much what you'd expect from that era. My quibble came late in the film...and this is why I gave it a 3. It ended with one of those god-awful sing-a-longs--the sort that Fleischer Studios loved in the 30s (and Famous Studio was descended from the Fleischers--when Paramount fired them and started making cartoons without them). Not a particularly brilliant or enjoyable cartoon overall---mostly because of that awful singing!!