OGF

A commenter below says:

... I just found a very unintentionally funny short about bicycle safety from many many decades ago called "One Got Fat." In this short, several kids wear monkey masks and tails. Each of these monkey-child hybrids wind up getting killed because they don't obey the rules, and are usually accompanied by animated effects.

And who is credited as the art director, as well as having a visual part? Ralph Hulett. Is this THE Ralph Hulett?

Indeed it is. We wrote about this flick on TAG blog some years ago right here. But I will recap:

In the early sixties my father was on a professional roll. He was painting backgrounds for Disney, doing fine art, creating a line of Christmas cards, doing record album covers for Capitol Records, making seasonal religious films (although he was not particularly religious), and painting artwork for the U.S. Air Force.

He was also a partner in "Interlude Films", which created educational movies shot on 16 mm. (Big school market for 16 millimeter films in those days ...)

This film was shot in La Crescenta (with a couple of locations in downtown L.A.) in the late summer of 1963. The director was a guy name William Dale Jennings, who later wrote "The Cowboys" a novel and movie starring John Wayne.

Max Hutto -- formerly a director for the radio show "Fibber McGee and Mollie" -- was the camera operator and d.p. My dad designed and executed the monkey masks and the limited animated effects.

I remember being ticked that my young brother got to be in the film and I was left out. (In retrospect, it was probably a creative decision; I was over six feet tall and wouldn't have fit in. And I think I was off on a camping trip.)

1963 was a busy year for padre. He was away from Disney a lot, since production work on Sword in the Stone was over. He was in Israel and Greece in the Spring of that year, doing a travel film for Swiss Air, home for the summer, then away for several weeks in Vietnam, the Phillipines and Japan doing art work for the Air Force. Then it was back to the regular gig at the House of Mouse.

The guy always did a lot. I get winded just thinking about it.

(Someday I need to find a better print of OFG. This one's awful.)