The Rise of Duton Lang (1955) Online

The UPA studio revolutionised American animation, to the extent that even the monolithic Disney studio emulated UPA's distinctive visual style in 'Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom'. The UPA toon 'The Rise of Duton Lang' is, by UPA's standards, a fairly straightforward narrative, but it still has a slight twist because of a flashback framing device.

SPOILERS AHEAD. The tale is narrated by veteran character actor and voice artist Marvin Miller, who (over his long career) demonstrated a wide range of distinctive voices. Yet here for some reason he seems to be imitating the verbal tics of Hans Conreid, voicing a character of the sort that Conreid played (in live-action and in cartoons) so frequently: a shabby genteel boulevardier who is down at heels. We see the unnamed narrator strolling down a street, twirling his cane, as he passes a sidewalk restaurant. One table still holds three wine glasses, with a few dregs of wine in each glass. The narrator pours them all together (I guess he likes varietals) and sups this, establishing his lack of funds. Then, seeing a meek little customer enjoying a martini, he promptly bends this man's ear with the tale of Duton Lang ... which we witness in flashback.

Duton (rhymes with 'futon') Lang was a brilliant chemist who did much to benefit humanity yet spent very little time actually working, because his passion was for eating. Offered an award for his achievements, he attends the ceremony only because it includes a banquet. Eventually, salad-dodger Duton gorges himself until he weights 497 pounds. Now it dawns on him that he ought to lose weight.

Duton promptly invents a chemical which, when sprinkled on his food, does not impair its taste but eliminates its weight-gain potential. He continues to eat liberally, yet rapidly loses weight. So, why is he still so fat? Because Duton hasn't actually lost girth ... he has merely lost WEIGHT. He prevails on his friend (the narrator) to assist him, but the narrator is helpless to intervene as Duton sails into the sky, gone forever. The 'rise' of Duton Lang was his downfall. Meanwhile, the narrator has signalled the waiter to keep a steady supply of martinis coming, at the expense of the meek little customer. After the narrator departs, the waiter tells the customer that he got off easy ... last week, the same cadger spun out the story to an even longer narrative, at the expense of a customer who got lumbered with a larger bill!

The credits of this toon say that 'The Rise of Duton Lang' is based on a story by Percival Wilde, published in Esquire magazine. As I've not read that story, I can't say how faithful this adaptation is. However, way back in 1903, H.G. Wells wrote a story -- 'The Truth about Pyecraft' -- with precisely the same gimmick: an immensely fat man hopes to lose his GIRTH (by applying an ancient Hindu weight-loss recipe, this time) ... with the result that he remains as fat as ever, but loses so much WEIGHT that he threatens to float away. In Wells's story, Pyecraft resorts to wearing sheet-lead underwear. In this version, poor Duton Lang floats away ... like a character in Joseph Payne Brennan's story 'Levitation', published three years after this UPA cartoon was released.

The framing gimmick in this cartoon isn't original, either: it seems to be based on the Jorkens stories by Lord Dunsany, in which a clubman cadges a steady supply of drinks by spinning wild stories.

The UPA toons normally did not lack for visual imagination, so I was annoyed that most of the shots here of Duton stuffing himself relied on the same image: he's holding a drumstick with one bite taken out of it. (This device is such a cliché, even the 'Heathcliff' comic strip uses it.) Apparently nobody ever eats poultry: they just take one bite out of the drumstick and then throw away the rest of the bird. I realise that much animation relies on recycled cel frames: I can understand Hanna-Barbera or even Warner Brothers repeating the same drawings ... but 'The Rise of Duton Lang' very oddly keeps repeating this drumstick image yet draws it differently each time, showing only an lack of imagination (not normally a problem at UPA) rather than an economy of labour.

Another animator, Jay Ward, always admitted how thoroughly his own studio's animation was influenced by UPA. Indeed, 'The Rise of Duton Lang' includes a shot of Lang's laboratory which looks remarkably like Mr Peabody's lab in the Jay Ward cartoons. I almost expected to see a Wayback machine.

One of the scriptwriters on this cartoon, who rejoiced in the name T. Hee, has a credit which isn't listed on his IMDb page. In the classic Twilight Zone episode 'The Dummy', Cliff Robertson played a ventriloquist who eventually swaps places with his own figure (dummy). For the final sequence in that episode, T. Hee sculpted the head of the ventriloquist's dummy: a caricature of Robertson's own face.

'The Rise of Duton Lang' lacks the visual innovation of so many other UPA cartoons, and isn't especially funny either. It's below UPA's usual standards, but even the worst UPA cartoon (which this isn't) is much better than 99% of the animated dreck out there. I'll rate this one 7 out of 10. Waiter: the check, please!

This is a short that features an incredibly odd and quirky character named Duton Lang. No description could adequately do Lang justice. I can't really do justice to the cartoon. Duton Lang is quite a character-but the same can also be said of the narrator as well. Quirky, far too neglected short. Worth tracking down. Most recommended.

A glorious age of animation and general cartooning where modern art philosophy merged with mainstream commercial and entertainment art design giving us some of the most thoughtfully drawn cartoons ever made. The animation styles and figuratism in these works were so good you'd never notice the lack of animation unless you were just obsessed with old 'circle based' style of cartoons which pioneers of this style were desperate to break free from. The only awful thing to come out of this style are todays outliney cartoons which are a horrid bastardization of modern design.

With that said, this was a wonderful little short that tells a fun but cautionary tale quite amusingly well. It's a shame some UPA shorts like this are so hard to find around online. UPA won't release most of these officially, but have no problem sending out takedown notices on youtube. If you can, please do try and at least find some collection that includes this short. It's a wonderful work as was nearly everything UPA was doing back then.

When I watch cartoons, I sometimes have a different perspective than some viewers. In this case, several other reviews loved this cartoon and could easily look past the amazingly poor quality of the animation. While I, too, liked the plot and characters, I just for the life of me can't give a very favorable review to a film that represents, in some ways, the downfall of cartoons.

In the 1950s, after many years of amazingly brilliant cartoons from Warner Brothers, MGM and Disney, newer "innovators" emerged with the idea that the audiences were stupid and there was no need to make high quality backgrounds or animate cartoons with 24 cels per second. Because these cartoons were so cheap to make, it was no wonder that they made money and soon the major studios began producing crappy cartoons as well. Eventually, by the 1960s and 70s, cartoons were, for the most part, dreadful and unlike the 40s and 50s, adults refused to watch them--because they had appeal only to the most undemanding audiences.

UPA, the maker of this cartoon, was at the forefront of making these newer crappier cartoons. While this one did have a cute story, I can't help but cringe to think that by 1960, all cartoons looked about like this one technically.

By the way, UPA later made the Mr. Magoo films (also of very dubious quality when it came to the animation). If you look carefully, one of the characters in the film has a head that looks almost exactly like Magoo.