Olio for Jasper (1946) Online

This is a stop-motion Puppetoon short produced by George Pal. There will be spoilers ahead:

This one's something of a head scratcher. in that it's visually entertaining, but the plot, such as it is, goes nowhere before it ends abruptly and degenerates into slapstick without an ending.

Jasper is minding his own business, playing with a snow globe, when he's spotted by Mr. Scarecrow and the crow. Mr. Scarecrow, mistakenly believing that Jasper is playing with a yo-yo, demands to be given whatever Jasper has. Jasper refuses and becomes combative. Scarecrow swiftly changes tactics, dropping into a sob story about his life, one which becomes more improbable by the second. There are more than a few puns in here, but the story hasn't got much point to it. Aside from a rather inventive running gag involving Father Time, too many of the jokes are forgettable misfires.

What's worse is that there isn't much of an ending. It's almost as though Pal painted himself into a corner, couldn't figure out an ending and just slapped a makeshift ending on. It's really too bad, because the short has possibilities and could have been very good.

This short is included as an extra on both DVD and Blu Ray releases of The Puppetoon Movie and is worth watching. The Blu Ray it's on is particularly good.

The Scarecrow wants Jasper's yo-yo and to convince the child to give it to him, he tells Jasper a long hard-luck story. Before he can finish it, the short ends.

George Pal was one of the greats of stop-motion animation, possessed of a clear cartoon sensibility. If he is not remembered for them, it is because most of his work for Paramount in the 1940s consisted of shorts starring Jasper, a small, rural Black boy continually led astray by the Scarecrow. The voices used were the stereotypical Black voices of the era -- the Scarecrow sounds like James Earl Jones doing a Stepin Fetchitt imitation.

Nonetheless, if you can get past the characterizations, you will find this a very funny short subject.

Mr. Scarecrow is impressed with Jasper's snow-globe, which prompts a tall-tale rags-to-riches-to-rags story: Poor starving Mammy dumps Baby Scarecrow with a greedy miser. Later, he whistles for his supper with a fruit seller. As an adult, our hero makes a "killing" on Wall Street, but lets his company "go to the dogs".

The story is a bit disjointed, but the production values ape anything Walt Disney was doing in 1945 (had he produced "stop-motion" instead of 2D animation). Not surprisingly, the Pal Puppetoons would price themselves out of existence within two years. Available on the excellent DVD "The Puppetoon Movie", the Jasper shorts are rarely screened today due to their dated views of "black culture".