Paul Terry – Lee Duigon

Image result for images of farmer grey cartoons

Growing up with 1950s TV, I must have seen this a thousand times in ancient Paul Terry cartoons–assorted mice, cats, and humans safely jumping off rooftops with an umbrella for a parachute.

Memory Lane: Don’t Try This!

All over the world, kids got hurt trying to duplicate this feat. Jump out the fifth-story window? Sure, no problem–I’ve got an umbrella!

These were really old cartoons, with captions instead of speech. Like silent movies. Actually, all these decades later (some of them are a hundred years old), they’re still pretty funny.

But kids will try to do what they see characters do in cartoons–so do your best to make them understand why they shouldn’t. (“Experience is the best teacher, but the fees are very high.” Especially when you jump out the window.)

If you grew up in the 1950s, you very likely saw these silent cartoons, created by Paul Terry, on your black-and-white TV. If you’d enjoy that particular stroll down Memory Lane, Youtube has several of them available.

Y’know what? These are really funny! Primitive in technique, but well-advanced in crackpot humor.

Most of the commenters, myself included, would have liked to know more about the cartoons’ music tracks. I don’t think most of the music that’s been plugged into this example is original. Somehow that got lost. But considering that some of these are more than 70 years old, we probably have to take what we can get.

Hey, it’s Labor Day, a holiday, so let’s have a few harmless laughs.