Animation Artifacts &Daily post 16 May 2006 07:24 am
Big Top Circus
– There was a show on WOR-TV 9 in NYC when I was a kid.
Claude Kirchner acted as ringmaster/host of the show. Kirchner was an off-screen announcer converted to on-screen host of the show. Originally it was called “Super Circus,” but when Kelloggs left as the show’s sponsor it changed its name to “Big Top Circus.” At other times the show was known as “Terrytoon Circus.”
Kirchner hosted the cartoon show with his papier-mâché sidekick puppet, “Clowny,” (you guessed it, he was a clown) a handpuppet with a non-changing face and a high-pitched, falsetto male voice. (I spent a lot of time waiting to see both Kirchner and “Clowny” on screen at the same time since I was sure he was doing the voice.) The only other people on the show weren’t on camera; they were the technical folk: cameramen, makeup, etc. You could hear them sometimes laugh off camera when there were big flubs by Kirchner, who always seemed to be shot in med CU. The show ended at 6:30pm each night with Kirchner saying “And now it’s time for all good little boys and girls to go to bed.”
The attraction of the show for me was that they aired B&W cartoons that were not the typical WB cartoons over on WNEW, local ch 5 or the Popeye cartoons on WPIX, ch 11. These cartoons originally were silent Aesop Fables from Terry; eventually they became the B&W sound Terry cartoons of the 30′s. Gandy Goose, Farmer Alfalfa and Barker Bill.
But for a short while, between the Aesop Fables and the sound Terrytoons, the show aired gems from Russia.
The original version of The Snow Queen before it was released as a feature from Universal in 1960, with songs and a new dubbing supervised by Dave Fleischer with the voices of Sandra Dee and Tommy Kirk. It was serialized, as was an Indian tale called The Golden Antelope. Both of these films were directed at Soyuzmultfilm by Lev Atamanov, and they both featured beautiful, rotoscoped-based animation.
These beautifully crafted films were a real treat, and, as a kid, I grew to love some of these films with their majestic, long-maned horses.
After getting into animation as a career, once I started collecting books and films, I sought out anything about these Russian cartoons.
These stills from The Golden Antelope are from a book entitled: Masters of Soviet Animation. It’s a small, Russian paperback published in 1971 and predates anything by Norstein. (click images to enlarge.)
on 16 May 2006 at 10:09 pm 1.Mark Mayerson said …
I remember Claude Kirchner and the Terrytoons very well, though I don’t remember him running Russian animation.
N.Y. TV in the late ’50′s and early ’60′s was really a goldmine for old theatrical cartoons. I think that’s why there were so many of us trying to get into the business in the ’70′s in New York. We got the whole history of American animation as we grew up and we wanted our chance to make those kind of cartoons.
on 19 Dec 2006 at 2:05 pm 2.Sue said …
I remember this show. Clowny used to insult Claude by calling him “Marshmallow Lungs.”
I remember “The Golden Antelope” and found this website by Googling it. You’re right, these were lovely and unusual animations.
I also seem to remember one called “The Swan Princess.” Was that real, or my imagination?
on 21 Apr 2007 at 12:57 pm 3.Phil said …
The Golden Antelope, I remember it as the “magic Antelope”, does it end where the evil ruler ends up burried in gold coins (that turned to clay after he said “enough”)>?
on 10 Sep 2016 at 2:03 am 4.Patricia said …
Finally found this obscure link about the magic antelope show and Claude Kirschener Circus. I had been trying to remember the details for months. It was one of my favoritr after school tv shows in 1950′s. New Jersey.