Bold King Cole

After being repeatedly attacked by lightning, Felix seeks shelter in King Cole's castle. There the braggart King regales him with tales of his bravery. However, the ghosts of the previous kings are sick of this and decide to teach the guy a lesson. But, unfortunately, by the end of the film the King has learned nothing.

Had I never seen any of the early Felix the Cat cartoons done during the silent era, I would have been more positive in my review for "Bold King Cole". However, this incarnation of Felix by Van Beuren Studio has practically nothing to do with the original character and you really have to see him as someone other than Felix. It just is NOT Felix. The original Felix was very surreal. For example, when he wanted to travel to Africa, he crawled there through the Trans-Atlantic cable! But here, he's more of a nice guy do-gooder--not the sassy jerk I love in the older black and white films.

In the place of the old Felix, you now have a much better looking Felix. This Van Beuren cartoon is MUCH better animated than the typical Van Beuren film and the color film stock is very, very nice--and looks almost as good as the films coming from Disney. Additionally, the Van Beuren cartoons make a HUGE mistake--they have Felix and other characters sing. While this was very common in the 1930s, this also tends to make the cartoons rather sappy. It's no surprise, then, that so few were made by the studio and I am sure the public was NOT impressed.

I noticed one other reviewer called this 'one of the best cartoons ever'. I would definitely not agree and suggest that from this same time period are some significantly better cartoons--such as Disney's "Ferdinand the Bull", "The Ugly Duckling" and most of the Mickey Mouse cartoons of the 1930s.

Although this is a decent enough cartoon, the later, color, shorts done by Van Beuren studios lack the magic and charm of the black and white silents done almost 15-20 years earlier. The studio did the best they could, but production values and a lack of cohesion make these curios rather than gems. Worth watching. Recommended to fans and for kids.

Anxious to become a formidable rival of the popular and influential Walt Disney animation studio, the struggling Van Beuren studio acquired the popular silent cartoon character Felix the Cat for his talking Technicolor debut. Alas, their version of Felix the Cat in BOLD KING COLE is just an insipidly cheerful character devoid of the spunk that, from what I gather from seeing one silent cartoon, made the original Felix memorable. The uncredited actress who provides Felix's voice pleasingly carries a tune but the sweet singing doesn't provide anything unique about the character.

However, the cartoon's interesting scenario, for the most part, compensates for the lackluster star. Caught in a thunderstorm, Felix seeks refuge in King Cole's castle. This King Cole is not only a merry old soul, but a boastful one as well. The castle's ghosts can't stand the king's bragging, so they strap him to a machine to suck the wind out of him. It happens to be the wind that makes him a windbag. It's quite bizarre watching the rotund king deflate like a balloon. Then the ghosts expose him to the gas which exudes all his boastings. The king learns it's not nearly as fun listening to his speech as it is making it. A fascinating sequence that has to be seen to be believed, it effectively exploits the essential unreality of animation.

BOLD KING COLE benefits from other vividly realized sequences including a harrowing thunderstorm. The energetic animation is enhanced by Winston Sharples's spirited musical score. Watching this cartoon makes one regret that when it was released, the Van Beuren cartoon studio was on its last legs. One can only wonder if the studio would've reached Disney's artistic heights had it been allowed to last longer.

Bold King Cole (1936)

** (out of 4)

Felix gets caught up in a bad storm so he takes shelter at the castle of King Cole, a man who claims to be brave but is in fact a coward. After getting fed up with all his bravery lies, a group of ghosts come out to tach the King a lesson but Felix gets caught up in the middle. This was my first Felix short from this era and I've heard this period isn't the best but I didn't find the movie too bad. I was expecting some sort of horror/old dark house spoof but it pretty much stayed away from those clichés. There's one good song in the film but there aren't too many laughs to be had.

As a fan of old celluloid in general--and of animation in particular--I have been enchanted by this cartoon since my first viewing of it in the early 1990's, when things that had not seen the light of day in decades began to resurface on VHS. I have seen the Felix cartoons from the '20s--and a few from the 'teens when Felix hit the silver screen--but this "middle period" of Felix releases by Van Beuren is best of all. The silents are engaging, but they are not really timeless...the animation techniques and topics of the early Felix cartoons have not aged gracefully, and even some of us older viewers don't know the topics or personalities of the day without explanation.

During my childhood, the Trans-Lux Felixes came out, produced by Joe Oriolo (who cut his teeth at The Fleischer Studios), but they were TV animated episodes, and Winston Sharples' scores were mostly "canned music", as was much of the TV cartoon music of that period.

The Phil Roman version of Felix in the late '90s was- surprisingly- pretty respectable, a breath of fresh air for those of us who have grown weary of TV animation and un-inspiring computer animation.

But these cartoons of the mid-1930s, directed by Burt Gillett and scored by Winston Sharples are --to me--Felix at his very best, and "Bold King Cole" is one of my very favorites. It's one of the best cartoons ever made. It is imaginative, engaging, well written, well drawn, and all of the elements congeal into a chemistry that works. I think there were three, perhaps four, Felixes made at Van Beuren and they were all worthwhile watches, but "Bold King Cole" was the best of them. It appears that the owner of the Van Bueren company died in the late 1930s, and that put a stop to this production...and to the studio. Burt Gillett soon went with Disney as the coast was "raided" for animation talent to work on his animated feature films. Winston Sharples soon made inroads into scoring animated feature films with The Fleischers, first with "Gulliver's Travels" music contributions, then to the Popeye cartoons, and he remained at Famous Studios--post Fleischer--until the studio shut down. He possibly scored more animated cartoons than any other single composer--though after 1960, they used his canned music over and over as a cost saving measure. I highly recommend "Bold King Cole". It's the best ever Felix the Cat cartoon, and they sure as heck don't make 'em like this anymore !!