The Great Rights
About The Great Rights
Millie and her father are touring Washington when the cartoon turns to a young man knocked on the head. He wakes in a country where the Bill of Rights has vanished. Agents arrest people without a charge, force them to incriminate themselves, and shut newspapers and theaters. Reminded of the amendments, he fights the faceless men who had been doing the arresting.
Cast & crew
More about The Great Rights
Thomas Brandon produced the short and Millard Lampell wrote it. William T. Hurtz directed. Five animation directors worked in relay, nights and weekends, and finished in ten weeks a job Brandon said would have taken eighteen. It went out on the school and library circuit.
Themes
Making
Hurtz had been a leading artist at UPA. The crew was largely UPA people who had moved on to Jay Ward and other Hollywood jobs, working this short around those schedules.
Reviews
Animation historian Jerry Beck called it one of the best-looking post-UPA cartoons of the 1960s, and heavy-handed.
Music
Gerald Fried wrote the score.
Preservation
Copyright 1963, Thomas Brandon, was not renewed. The A/V Geeks print is the one on the Internet Archive, and the film is in the public domain in the United States.
Notes
- The copyright notice reads 1963, Thomas Brandon.
- Voices include Herschel Bernardi, Daws Butler, and June Foray.
- Design and animation credits include UPA alumni Roy Morita, Shirley Silvey, and Ted Parmelee, who had directed The Tell-Tale Heart.
- Brandon's company had earlier distributed The Brotherhood of Man (1946).
- Gerald Fried's music was registered on its own as an unpublished composition. That registration was renewed. The film was not.
Scenes
- Millie and her father are in Washington when the lesson starts.
- A blow to the head drops a young man into a country with no rights.
- Agents censor a paper and a theater and haul people off without charges.
- He fights back once someone names the Bill of Rights.
Also available
- Internet Archive (0861_Great_Rights_The_15_45_37_00)
- Wikimedia Commons (William Hurtz - Great Rights, The (1963) (raw version).webm)
- A/V Geeks DVD catalog
