Tommy Tucker's Tooth
About Tommy Tucker's Tooth
Kansas City dentist Thomas B. McCrum paid Laugh-O-Gram to make a dental-hygiene short for Missouri schools. Tommy Tucker brushes his teeth. Jimmie Jones does not. Tommy's appearance gets him a job that Jimmie is refused. The short ends by showing how to brush.
Cast & crew
More about Tommy Tucker's Tooth
Walt Disney directed, produced, and wrote this mostly live-action short at his Kansas City studio. It is silent and black and white. The commission brought the studio $500, money Disney put into Alice's Wonderland rather than toward his creditors. Wikipedia dates the release December 6, 1922, and times the short at 10 minutes and 34 seconds. Wikidata lists 7 minutes. In 1926 McCrum asked for a sequel, Clara Cleans Her Teeth, with Disney's niece Marjorie Sewell Davis.
Themes
Background
Laugh-O-Gram was already close to collapse in 1922. A local school-film commission kept the studio open long enough for the Alice pilot.
In film history
The short is a commissioned classroom film from the Kansas City studio, not one of the fairy-tale cartoons Disney was trying to sell to theaters.
Making
McCrum, of the Deener Dental Institute, contacted Disney after Pictorial Clubs failed to finish paying for the Laugh-O-Gram fairy tales. Disney called part of the staff back for this one job.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
A print survives and has been posted as a public-domain file.
Notes
- The catalog bills Jack Records. TMDB lists him as Jimmie Jones.
- The Internet Animation Database credits the camera to Walt Pfeiffer.
- Laugh-O-Gram filed for bankruptcy in July 1923.
- An animated passage shows acid demons chipping at a diagram of teeth. The rest of the picture is live action.
Scenes
- Tommy is hired and Jimmie is turned away because of his teeth.
- Animated acid demons chip at a tooth diagram.
- The closing demonstration of brushing.
Influenced
- Clara Cleans Her Teeth
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Tommy Tucker's Tooth (1922).webm)
