Jay Ward's Fractured Flickers

[MrNewportCustom]

"Once again it's time for Fractured Flickers, or as it is known in the trade, 'Down Memory Lane with Axe and Crowbar.' "

If you've never seen Fractured Flickers, find it and you'll be in for a treat. Think "What's Up Tiger Lily" or "Kung Pow: Enter the Fist," but in black and white and all the stars have been dead for a long, long time. One of my favorites is "Dinky Dunstan, Boy Cheerleader," starring Lon Chaney as Dinky "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" Dunstan.

Produced in 1963, Jay Ward (who brought you Rocky and Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-Right and even Cap'n Crunch), and his crew took silent movies, usually comedies, and cut them down to size - about three minutes each - and inserted scenes from other silent movies, their own sound effects, dialog, and funny voices provided by the very talented voices of June Foray and Paul Frees. Those were some very talented voices, indeed.

Hans Conried hosts and cracks wise about everything from the movies themselves to the, "seventeen cities suing us for the travelogs we've made . . . and we've only made three!" In each episode, Hans interviews a current celebrity such as Rod Serling, Barbara Eden, Gypsy Rose Lee, Bullwinkle J. Moose, Allan Sherman, Cesar Romero and Edward Everett Horton to name just a few. (Behind him is a photograph of Theda Barrow, "with which we've taken certain liberties.")

I hadn't seen this show in ages! I got the entire series in a three DVD set from Amazon this past Saturday and watched one disc each day over the holiday weekend, which gave me the dubious pleasure of having the extremely catchy theme song stuck in my head well into today!

See your favorite silent movies and silent stars in a different way. Very different. Get Fractured Flickers today! Here's a free sample.


Lee
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Copyright MCMLXIII Jay Ward Productions Inc.

 

[Mad Molly]

And featuring...

Joseph Schildkraut as "Prince Boopie" and Adolf Hitler as "Ricky Teenage"! (No, I'm NOT kidding.)

I'm a Flickers Fangirl...I have this hilarious TV series in my collection on DVD, too.

That catchy title theme was written by Dennis Farnon...whose brother, Robert Farnon, composed the theme to "The Prisoner", among many other soundtracks.

And you can read more about the history of "Fractured Flickers" in a great book called "The Moose That Roared", written by voice master Keith Scott, who is no relation to the late, great Bill Scott but a talented vocal performer and writer in his own right.

 

[Tony in Tarzana]

Ah Molly, so you do read your e-mail!

"The Moose That Roared" is one of my favorite birthday gifts. I grew up with Bullwinkle and the gang.

 

[imoldfashioned]

Ooh! New (to me) Jay Ward!

I adore Fractured Fairytales but I've never heard of the Fractured Flickers. Off I go to investigate...