Creighton University Archives and Special Collections

Carlson Fable Collection

Item Set

Items

• Walt Disney Treasures: More Silly Symphonies
  2006 Walt Disney Treasures: More Silly Symphonies . The Historical Musical Animated Classics. 2 dvd set. Introduced by Leonard Maltin. Unknown source. As the promotion says, "This second volume of the revolutionary series boasts some of Disney's rarest cartoons, including over a dozen never before released on DVD or video." Among the first disc's highlights is the never-before-released "Hell's Bells." The advertising seems to claim that "Mother Goose Goes Hollywood" in its original unedited form is also here, but I could not find it on either disc. Maltin and others highlight the stereotypes that we would find offensive today but were standard stuff in the 30's. I enjoyed "Hell's Bells" and "Broken Toys." On Disc 2 of this second set, there are ten more cartoons. The abundant commentary highlights the development that occurred over the history of these cartoons. From the beginning, Disney's genius included the ability to break up bodies and machines and then reconstitute them. "Cock of the Walk" here repeats a fable theme: the loser becomes the winner, here when a star-struck chicken finds a picture of the "winner's" children. As I researched both pairs of Disney dvds, I discovered how expensive they are, roughly $130 and $200. I did not know what I had!
• Walt Disney: Silly Symphonies (?)
  2003 Walt Disney: Silly Symphonies (?). Chinese and English. SimaCulture. Epic Music Video. $7.50 from Alexlau1998 through Ebay, March, '04. Though this DVD was sold as "Tortoise and Hare Disney's DVD," it contains over 76 minutes of a variety of "Silly Symphonies," including titles like "3 Little Wolves"; "Peculiar Penguins"; "Water Babies"; and "Father Noah's Ark." The first Silly Symphony here is in fact Disney's 1934 "The Tortoise and the Hare," featuring Max Hare and Toby Tortoise in the "Big Race." The second video was the big surprise to me: "Toby Tortoise Returns" from 1936. The two characters are back, this time in a boxing match. Max performs all of his tricks in the ring, many of them Disney's delightful fantasies, for example of Max's boxing gloves continuing to pound Toby while Max is doing other things. Max's last ploys turn on him, including filling Toby's shell with water and especially filling his shell with fireworks. The fireworks launch Toby in pursuit of Max, eventually driving Max into the ambulance he had ready for Toby. A Mae West character and the girls from the school are part of the boxing match audience. There is a typical slip-up in English on the back cover of the carton, speaking of "baller" where "ballet" is clearly called for.
• Walt Disney Treasures: Silly Symphonies
  2001 Walt Disney Treasures: Silly Symphonies. The Historical Musical Animated Classics. 2 dvd set. Introduced by Leonard Maltin. Unknown source. To my surprise, the first disc in this two-disc set contains the three fables I am aware of Disney producing: TH, TMCM, and GA. TH in 1935 has the whole expanded story, including the parade for Max Hare, the stop at the girls' school, and the finish by an extended neck. Snails accompany Toby the Tortoise along the way and keep up with him. Laughter is the response to Toby several times over. "The Country Cousin," Disney's TMCM in 1936, moves straight to the fancy town mouse's home. This version is strong on the country mouse getting tipsy. This is a particularly good print of GA, done in 1934. I have used sometimes inferior prints in presenting this fable in class. Disc 2 provides a set of fascinating features using and commenting on the cartoons. I especially appreciated "Leonard's Picks." Others focus on nature and music. A theme throughout Maltin's contributions is the way in which Disney presentations developed. Some early offerings, like "Skeleton Dance" (1928) are still spellbinding. Maltin encourages watching the make and remake of "The Ugly Duckling" in 1931 and 1939. What a difference, both in technical development and even in story sense!
• Aesop's Fables from the Van Beuren Studio, Volume 2
  2009 Aesop's Fables from the Van Beuren Studio, Volume 2. Thunderbean Animation. DVD reprint of cartoons from 1928 through 1933. $12 from Thunderbean, Ann Arbor, MI., June, '10. There are sixteen "Aesop's Fables" cartoons on this DVD. I tried three of them and enjoyed them. They are a curious mix of fantasy, song, dance, and mayhem. My favorite here is "A Toy Town Tale" from 1931. Toys come alive, march around, get into fights, and fall in love. An apparently frequent feature of the cartoons involves imaging animals in their geometric parts and letting them come apart and get back together. At least one cartoon, "Presto Chango" from 1929, does have an Aesopic element: a final saying allegedly from Aesop and supposedly summing up the cartoon. This DVD has some nice additional features, including views of an Aesop's hanky book -- unfortunately without the hanky! -- and an array of buttons, many of which I have collected. Theirs may even be a full display.
• Aesop's Fables: 21 Classic Cartoons
  2009 Aesop's Fables: 21 Classic Cartoons. Alpha Video Classics: Alpha Home Entertainment. $10 from an unknown source. Might this dvd of 21 "Aesop's Fables" cartoons by Van Beuren Studios between 1929 and 1933 be related to the 2009 dvd "Aesop's Fables from the Van Beuren Studio, Volume 2"? "Toy Time," as on our dvd "2004 Cartoon Craze," remains a classic as two mice frolic through a toy store, playing with toys and then using them to terrorize the attacking cat. I also tried the first two cartoons on the disc. "Happy Polo" breaks animals down into machines and has separable parts frequently coming together again. A romantic interest between two mice is interrupted by an intruding cat. Even goalposts take on characteristics of humans and machines! "Summertime" has animals playing plants as orchestral instruments. The animation in these cartoons is by our standards rudimentary.
• The Golden Age of Cartoons: Aesop's Fables: Cartoon Classics from the Van Beuren Studio, Volume 1
  2005 The Golden Age of Cartoons: Aesop's Fables: Cartoon Classics from the Van Beuren Studio, Volume 1. Thunderbean Animation. DVD reprint of cartoons from 1930 through 1933. $8.93 from Thunderbean, Ann Arbor, MI., April, '08. There are, as in Volume 2, sixteen "Aesop's Fables" cartoons on this DVD. There are also engaging bonus features, including, for example, a side by side comparison of a sequence from "Toy Time" with an earlier cartoon. I tried "Gypped in Egypt" and "The Farmerette" and found them fun but harmless. I had trouble accessing a number of the bonus materials.
• Cartoon Craze
  2004 Cartoon Craze. DVD. Taiwan: Digiview Productions. $3.99 from oddestnotions on Ebay, Oct., '17. Two extra copies. Here are eight Van Beuren cartoons from about the 1930's, starting with "Close Call," "Dizzy Day," and "A Toytown Tale." As generally is the case with Van Beuren "Aesop's Fables" cartoons, they are not really from traditional Aesopic material. They are described in the cartoons themselves as "sugar coated pills of wisdom." As is true of cartoons more broadly, there may be more going on underneath the cartoon's surface – politically and philosophically – than is immediately apparent.
• Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome and Nancy Drew...Reporter
  2003? Felix the Cat in "The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg" on DVD Video Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome and Nancy Drew...Reporter. The Felix the Cat cartoon is copyrighted 1936 by the Van Beuren Corporation. $2 at Target, Santa Rosa, Nov., '05. There is not much reference to the fable in this pleasant cartoon. Felix has Goldie churning out golden eggs, from which he makes coins that he gives out to people. Captain Kidd steals Goldie and takes her to sea. Felix shoots himself onto the captain's ship and rescues here. In the last scene, he uses canons to fire coins to the townspeople. Good fun.
• The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends: The Complete Series
  2019 The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends: The Complete Series. 5 seasons, 163 episodes, 18 discs, approximately 59 hours. Includes, in their place in each production, all 50 episodes of "Aesop and Son." Ward Productions. Licensed by Bullwinkle Studios. Universal City, CA. $35.49 from Amazon, Jan., '21. This is a mammoth production! I selected one episode of "Aesop and Son" from each of the five years of the series. "The Mice in Council" features Murphy Mouse, who gets saddled with carrying out his suggestion. After various ploys, he actually gets the cat to put on the bell as a gift from an unknown admirer, but the ice cream vendor's bell confuses Murphy and leads to an attack by the cat. In "The Hares and the Frog," the frog becomes an advisor to the frightened hare: every "top critter" needs a gimmick. The hare's gimmick is wiggling his ears. He overpowers everyone with this gimmick, until he experiences the skunk's "gimmick." Further episodes were "The Jackrabbit and the Coyote"; "The Country Frog and the City Frog"; and "The Jackrabbits and the Mule." Always fun!
• Aesop and Son DVD Video Disc
  2010? Aesop and Son DVD Video Disc. World Wide Unique Media. $6.99 from Joe Gibson, Meriden CT, through Ebay, Dec., '11. One extra copy for $6.99 from the same source, Feb., '14. Good presentation of 23 of the "Aesop and Son" episodes. To my surprise, nothing similar is offered now in 2020 on the web. In fact, I had to purchase a whole set of "Rocky and Bullwinkle" to get the complete set of "Aesop and Son," which numbers some 39 episodes over five years. In this offering, I enjoyed stories parodying FS, BF, DS, and LM. The general pattern includes the wise-ass son actually telling the fable and then the father making up something different. The fable is regularly a springboard. There are many typical cartoon surprises. The dog needs to buy back his shadow. The fox only wanted to be accepted socially. The mouse becomes king, only to get "crowned" – hammered – by a female mouse. The crow with borrowed feathers gets rejected by both a female peacock and a female crow.
• "Beasts and Citizens" Forty Fables of La Fontaine.
  2006? "Beasts and Citizens" Forty Fables of La Fontaine." CD. Translated and red by Craig Hill. Recording by Point One Audio, Lincoln, MA. Concord, MA: Palm Press. Unknown source. It is pleasant to hear the translator read his own work, work we have in several copies, including an advance copy provided to me so that I could offer a review. The complete fables edition was by Arcade Publishing in 2008. The CD jewel case includes a simple leaflet offering a T of C of the fables read and their place in La Fontaine's twelve books. It refers to illustrations; I wonder if something has been lost from the simple foldout. Craig Hill is not an excited reader. Rather, as he is a careful translator, he is a careful reader. I find his title telling, especially since, of the first fables that I read, FK is particularly well done – and particularly telling for us in the United States these days! The rhymes often fortify the sense well. I can find no references to this disc online, but reviews mention the illustrations in the published edition, and the references to illustration here may well be pointing there.
• Aesop's Fables
  2003 Aesop's Fables. CD. Searchable e-book format. George Fyler Townsend from about 1880. Michael Poll Publishing. Charlottesville, VA: Cornerstone Book Publishers, apparent distributors. Distributed by lostWord. £5.50 to McElligott, March, '06. This disc represents perhaps a spate of helpful texts digitally reproduced soon after the technology fostered that work. I suspect that they have been eclipsed by more recent developments. This text is described as "about 1880." I would have hoped for more specific information. Tip: open this disc and get to "Data" and then click on the pdf "Aesop's Fables." 121 pages. As I catalogue this CD fifteen years later, I cannot explain how I paid British Pounds for a CD produced in Virginia!
• Aesop's Fables
  2002 Aesop's Fables. Text CD. George Fyler Townsend. Colan McRae Enterprises. $1.99 online, Dec., '02. I found this CD with some old materials in May of 2023 -- 21 years later! A note read "does not play on either computer." I decided to give it one more try. It turns out that this CD contains one long txt file. A quick look online showed that one could open it with Microsoft Word, and voila! There is George Fyler Townsend's translation.
• CD of page-by-page jpeg photographs of Francis Barlow's 1666 Aesop's Fables with his Life: in English, French, and Latin, Newly Translated
  2019 CD of page-by-page jpeg photographs of Francis Barlow's 1666 Aesop's Fables with his Life: in English, French, and Latin, Newly Translated. 325 images, including each page containing one of the 110 Barlow illustrations. Done by Gregory Hollins using the Creighton copy of the book. Illustrations appear on images between 100-231 and 100-2410. The illustrations are wonderfully distinct in these photographs. Note that the photographs are of pages, not of the illustration portions of pages. Some photographs of prose pages are better duplicates of less distinct images. That these are photographs of the Creighton copy is clear, for example, from the tears on 132.
• Fables of Aesop 15th Century: Ebook
  2012 Fables of Aesop 15th Century: Ebook. Pdf and jpg files, apparently of Steinhoewel, though with unusual title-page frame decorations. 227 jpg files. Purchased online from Luis de Blas, Oleiros, La Coruna, Spain. Detailed photographs of pages in two formats. The pdf is similarly 227 pages long. Good work! I have not been able to identify this apparent later printing of Steinhoewel's work.
• Boner's Edelstein
  2009 Boner's Edelstein. 176 jpg images of pages on a CD prepared by the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbuttel of a colored version of Albrecht Pfister's book published in Bamberg in 1461. This copy is in their library. Photographed at my request. I asked for these images as I was preparing a paper for the Renard Society in summer of 2009. I actually found that scans I got from our facsimile served my illustrated lecture's purpose even better. The preparation of this paper made for a lively summer in Mannheim in 2009.
• Aesop's Fables
  1996? Aesop's Fables. CD. PDFs of editions in English, German, Latin, and Spanish. Jewel case cover of Steinhoewel's title-page. Purchased online. This CD contains Aesop in four languages. The key to the English edition may be that the publisher is listed as "Cassell, Petter, Galpin, & Co." The company took that specific name in 1878. Note also the comment after the introduction by JBR(undell) that about 130 fables not in the first and second editions have been added by another editor. A guess says that this is the edition in our collection for which I have guessed a date of 1890. The break before the added 132 fables comes at the top of 219 here, as in that edition. 1869 and 1874 may have been the dates of the first and second editions, both published, as I believe, without clear indication of a date of publication. The German editionlisted as published in 1479, seems to be an authentic Steinhoewel, part of the Rosenwald collection given to the Library of Congress. The Latin, likewise from Rosenwald and LC, is the Sebastian Brant edition of 1501, printed by Jacob of Pfortzheim . The illustrations are hand-colored. There seems to be another book bound together with Brant's "Esopus." The Spanish version is from Jacob Cronberger in 1521. This disc is a richer resource than I had thought! To get a menu, click on "CD-Start."
• Aesop's Fables with Colin Hay
  2017 Aesop's Fables with Colin Hay. Written by Tom Graves. E-book and spoken CD. Memphis, TN: Devault-Graves Agency. Gifts of Tom Graves, March, '17. Tom and I had corresponded as he was on his way to creating this E-Book and spoken CD. He decided – wisely, I would say -- to use images from Milo Winter and Arthur Rackham. My sense is that Tom's versions enter into the stories' details with a loving eye, and that Colin Hay renders the stories with a loving ear and voice. Aesop keeps inspiring people to add their part! This very nice work is a labor of love!
• Through the Mirror: Tales from Childhood
  2015 Through the Mirror: Tales from Childhood. Siobhan Lamb and the Suoni Ensemble. Libretto by Gregory Warren Wilson. PRCD 2074: Proprius Music. $15.10 from Amazon, August, '22. This is a refreshing approach to the six fables offered. I listened to and enjoyed the first three. What a wide variety of emotions presented by the instruments and the human voices! There are surprising, lively explorations of the stories here. The demanding frog finally finds himself swallowed by chance by the ass to whom the frog has promised a reward. TH is presented in terms of its aftermath conversation between the two contestants. The fox in FC offers to teach the crow how to sing. It helps to have the printed text to check as one listens to this fine CD!
• Trapped in Aesop's Fables
  2012 Trapped in Aesop's Fables. A fully dramatized Audio Book. Lifehouse theater On-the-Air. Executive Producer Wayne Scott. InspiredInspirations Media. Unknown source. Twelve-year-old Henry, freshly chastised by his father as he brings home an old chest, finds the chest opening and beckoning to him. The chest offers books with a quest. Of course Henry opens one of the mysterious books and meets Aesop in a time warp. Aesop challenges him to figure out the life lessons from five stories, and then he can escape. Soon Henry has six legs and learns that he is a grasshopper and has to transition from easy summer to hungry winter. Henry is dying and finds no life lesson to learn. He fails his first test, and Aesop has to explain it to him. I left Henry as a hare in the second story running like crazy.
• Aesop's Fables: Volume One
  2012 Aesop's Fables: Volume One. Two CDs. 20 stories. Various narrators. Kingston, RI: AudioGO. $9.95 online, Jan., '09. The special value of this set lies in the gifted British narrators and expansive development of the storylines. The actors employ various voices within each fable and have sound effects and occasional musical background to help them. I listened to the first two fables on each disc. In this version of TH, the hare runs back to tell the tortoise that the race has started! He then announces that he will take a nap, apparently near the starting line. "Slow and steady is sometimes better than fast and flashy." In OF, one of the mother frog's 247 children tells her of the ox. She is overweight and hates exercise. She does not make it all the way to see the ox, but whizzes around like a balloon and lands at the ox's feet. Her mistake relied on her perception that "No creature in the pond is bigger than me." The wolf in WC spends most of his time thinking of food. He would love to try eating the moon and stars if he could. A fishbone gets stuck. This version of the story thus cleverly uses the river to introduce the heron as the wolf's savior. "I didn't bite your head off: that is your reward!" The "hee-haw" of the donkey in DLS gives him away to the fox. This donkey had long wanted to be something else. The other animals had laughed at him before and now they do again. In something of a surprise, the other animals tell the donkey "We like you just as you are."
• Das Grosse Fabel- und Tiermärchen Hörbuch
  2011 Das Grosse Fabel- und Tiermärchen Hörbuch. 2 CDs: Fabeln von Jean de La Fontaine. 2 CDs: Tiermärchen von Manfred Kyber. Gelesen von Andreas Muthesius. Made in Germany. Merenberg, Germany: ZYX Music GmbH. $11.04 from Grooves-Inc, Basel, Switzerland, through Ebay, Nov., '11. Muthesius' portrayal of these fables and Märchen is delightful, with helpful musical background by Ismail Boulaghmal and wonderfully varied voices. I wish we were told who did the verse translations of La Fontaine. Kyber is new to me. His stories are longer, more developed, and perhaps more modulated than most fables. I listened to three and found them all delightful: "Der K.d.R."; "Der grosse Augenblick" and "Die Haselmaushochzeit."
• Aesop's Fables
  2010? Aesop's Fables. 20 fables in five groups of four each, with the title-story of each group featured on the clamshell cover. Pegasus Audio Book. Pegasus: B. Jain Publishers Ltd. $2 from an unknown source. A female British voice tells the stories, listed in their groups on the back cover of the clamshell. The format of the clamshell front cover suggested that Jain had actually published a five-book series in 2010. A bit of snooping online and I found and ordered the set, along with an enclosed CD. Now let us see if this is the CD that comes.
• Julia Deans: Modern Fables
  2010 Julia Deans: Modern Fables. Songs written and performed by Julia Deans, with orchestral and vocal accompaniment. Recorded in a number of places. GBP5 from Douglashearma-O on Ebay, April, '19. Ten love songs. The second is "Modern Fables." It is a challenge for me to put together.
• Auricolae: Fairy Tales Folklore & Fables
  2009 Auricolae: Fairy Tales Folklore & Fables. Storytelling and music for violin, cello and narrator. Artistic Director and narrator David Yang. $4.99 from Second Spin Disk, Plainville, CT, through Ebay, May, '20. Here is a delightful rendition of six stories, the second of them with three different endings. Alas, I do not find a tale that I would call a fable among them. They are: "Ferdinand the Bull"; "The Rascally Rogue of the Beanstalk"; Rogue Endings A, B, C; "Rumpelstilskin"; "Adventure at Granny's"; "Prince Rooster"; "Three Little Pigs." The stories are well told, with excellent musical complements.