Big Cartoon Show at the Palace Ad – Sept. 9, 1946

Those of us that were born in the 1950s or early 1960s grew up during a virtual cartoon paradise, when Saturday morning TV programming consisting of wall-to-wall cartoons from dawn (or whenever the stations signed on) until lunchtime. We were glued to the TV screen, watching animated shorts that were originally shown in theaters, and brand new cartoons made specifically for television.

And my siblings and I watched them all, from Bugs Bunny to Milton the Monster. We did not discriminate.

But what about the unfortunate, deprived generations of children who had to grow up in an era before TV? How did they get their cartoon fix?

The answer: all day cartoon festivals in movie theaters. The ad below, which ran in the Lorain Journal back on Sept. 9, 1946, promoted just such an event coming up at the Palace Theater in Lorain on the 14th of that month.

(September 14, 1936 was a Saturday, in case you were wondering if the theater was encouraging skipping school.)

It's an odd lineup of cartoon stars for 1946, and the art in the ad doesn't help. We see 1930s versions of Popeye and Betty Boop (who was 'retired' by then) right alongside similarly outdated illustrations of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. The roll call of cartoon stars listed in the ad include Warner Brothers' biggest cartoon star Bugs Bunny, as well as two dogs from the Disney menagerie (one that talks and one that doesn't): Goofy and Pluto. Lastly, there's Little Lulu (whose cartoons were made by Paramount, the same company where Popeye was toiling in those monotonous 1940s color cartoons where he and Bluto fought over the fickle, unappetizing Olive Oyl.

I'm not sure whether the show was a big success, but the Palace put on a much better package about ten years later in July 1957. This time, the lineup featured Abbott and Costello, the Three Stooges and the Little Rascals, with the carrot-munching wascally wabbit in the spotlight.

Not surprisingly, the various elements of the 1957 Palace show ended up on television eventually. 

As for Abbott & Costello, I remember when their short-lived 1950s TV show turned up on Channel 43 in the late 1960s. I tape recorded the theme song on my reel to reel, and have had it in my head for more than 50 years. Here it is, so you can enjoy it too.