You're An Education

[Mr. Jinks]

I watched this cartoon from Volume 4, it looks like it was edited. Not recently, but by Warners when it was reissued.


Some of the magazines have a date of 1949 and 1942
During the fade out and fade in it looked like there was some action going on (example: it looked like they were spoofing "sunny" california when the scene faded in to the african beating on the drum)
Can someone confirm this for me please.

[Sean Gaffney]

There is a biography of Frank Tashlin (that I don't have), that apparently notes that about 45 seconds of this cartoon were cut from the Blue Ribbon print at the request of Hugh Herbert, who was upset with his caricature. Similar to the Alexander Woolcott thing with Have You Got Any Castles, except that You're An Education's missing footage seems to be genuinely lost.

Interestingly, no other cartoons with Hugh Herbert caricatures (and there are a lot of them) were affected, making me wonder what the heck went on in those 45 seconds.

[J Lee]

There is a biography of Frank Tashlin (that I don't have), that apparently notes that about 45 seconds of this cartoon were cut from the Blue Ribbon print at the request of Hugh Herbert, who was upset with his caricature. Similar to the Alexander Woolcott thing with Have You Got Any Castles, except that You're An Education's missing footage seems to be genuinely lost.

Interestingly, no other cartoons with Hugh Herbert caricatures (and there are a lot of them) were affected, making me wonder what the heck went on in those 45 seconds.

Although the story is Wollcott objected to Tashlin's use of him, the animation seems to have been removed from the BR print on its re-release by Warners more in an effort to keep the audiences from thinking the cartoon as dated, since Wollcott died in 1943 -- dead men tell no tales nor file any lawsuits. It's also why the studio went in and redid the dates on the magazines in the backgrounds, changing them from the late 30s to the years when those cartoons were re-released.

As for Herbert, Tashlin was pretty rough on him at the end of "Speaking of the Weather" -- smashing a globe on his head -- so as a Warners contract player, he may have expressed his problems to some studio people before "You're An Education" came out.

[Mr. Jinks]

Was anything cut from Speaking of the Weather?

[Mr. Jinks]

Oh yeah.... some of the animation in this cartoon looks (for lack of a better word) jerky, especially that scene where Hugh Herbert gets hit in the head with the globe.