The Dover Boys at Pimento University (1942)
Three interchangeable college brothers race to rescue their shared fiancée, Dora Standpipe, from the mustachioed cad Dan Backslide, only to find she's already thrashed him herself well before they arrive.
The Dover Boys at Pimento University is a landmark of limited “smear” animation, connecting poses with deliberately crude motion blurs rather than full in-betweens; animator Robert Cannon’s technique and John McGrew’s stylized layouts anticipated the flattened, modernist look UPA would popularize a decade later.
Background
The Dover Boys at Pimento University is a landmark of what animators call “limited” or “smear” animation, a technique that connects character poses with deliberately exaggerated motion blurs rather than smooth, fully animated in-between drawings. Directed by Chuck Jones at Warner Bros., with key contributions from animator Robert Cannon and layout artist John McGrew, the short parodies old-fashioned melodrama serials with a plot about three interchangeable college brothers racing to rescue a fiancée who, it turns out, has already handled the villain herself.
What to watch for
Watch for the flattened, geometric, modernist visual style, a notable departure from the rounder, more conventionally cartoonish look typical of Warner Bros. shorts at the time, and for the self-aware parody of damsel-in-distress melodrama built into the plot. The techniques developed here are widely credited with anticipating the stylized, limited-animation look that the UPA studio would make its signature a decade later, making this a significant transitional work in American animation history even though it was not treated as especially important at the time of its release.
