User Reviews

We got our first TV on Christmas Eve 1949, a Saturday as I recall. On Monday, 12/26, regular weekday programming came on, and I was introduced to Junior Frolics, a show featuring silent cartoons most of which featured Farmer Alfalfa, or Farmer Gray, as Fred Sayles, the announcer referred to him. Since the cartoons were silent and the picture quality on channel 13 wasn't very good, Uncle Fred guided us through the cartoons by explaining what was happening. The station apparently had no more than a dozen cartoons, so we saw all of them several times that Christmas week. One of the repeated cartoons was Hunting in 1950. This intrigued me since 1950 was still in the future and I watched the cartoon closely for useful indications of what the future had in store for me. It was disappointing to realize that the cartoon was just another Farmer Gray episode with nothing futuristic about it.

The cartoons were all silent, but they had a musical score added. I don't know if the musical score became part of the cartoon or if each station that showed the cartoons added its own sound track. There were sections of In a Persian Market Place, Le Tombeau de Couperin, Midsummer Night's Dream, and some Paul Whitemanish pieces I have never identified. To this day, when I hear the second movement of Tombeau de Couperin, I can see the elephants in a Farmer Gray cartoon. Any help identifying the music will gladden this geezer's heart.

Farmer Al Falfa goes hunting a variety of critters in what appears to be Africa in this pretty good Aesop's Fables cartoon. It had been ten years since Al had first appeared in the movies, so this was something of an important anniversary.

Director Paul Terry was turning out a cartoon a week, so the quality varied greatly, even in the course of a single movie, but despite a slow and unoriginal start, the pace begins to pick up soon enough, with silly images of bunnies on bicycles and lions getting manicures. Why the year 1950 should be in the title is a little vague; there are a couple of radio references, but that's about it. Perhaps they settled on the title, then wrote the cartoon, editing out more futuristic gags as they went along.

If you wish to look at this cartoon, an excellent copy is on the Harpodeon.com site.