“Alexander The Grape” by Jim Henson (1965)

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A few years ago, The Jim Henson Company Archives discovered material relating to an unfinished 1965 animated short by Jim Henson: Alexander The Grape. They combined the found footage with the storyboard and an existing soundtrack, and completed a reconstruction – which is now online. The complete story behind this find is here, on Jim Henson’s Red Book.

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  • ken kahn

    What’s sad is I actually enjoyed that better than a lot of the current 3D animation films.

  • optimist

    Cute. Reminds me of the kinder, gentler (yes, there were some) Calarts films of the 70s-80s.

    • Eaten Crow

      Almost ALL the independent animated films of the 60′s, 70′s and 80′s were far more gentle, or charming, or witty, or interesting, or intelligent, or clever, and far, far more watchable throughout the world than the antiseptic, overblown, overrated, all-the-same, over-animated CGI big budget animated productions of today. Of course, most of them were hand drawn and had character and points of view. By the way, speaking of seriously overrated and over-hyped, Cal-Arts is only one very, very small school within a big, big world out there. Not even 1/100th of 1 percent of the world’s animators ever went to Cal-Arts, and most have never even heard of it. PS. Jim Henson had more charm and humanity in one little drawn grape than all of the CGI lions, sharks, bears, and pandas of Hollywood today.

      • optimist

        I’m aware of Calarts being just one school. I’m only commenting on a resemblance to a style I saw from that period. Before CG, for what that’s worth. But thanks for the bashing! It maintains that ugly animation-cultural warfare that contributes so much to mutual respect and understanding among all kinds of artists.

  • Marvin

    Though unfinished, this short bears an Ernest Pintoff/Fred Wolf independent animation of the day influence. Maybe Henson realized he could do what he wanted better with puppetry than traditional 2D animation.

  • eeteed

    this is a wonderful little treasure.

    i wish jim henson was still with us.

  • Sardonic Tuba

    Cut-outs rule.