A Pink Christmas (1978)

While it is easy to say that the DePatie-Freling cartoons of the mid and late 1970's were not on par with the studio's cartoons of the 1960's and early 70's without any sense of doubt, A Pink Christmas is a huge exception. This made for TV short film is about as good a cartoon as the studio ever made.

This dialog-less story somewhat based on O. Henry's The Cop and the Anthem begins with the Pink Panther, poor and hungry, simply looking for some food at Christmas time. His attempts to find food lead him on one humorous adventure after another. (Spoilers ahead, scroll down to the next paragraph now if you don't want to read them) When our old Pink buddy finally gets a hold of a doughnut, after pursuing food rather selfishly for the entire film so far, he finds a poor hungry dog. The Panther shares this doughnut with the dog and the two become close friends. When the Pink Panther rest on a park bench for the night, he finds himself surrounded by food. Looking up he sees Santa's sled passing by.

The Pink Panther has often been compared to Charlie Chaplin, mostly because he is a pantomime character. This though is probably the most Chaplin-esque film the cartoon cat ever stared in. It beautifully combines comedy and pathos, and the idea of a poor tramp like character looking for food of course has roots in Chaplin as well. In fact this film borrows a gag from Chaplin's The Gold Rush (involving shoveling snow). It successeds very well. It is both very funny and very moving.

This is one of the only two films directed by Bill Perez (the other was another TV short called The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat). My fellow Hanna-Barbera buffs might like to know that Bill Perez also worked as a layout artist and a storyboard artist on various Hanna-Barbera projects including TV shows like The Jetsons, The Secret Squirrel Show, Johnny Quest, The Hurculoids, and The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan and feature films like Charlotte's Web, A Flintstones Christmas, Yogi Bear and the Magical Flight of the Spruce Goose, The Good, the Bad and the Huckleberry Hound and Rockin' With Judy Jetson. The writing was written by animation legend (and studio co-founder) Friz Freling and John Dunn (one of the studio's main writers and a writer who had worked with Friz dating back to his days with Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies).

-Michael J. Ruhland