Russell Merritt is a film studies professor at UC Berkeley and co-author of Walt in Wonderland and the forthcoming Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies. He will also introduce the films of Jirí Trnka on October 3.

UPA was the animation studio that gave the 1950s a good name. It made hip, funny cartoons, braved the McCarthy witch hunts, and created a snappy new look that revolutionized animation design. With this illustrated lecture we chart the studio's meteoric rise, and screen sparkling, brand-new prints of hard-to-find cartoon masterpieces. We'll see the UPA cream: Chuck Jones's one-of-a-kind Hell-Bent For Election (1944, 16mm, PFA Collection), the first animated film commissioned for a presidential election. Gerald McBoing Boing (Robert “Bobe” Cannon, 1951), the most famous and influential of all UPA shorts, based on Dr. Seuss's story about a kid who doesn't speak words, but only weird sounds. John Hubley's Rooty Toot Toot, UPA's jazz version of “Frankie and Johnny.” Willie the Kid (Robert “Bobe” Cannon, 1952), the make-believe fantasy film that James Thurber thought the perfect cartoon. The Oompahs (Robert “Bobe” Cannon, 1952), starring a tuba and his rebel son, a Dixieland trumpet, speeding around in bright abstract décor. And The Tell-Tale Heart (Ted Parmalee, 1953), Edgar Allan Poe dementia told in the Surrealist style of de Chirico and Dali, with narration by James Mason.