Admission $1.50

tom thumb
“George Pal had always wanted to do a full-length feature version of his Puppetoons. His chance came within a reasonable and happy compromise with tom thumb, a combination of live-action and animation. This would be his first role as a director, as well as producer. Few other artists could choreograph the transitions between full casts in exterior and studio sets, miniature sets with three-dimensional animation, and the oversize portions of sets. For instance, when Russ Tamblyn dances on a bench top, a bench was constructed that was thirty-five feet high and ninety feet long.

“By moving the production to its studio in England, MGM found that tom thumb could be completed there within the allotted budget. This delighted Pal, who found convivial craftsmen there as well as talents of actors like Terry-Thomas and Peter Sellers. They play two unscrupulous curmudgeons who add their elements of greed and confusion to a properly muddled fairy-tale plot. But it is a marvelous ramble with its quota of forest queens, wishes three, musicians, soldiers, robbers, castles and horses and livings happily-ever-after.

“Wah Chang's puppet animation of the Yawning Man is credited as ‘one of the most delightful pieces of animation ever filmed,' and that Jack-in-the-Box character among the toys is clearly the original of the recently assassinated franchise icon. Said Time of tom thumb: ‘...producer Pal can congratulate himself for having succeeded where Walt Disney often fails: he has managed to play down to his audience and still play up to a standard.'”