Today's Video Link

The folks at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Project have dug up more treasures for us. Here are several of the Chiquita Banana animated commercials that were done to be shown in motion picture houses in the late forties.

Not a lot is known about these commercials except that they were produced, beginning around 1947, by a company called John Sutherland Productions that did mostly industrial films and commercial spots. They seem to have farmed the animation work out to the Famous Studios operation in New York — the company that was doing the post-Fleischer Popeye cartoons and things like Herman & Katnip and Little Lulu.

A singer named Monica Lewis may have done the voice of Ms. Banana in these. She definitely was the voice of Chiquita when the character appeared in TV commercials in the fifties but sources differ on whether she sang for the theatricals. And now you know as much about these films as I do.

You can view or download the material here on the ASIFA site.

[UPDATE: I originally had an embedded link here but Steve Worth, who's doing such fine work for ASIFA finding and archiving treasures, asked me to remove it and direct you to their site. I am glad to do this.]