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| Cartoon Stars Re-Animated title card. |
So! Let's just dive into this one, shall we?
Mr. Magoo was the flagship character of United Productions of America, commonly known as UPA.
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| Classic Mr. Magoo. |
UPA was born in the aftermath of the animators' strike that took place at Walt Disney Animation Studios in 1941. At which point a number of animators left the company. (Didn't know old Uncle Walt was an attempted union-buster? Yeah, life is full of little disappointments). Among those leaving Disney was layout artist John Hubley, who was not happy with Disney's animation philosophy, which involved painstaking imitation of reality and lots of minute detail. Hubley believed that animation didn't have to be a total imitation of cinematic reality in order to work, and that animation could use simpler designs and more abstraction in its art and still work. Hubley, Bobe Cannon and others at UPA aimed to create animated films that could experiment in design. Though Hubley and Cannon contributed to UPA's experimentation in style, UPA actually started as Industrial Film and Poster Service, founded in 1941 by Zack Schwartz, David Hilberman and Stephen Bosustow. They did a lot of work with the U.S. government. They would soon make two films sponsored by the United Auto Workers, at which point, the company was rebranded UPA. Eventually, in the shadow of McCarthyism, government contracts dried up as the government started severing ties with Hollywood. UPA would eventually make a deal with Columbia Pictures, who were dissatsfied with their existing animation studio, Screen Gems. And it was under Columbia's aegis that UPA made the majority of its theatrical cartoons.
There is a lot more to this. There's a lot more to the history of UPA and their creative endeavors in general. If you want to read more about it, I suggest you seek more information out. But I had to get you to this point.
Because in 1949's short The Ragtime Bear, UPA created its most famous character, a crotchety, near-sighted old man named Mister Magoo (probably their second most famous was a character named Gerald McBoing Boing, who was actually based on a story record by Dr. Seuss).
Mr. Magoo, for those not in the know, is a rich, stubborn, self-important, extremely nearsighted old man who constantly gets into and out of bizarre and dangerous situations due to his poor eyesight while being completely oblivious to the situation. Why? Well, Mr. Magoo (full name Quincy Magoo) is too stubborn to wear his glasses or admit that he even needs glasses in the first place. So, he generally just convinces himself that he's seeing what he wants to see. I find it to be a rather well-constructed character in communicating his upper-class stubborn pride. Anytime he percieves any kind of injustice, Magoo always seeks out the highest office he can in order to complain (Magoo is, in fact, a bit of a “Karen”). He also laughs at his own jokes all the time. I knew such a practice was frowned on, but had never noticed how self-congratulatory it can seem until I saw Magoo do it. But he's not necessarily a bad fellow. He loves his nephew Waldo. He loves his alma mater. And he's usually trying to do right by something despite being all wrong. And in his theatrical outings, he's perfectly voiced by actor Jim Backus (also famous for portarying Thurston Howell III on the TV show Gilligan's Island).
In the earliest Magoo cartoons, Magoo was more of a gruff, hard-nosed reactionary type. One can see a bit of political satire built into Magoo. A bit of a poke at the conservative upper class who, like Magoo, can be short-sighted and see things they want to see them. Even after Magoo got revised into more of a friendly, avuncular sort, some of that still remained. The cartoons frequently emphasize Magoo being a proud alumnus of Rutgers University, a famously conservative university at the time (whether it still is, I don't know).
Magoo had a long and distinguished cartoon career. UPA won two Academy Awards from the Magoo shorts When Magoo Flew from 1954 and Magoo's Puddle Jumper from 1956. In 1959, Magoo was featured in UPA's first feature length animated film 1001 Arabian Nights. In the 1960s, Mr. Magoo made the leap to television with a show aptly titled Mr. Magoo. Along the way, Magoo's one major supporting cast member, his nephew Waldo, was spun off into his own subseries of cartoons. Waldo's absence was largely accomodated by the introduction of Charlie, Magoo's servant who was an unfortunate Asian stereotype. Not long after, in 1962, Magoo would star in the first ever animated Christmas special, Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. And TV would remain a home for Mr. Magoo for a long stretch. Magoo's brush with Dickens would lead to a new series The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo, which would cast Magoo as numerous famous characters from literature and history. In 1970, Magoo would star in another TV special, Uncle Sam Magoo. After that from 1976-77 would come the new series What's New, Mr. Magoo. By this point though, UPA had given up in-house production. What's New, Mr. Magoo was produced by DePatie-Freleng, the same people who animated the Pink Panther.
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| Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol |
But positive vibes toward Mr. Magoo didn't last forever.
In 1997, chasing the success of Universal's live action The Flintstones movie, Disney put out a live action Mr. Magoo film starring Leslie Nielsen. The film actually met with a great deal of controversy from the National Federation of the Blind and was released with a disclaimer at the end (for more on that production, see the Mr. Magoo video by Hats Off Entertainment.
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| Disney's live-action Mr. Magoo. |
Since then, Magoo projects have been few. A straight-to-DVD movie entitled Kung Fu Magoo was released in 2010. In 2019, a French animated series produced by Xilam Animation SAS was produced, first premiering in Portugal then on Boomerang Africa HD and then in the UK on CITV and the ITVX streaming service. Neither seem to have produced much in positive accolades.
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| The 2019 version of Mr. Magoo. |
So, does Mr. Magoo still work in 2025?
Well, I still think his cartoons are funny. But that's not worth much. I find Magoo's bumblings and mistakes amusing. And I tend to find this sort of bumbling due to a combination of pride and nearsightedness a lot easier to forgive than bumbling and stumbling out of sheer stupidity (for an example of this type of stupid character, see Inspector Gadget). And his bumbling is in large part due to Magoo's pride and stubbornness. Because if Magoo just chose to wear his glasses, he'd have no problem. But it's still a hard sell. It's the pride, the stubbornness and the visual impairment that make the comedic situations happen. But a lot of people are just going to see it as laughing at an old man's disability.
Unfortunately, not every character can make it into modern media. Some of them are just better to leave where they are.
The odds of seeing anything new Magoo-related are slim anyway. Near as I can tell, the rights to the original theatrical shorts and the 1001 Arabian Nights movie are with Sony Pictures, the entity that swallowed up Columbia Pictures some time in the 1980s. But the rights to UPA's various TV shows and the character himself fall under the umbrella of Dreamworks Classic, just like Casper. That puts ot under the auspices of Comcast/Universal.
That's all I've got here but I thought I'd put a companion piece up on my other blog Fairy Tale Fandom, where I look at Magoo's 1001 Arabian Nights film. Check it out if you're interested.
