Seth MacFarlane And Martin Scorsese Teamed Up To Save Classic Animated Shorts

On Saturday evening at the TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood, a screening will be held to premiere nine new restorations of Golden Age animated shorts mostly produced by Fleischer Studios.

The films were restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive and Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation, two organizations that are deeply involved in preserving classic film. Uniquely, however, the restorations of these nine films were funded by Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane through his Seth MacFarlane Foundation.

MacFarlane will personally introduce Saturday’s screening, titled “Back from the Ink: Restored Animated Shorts.”

While Scorsese’s foundation has restored hundreds of films, this marks the first time they’ve ever restored an entire slate of animated films. The film prints were selected from UCLA’s Paramount Pictures Archives.

“I’m so grateful to Seth MacFarlane for his enthusiasm and his support on these restorations,” Martin Scorsese said in a statement. “What an astonishing experience, to see these remarkable pictures that I experienced for the first time as a child brought back to their full glory. Imagine the reactions of children today! Because the films now seem as fresh as they did when they were newly made.”

Here is the line-up of newly-restored animated shorts:

• Koko’s Tattoo (dir. Dave Fleischer, 1928)
• Little Nobody (dir. Dave Fleischer, 1935)
• The Little Stranger (dir. Dave Fleischer, 1936)
• Greedy Humpty Dumpty (dir. Dave Fleischer, 1936)
• Peeping Penguins (dir. Dave Fleischer, 1937)
• The Fresh Vegetable Mystery (dir. Dave Fleischer, 1939)
• So Does an Automobile (dir. Dave Fleischer, 1939)
• The Three Bears (dir. Mannie Davis, 1939)
• Two-Gun Rusty (dir. George Pal, 1944)