Flip the Frog

Flip the Frog is an animated cartoon character created by American animator Ub Iwerks. He starred in a series of cartoons produced by Celebrity Pictures and distributed through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1930 to 1933. The series had many recurring characters besides Flip; including Flip's dog, the mule Orace, and a dizzy neighborhood spinster.

Flip was created by Ub Iwerks, animator for the Walt Disney Studios and a personal friend of Walt Disney in 1930, at the Iwerks Studios. After a series of disputes between the two, Iwerks left Disney and went on to accept an offer from Pat Powers to open a cartoon studio of his own and receive a salary of $300 a week, an offer that Disney couldn't match at the time. Iwerks was to produce new cartoons under Powers's Celebrity Pictures auspices and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The first series he was to produce was to feature a character called Tony the Frog, but Iwerks disliked the name and it was subsequently changed to Flip.

Ub Iwerks planned to release the series in both color and black and white versions through Celebrity Productions, Inc. The series attracted public attention in England by being the first color sound cartoon series, in the two-color British Multicolor System. These shorts were exhibited in England in color, but not in the United States where they were made. After four shorts had been produced (Flying Fists, Puddle Pranks and Little Orphan Willie, also all in Multicolor) MGM picked up the series. They agreed to exhibit Fiddlesticks and Flying Fists. Little Orphan Willie and Puddle Pranks, were never copyrighted and remain in the public domain. MGM decided to produce the series entirely in black and white, releasing the ones produced in color in Black and White versions only. Some have speculated that Techno-Cracked (1933) may have been photographed in Cinecolor. The Cinecolor process was a new two-strip color process that came out in 1932, the year that to the two-strip Technicolor process was discontinued in favor of their new three-strip process. Iwerks would go on to make extensive use of Cinecolor with his ComiColor Cartoon series.

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