''To Spring'' is a 1936 animated musical short produced by

Harman and Ising Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising were an American animation team known for founding the Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation studios. Early history Harman and Ising first worked in animation in the early 1920s at Laugh-O-Gram Studio, ...

for the MGM cartoon studio's ''

Happy Harmonies ''Happy Harmonies'' is the name of a series of thirty-seven animated cartoons distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and produced by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising between 1934 and 1938. Produced in Technicolor, these cartoons were very similar to Wal ...

'' series. Although the production credit goes to

this short was actually the first

cartoon A cartoon is a type of visual art that is typically drawn, frequently animated, in an unrealistic or semi-realistic style. The specific meaning has evolved over time, but the modern usage usually refers to either: an image or series of imag ...

to be directed by the future

giant

William Hanna William Denby Hanna (July 14, 1910 – March 22, 2001) was an American animator and cartoonist who was the creator of ''Tom and Jerry'' as well as the voice actor for the two title characters. Alongside Joseph Barbera, he also founded the ani ...

, along with animator Paul Fennell.

Plot

This short animates the changing of the seasons through the eyes of the gnomes responsible for spring, as well as their hard work that makes it possible. A dark

cloud In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may ...

with a deep bellowing

voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound production ...

is used to animate winter, and the elements which nature must fight to put this

season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and po ...

behind us.

Production

The title is a play on words used to represent the

of spring and action the gnomes must take to wake up and get to work. This cartoon uses the bold and vibrant colors synonymous with

springtime Springtime may refer to: * Spring (season), one of the four temperate seasons Film and television * ''Springtime'' (1920 film), an American silent comedy starring Oliver Hardy * ''Springtime'' (1929 film), a ''Silly Symphonies'' animated Disney ...

, and is an excellent example of the

Technicolor Technicolor is a series of color motion picture processes, the first version dating back to 1916, and followed by improved versions over several decades. Definitive Technicolor movies using three black and white films running through a special ...

process that was very popular at the time. File:screengraboftospring.jpg, A screen shot of the vivid Technicolor process

References

External links

To Spring
at the

Internet Movie Database IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, ...

1936 films 1936 animated films 1930s American animated films 1930s animated short films Films directed by Hugh Harman Short films directed by William Hanna Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animated short films American animated short films Films scored by Scott Bradley Films about gnomes Happy Harmonies {{short-animation-film-stub