Edgar Rice Burrough’s John Carter books have had a long bumpy road to the screen. While Pixar is now on track to make an animated John Carter movie, this isn’t the first attempt. Back in the 30s, legendary animator Bob Clampett and ERB teamed up on an animated version:

With such a hot property, one might expect it to have been adapted to film. Well, the Mars books weren’t quite as popular as the Tarzan books, but that didn’t stop Burroughs from trying when the opportunity arose. That opportunity came in the early 1930’s from animation pioneer Bob Clampett, who had recently earned his animation stripes at Warner Bros. studios. Clampett approached Burroughs with an idea for an animated film about one of his favorite characters: John Carter.

The surviving footage of the fabled team-up is shown in the above YouTube clip, and one can only imagine what a swashbuckling mind bender this would have been, equalling the Fleischer Superman for fantasy rooted in heightened naturalism.

This entry was posted on 04/10/08 at 8:38 am and is filed under Cartoons, History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.