How to Fight Disney with Miami Sunshine, a Giant Rotoscoped Radio Announcer, and a Massive Copyright Screw-up
It’s 3:15 AM. My eyes feel like they’ve been rubbed with coarse sandpaper, the cold pizza on my desk is starting to look back at me, and I am currently watching a highly realistic, rotoscoped giant who looks like he belongs in a 1930s soap commercial, being tied to the ground with tiny pieces of string by a bunch of bouncy, cartoonish gnomes who are singing a song about national anthems.
Welcome, my friends, to the beautiful, frantic, and historically chaotic world of Max and Dave Fleischer.
If you’ve never heard of Gulliver’s Travels, congratulations: you’ve never dug into the legendary, bitter war between Walt Disney and Fleischer Studios. In 1937, Disney released Snow White, and it became a massive, culture-shaping hit. Paramount Pictures, who distributed the Fleischer brothers’ cartoons (like Betty Boop and Popeye), panicked and demanded their own feature-length animated film immediately. The Fleischers had a simple, exhausting, and highly stressful strategy:
- Try to make a feature-length masterpiece in just 18 months, compared to the four years Disney took to make Snow White.
- Pack up your entire studio, escape union strikes in New York, move to Miami, Florida, build a brand-new facility, and hire hundreds of animators on the fly to meet the deadline.
- Use a “rotoscope” to trace over real, live-action footage of a radio actor for the main character, and hope the audience isn’t creeped out by how different he looks from the rest of the cartoon.
The result? Gulliver’s Travels (1939).
The “Plot” (If we can even call it that)
Based on Jonathan Swift’s classic novel, the movie focuses entirely on Gulliver’s time in Lilliput. Gulliver is shipwrecked during a storm and washes ashore on the island, where the inhabitants are about six inches tall.
Lilliput is currently on the brink of war with the neighboring island of Blefuscu. Why? Because King Little of Lilliput and King Bombo of Blefuscu cannot agree on which song should be sung at the upcoming wedding of their children. Lilliput wants “Faithful,” Blefuscu wants “Forever.” Instead of compromising, they decide to launch a massive, devastating military invasion.
It is up to the giant, rotoscoped Gulliver to step in, stop the war, act as a massive peacekeeper, and convince everyone that they can just mash the two songs together to make a nice duet.
Why You Need to Watch This Tonight
- The Bizarre “Double-Animation” Style: Because Gulliver was animated using rotoscoping (tracing over a live-action actor named Sam Parker), he moves with an eerie, fluid realism. Meanwhile, the Lilliputians are drawn in the classic, cartoony “squash-and-stretch” style. It creates a fascinating, surreal visual contrast—it looks like a real guy has accidentally stepped into a completely different cartoon universe.
- Gabby, the Neurotic Town Crier: Gabby is easily the best character in the movie. He is a tiny, loud-mouthed, deeply anxious town crier who is constantly paranoid that “something is wrong.” He is the one who discovers Gulliver, and his frantic panic is comedy gold. He was so popular he actually got his own spin-off cartoon series.
- The Petty War Over a Playlist: The movie’s war is a hilariously simplified, G-rated satire of international conflict. Millions of tiny people are prepared to die in a massive naval battle because two old men are arguing over a wedding playlist. It is deeply funny and surprisingly accurate to how petty real wars can be.
- The Ingenious Tiny Engineering: The sequence where the tiny Lilliputians construct a massive wooden crane and pulley system to transport the sleeping, giant Gulliver to their city is a masterpiece of mechanical animation. The Fleischers loved machines, and it shows in every single frame of this sequence.
The Verdict
Is it a good movie? It is a beautiful, charming, and highly nostalgic piece of animation history. While it doesn’t quite have the emotional depth of Disney’s Snow White, the soundtrack is fantastic (the song “Faithful Forever” was nominated for an Academy Award), the animation is incredibly fluid, and the classic, hand-drawn Fleischer style has a warm, vintage magic that modern CGI can never touch.
My Rating: 4 out of 5 tiny pieces of string that fail to hold down a giant.
Wanna see the ultimate classic cartoon feud in action?
Turn off your phone, dim the lights, and search for this gorgeous, hand-drawn 1930s classic on your favorite retro animation platform. Because Paramount failed to properly renew the copyright, the entire movie slipped into the public domain, meaning you can watch this historic animated masterpiece completely free and legally.
[WATCH “GULLIVER’S TRAVELS (1939)” ON YOUTUBE (Opens in a new window)]
