WFLD Channel 32 - Super Cartoon Sunday (Opening & Bumpers, 1977)

Here's a few neat treats: the original opening and bumpers for Super Cartoon Sunday on WFLD Channel 32, from the original 16mm film. (Previous to this we had only seen the 1984 version).

The cartoon characters spotlighted in the opening are Magilla Gorilla, Casper (The Friendly Ghost), Popeye, Valley of the Dinosaurs and The Jetsons. This is followed by two bumpers, one for Super Cartoon Sunday (with pertinent music added), and the other for Popeye (which seems like it wasn't finished completely or something).

The theme music (assuming it was the same) was as it would be on the open of Super Cartoon Sunrise, starting the next year - a jazzy, funky, disco-fied instrumental version of "Hail, Hail, The Gang's All Here." (anyone know where it came from or who played on it?)

Trivia note: The tune "Hail, Hail, The Gang's All Here" has lyrics written in 1917 by Arthur Morse to the music from Gilbert and Sullivan's 1879 comic opera The Pirates of Penzance - more specifically, from within a piece in that opera called "With Cat-Like Tread").

This film was produced for WFLD by Ritter-Waxberg (a Chicago-based animation and special effects company) on 9-2-77 (The company that did Super Cartoon Sunrise?!?! Finally revealed?)

This was exactly one month to the day after Channel 32's prior owner, Kaiser Broadcasting, was subsumed by original owner Field Communications for that company's second stint of running the station; however, the Kaiser-era "32" logo is still front and center. The written info on when this was produced is preceded by a color and 10-step grayscale chart.

My question: Why did Super Cartoon Sunday premiere a year before Super Cartoon Sunrise? I would have thought they would premiere the same year, or at least the Sunrise version starting before the Sunday one.

MODIFICATION NOTICE: I always state when something has been modified, so as not to disrupt the purity of your fuzzy experience. ;-) This was originally a silent 16mm film, so I had to add the sound manually. I actually spent quite a while trying my best to synchronize it as well as I could. I used the audio track from this clip (which did include the sound originally since it was from a Umatic tape). (I also used a little bit from this clip) I had to make a few modifications to extend the theme a bit since it didn't match up. Though there aren't any here, we can assume that Dr. Don Rose also did the voiceovers?

Artwork by Cathy Mustari, WFLD Channel 32's art director from 1974 until the late-eighties.

This aired on local Chicago TV during the 1977-78 season.

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