Just Bouncing Along

On rare occasions I have had a dream involving unusual Oz stuff. I stumble into a bookstore and find a previously unheard of Oz book by L. Frank Baum. Or I wander into a garage sale and find a ratty old box marked "Geo. M. Hill" and it's full of many pristine first printings of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - all in immaculate dust jackets.

The find described below is certainly not as much fun as finding a box of Hill Wizards would be, but it is almost as unbelievable! Here's a little background.

Original Wizard of Oz illustrator W. W. Denslow was also one of the first comic strip artists. In 1901 he began a comic page called Billy Bounce. In 1906 Billy Bounce became a children's book with illustrations by Denslow and text by Dudley A. Bragdon.

Well, one of our readers recently discovered an animated pilot for a Billy Bounce TV series. Made in 1963 by some of the Terrytoons animators, Billy Bounce was probably un unaired pilot. Denslow and Bragdon are fully and prominently credited for the source material. The credits even going so far as to imitate the way Denslow signed artwork - including his signature hippocampus! (That's the seahorse.)

This single episode is based on the over-packed first chapter of the 1906 novel. The villains, Nickel Plate and Bumbus the Bee, hire Billy Bounce to deliver a message to the Bogey Man. Billy asks Mr. Gas for help and is given an inflatable rubber bouncing suit.

The newly discovered cartoon is a big improvement over the source material. Were there any more episodes? Since this one has remained unknown for so long, there probably weren't. But who knows? Maybe a complete long-lost Billy Bounce television series is out there somewhere!

So here is the video of the first episode of the long-lost 1963 animated  Billy Bounce. Who would have imagined such a thing existed!