Are you a fan of The Cat in the Hat, Horton the elephant, and Marvin K. Mooney? Then you’re sure to enjoy this fine little series of theater spots made in 1946-49 by children’s author Dr. Seuss for the Ford Motor Company.
This four-minute video doesn’t require a whole lot of setup. It’s simply a series of promotional spots by noted children’s author Theodor Seuss Geisel—the world knows him as Dr. Seuss—for the Ford Motor Company’s parts and service divisions. Judging solely by the Ford cars featured in the spots, we can say they were produced between 1946 and 1949.
Dr. Seuess published his first children’s book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, in 1937, and he is revered to this day for such works as Horton Hears a Who! (1955) and Green Eggs and Ham (1960). But he first found fame in commercial advertising with a 1931 campaign for Flit insect killer, in which the line, “Quick Henry, the Flit!” became a national catchphrase. Here, Dr. Seuss returns to his original vocation to pitch the Ford parts and service lines. Enjoy the video.
My grandparents talked about “quick Henry the Flit” all the time. I had no idea what they were talking about at the time.
Like “The Cat in the Hat” and “The Grinch Who Stole Christms how long before this short, polite, whimsical Seuss cartoon is transformed into a rude, crass, tateless and unclever 80-minute live-action feature film?