Metadata
- Title: THE POLICE DOG [Main Title]
- Film Number: IWM 670c
- Other titles:
- Summary: Comic animated cartoon involving "Pinkerton Pup" and his handler "Officer Piffle".
- Description: The curtain goes up on the cartoon to introduce the two characters. They set out on patrol from a police station. The dog sees a cat and chases it over rough ground and through a sewer pipe. The handler, dragged along, loses his trousers in the process. The cat finally reaches safety up a tree.
- Access Conditions: IWM Attribution: © IWM (IWM 670c)
- Featured Period: 1914-1918
- Production Date: 1916
- Production Country: United States of America
- Production Details: Bray Studio (Production company) Pathe (Production company) Bray, John Randolph (Production individual) Anderson, Carl (Production individual)
- Personalities, Units and Organisations:
- Keywords: Animation (concept)
- Physical Characteristics: Colour format: B&W Sound format: Silent Soundtrack language: None Title language: English Subtitle language: English
- Technical Details: Format: 35mm Number of items/reels/tapes: 1 Footage: 260 ft; Running time: 4 mins
- Notes: Status: this is, apparently, a unique print of a previously 'lost' film, of which no copies were thought to exist at the time Donald Crafton wrote his history of early animation (see references). Its presence in the IWM collection presumably results from a mistake by a wartime film handler or projectionist, who must have left this fragment attached to a WAR OFFICE OFFICIAL TOPICAL BUDGET newsreel when it was returned to the TOPICAL FILM COMPANY studios (see IWM 651a for production details of the newsreel). If there was such a mistake, it was never spotted, and the film was handed over with more obviously relevant newsreel fragments to the Imperial War Museum in 1921 Title: IMDB indicates at least six further titles in the POLICE DOG series, produced between 1915 and 1916, after the original film with this title in 1914. It is not clear which of these titles matches the IWM's find. Production: credits deduced from Crafton's book, which identifies Bray Studio as the original production company and Anderson as the animator. Note that the copy held carries Pathe intertitles, indicating that Pathé had UK or European distribution rights Technical: this film is currently held on the same reel as IWM 670a and IWM 670b, the can is marked as IWM 670 Remarks: Crafton suggests that the POLICE DOG series "was probably just hack work, but we cannot know until some samples are discovered". Series continuity: there is no film held as IWM 671
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