Steve's Cannon Crackers

1937
Sound
8m

Come on Steve! The 1930s comic strip carthorse both starts and stops a naval battle in this cartoon animated by Carl Giles

Come on Steve! Roland Davies comic strip was a Sunday newspaper favourite of the 1930s and 40s. Davies was determined to bring his loveable, lumbering cart horse to life on screen and worked with Butcher's Film Service on a six-part series. Carl Giles, destined for even greater success as a cartoonist himself, was brought in to head the animation on the series in Davies' Ipswich studio.

ANIMATION. Cartoon. Steve and his master hire an empty old sea fort for a holiday but cause chaos when they begin to mess around with the old cannons, accidentally firing on a naval fleet who fire back until they realise that it is Steve.

Creatures Great and Small

Fur, feathers, bugs or beaks: from the start animators have cast the whole natural world in their human comedies and dramas

Would you know Mickey was a mouse if you didn’t know his surname? Many of the most famous animated characters are drawn from the animal kingdom, but they rarely behave quite as nature intended. Anthropomorphism has a long history in storytelling - going back to Aesop and beyond - and animation has imported it into film. But whether it's Bonzo the Dog or Charley the Cat, these characters are really studies in human nature.