Carnival in the Clothes Cupboard

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Contains racist characterisation

Trigger warning:

Contains suicidal ideation

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Carnival in the Clothes Cupboard

1 Jan 1941
Sound
6m

A cartoon fantasy brings fabric patterns to life in a literal soap opera - yet even here the reality of Home Front life creeps in

A colourful cartoon commercial for soap flakes seems the last place that the realities of wartime life should creep in. A clothes cupboard opens to reveal a fantasy world where figures on fabric patterns come to life, and a neglected clown is shunned until he bathes in Lux Flakes. But in a last minute coda, the clown returns to break the animated fourth wall and tell the audience that the product will not be made again till the war is over.

Future Ealing and Hollywood director Alexander Mackendrick began his career at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, scripting and storyboarding many of their animated cinema commercials at this time. Along with the very similar Fable of the Fabrics, this was the first production by Halas & Batchelor Cartoon Films – a company that would quickly develop into Britain's biggest animation studio of the post-war period.

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Halas & Batchelor

Celebrating the vital and varied work of the pioneering British animation studio

Halas & Batchelor Cartoon Films were a defining force in British animation for more than five decades. Founded in 1940 by the Hungarian-born John Halas and Watford-born Joy Batchelor, the company progressed from producing cinema advertisements to creating vital public information films during and after the Second World War, before producing Britain's first animated feature film, Animal Farm, in 1954.

Whether working in advertising, children's television or independent short films, Halas and Batchelor championed animation as both a commercial enterprise and an art form. Though more than the story of John and Joy, their vision, advocacy and innovation helped shape the careers of generations of artists and practitioners, while bringing a broad range animated storytelling to audiences on screens both large and small.