1935

I sit down in the darkened tent, overpriced cider in a plastic cup balanced tremulously in one hand. Behind me, the projector. Stuttering, glitching, past it’s prime. Before me, the screen. Dull canvas, with a few minor stains and pockmarks from years of wear and tear. The image fades into view. A big-headed cartoon blonde with those enormous, almost obscene kitschy Disney eyes. They’re probably blue. But the image is in monochrome. In the style of an old film noir pre-show trailer, white text flashes across the picture -

“A wanted woman turned wannabe-starlet…”

The shot wipes away to reveal another cartoon figure, a distorted mirror of the first. He looks almost like he could be a caricature of someone. Some cheeky or perhaps cruel private joke between the cartoonist and his crew. He has patches of unruly pale hair jutting out of a shaved head, turning up his collar, eyes darting, furtive. Perhaps a gangster. Perhaps the villain, or the ‘unlikely’ love interest, if it’s one of those kinds of cartoons. Pulling a surgical mask over his mouth-

“A haunted-housebound plastic surgeon…”

The trio is completed by a hulking figure smothered in fur and cigar smoke. She puffs it out in clouds through the filter of her penguin-like nose. If the second figure wasn’t a gangster, she certainly is. That or a bitter widow, a mean headmistress. Is this the villain after all? A stuffy Trunchbull type trying to keep the two lovers apart? Still no colour.

“And the big mama of the Lucky Rabbit Mafia…”

“They sing! They dance! They kill! In…”

The title unrolls.

“1935 A gruesome tale of love gone astray…”

I look around at the audience. A select few scattered asses filling the seats. No one displays any visible reaction.

“[This motion picture not approved by the Hayes Code]”

The next cartoon starts.

Like most things related to 1935, no one exactly knows who has this teaser trailer now, or if it’s gone for good. It was likely meant to be shown to potential investors rather than the general public. How I ended up seeing it, I’m still not exactly sure. It was stuck in along with a general showcase of new adult animation in Europe. Perhaps the curator knew somebody who worked on the production. Some of the projects previewed in that showcase went on to great things, many more flopped, a few were forgotten entirely. 1935 was the only one that was never got beyond the trailer. To this date, those 30 or so seconds represent the majority of completed animation made for the film. A handful of other shots are known to have been started, if not finished. These too remain, like the trailer itself, lost...