“John Henry and the Inky-Poo”

The last completed movie my father ever worked on was his personal favorite.

The narrator of “John Henry and the Inky-Poo,” Rex Ingram, had become famous as De Lawd in the movie of Marc Connelly’s The Green Pastures, as the genie in the 1940 The Thief Of Bagdad and as Jim to Mickey Rooney’s Huck Finn. “John Henry” was George Pal’s Fantasia, his attempt to atone for the not-so-subtle racism of his Jasper shorts.

In 1948, the year after “John Henry and the Inky-Poo,” the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that movie studios had to divest their theater holdings. There was no longer a profit motive for studios to maintain shorts departments, and very shortly afterwards Dad and most of the Puppetoon unit were permanently laid off.

After subsisting on industrial films for a few years, George Pal made a second career for himself as the producer and special-effects wizard behind such classics as The Time Machine and The War Of The Worlds. Reg Massie’s second career was as an art director for such magazines as The Reporter and Gourmet, at which he made a happy and comfortable life for himself and his family — myself eventually included.

Dad was the inspiration for the character of Max in my screenplay Tabula Rasa, and my screenplay Equity is dedicated to my parents.

Here are other Puppetoons designed by Reginald Massie.

Technorati tags: George Pal, Puppetoons, Reginald Massie, Rex Ingram, John Henry and the Inky-Poo