The Phable of a Busted Romance

T.E. Powers & Raoul Barré (1916)

An animated cartoon about a workman who recovers and returns Miss Gotrox’s lost purse containing $10,000,
and receives a Canadian dime as a reward.

Here’s a fun and quirky comic-style animated cartoon by famed animator Raoul Barré of Barré Studios who would later go on to direct animated Mutt & Jeff cartoons in the style of the original comic-strip creator Bud Fisher complete with text balloons much like in the cartoon above.

These short satires of contemporary life are based on Tom Powers’ newspaper comics. The comic-strip structure is barely altered in the two “Phables,” from a seven-film series of 1915-16 animated by the Canadian cartoonist Raoul Barré before he moved on to direct adaptations of the Mutt & Jeff strip. Providing odd marginal commentary in each film are the stick-figures Joys and Gloom.

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