Thus his British adventure began. Hired by J. Arthur Rank, David Hand established GB Animation. He fitted out luxurious premises in the countryside just outside London, amongst all the difficulties of the post-war period. He trained a couple of hundred artist and produced 9 episodes of the Animaland series and 10 of the Musical Paintbox series. The experience was ended by the protectionism of the American market, which refused to buy the British shorts.

A Fantasy on London, a Musical Paintbox short directed by Pat Griffin © G.B. Animation. Courtesy of Streamline Pictures.

In 1950, Hand returned to his motherland and left animation forever. He went to live in Colorado Springs and, later, in the small California town of Cambria; he married twice more and died in 1986.

Here too, his memoirs are reticent. Why did he not attempt to set up a new studio at a time when animated commercials was starting to boom and promised sure economic rewards? Why didn't he offer his services to one of the numerous producers still active, starting with his friend Walter Lantz, or Warner Bros., which was still flourishing? Reading between the lines of his autobiography, a picture emerges of a man who, at the age of 50, was fed up: he had touched the apex of his field, he had exhausted all his energy in an attempt to become an industrialist on his own account, and finally only wanted to enjoy family life and peace. However, to get an answer to these questions, we will have to wait for more research to be done by new historians.

The Good News
Now let us get to the good news, which led us to honor this underappreciated master. His British films have been recovered and have been reissued in grand style on video, rather than via a retrospective in a remote festival. As often happens, it all happened quite by chance.

Ken Kramer is the owner of the Clip Joint in California, a company which collects old films and acts as an advertising warehouse. One fine day, the cleaning man at an old warehouse approached him with a box full of some very old 35mm Technicolor prints; Kramer sent the man packing with a few dollars, mostly to keep him happy. He was thus quite taken aback when director Joe Dante (of Gremlins fame) happened along and saw the films, and recognized them as being by David Hand. Kramer then got in touch with the filmmaker's son, David Hale Hand, and together they planned to restore the films and their commercial rerelease. But who could finance such a project?

From this point on, the story also becomes part of Italian animation history. Luigi Affaba and Carlo Fei, the Milanese owners of Alfadedis, a home video production company specializing in animation, also happened to be in California. Kramer and Hand Jr. had already heard of them and started pursuing them and an agreement was reached: Alfadedis would finance the restoration and, in return, would acquire the video rights to the films. This was quite a risk for the two Italians, who had only seen a part of the material and for the most part just relied on their instincts.

Now the Animaland(Il Paese degli animali Italian) is a reality, dubbed into Italian by the multitalented actor Luca Barbareschi. What can be said of it? That these are brilliant fairy tales about animals interspersed with musical interludes, which reminds one of Disney's Silly Symphonies from the 1930s, but without the affection sometimes found in the originals. There is also the surprising anticipation of the stylized and simplified manner of the UPA films of the 1950s; for instance, look at The Ostrich, with its animated Egyptian hieroglyphics.