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Just like the Cat in the Hat barging in to enliven bored kids on a rainy day, Dr. Seuss (aka Theodor Geisel) brought fun and anarchy to the dreary landscape of Dick-and-Jane children’s books in the baby boom era and beyond. Seuss’ picture books, with their plush, friendly characters and impossible architecture (reminiscent of Dalí and Escher, to eggheads) made learning to read fun for kids, while their relieved parents could take pleasure in reciting his rhyming, rolling cadences.

In trying to adapt Seuss’ works, Hollywood has puzzled until its puzzlers were sore, concocting works of genius, pathetic desecrations and mixed successes in between, as shown in this retrospective inspired by the CGI Horton Hears a Who! (reviewed here):

“Horton Hatches the Egg” (1942)

Fourteen years before Horton heard the Whos in print, Seuss introduced the faithful elephant in 1940’s Horton Hatches the Egg, one of his first books. Animator Bob Clampett directed the mildly amusing adaptation for Warner Bros.’ “Merrie Melodies” cartoons. If you’re the kind of person who complains about dark humor and pop references in modern-day animation (like I sometimes do), check out the Katharine Hepburn and Peter Lorre impressions, and even the suicide joke.

“Gerald McBoing-Boing” (1951)

Nine years after “Horton,” a Dr. Seuss written for a children’s record inspired an animated treatment. One of the first examples of caricature-based “limited animation” (as opposed to the richer, more expensive and time-consuming method of the Disney model), “Gerald McBoing-Boing” looks nothing like Seuss’ signature drawing style (although it seems appropriately close to midcentury advertising, which gave Seuss his start). “Gerald McBoing-Boing” won an Oscar for best animated short and in 1994 was voted one of the top 10 cartoons of all time.

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953)

Seuss wrote the screenplay and lyrics for this rather insane live-action feature film, in which a boy imagines his despised music teacher Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conried) as the tyrant in a surreal, music-based dictatorship. The clip offers a satire of torture and totalitarianism, and illustrates a little of Seuss’ politics (he decries mob mentality in Horton Hears a Who!, environmental exploitation in The Lorax, the arms race in The Butter Battle Book, etc.). Dr. T. makes for eccentric but memorable viewing (check out the “hand-beanie” the boy wears), but Seuss reportedly hated the experience and end product so much that he swore off live-action feature adaptations of his work forever (and his instincts were right). This musical number suggests rather strongly that Liberace was the inspiration for Dr. T. Fun facts: Conried narrated the 1970 “Horton Hears a Who!” TV special, and “Terwilliger” is the last name of Sideshow Bob on “The Simpsons.”

“How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” (1966)

Now a holiday tradition, the Grinch cartoon qualifies as arguably the cleverest, funniest character animation ever made for television and the gold standard of Dr. Seuss adaptations. Narrator Boris Karloff and co-director Chuck Jones (who helmed most of the best Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoons) convey the Grinch’s infectious pleasure in being bad, with Thurl Ravenscroft singing “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.” Incidentally, the “Fah Who Foraze” song lyrics and the names of the wacky, noisy toys weren’t in the original book. Jones teamed up again with “Horton Hears a Who!,” which is pleasant and has a memorable “Boil that dust speck!” chant, but pales by comparison. (The 1970 “Horton” seems to have been vacuumed out of YouTube, but this clip sets its first five minutes to the music of the Who. Of course.)

“The Cat in the Hat” (1971)

Song parodist Allan Sherman of “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh” fame voiced the eponymous cat in a huggable TV treatment that features some mildly catchy songs, like the one in the clip. Sherman returned as the Cat in hosting the anthology special “Dr. Seuss on the Loose.” Setting the tone for the Seuss shows of the next two decades, they’re faithful and fine for kids, but declawed and tame compared with Jones’ Grinch.

“The Dr. Seuss Bible”

Around 1990, Canadian comedy troupe the Kids in the Hall finished their TV show’s first season with “The Dr. Seuss Bible,” offering a Seussian spoof on the passion of the Christ. The Kids’ execution doesn’t quite live up to the premise, but the idea isn’t so far off, since Seuss’ canon includes such Job-like martyrs as Horton the elephant.

Jesse Jackson’s “Green Eggs and Ham” (1991)

Dr. Seuss died in 1991, and Jesse Jackson delivered possibly the most memorable epitaph by reading Green Eggs and Ham on “Saturday Night Live’s” Weekend Update. The picture is lousy and poorly synched, but the audio isn’t bad. Incidentally, “Weird Al” Yankovic (whom you could call “Allan Sherman 2.0″) goofs on Green Eggs in this parody of the U2 video “Numb.”

Seussical (2000)

According to Wikipedia, “When Seuss died of cancer at the age of 87 in 1991, his widow Audrey Geisel was placed in charge of all licensing matters. She approved a live-action film version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas starring Jim Carrey, as well as a Seuss-themed Broadway musical called Seussical (both released in 2000). Seussical hinges on both Horton narratives and brings in other Seuss books and characters. It’s a lively spectacle (staged in Atlanta by the Alliance Children’s Theatre this year), but it doesn’t really look or sound that much like Dr. Seuss, as this clip from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade broadcast suggests. (By the way, if you really want to feel dead inside, watch this clip from the stage musical version of The Grinch from a more recent Thanksgiving.)

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) and The Cat in the Hat (2003)

Words like “abomination” and “bastardization” accompanied the release of the two recent live-action Seuss adaptations, respectively starring Jim Carrey as the furry, smelly Grinch and Mike Myers as the hairball-hawking cat. I can’t watch clips of either of them without imagining Jones’ animated Grinch getting hit in the head with drumsticks and crying “The noise! Oh, the noise, noise, noise!” Elephantine, garish, vulgar and yet sickeningly sweet as well, the live-action versions prove that Seuss knew best by avoiding them. At least he didn’t live to see them. This mash-up trailer suggests your proper attitude to them.

Horton Hears a Who! (2008)

I confess that I think Carrey’s performance as the Grinch has some funny moments, but Horton Hears a Who! (along with TNT’s weird live-action, star-studded special “In Search of Dr. Seuss”) suggests that big movie stars should be heard and not seen, as far as Dr. Seuss is concerned. The new CGI Horton turns out to be an unexpected delight, offering gorgeous renderings of Seuss’ designs, retaining the heart of the book and showing a gift for slapstick and sight gags worthy of Chuck Jones. The script comfortably expands to feature length, fleshing out a notion from Jones’ cartoon version: that both Horton (Jim Carrey) and an individual Who (Steve Carell as the Whoville Mayor) face ridicule from their respective neighbors. Horton Hears a Who! does nearly everything right that the live-action films did so very wrong.

I just wonder if the deafening, Whoville-saving exclamation “Yopp!” at the end of Horton was Seuss’ reference to Walt Whitman’s “barbaric yawp.”

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