Literary Toons: Oliver Twist (1974)

 Two years after Hanna-Barbera had adapted Charles Dickens' tale for the ABC Saturday Superstar Movie, Warner Bros. & Filmation took their turn with a feature length adaptation of Oliver Twist.

This version hews somewhere between the original story and the musical adaptation, "Oliver!", with all the music. Josh Albee (ex-Sealab 2020) provides Oliver's speaking voice, with Scottish actor Billy Simpson taking over for musical numbers. The cast also includes Davy Jones, Larry Storch, Jane Webb, Les Tremayne (the movie was released two months prior to Shazam! debuting on CBS), Dallas McKennon (ex-Daniel Boone; McKennon would return to playing Archie Andrews in U. S. of Archie a few weeks later), and Larry D. Mann.

As normal, Filmation recycled some music cues from their TV shows, in this case the dramatic cues from Star Trek & Lassie's Rescue Rangers from the previous season.

Many thanks to contributor Jennifer Schillig for tipping us to this film:

A year earlier, the two studios had collaborated on another adaptation, this being Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, with some of the same cast, and, as is the case here, a pet added to the story to attract the small ones. It should be noted that Richard Dawson (ex-Hogan's Heroes), who worked on Oliver & The Artful Dodger two years earlier, had been heard in Treasure Island, but did not return for this version of Oliver Twist.

No rating. Just a public service.