Gerald McBoing-Boing is an animated short film about a little boy who speaks through sound effects instead of spoken words. It was produced by United Productions of America (UPA) and given wide release by Columbia Pictures on November 2, 1950. It was adapted by Phil Eastman and Bill Scott from a story by Dr. Seuss, directed by Robert Cannon, and produced by John Hubley. Gerald McBoing-Boing won the 1950 Oscar for Best Animated Short. In 1994, it was voted #9 of The 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field, making it the highest ranked UPA cartoon on the list. In 1995, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Original recording, UPA film and sequels Dr. Seuss's story had originally appeared on a children's record, scored by Billy May, issued by Capitol Records, and read by radio veteran Harold Peary as "The Great Gildersleeve". This film was the first successful theatrical cartoon produced by UPA after their initial experiments with a short series of cartoons featuring Columbia Pictures stalwarts The Fox and the Crow. It was an artistic attempt to break away from the strict realism in animation that had been developed and perfected by Walt Disney. Cartoons did not have to obey the rules of the real world (as the short films of Tex Avery and their cartoon physics proved), and so UPA experimented with a non-realistic style that depicted caricatures rather than lifelike representations. This was a major step in the development of limited animation, which had the added advantage of being much less expensive to produce. The story describes Gerald McCloy, a two-year-old boy who begins "talking" in the form of sound effects, his first word being the titular "boing boing". Panicked, his father calls the doctor, who informs him that there is nothing he can do about it. As the boy grows up, he picks up more sounds and is able to make communicative gestures, but is still unable to utter a single word of the English language. In spite of this, he is admitted to a general public school, but more problems arise when he is chided by his peers and given the derogatory name "Gerald McBoing-Boing". After startling (and enraging) his father, he has no choice but to run away and hop a