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Cartoon woman painted on the side of a building, in black dress, long gloves, and a cigarette holder next to the question, in bubble letters, "Why doesn't someone give Mogubgub Ltd. two million dollars to make a movie?"

"Why doesn't someone give Mogubgub Ltd. two million dollars to make a movie?"

June 30, 2025

SVA's First Film, "Enter Hamlet" by Fred Mogubgub

Lauded in his time, the artist and animator Fred Mogubgub quickly faded into obscurity. He taught at least one class at SVA in 1964 and around the same time secured modest funding from SVA founder Silas Rhodes for a short film, "Enter Hamlet." We've written about the film in the most recent issue of the Visual Arts Journal.

animation still of boy holding a soda pop bottle with "pause" in speech bubble

"Enter Hamlet" takes a recording of the famous soliloquy and gives each word its own cartoon still. An incomplete but high-quality copy of the film is available through the Internet Archive. A complete copy at lower resolution is available from the animator Richard O'Connor on YouTube.

animation still of the character Wimpy from the cartoon Popeye with the word "contumely" in a speech bubble

O'Connor has also posted other Mogubgub films, such as "American Pie" and a segment from the '70s kids' show "Make a Wish." More films that can be found online include "The Great Society," a consumerist parade set to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic;" "The Pop Show," featuring a young Gloria Steinem; the unnervingly frenetic "Adagio;" and a commercial for Life-Savers that made Mogubgub a darling of youth-focused advertising.

If you're curious about the man himself, he appears in a 1967 documentary by Antonello Branca, called "What’s Happening?" alongside the likes of Allen Ginsburg, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Roy Lichtenstein.