On May 27, 1956, mil­lions of Amer­i­cans tuned in to The Ed Sul­li­van Show, expect­ing the usu­al vari­ety of come­di­ans, tal­ents and musi­cal guests. What they weren’t pre­pared for was a short ani­mat­ed film that Sul­li­van intro­duced thus­ly:

Just last week you read about the H‑bomb being dropped. Now two great Eng­lish writ­ers, two very imag­i­na­tive writ­ers — I’m gonna tell you if you have young­sters in the liv­ing room tell them not to be alarmed at this ‘cause it’s a fan­ta­sy, the whole thing is ani­mat­ed — but two Eng­lish writ­ers, Joan and Peter Foldes, wrote a thing which they called “A Short Vision” in which they won­dered what might hap­pen to the ani­mal pop­u­la­tion of the world if an H‑bomb were dropped. It’s pro­duced by George K. Arthur and I’d like you to see it. It is grim, but I think we can all stand it to real­ize that in war there is no win­ner.

And with that, he screened the hor­rif­ic bit of ani­ma­tion you can watch above. At the height of the atom­ic age, this film was a short sharp shock. Its vision of a nuclear holo­caust is told in the style of a fable or sto­ry­book, with both ani­mals and humans wit­ness­ing their last moments on earth, and end­ing with the extin­guish­ing of a tiny flame. The most­ly sta­t­ic art work is all the more effec­tive when faces melt into skulls.

Many chil­dren didn’t leave the room of course, and the web­site Conel­rad has a won­der­ful in-depth his­to­ry of that night and col­lect­ed mem­o­ries from peo­ple who were trau­ma­tized by the short as a child. One child’s hair–or rather a small sec­tion of his hair–turned white from fright.

It was as for­ma­tive a moment as The Day After would be to chil­dren of the ‘80s. The papers the next day report­ed on the short in sala­cious detail (“Shock Wave From A‑Bomb Film Rocks Nation’s TV Audi­ence”) and Sul­li­van not only defend­ed his deci­sion, but showed the film again on June 10.

The film was cre­at­ed by mar­ried cou­ple Peter and Joan Foldes, and shot for lit­tle mon­ey in their kitchen on a makeshift ani­ma­tion table. Peter was a Hun­gar­i­an immi­grant who had stud­ied at the Slade School of Art and the Court­laud Insti­tute and appren­ticed with John Halas where he learned ani­ma­tion.

(Halas is best known for the ani­mat­ed fea­ture ver­sion of Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm.)

A Short Vision would go on in Sep­tem­ber of that year to win best exper­i­men­tal film at the 17th Venice Film Fes­ti­val. (Peter Foldes would lat­er make anoth­er dis­turb­ing and award-win­ning short called Hunger.)

Once so shock­ing, A Short Vision fell out of cir­cu­la­tion. But a gen­er­a­tion grew up remem­ber­ing that they had seen some­thing hor­rif­ic on tele­vi­sion that night (in black and white, not the col­or ver­sion above.) For a time, it was hard to find a men­tion of the film on IMDB and a dam­aged edu­ca­tion­al print was one of the few copies cir­cu­lat­ing around. For­tu­nate­ly the British Film Insti­tute has made a pris­tine copy avail­able of this impor­tant Cold War doc­u­ment.

What we want to know is this: Did Steven Spiel­berg see this movie that Sun­day night in 1956? He would have been 10 years old.

A Short Vision will be added to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via A Wast­ed Life

Relat­ed con­tent:

Dick Van Dyke, Paul Lyn­de & the Orig­i­nal Cast of Bye Bye Birdie Appear on The Ed Sul­li­van Show (1961)

Ani­mat­ed Films Made Dur­ing the Cold War Explain Why Amer­i­ca is Excep­tion­al­ly Excep­tion­al

Dizzy Gille­spie Wor­ries About Nuclear & Envi­ron­men­tal Dis­as­ter in Vin­tage Ani­mat­ed Films

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.