Jerry Lieberman Productions is a production company headed by Jerry Lieberman himself in New York City, that entirely produced the first two of Richard Scarry's Best Videos Ever in 1989. The Animation on those two videos done by the company were notably a lot choppy, compared to the four videos produced by Jumbo Pictures in 1993 and 1994. Both videos were produced by Jerry Lieberman, directed by Tony Eastman, written by both Emily Perl Kingsley and Sharon Lerner (who also served as executive producer for both those videos), and music composed by Arthur Custer. The Cast for both videos even consisted such voice talent as P.J. Brown (who narrated both of the videos), Colin Carman, Michael Fass, Amy Gross, Alison Hashmall, Ron Marshall, and Jim Thurman, the latter three of whom had also done voices for "Dr. Seuss Beginner Book videos", another series produced by Random House Home Video.
History and Reception[]
About 20 years after Richard Scarry introduced Busytown in his first book What Do People Do All Day?, Random House were signed to produced a series of fully-animated videos, to sell to consumers. Jerry Lieberman was also likely looked to see if his own company could on the first couple of videos, possibly as a sort of test. Random House Home Video and Jerry Lieberman Production first produced "Richard Scarry's Best ABC Video Ever!" on March 15th, 1989 to generally mixed reactions and reviews from consumers. It wasn't exactly the smash-hit they would hope for, and fans of Richard Scarry's books found the first video to be pretty underwhelming, despite a good deal of smaller or younger children having enjoyed the video themselves. Random House's first outing with Jerry Lieberman had put more of an emphasis on continuous jumps from one thing to another, pointless cutaways, and hit-or-miss slapstick humor, and the beloved character of Lily Bunny (who would appear in the second video) was completely absent. The addition of a subplot involving Bananas Gorilla (in a more antagonistic role) looking for bananas and eventually stealing some and being pursuit by Sergeant Murphy (along with Huckle Cat and Lowly Worm) didn't help, nor did Huckle Cat's deeper, deadpan voice which was made more higher sometime later.
Thankfully though, both Random House and Jerry Lieberman Productions knew that Richard Scarry's work still held a lot of potential for them, and so another animated video was released later the same year on August 31st. Richard Scarry's Best Counting Video Ever! introduced Lily Bunny into the mix, implemented a catchy musical theme that would used plenty of times throughout (being Won't you come and Count with Me?), and was a much bigger success for Random House, cementing the status of Richard Scarry as staple of Random House.
However, not to long after the release of the second video, Jerry Lieberman Productions turned down from working on any further video, and were more than likely were either interest or busy in some other projects around this time. So Random House then looked to Jumbo Pictures, who were more than willing to work on a few more animated videos for Richard Scarry.
Trivia[]
- Information about Jerry Lieberman Productions is very few and far in between. Lieberman himself passed away in 2017, but the company presumably shut down long before that.
- Aside from the first two videos, They also did bumpers, commercials, and advertisements for Television productions (such as MTV, TNT, Nickelodeon, and the Comedy Channel), and also worked on The Electric Company for a period of time (including the Famous "It's the Plumber" sketch).
- Richard Scarry was also more than apparently disappointed in the first video ("Best ABC Video Ever!") that the company produced but willing gave the company a chance, and probably had a much better like for the second ("Best Counting Video Ever!") video.
- Interestingly enough, Both of those videos were produced in 1989, the same year Disney's (first successful, in a long time) film "The Little Mermaid", Peter Jackson's "Meet the Feebles", and the English version of "The Adventures of Milo and Otis" dubbed by Dudley Moore were released in theaters, The Simpsons, and "Shining Time Station" (which introduced "Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends" in US) premiered on TV for the very first time, "Sesame Street... 20 Years and Counting" also aired to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Sesame Street at the time, a TV Adaption of Dr. Seuss' "The Butter Battle Book" was first broadcasted, Nick Park's first Wallace and Gromit short "A Grand Day Out" first aired, and the first few episodes of "McGee and Me", "Wee Sing in Sillyville", and "Disney's Sing-Along Songs: Fun With Music" were released home video during this time.
- This also wasn't the first time Richard Scarry had his work on home video, as a couple Golden Book Videos based on Richard Scarry's own work (which barely have any animation at all) were released in 1985-86.
- One of the animators at Jerry Lieberman Productions who worked on the two Best Video Ever titles was John R. Dilworth, who would go on to create Courage the Cowardly Dog for Cartoon Network.
See Also[]
Jumbo Pictures, A company that produced the later titles of the "Best Videos Ever!" series.