school girl’s tribute
by
Douglas Messerli
Sheila
Graber and her students Fiona, Louise, and Valerie (directors and animators) Walk
on the Wild Side / 1975 [4.45 minutes] [music video]
Today,
I doubt that what teacher and famed Paddington animator Sheila Graber accomplished with her
students in the British King George School would even be permitted; certainly
not in the US.
Not only encouraging her your female charges in the school’s Cine Animation Club, but helping them to accomplish it, Graber allowed students Fiona, Louise, and Valerie to visually reinterpret the racy lyrics of the then popular song.
Most of what her students proffer as “animation” are basically pin-up like pictures of the various celebrities, although there is a wonderful film clip of Candy Darling.
And Little Joe Dellasandro is portrayed in
cartoon form as just that, a young boy demanding money for his sexual actions.
But the best of their images are
those of “the colored girls” who sing the wonderful refrain:
“And
the colored girls go
Do-do-do, do-o, do-do-do
Do, do-do, do-do, do-do-do
Do, do-do, do-do, do-do-do
Do, do-do, do-do, do-do-do
Do, do-do, do-do, do-do-do
Do, do-do, do-do, do-do-do
Do, do-do, do-do, do-do-do
Do, do-do, do-do, do-do-do,
do”
The girls award themselves their own X certificate and declare their
work censored, while suggesting that perhaps the wild side to which the lyrics
keep referring are perhaps limited only to New York City. Touché.
Too bad the musical quality to this video is so very poor.
Los Angeles, May 30, 2026
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog
(May 2026).
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