This colour short was transmitted on BBC TV each Christmas in the UK for a dozen years from the mid-1950s onwards. It has not since re-appeared in the UK
Set in Edwardian England a young suitor attempts to woo his intended, Wendy Toye, by bringing gifts as denoted in the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas". She is at first charmed and delighted to receive "a Partridge in a Pear Tree". However the suitor feels obliged to follow the song to the letter - to the bitter end. Entirely wordless apart from the song itself, the most striking feature is visual.
The artistic vision behind it was Ronald Searle's, a famous cartoonist, illustrator and author for five decades whose work includes the title sequences to "Those Magnificent Men and their Flying Machines", "Monte Carlo or Bust" and of course the entire "St Trinians" series (Searle was the author of the St Trinian books).
Set in Edwardian England a young suitor attempts to woo his intended, Wendy Toye, by bringing gifts as denoted in the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas". She is at first charmed and delighted to receive "a Partridge in a Pear Tree". However the suitor feels obliged to follow the song to the letter - to the bitter end. Entirely wordless apart from the song itself, the most striking feature is visual.
The artistic vision behind it was Ronald Searle's, a famous cartoonist, illustrator and author for five decades whose work includes the title sequences to "Those Magnificent Men and their Flying Machines", "Monte Carlo or Bust" and of course the entire "St Trinians" series (Searle was the author of the St Trinian books).