With the death of Charles Mintz, Columbia Pictures was left without a source of cartoons to package to their markets. They gave Paul Fennell a trial and he produced this cartoon and two short current events cartoons before Columbia gave up on him or he left -- there's no way to be sure. Columbia's cartoon production went through at least four regimes before they settled on a longterm contract with UPA in the late 1940s.
THE CARPENTERS is a well-executed if standard cartoon for the era. It concerns two carpenters building a house under the eye of their short-tempered contractor. There's a big, dumb guy, a short smart guy and a plethora of the usual gags, from polishing a pane of glass that isn't there to drawing a door on a wall and then opening and walking through it. The gags are well timed and it was clearly intended as the start of a series, since the three characters are shown in portrait and named before the action starts. It's not great, but it was a solid start for a new studio. It's a pity it got no further.
