click here (then click Haplea) to see fragment from the 1928 movie
Gobbles is a black boot now,On his stool he plies for fare.Everything he's tried so farEnded up in bleak despair. As he sits twiddling his thumbs,There's his first chance to get paid:"Shine 'em bright an' on the doubleIf you be black boot by trade," Says a man all dressed in white,Who starts reading… What? You've guessed!It's the very sheet you're reading,It's the mag'zine you love best. And he's laughing as he reads,While our hero shines away,"Well, I never! That's so funny!,"Gobbles hears the client say, And he looks up from his job.When the mag'zine meets his eye,He's so overjoyed he's jumpingOff his stool. He jumps up high. He is trying hard to read it –"Hey, this stuff is great! I say!" –And he wields his brush at random,Brushing each and every way. Gobbles giggles as he's brushing,At his job he's most astute.When he's finished half the business,He asks for the other foot. Have a look now at the man,He is blackened to his knees,He is speechless, he is stunnedWhen he looks down and he sees. "What's that, boy?," he yells at GobblesAs he boxes both his ears.Gobbles laughs as he retorts,"You've got top boots, it appears." N. BATZARIA ("Old Nae"), a great storyteller, had an adventurous life: a participant in the Young Turks' revolution, he was – as a senator and minister of the Ottoman Empire – a signatory of the London Peace Treaty (1913) that brought the First Balkan War to an end. He became a senator in Romania, and died in a communist camp. Marin IORDA (aka Iordache), a film and stage director and set designer, actor, screenwriter, and cartoonist, was cofounder, with Batzaria, of the Children's Morning magazine in 1924. Together they created the zany, sometimes grotesque, Haplea (Gobbles) family (1928), made into the first Romanian animated film in the same year - click here to see fragment (click on "Haplea").
by N. Batzaria (1874-1952); Marin Iorda (1901-1972)
