"Journey to the Beginning of Time": Four boys fight dinosaurs in the early years of their lives, before Jules Verne, Sinbad, and "What girl do you like?"

During the 1970s, our local afternoon kid's show, Captain Ernie's Cartoon Showboat, played a serial called Journey to the Beginning of Time, about four boys on a field trip to the Museum of Natural History in New York who find a secret passage leading to a mysterious river. They paddle down the river through different geological eras, rescuing each other from mastodons and dinosaurs, learning to survive in the prehistoric wilderness.  

Finally they pass the Precambrian Era and see the dazzling psychedelic fireworks of the Earth's creation.

The serial made no sense.  The boys' costumes and hair styles changed; they got taller and shorter; the voice-over narration didn't match the action; no one wonders how they're going to get back home again; and where did boys visiting a museum get a boat, anyway?

Still, it became one of the iconic images of my childhood, maybe because it made no sense.  It was a puzzle, a mystery to be unraveled, and that puzzle involved boys facing the world together.

  In a pivotal scene, Doc loses the diary with his scientific notes of the journey, and Jo-Jo fights off a dinosaur to retrieve it.  Their subsequent moment of emotional intimacy reverberated through my childhood.

Turns out that in 1955, Czech filmmaker Karel Zeman wrote and directed Cesta do praveku ("Journey to Prehistory"), based on Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth: four boys find a living trilobite, which should have gone extinct 251 million years ago.  This propels them to their journey through time.

In 1966, William Cayton took the river sequences and filmed then filmed new opening and closing segments in the United States with different boys, figuring that the dumb kids in his target audience would never notice.  He then chopped it into installments to rent to after-school cartoon shows like Garfield Goose in Chicago -- and Captain Ernie's Cartoon Showboat.

 I noticed, but I didn't care. I was busy watching the boys bonding with each other through science fiction adventure.

1. Doc/Petr: Josef Lukás (born 1939).  This is is only film appearance.

2. Jo-Jo/Jirka: Vladimír Bejval (1942-2011) has 17 acting credits, all between 1949 and 1957, except for a 1995 tv series, where he played a doctor.

3. Ben/Tonik: Petr Herrman (1938-2018). 14 acting credits, ending in 2009.

4. Zenda: Zdenek Hustak (1940-2015).  This is his only film appearance. 

There is little or no information about any of them online, but I doubt that they would have any gay-subtext roles in Communist Czechoslovakia.

What about director Karel Zeman (1910-1989)?

He is lauded as one of the greatest animators of the 20th century; there is a Karel Zeman Museum near the Charles Bridge in Prague.

His other works available with English subtitles are:

Vynález zkázy (1958), based on Jules Verne's Facing the Flag, translated as The Fabulous World of Jules Verne.  Some pirates capture the inventor of a fabulous weapon. who falls in love.

More after the break

Baron Prášil (1962), translated as The Fabulous Baron Munchausen.  An astronaut (Rudolf Jelínek) crashes on the moon and meets Cyrano de Bergerac and the fabulous Baron. They return him to Earth, where he falls in love with a Damsel in Distress.

Ukradená vzducholo (The Stolen Airship, 1966), based on Jules Verne's Two Year's Vacation. Five boys are trapped on an airship, which crashes on a tropical island. They fight pirates and slavers, meet Captain Nemo and a Damsel in Distress. and gawk at a can-can dance. Ugh.

Na kometě (1970), based on Jules Verne's Off on a comet. A French colony in North Africa is carried off on a comet, where French, Spanish, and Arab survivors squabble with each other and fight dinosaurs, and a mild-mannered cartographer falls in love.

Seven Voyages of Sinbad cartoons (1971-74).  Sinbad falls in love in two of them.

I guess boys can only love each other in the early years of their lives, when they are warm and calm and safe, and the "What girl do you like?" mania is still in the future.

See also: Jules Verne: The Disney Version

The Gay Villages of Sonia and Tim Gidal

Sage Ftacek: "Sweethearts" Short Brigade Stud from Anoka, with a BFA, some Tiktok videos, and a d*ck

Samuel": French middle school boys are all in love with the same girl. With queerbaiting, drag, Freudian dreams, and some n*de twinks