Paul Sprunk

Paul Sprunk (1892-1963) was commissioned by Sawyers to create their own character, Sam Sawyer, in 1950. He was never credited in the accompanying booklets. He had already worked on many Hollywood films as a miniature artist and had his own film studio. He created a 3D stop action animated film, “The Adventures of Sam Space”, which was never released in 3D to the US theaters. It has been resurrected on the 3D Blu-Ray “3D Rarities”. Paul also created a number of dioramas for 3D Stori-View cards. Not much appears to be available about this good miniature artist. Some details are available in “View-Master Memories” by Mary Anne and Wolfgang Sell.

Unfortunately Sam Sawyer was not as popular as other characters which were heavily advertised and were shown on TV or movies, so the series was not continues beyond the first 6 reels. The acquisition by Sawyers of Disney rights also gave the company much more marketable characters. Both his View-Master reels and Stori-View cards appear on web auction sites.

SAM-1 (Sam Flies to the Moon, Scene 4) Sam fights Moonmen with paralyzer gun


SAM-2 (Sam Finds a Treasure, Scene 4) Otto Octopus creeps up on Sam and Paul


SAM-3 (Sam in the Land of Giants, Scene 3) Sam visits Hank and his brother Crank


SAM-4 (Sam in Darkest Africa, Scene 5) Sam shoots a Thanksgiving bird for the King's banquet


SAM-5 (Sam in the Land of Ice, Scene 2) They enter the icy land of the snow dwarfs


SAM-6 (Sam Sawyer & The Flying Saucer Pirates, Scene 2) Atomic dischargers blow up the saucer from outer space


The leaflets with the reels had fairly simple line drawings. (Restoration and 3D conversion by J. Clement)