His studio first produced the animated cartoon series Daffy Ditties for United Artists, beginning with The Cross-Eyed Bull (1945).
Seeking theatrical distribution, Harding president George S. Benson sold the film to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for one dollar.
This release plan was implemented for subsequent films if rejected by MGM, in which Harding College partnered with the distribution company Modern Talking Pictures.
"[6] Aside from the Sloan Foundation, Sutherland Productions contracted with other industrial corporations to sponsor their short films, including General Electric, United Fruit, American Telephone & Telegraph, Du Pont Motors, and the New York Stock Exchange.
[7] In 1952, MGM replaced their sales manager W. F. Rodgers with Charles M. Reagan, who declined to distribute their latest films Dear Uncle (1952) and The Devil and John Q (1952).
Subsequently, Sutherland and Arnold J. Zurcher, the executive director for the Sloan Foundation, negotiated over the cost of future films but it ended in a stalemate.
The film's art direction was done by Eyvind Earle, who had recently finished Sleeping Beauty (1959) and joined the studio.
[2] A review in Time magazine called Sutherland "a slick entertainer and a painless pedagogue", but noted "the picture's pace is brisk, its tricks of animation are better than cute, and the plug, when the sponsor slips it in on the final frame, is modestly understated.
In 1972, Sutherland produced The Most Important Person short films for the Head Start program that later aired on CBS's Captain Kangaroo.