The Absent-Minded Professor was one of the first Disney films to be colorized (for the 1986 video release), and, along with 1959's "The Shaggy Dog" and 1963's "Son of Flubber", it is one of Disney's few black-and-white films to be produced after 1941. Professor Brainard (Fred MacMurray) (pronounced BRAY-nard) is an absent-minded professor of physical chemistry at Medfield College who invents a substance that gains energy when it strikes a hard surface. This discovery follows some blackboard scribbling in which he reverses a sign in the equation for enthalpy to energy plus pressure times volume. Brainard names his discovery "Flubber", which is a
Joe Brainard Brainard was born March 11, 1942, in Salem, Arkansas, and spent his childhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He is the brother of painter John Brainard. Brainard became friends with Ron Padgett, Dick Gallup, and Ted Berrigan during high school while working on the literary journal "The White Dove Review", which was printed five times during 1959/1960. The 18-year-old Brainard joined the journal as its art editor after fellow Central High classmate Padgett sent Brainard an anonymous Christmas card praising his work. After high school, the artist re-united with the "White Dove" boys in New York City shortly after leaving the Dayton