Oh, there’s the usual Fleischer ridiculousness. The ending when the ugly stepsisters get crushed by the doors announcing the end of the cartoon is fun but I always like the silly aspect of a Fleischer cartoon and nothing can be sillier than mice, lizards and a pumpkin (voiced by Gus Wickie?) each getting a chorus of the title song.
I defy anyone to hate mice singing “la-la-la” in falsetto.
Seeing Betty Boop as a redhead is a bit disconserting and I enjoyed her far more in the bizarre ‘Snow White’ the previous year but this short has its charms.
Seymour Kneitel, Doc Crandall and William Henning are the credited animators.
Sounds a little more like William Pennell than Gus Wickie. Pennell handled the baritone voices for Fliescher in the early 30s, including the early Popeyes; Wickie takes his place in that series starting with 1935's "The Hyp-Nut-Tist" and IIRC, his first Color Classic was "An Elephant Never Forgets".
ReplyDeleteIf that's the case, it's Pennell. I didn't know when Wickie took over; I was always under the impression he was there earlier.
ReplyDeleteRay Pointer swore he was identifying a lot of the early 30s deep voiced characters as being done by Gus; but other animation experts have disagreed. To me, you can hear a smoother, more rounder sound in Wickie' baritone than you do in Pennell's -- his voice has a rough edge to it that fit the bad guy characters in the early 30s Fleischer shorts, but it's hard to imagine him singing the 'Sindbad' or 'Ali Baba' songs in the color Popeye specials as well as Wickie.
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