Busted Blossoms

“Busted Blossoms,” a 1934 Terrytoon, has some nice Oriental settings and an imaginative little gag when the boy sings to the girl in the balcony.

The lyrics coming out of their mouths form into little pictographs until they morph together into forming a ladder which the boy climbs to greet the girl. The lyrics include: “Chinese girl is nuts for you. She much like to mally (marry) you. My old man he sleeps, let’s run away.”



The title is a play on the silent classic “Broken Blossoms,” where an abused girl dies, her tormentor is killed by her Chinese boy-friend, who then commits suicide. The cartoon is a little happier than that.