In the Krazy Kat cartoon “Weenie Roast” (1931), Krazy and his girl-friend are on the beach, la-la-la-ing to “By the Sea.” Their weenie-roasting fire gets into the act. So do the weenies. The fire even jumps rope over the wieners.
There’s a Fleischer-like gag where the fire’s umbrella sprouts an umbrella of its own to protect it from the waves.
Later in the cartoon, we see happy, dancing starfish.
Eventually, cartoon characters had to do more than sing and dance but most studios didn’t seem to know what they should do instead. The Warners, Lantz and Columbia cartoons hit a real lull by the mid-‘30s. It took a few more years for boisterous new characters to show up to put life back into cartoons, though without any dancing wieners.
Ah, this is why I really like 1930's cartoons, even today. You're right that toon-lovers demanded that animation do more than just sing and dance, but animated weenies did show up in some 1940's cartoons. I don't recall its title, but there was a HECKLE AND JECKLE cartoon in which the two birds were selling shimmying hot dogs in sour kraut skirts. Thank you, Krazy Kat.
ReplyDeleteKrazy has a girlfriend?!? Well, tbh, that's not really surprising; I already knew that some of the animated incarnations bore little resemblance to the comic strip.
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