Pausing Penguins

We get several different versions of “When My Dreamboat Comes Home” in the 1938 Warners cartoon The Penguin Parade. First, there’s a crooning version in imitation of Bing Crosby, then there’s a jivin’ male trio version.

The song’s handled pretty straight but then director Tex Avery jars the audience by having the singers make nutty faces held for about 32 frames just for the hell of it. Then back they go to jive-step and finish the song.



Later in the cartoon we get a hot instrumental swing style of the song—so hot, the notes melt off the sheet music. Avery, of course, can’t treat it straight. It’s interrupted for a few bars of “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down.” But there’s some pretty good horn playing, and the arrangement by Milt Franklyn is tops. The penguin band is too exhausted to continue and walk off the stage. With that, the cartoon fizzles to an end.

Also on the sound track are “Penguin Parade” by Byron Gay and Richard Whiting, “Sing You Son of a Gun” by Whiting and Johnny Mercer, “On the Rue de la Paix” by Werner Heymann and Ted Koehler and Sammy Cahn’s “Bei Mir Bist du Schön.”

Paul Smith is the credited animator on this short. Virgil Ross, Sid Sutherland and Irv Spence were also in Avery’s unit at the time.