The cartoon is set around a speak-easy where cats dance, bugs and mice play musical instruments and drinks are untouched on tables because that saves animation. Oscar the police horse pulls one of those old silent cartoon bits I still like. His neck stretches into the club and a question mark forms from his ears.
The Motion Picture Herald of December 5, 1931 opined “An Aesop's fable parodying the raiding of dance halls in the days of the old West.” Old West? With jazz music? And billboards?
John McManus has a credit on this short as well as John Foster. The song “Horses” is all over the sound track. It’s another song you know from old cartoons.
Late note: Rollo Nichols tells me the song is The Man From The South by Rube Bloom and Harry Woods.
Why are complete prints of "Horse Cops" so hard to come by? There must have been some red hot sequence in this that the local censors just had to chop. This print runs less than 5 minutes, and I have a print that is just about that length as well. This is very funny as chopped, but I long to see the rest of this cartoon some day.
ReplyDeleteThey really hacked it as Harrison's Reports says the cartoon ran 7 1/2 minutes.
ReplyDeleteI like how it's nighttime when the cop goes into the police station but daytime when he comes out.