Friday 13 March 2020

Celebrity Pirates (1936 version)

Celebrity caricatures abound in The Merry Mutineers, a 1936 Color Rhapsody starring Scrappy.



The Three Stooges.



I don’t know who this bass singer is supposed to be.



W.C. Fields and Charles Laughton.



Groucho and Chico.



Harpo. He’s part of an extended scene where he does an X’s and O’s gag.



Durante.



Laurel and Hardy.



Wallace Beery.



B-b-b-Bing.



A can of paint falls on him. B-b-b-Bing b-b-b-blackens up as Al Jolson.



My wild guess, judging by the desk, is this is Major Bowes. I don’t know the “all right” catchphrase.



Fred Astaire.



I don’t know the guy in the middle, but they drop down into their clothes and pop up as the Boswell Sisters, though I thought they had dark hair.



George Arliss and Joe E. Brown.

Ben Harrison wrote the non-story. Basically, the cartoon is singing and gags based on caricatures, with another head-scratching Columbia ending (Scrappy and Oopy fainting watching toy pirate ships swirl around in a park pond).

2 comments:

  1. I think the reason that Scrappy and Oopy faint at the end is because of their astonishment as the toy ships emerge from the city pond and sail for the horizon. The Bing Crosby scene was animated by Bill Nolan, after he exited the Universal/Lantz studio.

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