Tommy growls in song at a theatre audience: “Darling, I am growing hun-gry.”
The audience pelts him with food, like a lousy vaudeville act. Whoever animated this provides some fun expressions.
But Tommy’s hep to the jive! He’s keen to the scene! He rips a pair of drumsticks off a turkey thrown at him and starts playing the produce tossed at him like drums.
One last pumpkin comes flying toward him. He smashes it like bass drum. Scott Bradley has all kinds of percussion sounds playing in the background.
Gross fan afoul of politics and was quickly shown the door. History claims someone at MGM thought this rowdy cartoon was “beneath the dignity” of the prestigious studio. Within a year, MGM told Hugh Harman to start making rowdier cartoons, like the ones released by Warner Bros. Or like this one. Go figure.
IIRC, it was Rich Hogan, who followed Avery over to MGM, who was told by Fred Quimby shortly after his arrival they didn't want any of that "Warner Bros. rowdyism" in their cartoons. So the mindset was still in place in early 1942 or so, and probably wouldn't have changed if the Schelsinger shorts weren't getting more bookings (this cartoon, along with the spot gag short "Petunia Natural Park" released around the same time both do a pretty good job of matching the Warners' style. But odds are in late 1938 Quimby was still thinking mimicking Disney was the way out of the animation studio's problems. That would explain Hugh and Rudy's return and why Friz was on the next trolley for Sunset Boulevard a short time later).
ReplyDeleteMike Maltese mentioned it in Joe Adamson's book.
DeleteTo be honest, I don't think he was referring to the cartoons. Avery was already directing at MGM in the Warners style. I think he was referring to the attitude in the studio itself, with the endless pranks at Warners by Clampett et al.
Bill Nolan of Oswald fame is the presumed animator for this scene.
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