In Polly Wants a Doctor (January 1944), Polly doesn’t want a doctor at all. She doesn’t want crackers, either. She meets up with a goat, who eats junk and only junk. “Roughage,” you know. The goat offers Polly unappetizing garbage. Polly isn’t keen on the idea. But, in the very next scene, Polly’s eating the stuff without any objection.
Then the goat feeds her a phonograph/radio. But it operates just like a telephone; the goat talks to an operator to get music to play. Polly, for some reason, turns into the shape of an airplane when an airplane news broadcast comes on, then crashes on top of the goat.
The scene turns black and then the camera follows some kind of shaft. Now the final gag. The goat and Polly are upside down in China, eating rice with chopsticks. No punch line. That’s it. Cartoon over. The audience really did get the shaft.
Why does the goat want to eat real food now? And, oh, skip it. Dun Roman’s responsible for the story but it’s like six different people were put into separate rooms and asked to come up with a sequence, and then they were all glued together.
Keith Scott says comedian Jerry Mann is the parrot and Byron Kane (not John McLeish) is the goat who invites Polly for “luncheon” to...try out recipes? Why? Oh, well. It’s best not to ask and move on to the next cartoon.
Ok, so it wasn't just me. So many of these cartoons, most especially Terrytoons, had not just formula-driven scripts but they didn't make sense even within their own world.
ReplyDeleteThere was a reason why Disney and his shorts were popular. They were about SOMETHING, even if it was just animals trying to survive lightning and a storm.
Not everything has to be deep and meaningful and I love the often disjointed Fleischer cartoons, but this kind of bizarre, we're-not-really-trying nonsense is so boring.
Toward the start, the goat sure seems like he's inviting Polly with an ulterior motive, doesn't he? (Like eating HER once she's stuffed enough?)
ReplyDeleteYeah, Ramapith, which is why it's so odd. Polly is reluctant to eat the crap but in the next scene, (s)he is eating merrily. What happened? And the goat offering food to Polly is baffling. Why? Only Columbia would have a story mess like this.
DeleteI don't think the creators of this cartoon were aiming so much for narrative clarity than basic amusement, but perhaps they missed that mark as well. It's interesting (and a little sad) that Columbia hopefully called their re-released cartoons Favorites when they don't seem to be anybody's.
ReplyDeleteI like the early Van Beuren cartoons because even though they don't make sense, something completely bizarre shows up out of nowhere.
DeleteColumbias just don't make sense.