Prohibition hadn’t quite ended in the U.S. when this cartoon was released, but a congressman is celebrating nonetheless. He’s waving his pint of beer and yelling “Whoopie!” in 24 drawings. Other cycles in the same scene are of different length. Sherlock Holmes waves his magnifying glass in 12 drawings, a boxer claps his gloves, a Chinese man thrusts his fists into the air and a showgirl claps her hands in eight frames while George Arliss (left of the congressman) claps in four frames.
Yes, the congressman loses the squares on his vest in one frame.
This is actually a 36-frame cycle. There is a 12-frame hold on the congressman after he finishes raising his beer.
Friz Freleng and Larry Martin are the credited animators.
Though it seems to have been omnipresent in Warners cartoons, the song I Like Mountain Music was heard in only eight of them.
The song gets more play here, but probably ended up best-known to Boomers and Gen-Xers when Bugs sings it at the start of "Hillbilly Hare". Warners wasn't up to its best drawing style by 1938, but the books-come-to-life/clapping-on-cycles gets another go in Tashlin's "Have You Got Any Castles?" (seguing into the blatantly obvious but still funny Heidi gag).
ReplyDeleteAt the time the cartoon was released (June, 1933), light wines and beer had been legalized (the Cullen-Harrison Act of March, 1933), with effect as of April 7, 1933. Hence why the stereotyped (string tie-black Stetson) Congressman is waving a stein of beer. Hard liquor sales had to wait some more months until the 18th amendment was repealed by the 21st amendment.
ReplyDeleteI saw it on "Matinee at the Bijou," where it was retitled "Magazine Rack" by an indie distributor (Walter Gutlohn, perhaps?).
ReplyDelete"Whiz Bong" is a reference to "Capt. Billy's Whiz Bang," the flagship publication of William Fawcett's magazine empire in the 1920s, when its mix of somewhat raunchy humour (hence the scantily clad girl) hit its peak. It faded with the Depression, and was gone by 1936.
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