The Fire Where Santy Claus Lives

There’s a sameness about the cartoons Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising made for Warner Bros. The characters are all designed the same way, posed at the same angles, and have the same falsettos in about every cartoon. The shorts are competent but not very daring.

The Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives is missing something Harman and Ising loved—a plot where a girl gets kidnapped and the hero and his buddies gang up to defeat him, generally with some butt violating gag along the way. The danger comes late in this cartoon, and it’s in the form of a fire started by an enthusiastic toy, bobbing to the tuba beat in the cartoon’s title theme. Fire! he yells.



You’d think St. Nick would come to the rescue, or at least show up, but he vanished about half-way through the cartoon, never to be seen again. Instead, the poor boy he rescued from a shack comes up with an idea—use bagpipes as a firehose.



The fire is out. The toys cheer. The boy looks at the camera like he does periodically through the cartoon.



So long, folks!



Ham Hamilton and Norm Blackburn are the credited animators, with chunks of scenes lifted from Red Headed Baby in 1931. This cartoon just missed a Christmas release and came out in January 1933.