This is a 1934 Harman-Ising MGM cartoon but it feels like one of their shorts for Warner Bros. Probably because it has animation from It’s Got Me Again (1932) and The Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives (1933).
Celebrity stand-ins: The Boswell Sisters.
Bing.
The old expended-balloon-air gag, turning a girl into Kate Smith.
The soldier is channeling Charlie Winninger of the Maxwell House Show Boat: “It’s only the beginning folks, only the beginning!”
Paul Whiteman.
Rudy Vallee, noted saxophonist.
Dave Rubinoff and his violin (of the Eddie Cantor show).
The Mills Brothers. They are actually white soldiers who become black when girls drop chocolates on their heads. Who thought of that gag, Hugh?
Aunt Jemima, who had a radio show at the time.
The cartoon begins with a spoof of the NBC chimes, which is how a number of these radio parody cartoons began.
No Cantor, Walter Winchell or Ed Wynn this time.
No animators are credited.
Love how the mic has the call sign "ABC" with a parody of NBC Chimes. I could be wrong, but I believe ABC Radio actually went on the air in the early to mid 1940s?. Cartoon was made in 1934. Sounds almost prophetic-Ha!!
ReplyDeleteThe Boswells were all brunettes, not blondes!
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ReplyDeleteI remember seeing this on Channel 50 in Detroit in the mid-1980's when they had some old MGM cartoons as part of their "Tom & Jerry" syndication deal. When Channel 50 showed it at the time, they crudely scissored out the references to The Mills Brothers & Aunt Jemima due to having African American staff at the time who thought these celebrity cameos were racially insensitive to the black families watching this cartoon in the Detroit area. However, Channel 56, a Detroit PBS station had this same cartoon that was used for historical purposes for a "Night At The Bijou" theatrical program for TV airing, and they showed the entire cartoon with the black stereotyping left in. PBS obviously showed it uncut for historical reasons, since they also had some original black & white Looney Tunes cartoons on their program as well, something channel 50 and Channel 25 in Flint didn't have (they had the colorized 1968 & 1985 versions instead.)ABC Broadcast was indeed a former NBC affiliate when it broke loose in the late 1940's to become a separate fourth network (while Dumont Network still existed at the time until it's folding in 1956.) It was originally known as NBC's "Blue Station". The "ABC" radio gag here in this cartoon refers to child-like "ABC" alphabet wordplay. The fact that ABC became real in 1949 was indeed prophetic.
I always wondered if these cartoons were the primary clue to viewers as to what the radio stars looked like (except their pictures appeared in the papers now and then).
ReplyDeleteFor a minute there I thought it was "Toy Town Hall" from WB...
ReplyDeleteYeah, there's a sameness about these H-I cartoons.
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