Who says everyone thinks Buddy stinks?
About Buddy’s Theatre, the Motion Picture Herald wrote in its issue of March 30, 1935:
Good Cartoon One of the Looney Tune cartoon series, this is really entertaining and amusing, as Buddy is manager, ticket taker and projectionist at his picture house. There is real novelty and laugh provocation in Buddy's newsreel, and the feature starring his friend Cookie, whom Buddy rescues from the pursuit of a gorilla. A wholly engaging cartoon short.And Motion Picture Daily of April 5, 1935 called it a “fairly entertaining cartoon”:
Buddy as a theatre operator, is in love with a star. He plays one of her pictures and when she finds herself being pursued, on the screen, he dives out of the projection rooms to rescue her. The funniest sequences of the reel, however, are the burlesque of a newsreel and trailer.
How funny was the newsreel?
Instead of “Rome,” it’s “Dome”!!! How could cartoons top that kind of cleverness? (We’ll skip the tired “Pathé” and “Mussolini” puns).
They tried topping it in the next gag. A ship in the Swiss Navy (There’s no ocean in Switzerland. Get it?) sinks after being christened with a bottle of milk. One official turns to the other and says (oh, this’ll KILL you) “Well, here today, gone tomorrow.”
What?
One gag I did like is the ending of the newsreel, which parodies the ending of the Paramount News with its grinding camera. In the cartoon, the grinding is from the roller of a washing machine, which makes the same 90-degree turn that the Paramount camera does. The roller is squeezing out some long underwear.
Bugs Hardaway is the director of this short, with Don Williams and Sandy Walker getting the animation credit. Norman Spencer’s score includes “Mr. and Mrs. is The Name.”
The union suit is another one of those things whose existence I learned of through cartoons. As a little kid, though, I did not immediately grasp the full implications of all its design elements.
ReplyDeleteFred Allen was big on union suits. He has gags about them going back to the Hour of Smiles days. I never heard the term when I was a kid, though I knew what they looked like because of Warners cartoons.
DeleteBuddy is too uninteresting a character to bother hating.
ReplyDeleteOnly moment I can ever recall from these borefests is in Buddy Steps Out, where Buddy helps a sickly canary blow his "nose" and then promptly wraps the hankie around the bird's head like a scarf. Ewww...
ReplyDeleteI don't even remember that one. I'm still trying to wrap my head around Buddy leaving, but then a picture Buddy takes over the action. Whose idea was that?
DeleteBUDDY'S THEATER is a sentimental favorite of mine, the first WB cartoon I owned in 16mm (over 40 years later, still have the print.) Rewardingly bland, with movie jokes like Buddy splicing films with a hammer and big staples. "Mr. and Mrs. Is the Name" all over the soundtrack, but Cookie warbles "How High Can a Little Bird Fly." Yes. I love this stuff. Don't judge me.
ReplyDelete