We Interrupt This Blacksmith

The Village Smithy must have been a real unexpected treat for cartoon-lovers of 1936. Instead of the cartoon tootling along on its own, an off-screen narrator interferes with, and reacts to, what’s happening on the screen. It’s something that, to the best of my knowledge, hadn’t been done before.

The narrator recites the familiar Wordsworth poem (with a few of his own touches) focusing on the blacksmith at work. But then he completely changes direction. “Now,” he says, “our hero, Porky Pig.” The camera pans to the left, where we find Porky, shaking his hands as if he was a newly-victorious champ.



The narrator carries on with a non-poetic explanation. “Let’s see. We have the blacksmith.” The camera pans back to the smithy, who gives his opinion of the situation to the audience.



“Now, boys,” he says the two-some on screen, “we need a horse.” They lamely search for one in the scene.



Carl Stalling plays von Suppé’s Light Cavalry Overture. “Listen boys! Here comes one, now!” says the narrator. A camel wanders into view. The narrator apologises for the wrong animal and an off-screen hook yanks him out of the cartoon.



This sort of humour is light-years away from any Buddy or Beans cartoon, let alone the cutesy-ootsy world of Disney and Harman-Ising. Only Tex Avery would try to make something like this.

If I recall, story units hadn’t been set up so the whole story department—Bugs Hardaway, Cal Howard, Tedd Pierce (who plays the blacksmith) and whoever else was around then—pitched in with ideas, though this has Avery written all over it. Cecil Surry and Sid Sutherland receive the animation credits, though it’s fairly certain Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones and Virgil Ross animated on it as well.

Among the approriate tunes Stalling employs are “Horsey Keep Your Tail Up” (Bert Kaplan and Walter Hirsch) and “My Pony Boy” (Bobby Heath and Charley O’Donnell).