One of them is the 1932 short Stone Age Error.
What is the error? A caveman (a dog, I believe) is in love with a cavegirl (a cat, I think). The girl is more interested in dancing on the back of a tiger. He throws the tiger out of the picture and suddenly they decide to get married (don’t expect logic in a Van Beuren cartoon).
The two say their “I do’s” and are yoked together in a stone with cut-out heart shapes for each of them. The bird chorus now launches into the comedy part, singing to the caveman “Your Wild Days Are Over,” a 1918 song by Rubey Cowan and Lew Brown.
The caveman fails to run away and sings forlorn lyrics, resigning himself to his fate of his wife running his life to end the cartoon.
Whoever supplied the voice for Cubby Bear is the singing voice of the caveman. John Foster and Mannie Davis get screen credit, along with musician Gene Rodemich. One of the gags involves a pet dinosaur that behaves like a dog. Cartoon fans would see that again in about 30 years.
I think the title is simply a pun on "Stone Age Era". On the other hand, I may be in error.
ReplyDeleteJohn Foster seems to have loved that singing mouth merger gag. Tom and Jerry did it during the "Fish Store" song in "Rocketeers", the two mice did it in "Office Boy", and the animals in the laundry did it in both "Laundry Blues" and "Chinese Jinks". I'm sure I've seen it in at least one cartoon from another studio as well, probably Terrytoons, and if that's the case Foster was probably responsible for that as well.
Foster and Davis must have loved the idea of a girl in a skimpy costume dancing on a tiger's back. It happened again in "Club Life in the Stone Age" (1940), one of the best black-and-white Terrytoons, and yet again in "Mighty Mouse and the Pirates" (1945), the first of the MM operettas, although only the pirates sing in it. There are some lost silent Fables cartoons with a stone age theme, and I'd be delighted if they came to light someday.