Much like in the Fleischers’ Christmas Comes But Once a Year, where Grampy invents toys from household items for kids in an orphange, the waif in this Columbia release creates a make-shift Christmas tree from things around the tumbledown home. First, a tattered umbrella.
Now, ornaments made from bubbles, including a star at the top.
A kitty cat conveniently shows up. The orphan rubs his fur to create static electricity, plugs the cat’s tail into a barrel and lights the tree. Hey, it’s better than Herman shoving a motionless Katnip’s tail into a light socket to do the same thing as in Mice Meeting You (1950). The electricity around the bubbles is hard to see in this pixilated video file.
This Color Rhapsody was copyrighted on December 22, 1936. While the official release date was January 1, 1937, a few theatres got it on their screens before then. The ad to the right is for a movie house in Ft. Worth on Christmas Day. The Ritz in San Bernadino showed it two days earlier with Bing Crosby’s Pennies From Heaven (an orphanage was in that one).
Ben Harrison came up with the story, with the animation credit going to Manny Gould. My guess is the song by a female trio as the boy is looking at toys in a shop window is a Joe De Nat original (“It’s Christmas time, it’s Christmas time, the glad time of the year. With lots of toys for girls and boys to bring them Christmas cheer” and so on). De Nat adds “O Come All Ye Faithful” and the inevitable “Jingle Bells” to the score. The cartoon ends with “Auld Lang Syne.”
The second half of the cartoon features something Columbia seems to have loved to put into its cartoons—radio star caricatures. Cantor, Bing, Bernie, Whiteman, Wynn and several others are here.
Motion Picture Exhibitor’s review of the cartoon in 1937 says “...a little boy gets a lot of fun out of some broken down toys. He prays and then believes the toys come from heaven.” Unless something has been edited in the re-release prints posted on-line, there’s no praying.
Wait a minute! What happened to the train and the elephant between scenes?
Mintz’s other Christmas time cartoon is the Art Davis-directed The Little Match Girl (1937) though there’s a Christmas sequence in the Scrappy-sans-Santa short Holiday Land (1934). (If I have missed one, leave a note in the comments).
A gelatinous Santa appears in "Bon Bon Parade."
ReplyDeleteYeah, there's a post on that on the 20th. It's not really a Christmas cartoon any more than the Easter bunny appearance makes it an Easter cartoon.
ReplyDeleteI saw the Rifftrax version of this short. Their response to the aforementioned scene of the boy using the cat to light his little makeshift tree is a hoot: "And just like that, little Nikola Tesla changed the world forever."
ReplyDeleteOverall, the short itself is pretty cute, if a little strange at times.
Art Davis told Michael Barrier in an interview that Sid Marcus directed "The Little Match Girl" (Mr. Barrier confirmed this to me in an email some time back). Which is also what the "story" screen credit for Sid Marcus and analysis of the films themselves from the different directors would indicate.
ReplyDeleteHarrison and Gould were still co-directing when they made "Gifts from the Air", like with their Krazy Kats in the early and mid '30s, but the assignment of the "story" and "animation" credits to Harrison and Gould respectively does reflect which role they tended to have more (but not exclusive) involvement in.
There is a clear cut before the little boy falls asleep in bed where one can naturally assume the edited praying scene was originally located.
ReplyDeleteI was going to mention it but deleted it from the post as I don't wish to "naturally assume." Plus the synopses in the trades aren't altogether accurate sometimes.
DeleteSpeaking of "Christmas Comes But Once a Year," I always wonder what they do at the orphanage when Christmas is over since Grampy has used all the kitchen stuff to make toys. Maybe they order takeout.
ReplyDelete