And Red as Little Eva

Uncle Tom's Cabaña is a stew with ingredients Tex Avery used in other cartoons—visual puns, a climax where things ridiculously escalate, a character talking to the audience, a two phones gag, and, of course, Red on stage with cuts to reactions (by a human, not a wolf) at a cabaret table (and the concept of the cabaret-instead-of-small-home itself).

Even the starting point for the story—a send-up of Uncle Tom’s Cabin—had been tried by Avery at Warner Bros.



I really wish I could get more excited about this cartoon, but I can’t. Red aka Little Eva is too demure on stage. Avery and writer Heck Allen came up with tamer reactions by the wolfish-Simon Legree. Here, he is so fixated on the performance on stage that he substitutes the table for a pie.



The animators are Walt Clinton, Ray Abrams, Bob Bentley and Preston Blair, with backgrounds by Johnny Johnsen. The official release date was July 19, 1947 but, not surprisingly, the Fox Wilshire in Los Angeles screened it on June 24, along with Fiesta, starring Ricardo Montalban and Cyd Charisse. The cartoon was already being advertised in the trades as early as March 1, 1945 as a sequel to Red Hot Riding Hood.

I don’t need to tell you the black stereotypes are the reason this cartoon will never be restored. They outraged what was then called “the negro press” when the short was re-released on Feb. 6, 1954. This is from an unbylined writer in the Pittsburgh Courier, March 6, 1954.

’Uncle Tom’s Cabana’ Outrages Negro Audiences
What Price Brotherhood If Movies Play Up Handkerchief Heads?
[E-D-I-T-O-R-I-A-L]
The damndest thing in the world is to keep responsible Americans from writing dirty words on fences. The latest episode in this “ignorant compulsion” series is the motion picture cartoon “Uncle Tom’s Cabana,” a base stereotype and an insult to Negros. With the movies trying to buck television it is strange that a studio would distribute such a malodorous thing. What price brotherhood if movies up handkerchief heads?
Even though there has been a general loosening of the Production Code in order to hypo the boxoffice, there is no reason why Negroes should continue to be ridiculed and jeered at in the motion pictures. This medium reaches all levels of mentalities and feeds the flames of prejudice by projecting such canards as “Uncle Tom’s Cabana.”
This uncommonly poor cartoon is showing in theatres all over America right now. Will it be shown in other countries where communism is battling for people’s minds? Are ideas so lacking that movie short subjects must dredge up “Birth of a Nation” material. Or was this thing called “Uncle Tom’s Cabana” the result of thoughtlessness?
Motion pictures are designed to entertain, but the motion picture industry must face responsibilities to itself and the public it serves and seeks. The low buffoonery of Negroes on the screen is not appreciated. The callous depiction of Negroes as lackeys and cretins fresh out of the cotton fields leaves everyone cold because people know better.
It does require genius to point out that other racial and religious groups are never vilified on the screen. The pressure would almost wreck the movies. Negroes must rise in a mass and protest such antic foolishness and “Uncle Tom’s Cabana,” and all other films of this type.
Now where we the state censors when this film (“Uncle Tom’s Cabana”) was released? By showing this during Brotherhood Week was a kick in the teeth to wipe out prejudice in America. With the world in ferment, “Uncle Tom’s Cabana” set the movies back ten years. Withdraw the film immediately, huh?

Evidently, the reviewer somehow missed continual Jewish and Chinese stereotypes in films, cartoons and otherwise. Or the perennial depiction of gays as limp-wristed swishers. Or all Scotsmen being cheapskates. Perhaps they were too busy raising the tired old “Communist” scare.

Regardless, the cartoon doesn’t do a lot for me. Some of the parts are better than the whole.