Musical Roaches

Here’s Friz Freleng’s dilemma.

He had to make cartoons out of Warner Bros-owned songs. In 1935, Mort Dixon and Allie Wrubel wrote “The Lady in Red” for the Warners feature In Caliente starring Dolores del Rio and Pat O’Brien. It was a hit, so Friz and the writers went to work.

The feature was set in a Mexican cabaret, so the cartoon was set in a Mexican café, which just happened to have a cabaret attached. And what better to star in a cartoon set in Mexico than the most Mexican of all insects—cucarachas.

It was already a cartoon cliché to find musical purposes for ordinary items. In this scene, cockroaches are providing accompaniment to a Rudy Vallee roach singing Warren and Dubin’s “Sweet Music.”



One happy roach is playing a jar of jelly like a snare drum. Another jolly roach is playing a pipe like a saxophone. Bernie Brown’s score has neither a drum nor saxophone in it.

Here, peanuts stand-in for maracas.



Spoons and empty water glasses turn into a celeste.



False teeth click like castanets when they “see” a piece of really thin meat. I’m afraid the “gags” don’t get better than this.



The writers revert to the old Harman-Ising “villain shows up in the second half and is quelled by the gang” formula. At least in the H-I cartoons, you could guess the villain had romantic/sexual interest in his captive. I don’t know what the parrot’s motivation is to grab the Dolores Del Rio roach.

This is the best part of the cartoon.



Well, I always liked the jester.

Bob McKimson and Ben Clopton are the credited animators.