This one is another 1934 Warners cartoon that uses the standard-issue 1890s stage melodrama as the peg for its plot after the first half is taken up with gags in a saloon of the era.
Example? Beer steins sprout fish lips and sing along to a player piano tinkling out the title tune.
Having already lost interest in this stale effort, I wondered if there would any examples of inside jokes on background signs. I was not disappointed.
You can see on the left of the frame above that writer Tubby Millar is into the cut-plug tobacco business. Whether “Higgin’s” in the background refers to Bill Higgins, I don’t know. The Los Angeles City Directory for 1933 gives his occupation as a “cartoonist” and the following year, he is listed as a “studioworker,” but doesn’t say where. His 1940 draft card reveals he was at MGM. He got animation screen credits on cartoons for John Sutherland Productions in the 1950s. Higgins was a native of Muncie, born in 1911, and died in California in 1991.
Ah, ha! There’s a partly-obscured poster for “Charlotte Darling’s Burlesque Queens.” At the time, she would have been in the ink and paint department at Schlesinger’s. She was an early union activist and secretary of the Screen Cartoonists Guild in 1937. She testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee and you can read her testimony here.
This cartoon ends with the villain happily bidding us “So long, folks!”
Sound technician Bernie Brown is the credited supervisor on this short, with animation credits going to Paul J. Smith and Don Williams.
The cartoon seems to have been restored for television. We hope this means a home video release.
I've always said the Warner Bros. cartoons, all of them, even the "Censored 11," should be available for download or streaming on an a la carte basis. Dozens of them, like these early Merrie Melodies, less highly thought of by the experts than, say, 1950s Chuck Jones, get some play on TV but are also-rans when it comes to the DVD collections. (At least the 1990 laser disc collections focused on pre-1948, which some of us consider prime time for Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies.)
ReplyDeleteWhat's nice about the 1930s Merrie Melodies is many of them show early stages of the humor that Warner cartoons would be known for. Like the villain in this cartoon, "I've Got to Sing a Torch Song" ends with Garbo saying "That's all, folks."
One of the first 16mm films I acquired decades ago, ergo a sentimental favorite. Funnier than anything in this cartoon is the quick reprise of the title tune by a vulture and a bunch of reptiles in Clampett's PREHISTORIC PORKY (1940).
ReplyDeleteThe way that women are portrayed in these golden age cartoons is amazing because the change in society is like night and day. The humans are mostly faceless and the animals are clearly the stars in them. I noticed the theme of mice terrorizing the lady of the house in so many episodes and that the Looney tunes show the lady with sexy legs and high heels and nylons but the Tom and Jerry lady is not at all with any sex appeal and is black in the early episodes. With the Looney tunes woman having white legs. I noticed that after a friend pointed it out. I think there was always a subliminal message to audiences and the women of today would be appalled to be seen as helpless and afraid of mice. Although some are really scared in real life as well as some men
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