But funny? Uh….
In The Cat Came Back, a kitten is being swept away in the sewage system. A cuckoo clock drifts into the scene. The kitten tries to grasp it. The cuckoo bird comes out. The kitten swats at it (never making contact). Apparently it was so funny the first time, it happens again with the same animation.
The third time, the bird pecks at the kitten before going back inside and the clock continues its journey over top of the cat.
Yeah, that’s the gag.
Friz pulls off one of those surprise turnabouts at the end where the happy cat and mouse families start fighting again (and why is the mother mouse the same size as the mother cat?)
The restoration is a Blue Ribbon (13 re-issues were released in 1943-44 because of a lack of raw film stock; this was one of them). This means there are no credits, though Jerry Beck must have seen a print with them as his book with Will Friedwald lists Bob McKimson and Ben Clopton as the animators.
There is no mistaking the score is by Norman Spencer, arranged by Norman Spencer, Jr. It features his beloved backbeat woodblock, and double-timed theme song played by muted trumpets in the “chase” portion. Spencer’s music, together with the squealy voice of Berneice Hansell, the Rhythmettes quietly crooning the opening song, and the concentration on kid animals makes this an atypical mid-‘30s Merrie Melodies short.
A lot of early cartoons tend to repeat a bit of business multiple times. Sometimes you have to wonder if it was to pad out a short, or if the animators liked a sequence enough to repeat it, or they just wanted to make sure that the audience caught it.
ReplyDeleteThese cartoons are fascinating as a time capsule of where animation was in the 1930s, and, at least in my opinion, these Merrie Melodies have a bit more rewatching value than the Bosko and Buddy shorts.
I think every studio repeated animation. The repetition isn't the point. I suspect it was done to set up the punch-line, which was (in my opinion) a big zero.
DeleteI feel bad for Friz as he's a fine director, but this isn't exactly A-list material he's working with. He must have been respected in the industry at the time, considering Quimby head-hunted him, and Leon readily took him back.
I don't think this is meant as a gag. I think we're supposed to take this as part of the storyline, as in the Disney films that aren't meant to be all that funny, even when they include some gags. I see these as cute musical films of the 1930's. By the 1940's, Friz made sure his cartoons were funny.
DeleteAs I remember the story as Friz told it, Schlesinger tried a couple of directors who didn't work out. Friz came back and took three cartoons they had made and cobbled them into two. Is it possible, even granting the 1936 release date, that this had been one of those efforts and it was just released later?
DeleteMy guess is that Jerry looked up the entry in the copyright register; I did so, just now, and sure enough, McKimson and Clopton are referenced as having been credited for the animation.
ReplyDeleteAnimation is expensive. Disney did repeat animation. There was no reason for Merrie Melodies not to do the same.
ReplyDeleteIt only makes sense to repeat animation when it involves mundane movements not meant to establish a character's personality, or even a gag that's too good not to use just the once. Particularly back when no one could have anticipated that one day these cartoons would be watched repeatedly enough for audiences to notice (let alone own their own copies of the cartoons).
ReplyDeleteAnd it's about time that the '30s Merrie Melodies got some attention after years of receiving short shrift on the DVD collections (because of course '50s Chuck Jones had to come first). Hopefully someone will unscramble the end titles that happened in the '90s.
Original release date, February 8,1936.Elvia Allman also appears.
ReplyDelete