Morphing Musical Instruments

Schoolboy Bimbo (wearing glasses so the teacher won’t hit him) grabs a banjo and strums the old chestnut “School Days” in the finale of the Talkartoon Teacher's Pest (released Feb. 7, 1931).



Bimbo keeps time with his left foot. In the frame above, the upper part of the shoe detached from the sole (note the nails). Later, the whole shoe stays on the floor and his foot lifts out of it.

The banjo morphs into a sax. When he squeezes it, a cat jumps out of the bell.



The instrument becomes a trombone, which wraps itself around Bimbo and tries to crawl away like a snake.



He pulls it back, and it briefly goes from a mandolin into a bass violin, which he plays from the hole with a saw.



The large fiddle explodes and when the dust clears, Bimbo plays the woozy stars above his head like a xylophone.



All kinds of things come to life in these early Fleischer shorts. The continents on the teacher’s globe start slapping in rhythm. A pen and pencil dance on a sloping desk. And, in a terrific visual, letters and numbers from a blackboard dance and break apart in mid-air, with silhouettes of students behind them.



Yeah, crappy TV “message” cartoons from the ‘80s can get restored, but we can’t get a pristine set of the inventive Talkartoons and Fleischer Screen Songs. Bravo to anyone working on these. Still, these frames are certainly better than nothing.

Grim Natwick and Seymour Kneitel are the credited animators. “School Days” was co-written in 1907 by Gus Edwards for his young people’s revue on Broadway. Edwards appears with a really off-key kid in a Screen Song with that name, released Sept. 30, 1932.

Here’s a version of the song from that era.