There would have been good prints available. Today, people like Steve Stanchfield at Thunderbean have to search everywhere for decent remaining elements to restore these cartoons to the best condition they can.
One is Nursery Scandal, an Aesop Fable released August 27, 1932. The versions I’ve seen as of this posting are pretty low-resolution and edited; you can hear a cut in Gene Rodemich’s soundtrack after Mother Goose’s goose and a bird comment about the romance going on—and this is the horrendous scandal—between Mother Goose (who looks like a witch) and a scarecrow.
This short is Van Beuren pretending to be 1929 Walt Disney. There’s a lot of dancing, singing by a male quartet heard in other Aesop Fables, and, well, not much else.
An interesting bit of animation is when the marching horses turn around, with their tails becoming heads and vice versa. Even in these pixilated frames, you can see how the heads wither and change.
What would a Van Beuren cartoon be without happy dancing? You can find scenes like these in The Farmerette and Barnyard Bunk.
The cow jumps over the moon! I love the tongues. And I just noticed the cat is Puss in Boots.
Van Beuren churned out the cartoons in 1932. There were two or three releases every month. Is it any wonder the quality suffered? The same month Nursery Scandal was released, RKO put out Wild Goose Chase, Aug. 13 (Fables) and Jolly Fish, Aug. 19 (Tom and Jerry). Some of the animation (and character designs) in this came from the 1931 Fable Fairyland Follies. Harry Bailey and John Foster get the "by" credit.
The gnome quartet is singing "The Kings Horse's (and the King's Men") by Noel Gay and Harry Graham. Here's a nice little version of it.
“ Van Beuren churned out the cartoons in 1932. They were two or three releases every month. Is it any wonder the quality suffered?”
ReplyDeleteI mean…considering Paul Terry under Van Beuren was churning out one Fable every single week in the 1920s…