Reviews

Merrie Melodies (1931)

Commentary

A spin-off from Looney Tunes (1930), focused on the musical genre, allowing Looney Tunes to develop narratives instead.

References here: Over the Garden Wall (2014).

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Entry:

“Lady, Play Your Mandolin!” (1931) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	First of the Merrie Melodies. Well made, anarchic, extending anthropomorphization to the entire building that forms most of the set, and showing alcohol-induced psychosis for comedy. It introduced Foxy, a copy of Mickey Mouse, and Roxy, who combines Betty Boop (launched a year earlier; her vocal flourishes are imitated here) with the redundant markers of femininity that are also applied to Bosko’s girlfriend Honey. The attempt to promote a Warner-owned popular song is more obvious than in the earlier Looney Tunes (1930).
References here: “Bosko’s Fox Hunt” (1931), “Goopy Geer” (1932).
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Entry:

“Smile, Darn Ya, Smile!” (1931) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	Imitative of “Box Car Blues” (1930). Hobos chime in while cooking a living bird, and knocking it out, which seems entirely appropriate to the underlying grimness of the song.
References here: “Goopy Geer” (1932).
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Entry:

“One More Time” (1931) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	Amid violence and urban alienation, it achieves the distinction of being especially nonsensical because the music it promotes is very poorly matched to the action. Perhaps it could be profitably remixed to Daft Punk’s song by the same name.
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Entry:

“You Don’t Know What You’re Doin’!” (1931) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	More hobos, and an amusing advertisement for asbestos on the theater curtain, deliberately comical in the era of escalating concern with the negative health effects. There’s good anarchic energy in a few shots, but the nightmare scene doesn’t quite sustain the right intensity.
References here: “Bosko in Person” (1933).
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Entry:

“Hittin’ the Trail for Hallelujah Land” (1931) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	More hobos, and Uncle Tom; one of the Censored Eleven for its obvious racism. I like the lights from the windows on the boat reflected in the water, Porky’s trick with the propeller, the third-act ripoff of “The Skeleton Dance” (1929), and the extreme (though not graphic) brutality of the melodramatic villain’s comeuppance.
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Entry:

“Red-Headed Baby” (1931) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
References here: “Santa’s Workshop” (1932).
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“Pagan Moon” (1932) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Subject	Hawaiian natives.
Commentary	I like the slowly rising sun, and the last shot is fun.
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Entry:

“Freddy the Freshman” (1932) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	Good potential for prefiguring the college comedies of a later era, with wild partying verging on the surreal, but it doesn’t live up to its potential.
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Entry:

“Crosby, Columbo, and Vallee” (1932) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Subject	Native Americans complain about popular singers.
Commentary	I initially thought it might be Christopher Columbus in the title, but it really is Russ Columbo, even though the characters are racially caricatured in a 15th-century lifestyle. I suppose the most interesting thing about this short is the relative similarity of the girl and the boy, compared to the previous couples in this series and Looney Tunes (1930): The extreme feminine attributes of Honey, Roxy and Fluffy are absent here.
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Entry:

“Goopy Geer” (1932) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	One good detail for ecocriticism: A waiter orders “One soup!” from a plucked chicken in the kitchen. The bird replies “Comin' up!”, leaps from its shelf into a bowl of water on the stove, swims around, rubs its butt in the water a little extra before getting out, and then towels off. The waiter returns and takes a scoop of water from the bowl to serve his customer. Compare “Smile, Darn Ya, Smile!” (1931). The scene of the psychotic, drunken horse is repeated from “Lady, Play Your Mandolin!” (1931), but the wild energy of that film is sadly absent here.
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Entry:

“It’s Got Me Again!” (1932) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Subject	Mice defend themselves from a cat using musical instruments, in what appears to be a school.
Commentary	First Warner Bros. Oscar nomination for an animated short. It’s plain to see why: It’s much more European and poetic in its sensibilities than other early Merrie Melodies shorts, and much more sedate. The shot of the cat creeping across the roof in the rain is actually beautiful.
References here: “A Great Big Bunch of You” (1932).
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Entry:

“Moonlight for Two” (1932) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	Worth watching purely for its painfully bad dance animation, which looks like a 1990s parody of this era’s cartoons.
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Entry:

“The Queen Was in the Parlor” (1932) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	Evidently thoughtless faux-medieval romanticism.
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Entry:

“I Love a Parade” (1932) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Subject	A circus.
Commentary	Itchy & Scratchy logic: A lion beats a bass drum too hard, breaking the skin, and pushes it down a dog’s throat to fix the problem. Also a freak show of mostly-ethnic characters.
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Entry:

“You’re Too Careless with Your Kisses!” (1932) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Subject	Drunkenness, domestic quarrels and war among bees.
Commentary	I like the war sequence: From cavalry to modern warfare with an aircraft carrier and a submarine (U-Boot) that is a boot.
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Entry:

“I Wish I Had Wings” (1932) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	Another sack of easy targets for ecocriticism. I like the rooster calling out the marching pace in German, just five months before the Reichstag fire.
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Entry:

“A Great Big Bunch of You” (1932) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	Rather less successful in its European-style gentrification than “It’s Got Me Again!” (1932).
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Entry:

“Three’s a Crowd” (1932) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	The atypically realistic character designs for Cleopatra and Tarzan look out of place. Indeed, Hyde here functions as a villain against the characters from other works. Sambo and Uncle Tom are both present as literary classics, as would be expected from early Merrie Melodies; they’re the only ones present that would completely drop out of the canon in the 85 years between the production and my viewing. Unexpectedly, Hyde does not morph into a black stereotype like them after being splashed with ink.
References here: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (1999).
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Entry:

“The Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives” (1933) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	The design sensibility of the opening shots seems prescient, but it all devolves into a fantasy of wish fulfillment, racism and recycled footage.
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Entry:

“One Step Ahead of My Shadow” (1933) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Subject	Musical pastiche of American stereotypes of East Asian culture: Mostly Chinese but with Japanese torii and stratovolcano etc.
Commentary	No improvement over “The Dragon Painter” (1919). The title song is delivered in broken English. As usual, the WB animation studio likes to mix its racial stereotypes for variety, so there’s a Mandarin version of Amos and Andy in one shot.
References here: “Buddy the Gob” (1934).
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Entry:

“Young and Healthy” (1933) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	The opening walk down the stairs is an ambitious effort in manual technical animation, but watch the bad geometry when figures are exchanged.
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“The Organ Grinder” (1933) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	Watch the background repeat. The monkey is pretty well animated when its gets going.
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“Wake Up the Gypsy in Me” (1933) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	The usual casual racism and exoticism dressed up for comedy. The comment on Rasputin is curious in its lack of apparent meaning. He’s just a scheming villain, disloyal to an unseen tzar. He’s not even hard to kill. The amusing figure entering his castle with a bunch of bombs—perhaps a 1910s-style anarchist terrorist vaguely influenced by Khioniya Guseva—is dropped without comment or consequence.
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Entry:

“I Like Mountain Music” (1933) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
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“The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon” (1933) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	I like the many-eyed anthropomorphic potato crying, the anthropomorphic egg slipping in lard to fall and crack open, revealing an unharmed anthropomorphic chicken, and finally the literal doughboy who gets doped up on yeast and cooked by his enemies.
References here: Rick and Morty (2013).
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Entry:

“We’re in the Money” (1933) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	I was reminded of my niece’s 2017 fascination with “Shopkins”, little anthropomorphic representations of consumer goods, a more recent form of imagining inanimate objects of desire as friendly creatures. It seems both Rudolf Ising and Friz Freleng did a ton of shorts on this theme, resembling “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” (1838).
References here: “How Do I Know It’s Sunday” (1934), Brewster’s Millions (1985).
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“I’ve Got to Sing a Torch Song” (1933) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
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“Sittin’ on a Backyard Fence” (1933) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Subject	Inanimate objects and cats.
Commentary	I like the long johns doing circus acrobatics in the breeze.
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“Pettin’ in the Park” (1934) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
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“Honeymoon Hotel” (1934) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	Catchy. The funniest thing about it is the deliberately broken coy causality. Observe the cut away from the shot of the thermometer, starting with a heart-shaped red bead of mercury and rising to indicate that the honeymooners are shtupping. High pressure breaks the glass (orgasm) and triggers the fire alarm. In isolation, that’s expected in the genre, but it becomes apparent that the same event somehow caused an actual fire too, which is not shown and upon which there is no comment whatsoever.
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Entry:

“Beauty and the Beast” (1934) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	A gluttonous female protagonist, no less.
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“Those Were Wonderful Days” (1934) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Subject	Parody of Gay Nineties and turn-of-the-century stereotypes.
Commentary	I like the villain’s well-timed dynamite toss and the damsel’s subversive preference for him.
References here: “Little Dutch Plate” (1935).
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Entry:

“Goin’ to Heaven on a Mule” (1934) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Subject	An imp and a cherub get into a brutal fistfight and leave the protagonist to drink his gin. He goes to a casino-themed Heaven where everyone is black. Saint Peter gets rid of a salesman at the gate.
Commentary	There is no implication that whites go to a segregated Heaven elsewhere. As a satire of Christian belief it’s pretty funny. It would have been less funny with a white Saint Peter, and funnier without the racial stereotypes.
References here: “Those Beautiful Dames” (1934), “Fish Tales” (1936).
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Entry:

“How Do I Know It’s Sunday” (1934) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Subject	Another short about what happens in a store when there are no people around; this time a grocery store.
Commentary	No doubt the result of bored animators using their imagination in everyday life, hence more pleasant than “We’re in the Money” (1933).
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Entry:

“Why Do I Dream Those Dreams” (1934) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Subject	Rip Van Winkle.
Commentary	Surprisingly pedestrian. Three years earlier the animators would probably have done wilder things with the legend.
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Entry:

“The Girl at the Ironing Board” (1934) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
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“The Miller’s Daughter” (1934) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
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“Shake Your Powder Puff” (1934) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	Joyful. I particularly enjoyed the careful characterization of individual band members, whereas collectives are undifferentiated in e.g. “Buddy’s Circus” (1934).
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Entry:

“Rhythm in the Bow” (1934) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Subject	A Depression hobo utopia.
Commentary	Pretty well composed.
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Entry:

“Those Beautiful Dames” (1934) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Subject	A poor girl, possibly an orphan, freezes in the winter. When she falls asleep, toys come by to give her an extreme home makeover. Unlike “Goin’ to Heaven on a Mule” (1934), there is nothing here to indicate that the fantastic event is only a dream.
Commentary	Cognitive dissonance. It is a curious reversal of the several previous Merrie Melodies where toys party by themselves. See it for the implication that what destitute children need is the appearance of a middle-class lifestyle, not attentive parents, friends, money, education, talent, effort etc.
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Entry:

“Pop Goes Your Heart” (1934) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	Colour and no real theme, plot or energy.
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“Mr. and Mrs. Is the Name” (1935) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	Observe the lobster, alive and well in the sea, yet red.
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Entry:

“Country Boy” (1935) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	The sole highlight is the rhyming conversation between bad-boy Peter Rabbit—whether licensed or a knock-off I don’t know—and his classmates, who warn him not to steal from the farmer, because the teacher will find out. Also, the farmer is a human who will kill Peter and eat him “in a pot”; I like how the funny-animal setting makes this bogeyman threat uncommonly credible. The speaking, anthropomorphic prey animals wear (some) clothes, unlike the farmer’s mute cow.
References here: Charlotte’s Web (1973).
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Entry:

“I Haven’t Got a Hat” (1935) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	A jump forward in character design and planning, including the thoughtful use of colour.
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Entry:

“Along Flirtation Walk” (1935) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Subject	Hens, with apparently male coaches, compete at laying eggs. Viable eggs are cause for a penalty.
Commentary	Poorly put together, but recommended for ecocritical thinking. The animal glee club sings, but none of the animals talk.
References here: BoJack Horseman (2014).
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Entry:

“My Green Fedora” (1935) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
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“Into Your Dance” (1935) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
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“The Country Mouse” (1935) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
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“The Merry Old Soul” (1935) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
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“The Lady in Red” (1935) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Subject	Roaches in a Spanish kitchen and a parrot villain.
Commentary	A minor graphical upgrade on the recurring motif of small creatures running the show and repurposing everyday objects when there are no people around.
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Entry:

“Little Dutch Plate” (1935) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	The twist ending is that of “Those Were Wonderful Days” (1934).
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Entry:

“Billboard Frolics” (1935) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	Yet another animist Warner Bros. short about environments coming to life without people around.
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Entry:

“Flowers for Madame” (1935) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Subject	Flowers in a garden have a parade and put out a living fire.
Commentary	The first 3-strip Technicolor cartoon in the series.
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Entry:

“I Wanna Play House” (1936) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Subject	Bear cubs at play.
Commentary	A marked improvement in the use of shot length and Technicolor. The plot is not yet clever and the characters are weak, but the basic technical building blocks are in place for the golden age.
References here: “Mickey’s Trailer” (1938).
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Entry:

“I’m a Big Shot Now” (1936) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
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“Let It Be Me” (1936) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	I like the rural boyfriend getting up the nerve to head out in the winter storm and being blown through several rooms of his house and out the back.
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Entry:

“I’d Love to Take Orders from You” (1936) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Subject	A family of scarecrows.
Commentary	Looks and feels like a conservative Disney production.
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Entry:

“Bingo Crosbyana” (1936) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	An awkward combination of several of Freleng’s most common tropes: Musical bugs repurposing a domestic scene in the absence of people, melodramatic villainy threatening the women, and gentle, conventionally moral parody of a pop star.
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Entry:

“Page Miss Glory” (1936) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Subject	A Hicksville bellhop fantasizes about meeting a star.
Commentary	The Art Deco, with echoes of Fritz Lang, suggests Tex Avery’s talent and bright future.
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Entry:

“When I Yoo Hoo” (1936) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	The final shot, of non-funny-animal cocks on the bleachers when their funny-animal owners and trainers fight, is no punchline. It is more interesting, ecocritically, that the two feuding hillbilly clans are both represented as biologically similar to one another and internally diverse.
References here: “The Martins and the Coys” (1946).
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Entry:

“I Love to Singa” (1936) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Commentary	The Jazz Singer (1927) according to Tex Avery.
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Entry:

“Sunday Go to Meetin’ Time” (1936) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
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Entry:

“At Your Service Madame” (1936) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
Subject	Anthropomorphic piglets are taught to eat gracefully out of individual troughs. One hyperactive piglet who fails at this task is the only one with the initiative to stop a con man.
Commentary	Neatly contained, without anyone thinking too hard about the contents.
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Entry:

“Toy Town Hall” (1936) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2017.
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“The CooCoo Nut Grove” (1936) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
Subject	Cartoon caricatures of real contemporary celebrities at a glamorous night club, patterned after the Cocoanut Grove of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
Commentary	Wikipedia names over 20 celebrities, many more than I could recognize. For something so extremely heavy on reference humour for its time and medium, it is surprisingly well put together; there is even a restored version where the colour looks lovely. Though it alludes to the various celebrities rather than naming them, it is a more direct form of reference humour than the mere idioms of “Bosko in Person” (1933).
References here: “Porky’s Road Race” (1937), “Speaking of the Weather” (1937), “The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos” (1937), “Bambi Meets Godzilla” (1974).
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Entry:

“Don’t Look Now” (1936) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
Subject	Cupid and a devil.
Commentary	The two turtles dancing inside the male’s shell are cute.
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Entry:

“He Was Her Man” (1937) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
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“Pigs Is Pigs” (1937) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
Subject	A gluttonous pig—not Porky—is force-fed but learns nothing.
References here: The Simpsons (1989).
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Entry:

“The Fella with the Fiddle” (1937) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
Subject	A beggar living in luxury is menaced by a tax collector.
Commentary	While the premise is offensive, the execution is not bad.
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Entry:

“She Was an Acrobat’s Daughter” (1937) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
Commentary	A brief Hitler cameo is used to illustrate the uselessness of seats crammed in very close to the movie-theatre screen, as was common at the time.
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Entry:

“I Only Have Eyes for You” (1937) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
Commentary	Pun title, misuse of Blanc. The only good part is the love interest’s ambition to marry any radio crooner.
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Entry:

“Clean Pastures” (1937) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
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Entry:

“Streamlined Greta Green” (1937) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
Subject	Anthropomorphic cars.
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Entry:

“Sweet Sioux” (1937) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
Subject	Native Americans.
Commentary	As in “Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid” (1929), there is not much going on here except ethnicity viewed from the outside. Like Bosko, the Americans dance the czardas to mix things up. The individual jokes all fail, which leads me to believe that this game of ethnicities was itself considered a selling point.
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Entry:

“Egghead Rides Again” (1937) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
Subject	A weak Wild West fanboy gets to try being a cowboy.
Commentary	Egghead looks a bit like a proboscis monkey.
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Entry:

“Plenty of Money and You” (1937) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
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“Ain’t We Got Fun” (1937) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
Commentary	Neatly condensed plotting.
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Entry:

“Speaking of the Weather” (1937) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
Commentary	There is a direct textual reference to “The CooCoo Nut Grove” (1936) in it, and I like the concept of magazines coming to life as a variation of the perennial series motif, but it it isn’t developed.
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Entry:

“Dog Daze” (1937) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
Subject	A pedigree dog show.
Commentary	Some of the individual acts are short enough for the Vine video sharing service of 80 years later.
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Entry:

“I Wanna Be a Sailor” (1937) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
Subject	A fledgling parrot and a duckling team up as pirates.
Commentary	Avery switching fluidly between miniature musical numbers, pop-culture allusions and a thin plot, but the characters are weak.
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Entry:

“The Lyin’ Mouse” (1937) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
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Entry:

“A Sunbonnet Blue” (1937) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
Subject	Mice in a hat shop.
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Entry:

“The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos” (1937) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
Subject	Stars of radio and music. A collection of celebrity impressions similar in style and concept to “The CooCoo Nut Grove” (1936).
Commentary	Comparatively poor, perhaps because I recognize even fewer celebrities, but it doesn’t seem to have the same verve.
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“September in the Rain” (1937) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
Subject	Figures on grocery store packages come to life at night.
Commentary	Bad rotoscope dancing and a relatively dull take on the recurring motif.
References here: “Daffy Duck & Egghead” (1938).
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Entry:

“Little Red Walking Hood” (1937) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
References here: “Red Hot Riding Hood” (1943).
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“My Little Buckeroo” (1938) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
Commentary	A Western. I like the hero’s horse getting distracted.
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Entry:

“Jungle Jitters” (1938) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
Commentary	One of the Censored Eleven. The non-racist humour in it is based on references, apparently to Al Pearce, Clark Gable and Robert Taylor. So it’s two kinds of comedy that do not age well.
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Entry:

“The Sneezing Weasel” (1938) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
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“A Star Is Hatched” (1938) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2018.
Subject	Anthropomorphic A Star Is Born (1937) without female success or male failure.
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“Now That Summer Is Gone” (1938) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2019.
Subject	Squirrels gathering, or gambling for, nuts.
Commentary	A pretty good catalogue of the serial production tricks developed up to this point.
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Entry:

“Katnip Kollege” (1938) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2019.
Subject	A kitten learns to swing by listening to the ticking of a clock in detention after school.
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“Have You Got Any Castles?” (1938) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2019.
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“Love and Curses” (1938) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2019.
Subject	1890s melodrama.
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“Cinderella Meets Fella” (1938) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2019.
Subject	A remarkably complete retelling of Cinderella’s tale with an alcoholic fairy godmother and multiple rounds of Avery metatheatre to cap it off.
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Entry:

“The Penguin Parade” (1938) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2019.
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“The Major Lied ’Til Dawn” (1938) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2019.
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“A-Lad-In Bagdad” (1938) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2019.
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“Cracked Ice” (1938) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2019.
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“The Isle of Pingo Pongo” (1938) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2019.
Commentary	The first handful of jokes about the black “aboriginals” on the island all undercut prejudice and exoticism. Only after that, the notorious racism of the Censored Eleven enters the picture. There’s enough other stuff going on to keep it funny.
References here: “Clown of the Jungle” (1947).
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Entry:

“A Feud There Was” (1938) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2019.
Subject	Hillbilly families shooting each other.
Commentary	Especially poor shot continuity but some decent metafiction.
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“Little Pancho Vanilla” (1938) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2019.
References here: “Ferdinand the Bull” (1938).
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“Johnny Smith and Poker-Huntas” (1938) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2019.
Commentary	Pretty intelligent anti-racist use of racist motifs. The native Americans are simultaneously portrayed according to stereotype and as modern Americans outclassing the white settlers on the Mayflower.
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Entry:

“You’re an Education” (1938) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2019.
Subject	Yet more of Tashlin’s stores-coming-to-life, now with more puns.
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“The Night Watchman” (1938) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2019.
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“Count Me Out” (1938) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2019.
Commentary	The correspondence course in boxing, which extends to coaching a title match in real time on vinyl, is the first noted use of an ACME product in a Warner Bros. cartoon. It’s a fine start.
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Entry:

“The Mice Will Play” (1938) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2019.
Commentary	The closing punchline is good: Overhearing the heroic newlyweds’ talk of babies, the villainous cat who’s been stalking them throughout the film decides to hold off its attack. It’s a tame anthropomorphic animal deciding on animal husbandry, in further imitation of a human.
animation fiction moving picture

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“Dog Gone Modern” (1939) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2019.
Subject	Smart-home automation.
Commentary	Poorly conceived and animated.
animation fiction moving picture

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“Hamateur Night” (1939) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2020.
Subject	Vaudeville.
animation fiction moving picture

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“Robin Hood Makes Good” (1939) IMDb

Extent	Seen in 2020.
Subject	Squirrels play at The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938).
animation fiction moving picture

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“Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs” (1943) IMDb

Commentary	The censors should have had more sense than to martyr this crap.
animation fiction moving picture