Reviews of Merrie Melodies (1931) and related work

• Entry: “Lady, Play Your Mandolin!” (1931)
• Entry: “Smile, Darn Ya, Smile!” (1931)
• Entry: “One More Time” (1931)
• Entry: “You Don’t Know What You’re Doin’!” (1931)
• Entry: “Hittin’ the Trail for Hallelujah Land” (1931)
• Entry: “Red-Headed Baby” (1931)
• Entry: “Pagan Moon” (1932)
• Entry: “Freddy the Freshman” (1932)
• Entry: “Crosby, Columbo, and Vallee” (1932)
• Entry: “Goopy Geer” (1932)
• Entry: “It’s Got Me Again!” (1932)
• Entry: “Moonlight for Two” (1932)
• Entry: “The Queen Was in the Parlor” (1932)
• Entry: “I Love a Parade” (1932)
• Entry: “You’re Too Careless with Your Kisses!” (1932)
• Entry: “I Wish I Had Wings” (1932)
• Entry: “A Great Big Bunch of You” (1932)
• Entry: “Three’s a Crowd” (1932)
• Entry: “The Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives” (1933)
• Entry: “One Step Ahead of My Shadow” (1933)
• Entry: “Young and Healthy” (1933)
• Entry: “The Organ Grinder” (1933)
• Entry: “Wake Up the Gypsy in Me” (1933)
• Entry: “I Like Mountain Music” (1933)
• Entry: “The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon” (1933)
• Entry: “We’re in the Money” (1933)
• Entry: “I’ve Got to Sing a Torch Song” (1933)
• Entry: “Sittin’ on a Backyard Fence” (1933)
• Entry: “Pettin’ in the Park” (1934)
• Entry: “Honeymoon Hotel” (1934)
• Entry: “Beauty and the Beast” (1934)
• Entry: “Those Were Wonderful Days” (1934)
• Entry: “Goin’ to Heaven on a Mule” (1934)
• Entry: “How Do I Know It’s Sunday” (1934)
• Entry: “Why Do I Dream Those Dreams” (1934)
• Entry: “The Girl at the Ironing Board” (1934)
• Entry: “The Miller’s Daughter” (1934)
• Entry: “Shake Your Powder Puff” (1934)
• Entry: “Rhythm in the Bow” (1934)
• Entry: “Those Beautiful Dames” (1934)
• Entry: “Pop Goes Your Heart” (1934)
• Entry: “Mr. and Mrs. Is the Name” (1935)
• Entry: “Country Boy” (1935)
• Entry: “I Haven’t Got a Hat” (1935)
• Entry: “Along Flirtation Walk” (1935)
• Entry: “My Green Fedora” (1935)
• Entry: “Into Your Dance” (1935)
• Entry: “The Country Mouse” (1935)
• Entry: “The Merry Old Soul” (1935)
• Entry: “The Lady in Red” (1935)
• Entry: “Little Dutch Plate” (1935)
• Entry: “Billboard Frolics” (1935)
• Entry: “Flowers for Madame” (1935)
• Entry: “I Wanna Play House” (1936)
• Entry: “I’m a Big Shot Now” (1936)
• Entry: “Let It Be Me” (1936)
• Entry: “I’d Love to Take Orders from You” (1936)
• Entry: “Bingo Crosbyana” (1936)
• Entry: “Page Miss Glory” (1936)
• Entry: “When I Yoo Hoo” (1936)
• Entry: “I Love to Singa” (1936)
• Entry: “Sunday Go to Meetin’ Time” (1936)
• Entry: “At Your Service Madame” (1936)
• Entry: “Toy Town Hall” (1936)
• Entry: “The CooCoo Nut Grove” (1936)
• Entry: “Don’t Look Now” (1936)
• Entry: “He Was Her Man” (1937)
• Entry: “Pigs Is Pigs” (1937)
• Entry: “The Fella with the Fiddle” (1937)
• Entry: “She Was an Acrobat’s Daughter” (1937)
• Entry: “I Only Have Eyes for You” (1937)
• Entry: “Clean Pastures” (1937)
• Entry: “Streamlined Greta Green” (1937)
• Entry: “Sweet Sioux” (1937)
• Entry: “Egghead Rides Again” (1937)
• Entry: “Plenty of Money and You” (1937)
• Entry: “Ain’t We Got Fun” (1937)
• Entry: “Speaking of the Weather” (1937)
• Entry: “Dog Daze” (1937)
• Entry: “I Wanna Be a Sailor” (1937)
• Entry: “The Lyin’ Mouse” (1937)
• Entry: “A Sunbonnet Blue” (1937)
• Entry: “The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos” (1937)
• Entry: “September in the Rain” (1937)
• Entry: “Little Red Walking Hood” (1937)
• Entry: “My Little Buckeroo” (1938)
• Entry: “Jungle Jitters” (1938)
• Entry: “The Sneezing Weasel” (1938)
• Entry: “A Star Is Hatched” (1938)
• Entry: “Now That Summer Is Gone” (1938)
• Entry: “Katnip Kollege” (1938)
• Entry: “Have You Got Any Castles?” (1938)
• Entry: “Love and Curses” (1938)
• Entry: “Cinderella Meets Fella” (1938)
• Entry: “The Penguin Parade” (1938)
• Entry: “The Major Lied ’Til Dawn” (1938)
• Entry: “A-Lad-In Bagdad” (1938)
• Entry: “Cracked Ice” (1938)
• Entry: “The Isle of Pingo Pongo” (1938)
• Entry: “A Feud There Was” (1938)
• Entry: “Little Pancho Vanilla” (1938)
• Entry: “Johnny Smith and Poker-Huntas” (1938)
• Entry: “You’re an Education” (1938)
• Entry: “The Night Watchman” (1938)
• Entry: “Count Me Out” (1938)
• Entry: “The Mice Will Play” (1938)
• Entry: “Dog Gone Modern” (1939)
• Entry: “Hamateur Night” (1939)
• Entry: “Robin Hood Makes Good” (1939)
• Entry: “Gold Rush Daze” (1939)
• Entry: “A Day at the Zoo” (1939)
• Entry: “Prest-O Change-O” (1939)
• Entry: “Bars and Stripes Forever” (1939)
• Entry: “Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur” (1939)
• Entry: “Thugs With Dirty Mugs” (1939)
• Entry: “Naughty But Mice” (1939)
• Entry: “Believe It or Else” (1939)
• Entry: “Hobo Gadget Band” (1939)
• Entry: “Old Glory” (1939)
• Entry: “Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs” (1943)

Merrie Melodies (1931)

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), “Alternate Histories” (2019).

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

Seen in 2017.

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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‣ “Smile, Darn Ya, Smile!” (1931) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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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‣ “One More Time” (1931) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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

Seen in 2017.

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

Seen in 2017.

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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‣ “Red-Headed Baby” (1931) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

References here: “Santa’s Workshop” (1932).

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‣ “Pagan Moon” (1932) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

I like the slowly rising sun, and the last shot is fun.

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‣ “Freddy the Freshman” (1932) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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

Seen in 2017.

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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‣ “Goopy Geer” (1932) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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.

References here: BoJack Horseman (2014).

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‣ “It’s Got Me Again!” (1932) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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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‣ “Moonlight for Two” (1932) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

Worth watching purely for its painfully bad dance animation, which looks like a 1990s parody of this era’s cartoons.

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

Seen in 2017.

Evidently thoughtless faux-medieval romanticism.

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‣ “I Love a Parade” (1932) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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

Seen in 2017.

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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‣ “I Wish I Had Wings” (1932) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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

Seen in 2017.

Rather less successful in its European-style gentrification than “It’s Got Me Again!” (1932).

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‣ “Three’s a Crowd” (1932) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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

Seen in 2017.

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

Seen in 2017.

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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‣ “Young and Healthy” (1933) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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

Seen in 2017.

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

Seen in 2017.

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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‣ “I Like Mountain Music” (1933) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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‣ “The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon” (1933) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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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‣ “We’re in the Money” (1933) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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

Seen in 2017.

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‣ “Sittin’ on a Backyard Fence” (1933) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

I like the long johns doing circus acrobatics in the breeze.

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‣ “Pettin’ in the Park” (1934) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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‣ “Honeymoon Hotel” (1934) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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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‣ “Beauty and the Beast” (1934) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

A gluttonous female protagonist, no less.

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‣ “Those Were Wonderful Days” (1934) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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

Seen in 2017.

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

Seen in 2017.

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

Seen in 2017.

Surprisingly pedestrian. Three years earlier the animators would probably have done wilder things with the legend.

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

Seen in 2017.

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‣ “The Miller’s Daughter” (1934) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

animation fiction moving picture

‣ “Shake Your Powder Puff” (1934) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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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‣ “Rhythm in the Bow” (1934) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

Pretty well composed.

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‣ “Those Beautiful Dames” (1934) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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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‣ “Pop Goes Your Heart” (1934) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

Colour and no real theme, plot or energy.

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‣ “Mr. and Mrs. Is the Name” (1935) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

Observe the lobster, alive and well in the sea, yet red.

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‣ “Country Boy” (1935) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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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‣ “I Haven’t Got a Hat” (1935) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

A jump forward in character design and planning, including the thoughtful use of colour.

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‣ “Along Flirtation Walk” (1935) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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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‣ “My Green Fedora” (1935) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

animation fiction moving picture

‣ “Into Your Dance” (1935) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

animation fiction moving picture

‣ “The Country Mouse” (1935) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

animation fiction moving picture

‣ “The Merry Old Soul” (1935) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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‣ “The Lady in Red” (1935) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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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‣ “Little Dutch Plate” (1935) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

The twist ending is that of “Those Were Wonderful Days” (1934).

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‣ “Billboard Frolics” (1935) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

Yet another animist Warner Bros. short about environments coming to life without people around.

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‣ “Flowers for Madame” (1935) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

The first 3-strip Technicolor cartoon in the series.

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‣ “I Wanna Play House” (1936) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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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‣ “I’m a Big Shot Now” (1936) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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‣ “Let It Be Me” (1936) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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

Seen in 2017.

Looks and feels like a conservative Disney production.

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‣ “Bingo Crosbyana” (1936) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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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‣ “Page Miss Glory” (1936) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

The Art Deco, with echoes of Fritz Lang, suggests Tex Avery’s talent and bright future.

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‣ “When I Yoo Hoo” (1936) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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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‣ “I Love to Singa” (1936) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

The Jazz Singer (1927) according to Tex Avery.

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

Seen in 2017.

animation fiction moving picture

‣ “At Your Service Madame” (1936) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

Neatly contained, without anyone thinking too hard about the contents.

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‣ “Toy Town Hall” (1936) IMDb

Seen in 2017.

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‣ “The CooCoo Nut Grove” (1936) IMDb

Seen in 2018.

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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‣ “Don’t Look Now” (1936) IMDb

Seen in 2018.

The two turtles dancing inside the male’s shell are cute.

animation fiction moving picture

‣ “He Was Her Man” (1937) IMDb

Seen in 2018.

animation fiction moving picture

‣ “Pigs Is Pigs” (1937) IMDb

Seen in 2018.

References here: The Simpsons (1989).

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‣ “The Fella with the Fiddle” (1937) IMDb

Seen in 2018.

While the premise is offensive, the execution is not bad.

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

Seen in 2018.

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

Seen in 2018.

Pun title, misuse of Blanc. The only good part is the love interest’s ambition to marry any radio crooner.

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‣ “Clean Pastures” (1937) IMDb

Seen in 2018.

animation fiction moving picture

‣ “Streamlined Greta Green” (1937) IMDb

Seen in 2018.

animation fiction moving picture

‣ “Sweet Sioux” (1937) IMDb

Seen in 2018.

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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‣ “Egghead Rides Again” (1937) IMDb

Seen in 2018.

Egghead looks a bit like a proboscis monkey.

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‣ “Plenty of Money and You” (1937) IMDb

Seen in 2018.

animation fiction moving picture

‣ “Ain’t We Got Fun” (1937) IMDb

Seen in 2018.

Neatly condensed plotting.

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‣ “Speaking of the Weather” (1937) IMDb

Seen in 2018.

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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‣ “Dog Daze” (1937) IMDb

Seen in 2018.

Some of the individual acts are short enough for the Vine video sharing service of 80 years later.

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‣ “I Wanna Be a Sailor” (1937) IMDb

Seen in 2018.

Avery switching fluidly between miniature musical numbers, pop-culture allusions and a thin plot, but the characters are weak.

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‣ “The Lyin’ Mouse” (1937) IMDb

Seen in 2018.

animation fiction moving picture

‣ “A Sunbonnet Blue” (1937) IMDb

Seen in 2018.

animation fiction moving picture

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

Seen in 2018.

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

Seen in 2018.

Bad rotoscope dancing and a relatively dull take on the recurring motif.

References here: “Daffy Duck & Egghead” (1938).

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‣ “Little Red Walking Hood” (1937) IMDb

Seen in 2018.

References here: “Red Hot Riding Hood” (1943).

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‣ “My Little Buckeroo” (1938) IMDb

Seen in 2018.

A Western. I like the hero’s horse getting distracted.

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‣ “Jungle Jitters” (1938) IMDb

Seen in 2018.

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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‣ “The Sneezing Weasel” (1938) IMDb

Seen in 2018.

animation fiction moving picture

‣ “A Star Is Hatched” (1938) IMDb

Seen in 2018.

animation fiction moving picture

‣ “Now That Summer Is Gone” (1938) IMDb

Seen in 2019.

A pretty good catalogue of the serial production tricks developed up to this point.

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‣ “Katnip Kollege” (1938) IMDb

Seen in 2019.

animation fiction moving picture

‣ “Have You Got Any Castles?” (1938) IMDb

Seen in 2019.

animation fiction moving picture

‣ “Love and Curses” (1938) IMDb

Seen in 2019.

animation fiction moving picture

‣ “Cinderella Meets Fella” (1938) IMDb

Seen in 2019.

animation fiction moving picture

‣ “The Penguin Parade” (1938) IMDb

Seen in 2019.

animation fiction moving picture

‣ “The Major Lied ’Til Dawn” (1938) IMDb

Seen in 2019.

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‣ “A-Lad-In Bagdad” (1938) IMDb

Seen in 2019.

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‣ “Cracked Ice” (1938) IMDb

Seen in 2019.

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‣ “The Isle of Pingo Pongo” (1938) IMDb

Seen in 2019.

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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‣ “A Feud There Was” (1938) IMDb

Seen in 2019.

Especially poor shot continuity but some decent metafiction.

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‣ “Little Pancho Vanilla” (1938) IMDb

Seen in 2019.

References here: “Ferdinand the Bull” (1938).

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‣ “Johnny Smith and Poker-Huntas” (1938) IMDb

Seen in 2019.

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.

References here: “Scalp Trouble” (1939).

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‣ “You’re an Education” (1938) IMDb

Seen in 2019.

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‣ “The Night Watchman” (1938) IMDb

Seen in 2019.

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‣ “Count Me Out” (1938) IMDb

Seen in 2019.

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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‣ “The Mice Will Play” (1938) IMDb

Seen in 2019.

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.

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‣ “Dog Gone Modern” (1939) IMDb

Seen in 2019.

Poorly conceived and animated.

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‣ “Hamateur Night” (1939) IMDb

Seen in 2020.

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‣ “Robin Hood Makes Good” (1939) IMDb

Seen in 2020.

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‣ “Gold Rush Daze” (1939) IMDb

Seen in 2020.

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‣ “A Day at the Zoo” (1939) IMDb

Seen in 2020.

Very Lewis Carroll.

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‣ “Prest-O Change-O” (1939) IMDb

Seen in 2020.

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‣ “Bars and Stripes Forever” (1939) IMDb

Seen in 2020.

The joys of the US prison system.

Good title; the US prison system is unique and deeply connected to the country’s history of slavery. I assume this is not an intentional glamorization of it, but it’s hard to believe this sort of purposeful naïveté for comedy is harmless.

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‣ “Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur” (1939) IMDb

Seen in 2020.

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‣ “Thugs With Dirty Mugs” (1939) IMDb

Seen in 2020.

A fine parody of Warner Brothers’ gangster movies. I particularly like the recurring motif of various objects functioning as slot machines, infusing the whole world with a love of thrills and money.

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‣ “Naughty But Mice” (1939) IMDb

Seen in 2020.

A transitional fossil between the “store coming alive” motif and Chuck Jones’s usual stuff. The only point of interest is the creative voice modulation for Sniffles’ drinking buddy, an electric razor.

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‣ “Believe It or Else” (1939) IMDb

Seen in 2020.

A series of simple, mostly bad jokes parodying Ripley’s Believe It or Not!. The best of them is a pun that layers in the studio system’s strict self-censorship in the Hays Code era: The narrator promises to show the birth of a baby and shows a baby on a berth. The integration of the Warner musical element that ostensibly drives Merrie Melodies is curious: Short performances mixed into the jokes.

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‣ “Hobo Gadget Band” (1939) IMDb

Seen in 2020.

The soda fizz gag prefigures the “Diet Coke and Mentos” geyser meme popular in the ten years after 2005. The portrayal of the Great Depression’s homeless here is romantic and comedic, subtly dehumanizing but not disparaging.

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‣ “Old Glory” (1939) IMDb

Seen in 2020.

This was before the pledge was adopted by Congress, and before the Christian faith was snuck into it, so Porky does not say “under god”. Regardless, the short would make no sense at all to a viewer who was not already familiar with US history as taught to its children. It’s pure propaganda, making no argument other than “love the country because people have died for it”, and only vaguely alluding to internal enemies who are not so fervently patriotic.

Despite Lincoln’s appearance, and despite native Americans and blacks having featured pretty heavily in previous Melodies and Looney Tunes like the preceding week’s “Scalp Trouble” (1939), there is no direct mention here of native Americans, slavery, the civil war, segregation, US wars for expansion etc., nor do they appear on screen. This delineation of the subject matter is abhorrent both in how it misrepresents history for the purpose of indoctrination and in its total lack of humour, typical of authoritarianism. In my opinion, to go from a purely comedic, cartoonish, squash-and-stretch colonial war one week to this rotoscoped sermon the next, with the same protagonist, is much more vile than simply including caricatures of native Americans being killed in the earlier short, or even calling it “Scalp Trouble”. Yet, when the list of the Censored Eleven was drafted, I’m sure they never considered this piece of shit.

References here: A People’s History of the United States (1980), “American Psychosis” (2017).

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

The censors should have had more sense than to martyr this crap.

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