A Symposium on Popular Songs

Director: Bill Justice
Release date: December 1962
Stars: Ludwig von Drake
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:

‘A Symposium on Popular Songs’ is the only theatrical cartoon to star Ludwig von Drake. This looney professor was created in 1961 when the Disney television series needed a new host, due to their move from ABC to NBC.

Voiced by an inspired Paul Frees, Von Drake is a wonderful character: he’s very talkative, often saying wrong things and correcting himself, and he has very lively hand gestures. Moreover, his talking is accompanied by all sorts of little sight gags, which makes his ‘lecture’ a delight to watch.

In ‘A Symposium on Popular Songs’ Von Drake leads the viewer along seven of his ‘greatest hits’, which are all wonderfully conceived parodies of 20th century popular music from ragtime to rock ‘n roll. All these hits were penned by the Sherman brothers, and it’s obvious that the two had a great time writing this spoof music, the highlight probably being their parody on the boogie-woogie of the Andrew Sisters.

Von Drake himself is traditionally animated, but his songs are accompanied by delighftul stop-motion and cut-out animations, designed by Xavier Atencio and animated by Bill Justice. In the first song, ‘Rutabaga Rag’, the two indulge in traditional stop-motion of vegetables dancing to the music. But in the subsequent songs the two favor a more sophisticated blend of cut-out and stop-motion, both attractively designed and well-animated.

After the ragtime we get a Charleston (‘Charleston Charlie’, sung by a flapper girl), an Al Jolson-like post-1929-crash song called ‘Although I Dropped a Hundred Thousand in the Market, Baby (I Found a Million Dollars in Your Smile)’, a Bing Crosby-like crooner song called ‘I am blue for you’, in which the crooner (no more than a head with a rudimentary armless stick-body) figures as a bouncing ball illustrating the lyrics, the aforementioned Andrews Sisters-like boogie-woogie song titled ‘The Boogie Woogie Bakery Man’, a doo-wop song called ‘Puppy Love’, and finally a wild rock ‘n’ roll song called ‘Rock, Rumble and Roar’, which is the only one delivered by Ludwig von Drake in person, but it figures excerpts from all six earlier songs.

The result is a wonderful cartoon that is both nonsensical, entertaining and educational.

Watch ‘A Symposium on Popular Songs’ yourself and tell me what you think: