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Director: Jack King
Release Date: September 20, 1940
Stars: Donald Duck, Pluto
Rating: ★★½
Review:
Window Cleaners is the fifth of six cartoons co-starring Donald Duck and Pluto. Unlike the other films starring the duo, this is pretty much Donald’s film, with Pluto sleeping most of the time.
Donald has a job cleaning windows on a ridiculously high building and using the lazy mutt as his helper. This accounts for some spectacular background art emphasizing the dizzying heights Donald is working on.
The film is less gag rich than its contemporaries, however, being split into two long and distinct routines: in the first Donald tries to wake Pluto, to no avail. Highlight of this part is his attempt to yell into the drainpipe. This scene accounts for some spectacular body deformations on our beloved duck.
In the second routine Donald bullies a bee, which takes revenge immediately. This bee is the direct ancestor of the bee Jack Hannah introduced in ‘Inferior Decorator’ (1948) and one can say that all Hannah’s bee films follow the routine from this particular cartoon.
Watch ‘Window Cleaners’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Donald Duck cartoon No. 20
To the previous Donald Duck cartoon: Donald’s Vacation
To the next Donald Duck cartoon: Fire Chief
‘Window Cleaners’ is available on the DVD set ‘The Chronological Donald Volume 1’
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Director: Dave Fleischer
Release Date: October 18, 1940
Stars: Popeye, Poopdeck Pappy
Rating: ★★½
Review:
In ‘My Pop, My Pop’ Popeye builds a boat. Poopdeck Pappy comes along and insists on helping him, but in the end, it’s Popeye who does all the work.
Although Poopdeck Pappy had already been introduced in the Fleischer Popeye series in 1938, in ‘Goonland‘, he was shelved for two years. With ‘My Pop, My Pop’ he reentered the Popeye universe: having his own theme song, a Scottish voice, and being remarkably weak and lazy. These character traits don’t match the character in E.C. Segar’s comic strip or in ‘Goonland’, and were not repeated in his next cartoon, ‘With Poopdeck Pappy‘.
Indeed, they’re not even very funny in this cartoon, with Poopdeck Pappy remaining a rather bland character. Moreover, the whole short is rather slow moving and too rich in unfunny dialogue. The best gags are Popeye’s original ways of boat building.
Luckily, Poopdeck Pappy’s most of next cartoons would be much better.
Watch ‘My Pop, My Pop’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘My Pop, My Pop’ is available on the DVD set ‘Popeye the Sailor Volume Two’
Director: Dave Fleischer
Release Date: August 23, 1940
Stars: Hunky & Spunky
Rating: ★★½
Review:
‘You Can’t Shoe a Horsefly’ opens with a tired Hunky & Spunky laying themselves down to sleep.
Unfortunately, Spunky is soon troubled by a horsefly, who looks like a miniature winged horse and who sings the title song. The antagonism between Spunky and the horsefly, which even lead to a chase scene makes ‘You Can’t Shoe a Horsefly’ the most modern of the Hunky & Spunky cartoons, and the only one fitting the then emerging chase cartoon era. However, it’s still Hunky who has to come to the rescue, killing the horsefly and all his friends in one stroke.
Composer Sammy Timberg nicely intertwines the lullaby ‘Go to Sleep My Baby’ (which I know best as sung by Oliver Hardy in ‘Brats’ from 1930), into the soundtrack when the two donkeys are trying to sleep.
Watch ‘You Can’t Shoe a Horsefly’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘You Can’t Shoe a Horsefly’ is available on the DVD set ‘Somewhere in Dreamland – Max Fleischer’s Color Classics: The Definitive Collection’
Director: Dave Fleischer
Release Date: May 17, 1940
Stars: Hunky & Spunky
Rating: ★★½
Review:
The last stage of the Fleischers’ Color Classics series was solely devoted to Hunky & Spunky, the donkey duo introduced in the eponymous cartoon from 1938.
When Betty Boop retired in 1939, the Fleischers were left without a star of their own (their biggest star Popeye was owned by King Features). Thus Hunky & Spunky, were promoted to be their top stars, together with Gabby from ‘Gulliver’s Travels‘ (1939) and the Stone Age characters, both introduced in 1940. None of these stars had any appeal, and they hardly stood a chance against contemporaries like Disney’s Donald Duck and Goofy, or Warner Bros.’ Porky Pig and Daffy. Nevertheless, Hunky and Spunky survived until 1941, starring seven cartoons in total.
In their fourth cartoon, ‘A Kick in Time’, Spunky is kidnapped and sold to an Italian rag collector, who irons the little burro. Spunky’s antics with the bit and irons are very reminiscent of Donald Duck’s problems with inanimate objects. However, as the bit and irons are clearly introduced as tools of torture, Spunky’s antics are painful to watch, not funny. Meanwhile Hunky seeks his/her son in the large city, and she saves his/her child in the nick of time from being crushed by an approaching streetcar.
There’s little to enjoy in ‘A Kick in Time’, but the cartoon is well animated by top animators Shamus Culhane and Al Eugster, and features quite elaborate human designs and realistic close ups of human hands. Moreover, the urban setting gives the cartoon a distinct character, absent in the other Hunky & Spunky cartoons.
Watch ‘A Kick in Time’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘A Kick in Time’ is available on the DVD set ‘Somewhere in Dreamland – Max Fleischer’s Color Classics: The Definitive Collection’
Director: Sanae Yamamoto
Release Date: 1942
Rating: ★★½
Review:
‘The Animal Village in Trouble’ tells the tale of three families: the monkeys, the bears and the raccoon dogs.
The monkeys’ family is very large, and hard to feed. But when a storm breaks out, it’s the only family that manages to protect its home. Moreover, the monkeys save the other two families from drowning. Is this a message to the audience to produce more offspring in times of war?
This film is essentially silent, with a voice over. The designs are quite elegant, and more clearly Japanese than usual in pre-war/wartime anime. The animation is mostly fair, with the storm scene in particular being quite spectacular. Also interesting is the occurrence of metamorphosis, a rarity in prewar/wartime Japanese animation: one raccoon dog transforms itself into an alarm clock, while another changes into a bridge at one point.
Sanae Yamamoto (1898-1981) came into prominence as an animator in the 1920s. In the 1950s he would join the Tōei animation studio, where he became supervising animator until his retirement in 1967.
Watch ‘The Animal Village in Trouble’ yourself and tell me what you think:
https://www.senscritique.com/film/Doubutsu_Mura_no_Daisodou/21070972
‘The Animal Village in Trouble’ is available on the DVD-box set ‘Japanese Anime Classic Collection’
Director: Yoshitaro Kataoka
Release Date: 1942
Rating: ★★½
Review:
With ‘Sankichi the Monkey: The Air Combat’ we’re clearly in propaganda area. The film’s motto says it all: “Protect our sky! The best defense is offense!”.
In the film the monkeys (Japan) are attacked by an air squadron of bears (Soviet Union). The monkeys shoot the bears out of the sky by the dozen, and win the day. But the film warns the audience: ‘There still are other enemies. We must protect our sky!”.
The film’s message, as if Japan were threatened by other nations and had to be aggressive out of defense, is sickening. When the film was released, in 1942, Japan was already the cruel occupier of most of South East Asia, an aggressor on a scale only matched by Nazi Germany.
‘Sankichi the Monkey: The Air Combat’ is a silent film, and the animation is poor and old-fashioned. In fact, the film looks like as if it had been made in 1929, not 1942. At least the short sheds a light on how the military government sold its actions to the Japanese public: with lies and seeds of fear. And while in 1945 the Soviet Union did declare war on Japan (on August 9, after the U.S. had dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Japan was on the brink of collapse), the Soviet air attack never materialized.
Watch ‘Sankichi the Monkey: The Air Combat’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Sankichi the Monkey: The Air Combat’ is available on the DVD-box set ‘Japanese Anime Classic Collection’
Director: Bob Clampett
Release Date: April 27, 1940
Stars: Porky Pig
Rating: ★★½
Review:
Bob Clampett is one of the greatest ‘authors’ of the classic cartoon era, but not every cartoon he made was a winner. For example, ‘Porky’s Poor Fish’ is less than impressive.
‘Porky’s Poor Fish’ revisits a story idea that goes all the way back to the Silly Symphony ‘The Bird Store‘ (1932): a cat enters a pet store and when he catches one specimen, the other animals come to the rescue in a war-like reaction.
In Clampett’s film the bird store has changed in to a fish store, and the war scene involves a squadron of flying fish, a very silly hammerhead shark, and electric eels. There’s nothing special to the story, and the film’s charm and laughs lie exclusively in the abundance of puns, e.g. on holey mackerel and sole.
Watch ‘Porky’s Poor Fish’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Porky Pig cartoon no. 72
To the previous Porky Pig cartoon: Slap Happy Pappy
To the next Porky Pig cartoon: You Ought to Be in Pictures
‘Porky’s Poor Fish’ is available on the DVD sets ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Four’ and ‘Porky Pig 101’.
Director: Paul Fennell?
Release Date: 1940
Stars: Gran’ Pop Monkey
Rating: ★★½
Review:
The Gran’ Pop Monkey cartoon were made during the aftermath of the Ub Iwerks studio (then called Cartoon Films, LTD), just before Iwerks sold the studio and went back to Disney himself.
The character Gran’ Pop Monkey was based on illustrations by British artist Lawson Wood (1878-1957), and in 1939 the studio announced it would make 24 cartoons with the character. However, only three are known today, which were all three released in 1940. In fact, as Yowp notices in his comment to Steve Stanchfield’s informative blog post on this cartoon, these three had already been finished by the end of 1938, so perhaps these were the only ones ever made. In any case, it remains unclear why the series was discontinued, but one thing is certain: they are far from classics.
All three Gran’ Pop Monkey cartoons were shot in Cinecolor, a 2-color system, lacking the vibrant color range of Technicolor, and although the animation is fair, the stories, the designs, voices and gags are not, and the three films make a tiresome watch. In fact, the most enjoyable part of these three cartoons is their excellent musical score.
The first, ‘Beauty Shoppe’ is arguably the best of the surviving trio. In this short Gran’ Pop Monkey is a barber, helped by his two grandsons (who look like macaques, while Gran’ Pop Monkey clearly is a chimpanzee). Business isn’t going well, however, in contrast to that of the beauty salon across the street (the film takes place in a jungle, but anyway). So, one of the grandson suggests to copy the salon’s formula. Soon, female animals rush into Gran’ Pop Monkey’s cabin-turned-beauty salon (including a colorful company of a badger, a penguin, a seal, a pig and a kangaroo). When a gangster-like gorilla demands they make his wife, a hippo, beautiful, things turn very bad for the trio, indeed. Curiously, ‘Beauty Shoppe’ starts with some dialogue in rhyme, which is discarded halfway.
Watch ‘Beauty Shoppe’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Beauty Shoppe’ is available on the DVD ‘Cultoons! Rare, Lost and Strange Cartoons! Volume 3: Monkeys, Monsters & More!’
Director: Burt Gillett
Release Date: August 28, 1939
Stars: Lil’ Eightball
Rating: ★★½
Review:
‘Silly Superstition’ is the second of three cartoon starring Lil’ Eightball, a heavy caricatured black boy with a deep southern voice (by Mel Blanc).
In ‘Silly Superstition’ Lil’ Eightball’s mama warns him that it’s Friday the 13th, and that he shouldn’t walk under a ladder or let a black cat cross his path. Lil’ Eightball dismisses these warnings as superstition, doing deliberately these things. The ladder walk rather unlikely makes a complete building collapse, while the black cat immediately introduces an escaped lion. Luckily, Lil’ Eightball’s puppy dog saves the day, chasing the lion back to the zoo.
‘Silly Superstition’ is pretty hard to watch today. The animation in this short is very uneven, being sometimes strikingly modern, yet at other times disappointingly old-fashioned. But more importantly, Lil’ Eightball is too severe a stereotype to enjoy. The boy looks particularly goofy in this cartoon, having a balloon head, a ridiculously small body and over-sized, rather clownish shoes, emphasizing his stupidity. Most of the ‘humor’ of the cartoon stems from the fact that despite his uneducated background, Lil’ Eightball manages to use big words.
As Christopher P. Lehman notices in ‘The Colored Cartoon’ it’s a sad fact that Lil’ Eightbal starts atypically self-assured and brave, but ends up as a stereotypical fearful negro boy. This ‘morale’ is dubious to say the least. Luckily, contemporary reviewers weren’t impressed either, and Lil’ Eightball vanished from the screen after only three cartoons.
Watch a colorized version of ‘Silly Superstition’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Silly Superstition’ is available on the DVD ‘Lantz Studio Treasures Starring Oswald’
Director: Alex Lovy
Release Date: April 22, 1940
Stars: Andy Panda
Rating: ★★½
Review:
In Andy Panda’s third film the little brat receives a package from a turtle postman, which is a clear caricature of a black man.
The package contains a magic wand, and Andy immediately uses it on the delivery boy and on his dad. Meanwhile, the pygmy witch doctor consults his magic mask, as if he were Snow White’s stepmother. The mask tells him Andy Panda now has more magic than he has. The witch doctor battles with Andy, but he loses. Then he summons countless pygmies, and soon Andy ‘s overwhelmed. Unfortunately, the witch doctor uses the wrong magic wand, and he and his pygmies are immediately transferred to some busy American town: we watch the pygmies fleeing in terror from cars and such in black-and-white live action footage. This last gag is the single entertaining one in an otherwise very tiresome film that hasn’t aged well, and not only because of the racial stereotypes it exploits.
Watch ‘100 Pygmies and Andy Panda’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘100 Pygmies and Andy Panda’ is available on the DVD set ‘The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection Volume 2’
Director: Alex Lovy
Release Date: November 20, 1939
Stars: Peterkin
Rating: ★★½
Review:
‘Scrambled Eggs’ stars a misschievous young satyr, called Peterkin.
After Lil’ Eightball (see ‘A Haunting We Will Go‘) and Andy Panda (‘Life Begins for Andy Panda‘) Peterkin was the third character Walter Lantz introduced with a color cartoon during the fall of 1939. Peterkin, however, only lasted this one cartoon.
Peterkin was conceived by Elaine Pogány, wife of the great Hungarian illustrator Willy Pogány, who did the backgrounds for this cartoon. These backgrounds are the short’s most striking feat, for they are ludicrously detailed, and while beautiful, way out of tune with Lantz’s cartoony characters, who don’t read well against the intricate background drawings.
Made at the very end of the 1930s, ‘Scrambled Eggs’ is a strange mix between the childish cute style of the mid-1930s and the more adult, urban style of the 1940s. Peterkin himself is drawn all too cute, with a matching voice and story. He changes several birds’ eggs for fun, but on hatching the dazzled parents abandon their strange children: the men go spend their time at the club, while the women go to their mothers, leaving Peterkin solely in charge of the hungry chicks. When he confesses his crime to the parents, the birds make him do all the laundry, which cost him work well into the night. This moralistic story contrasts wildly with some of the voices and animation of the birds, which are definitely contemporary and urban, aiming at adult audiences. This strange mix doesn’t work well, and as Peterkin is far from an engaging character, the cartoon is unfortunately a failure, despite some splendid animation, and of course, the elaborate background paintings.
Watch ‘Scrambled Eggs’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Scrambled Eggs’ is available on the DVD set ‘The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection’
Director: Clyde Geronimi
Release Date: October 10, 1939
Stars: Donald Duck, Pete
Rating: ★★½
Review:
‘Officer Duck’ is the first of nine cartoons co-starring Donald Duck and Pete.
Pete, who in this short is called Tiny Tom and who has a golden tooth, had been a great adversary to the courageous Mickey Mouse, and he also was a strong opponent to Donald Duck. However, he was dropped after 1944, as Donald Duck director Jack Hannah preferred smaller adversaries, making Donald Duck more of a straight man to bees, bugs and chipmunks.
In ‘Officer Duck’ Donald is a policeman ordered to arrest Tiny Tom (ergo Pete). He does so by pretending to be a baby, bringing out Pete’s previously unknown soft side. Apart from being rather unlikely, the comedy also suffers from milking this one idea – in a 1940s Warner Bros. cartoon the baby trick would have been only one of several schemes.
Watch ‘Officer Duck’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Donald Duck cartoon no. 14
To the previous Donald Duck cartoon: The Autograph Hound
To the next Donald Duck cartoon: The Riveter
‘Officer Duck’ is available on the DVD set ‘The Chronological Donald Volume 1’
Director: Ben Hardaway & Cal Dalton
Release Date: August 12, 1939
Stars: proto-Bugs Bunny
Rating: ★★½
Review:
In 1939 Ben Hardaway revisited the rabbit he had introduced in ‘Porky’s Hare Hunt‘ (1938).
The rabbit was completely redesigned, and received the colors that would make Bugs Bunny. However, the rabbit retained his loony character and Woody Woodpecker laugh, and is a far cry from the cool guy Bugs Bunny would become. But as he was Ben “Bugs” Hardaway’s bunny, it was this character that gave Tex Avery’s later star his name.
‘Hare-Um Scare-Um’ stars an anonymous red-nosed man who goes hunting when meat prices soar. In the forest he encounters the loony rabbit, who at one point even sings a song about how crazy he is.
There’s remarkably little to enjoy in ‘Hare-um Scare-um’, as neither hunter nor rabbit are sympathetic, and one doesn’t care for either. However, the short introduces cross-dressing, when the rabbit disguises himself as a female dog to attract the hunter’s pooch. This cross-dressing would become a popular feature of the later Bugs Bunny.
Watch ‘Hare-Um Scare-Um’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Hare-Um Scare-Um’ is available on the Blu-Ray set ‘Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 2’
This is the third of four cartoons featuring a Bugs Bunny forerunner
To the first proto-Bugs Bunny cartoon: Prest-O Change-O
To the next proto-Bugs Bunny cartoon: Elmer’s Candid Camera
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: March 25, 1939
Stars: Two Curious Dogs, proto-Bugs Bunny
Rating: ★★½
Review:
Chuck Jones uses the silly rabbit from Ben Hardaway’s ‘Porky’s Hare Hunt‘ (1938) and makes it a magician’s rabbit in a cartoon featuring his earliest stars, the “Two Curious Dogs”, which had made their debut in January in ‘Dog Gone Modern’.
In ‘Prest-O Change-O” the two dogs flee from a dog catcher into a magician’s house, where the tall dog meets the rabbit, while the small dog struggles with a “hindu rope”.
Jones’s handling of the material is very Disney-like, slow in action and with much attention for situation comedy. Unfortunately, his two dog characters are anything but funny, and the complete film fails to impress. The rabbit, a forerunner of Bugs Bunny, is as unsympathetic as he was in ‘Porky’s Hare Hunt’ and rightfully gets punched in the end. He doesn’t talk, however, but shows the weird laugh he got in ‘Porky’s Hare Hunt’.
‘Prest-O Change-O’ doesn’t add anything, however, and the rabbit remains unappealing. So, after this film this particular rabbit was transformed into another design, making its debut in ‘Hare-um Scare-um’ of five months later.
Watch ‘Prest-O Change-O’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Prest-O Change-O’ is available on the Blu-Ray set ‘Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 2’
This is the second of four cartoons featuring a Bugs Bunny forerunner
To the first proto-Bugs Bunny cartoon: Porky’s Hare Hunt
To the next proto-Bugs Bunny cartoon: Hare-um Scare-um
Director: Bob Clampett
Release Date: December 16, 1939
Stars: Porky Pig
Rating: ★★½
Review:
‘The Film Fan’ is one of those cartoons on cinema itself.
In this short Porky Pig is still a kid, sent to the grocery store by his mother. But when he passes a cinema with free admittance for kids, he rushes inside. What follows are some typical cinema annoyances, and advertisements for films like ‘Gone with the Breeze’. However, when an employee interrupts the program to say that “if there’s a little boy in this theater, that was sent to the store by his mother, he’d better go home right away’, Porky leaves the theater, together with all other kids…
There’s little to enjoy in ‘The Film Fan’, which is remarkably low on gags, most of them trite, and the film can’t stand the comparison with the similar ‘She Was An Acrobat’s Daughter‘ (1937).
Watch ‘The Film Fan’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Porky Pig cartoon no. 66
To the previous Porky Pig cartoon: Porky the Giant Killer
To the next Porky Pig cartoon: Porky’s Last Stand
‘The Film Fan’ is available on the DVD sets ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Three’ and ‘Porky Pig 101’
Director: Tex Avery
Release Date: December 12, 1938
Stars: Daffy Duck
Rating: ★★½
Review:
In ‘Daffy Duck in Hollywood’ Daffy visits ‘Wonder Pictures’ only to sabotage the shooting of a film by a pig director with an irritating accent.
Halfway Daffy edits a film of his own, which is eventually shown to the studio’s boss, and which consists of unrelated spot gags on live action news reels, with the visuals totally out of tune with the soundtrack.
‘Daffy Duck in Hollywood’ is disappointingly unfunny. Avery’s timing is remarkably sloppy and Daffy Duck is, if anything, utterly annoying. The short’s best gags do not involve the duck, and are the opening shot of Wonder Pictures, with its slogan ‘If it’s a good picture, it’s a wonder‘ and the studio boss’s reaction to Daffy’s film. Indeed, after this film Avery never worked with the duck again, and it was left to other directors to transform the annoying duck into a likable character.
Watch ‘Daffy Duck in Hollywood’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Daffy Duck cartoon no. 5
To the previous Daffy Duck cartoon: The Daffy Doc
To the next Daffy Duck cartoon: Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur
‘Daffy Duck in Hollywood’ is available on the DVD set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Three’
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: November 19, 1938
Rating: ★★½
Review:
In ‘A Night Watchman’ a young kitten has to replace his sick father to be the night watchman in a kitchen.
The kitten soon encounters some large tough mice led by a real gangster type, and they bully him, until the kitten’s conscience gets the better of him, and makes him fighting back. Soon he clobbers all the mice one by one, and back into their hole.
‘The Night Watchman’ was the very first cartoon directed by Chuck Jones, who took over Frank Tashlin’s unit when Tashlin left Schlesinger. In his first short Jones clearly continues the rather Disneyesque style of Frank Tashlin’s Merrie Melodies. The short even contains a clear Tashlin-like montage scene.
Despite the detectable Disney-influence, ‘The Night Watchman’ is a clear Warner Bros. product, thanks to Stallings’ peppy music, Treg Brown’s idiosyncratic sound effects, and a fast gag scene in which we watch the mice eating in ridiculous ways.
Nevertheless, in true mid-1930s fashion, the kitten is cute, not funny, and the action is hold up by a catchy jazz number on the 1905 hit song ‘In the Shade of the Apple Tree’, including a vocal trio and a big band take. This number shows the Merrie Melodies’ raison d’être: to showcase songs from the Warner Bros. publicity catalog.
Jones’s earliest output is often regarded as slow and rather boring. Indeed, it’s hard to call ‘The Night Watchman’ a classic, and nowhere Jones’s signature can be detected. Moreover, when compared to contemporary cartoons by Tex Avery and Bob Clampett, the short seems to belong to another world. Yet, the cartoon is nicely animated, and in fact much more enjoyable than other Disney imitations of the time, e.g. Fleischer’s Color Classics.
Watch ‘The Night Watchman’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘The Captain’s Christmas’ is available on the DVD-set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Four’
Director: Jack King
Release Date: January 13, 1939
Stars: Donald Duck
Rating: ★★½
Review:
‘Donald’s Lucky Day’ starts with the shadows of two gangsters making a time bomb to be delivered by a messenger boy.
The messenger boy in question is Donald Duck. Unfortunately, it’s Friday the 13th, and superstitious Donald desperately tries to avoid a ladder, a mirror and a black cat. In the end the black cat saves him by accident, hence the title.
Donald Duck is the sole star of this cartoon, but apart from his antics with the cat in the harbor, there’s little to enjoy. And because of Jack King’s slow timing, one has ample time to admire the beautiful, realistic background paintings, successfully evoking the atmosphere of a misty harbor quarter by night.
Watch ‘Donald’s Lucky Day’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Donald Duck cartoon no. 7
To the previous Donald Duck cartoon: Donald’s Golf Game
To the next Donald Duck cartoon: The Hockey Champ
‘Donald’s Golf Game’ is available on the DVD set ‘The Chronological Donald Volume 1’
Director: Dave Fleischer
Release Date: October 14, 1938
Stars: Betty Boop
Rating: ★★½
Review:
This short opens with Betty Boop looking for a singer to lead a swing band at the university ball.
Unfortunately, no one in the audition room qualifies. Luckily she discovers that the cleaning lady is a natural talent in swinging, ans she hires her on the spot.
In a smooth overlaying cut we are immediately transferred to the ball night. We watch Sally Swing performing her own theme music to intoxicating swing music for the remainder half of the film. Exit story, although during this swing part there’s some rudimentary story of an old professor who somehow doesn’t approve, but who’s caught by the swing music anyway.
The second half is joyous and captures the swing craze that had taken over America. But this section is hampered by lame gags, and ugly and old-fashioned animation, a problem the complete cartoon suffers from. It seems that Betty Boop had become the victim of the Fleischers’ move to Florida and the start of animation on their feature project, ‘Gulliver’s Travels‘. While for this project Fleischer attracted top animators, the lesser talents apparently had to work on Betty Boop cartoons. Even the animation on contemporary Popeye cartoons is much more flexible and inspired.
Even worse, Sally Swing is anything but an appealing character. In fact, she hasn’t got any character traits, at all. If the Fleischers had planned to make her their next star, this plan was doomed to fail, as stars devoid of character had become obsolete since ca. 1936. In any case, after this cartoon Sally Swing was never seen again.
For this short Betty Boop has been re-designed to look more human. Unfortunately, the restyling isn’t a success: she also looks a little more angular, less appealing, and if possible, less sexy than she already had become by the late 1930s. Nevertheless, Betty’s quite boring new design would stay up to her last cartoon.
Watch ‘Sally Swing’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Betty Boop cartoon No. 76
To the previous Betty Boop cartoon: Pudgy the Watchman
To the next Betty Boop cartoon: On with the New
‘Sally Swing’ is available on the French DVD Box Set ‘Betty Boop Coffret Collector’
Director: Friz Freleng
Release Date: December 17, 1938
Stars: The Captain and the Kids
Rating: ★★½
Review:
‘The Captain’s Christmas’ is the first of only two ‘Captain and the Kids’ cartoons in color.
Color definitely adds some charm to the series, as does the presence of the foe Long John Silver and his three helpers, and the result is one of the better ‘Captain and the Kids’ cartoons.
Watching the captain playing Santa, Long John Silver decides to steal the captain’s act, and, dressed as Santa, descends down the chimney. He plays his part jollily alright, but also very violently, destroying all the kids’ toys. In an all too typical 1930s morale, the villain is reprimanded by his own younger self.
So, Long John Silver thinks up a plan, and with his men goes singing Christmas Carols in a village inexplicably inhabited with Santa Clauses. Silver and his men do their best, but soon the Santas are disgusted by their act, and start throwing toys at the bunch. Thus, the four scoundrels can flood the Captain’s house with toys.
‘The Captain’s Christmas’ is joyous, if nowhere near classic, and full of the Christmas spirit. Unfortunately, its story is rather weird than engaging, and the carol singing sequence just makes no sense. Moreover, none of the songs are really memorable, and one has the feeling that a lot of money and animation talent is wasted on this cartoon, which, after all, remains mediocre.
Watch ‘The Captain’s Christmas’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘The Captain’s Christmas’ is available on the DVD-set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Six’
