You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘1932’ tag.
Director: Boyd La Vero
Release Date: 1932
Stars: Marty the Monk
Rating: ★
Review
‘Mere Maids’ is the second of three known Marty the Monk cartoons.
The short opens interestingly enough with Boyd La Vero sitting at his desk, working. We then cut to Marty, who drives to his sweetie’s house to drive her to ‘Parade Grounds’. But wait! Marty’s first cartoon, ‘Marty the Monk‘, took place there, too! Indeed, from that scene on, practically every scene is reused from the first cartoon, here and there with mild alterations in timing and gag development.
I’ve never before seen such blatant self-plagiarism: as if La Vero wanted to remake his own cartoon immediately. Unfortunately, the second attempt is as bad as the first one, and would in no way have a better chance to propel Marty’s career forward.
‘Mere Maids’ is available on the DVD ‘Cultoons! Rare, Lost and Strange Cartoons! Volume 3: Monkeys, Monsters & More!’
Directors: John Foster & George Stallings
Release Date: July 23, 1932
Stars: Tom and Jerry
Rating: ★★★
Review
Immediately after having insulted the black part of the population in ‘Plane Dumb‘, Tom and Jerry turned their attention to the native Americans.
‘Redskin Blues’ opens without delay: Tom & Jerry are riding a stage coach, surrounded by Indians on horseback. The fight is severe, and soon their coach is destroyed completely. Tom & Jerry manage to escape to the top of a large cliff, but the Indians use their feathers to fly(!) after them. Soon Tom & Jerry are captured and tied to stakes. But with their feet the two play a lively xylophone tune on the wood surrounding them, prompting a dance scene.
When Jerry blows a horn for help, the cavalry arrives, and the navy, and the air force, and a battalion of tanks. Needless to say, the Indians flee, but a Buffalo Bill-like type catches the chief, who turns out to be Jewish and who scares everyone away with a single mouse.
‘Redskin Blues’ is a fast, and action packed cartoon. The rescue scene is one of the most inspired gags within the complete series, and would prompt similar scenes in the Marx Brothers film ‘Duck Soup’ and the Fleischer cartoon ‘Betty Boop’s Big Boss‘ (both 1933). Nevertheless, the film’s highlight is a short sequence during the dance scene in which some sexy squaws dancing in a circle.
Watch ‘Redskin Blues’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Tom & Jerry cartoon No. 13
To the previous Tom & Jerry cartoon: Plane Dumb
To the next Tom & Jerry cartoon: Jolly Fish
‘Redskin Blues’ is available on the DVD ‘The Complete Animated Adventures of Van Beuren Studio’s Tom and Jerry’
Directors: John Foster & George Rufle
Release Date: June 25, 1932
Stars: Tom and Jerry
Rating: ★
Review
‘Plane Dumb’ opens with Tom & Jerry on a non-stop flight to Africa.
Jerry is worried they’ll not be safe in Africa, so, to be sure, they change themselves into blackface. But immediately afterwards their plane crashes into the sea, as if the blackface had taken away their ability to fly! At sea Tom & Jerry are bothered by an equally blackfaced octopus, some sharks and a large whale, which throws them onto the African shore. There they encounter some fantasy monsters (recalling the Waffles & Don short ‘Jungle Jazz‘ from 1930), a gospel quartet of black skeletons, and finally several cannibals, who chase them away. Iris out.
Unlike any other Van Beuren film, ‘Plane Dumb’ is extremely dialogue-rich. In fact, it’s quite possibly the most dialogue-rich cartoon of the early 1930s. As soon as they’re blackfaced, Tom & Jerry start to talk in fake negro speak. Of course, as the duo is heading to Africa, this makes no sense at all – it only adds to the ignorant racism that completely fills this short. Moreover, one soon forgets that these characters had been Tom & Jerry in the first place.
Tom & Jerry’s dialogue is very reminiscent of Amos ‘n’ Andy, the popular fake black radio stars of the time. The cartoon stars’ trite conversation was supposed to be the sole source of the humor in the cartoon, making ‘Plane Dumb’ the first animated cartoon ever to rely on dialogue. Rarely there was such a strange combination of innovation and backward thinking.
The dependence on dialogue makes the short a failure by all means, as none of it is remotely funny; not only by today’s standards, but also by those of 1932 itself, as the short only received a lukewarm welcome at the time.
Nevertheless, in 1934 Van Beuren produced two cartoons featuring the “real” Amos ‘n’ Andy. Neither of the two were a success. Van Beuren might have known, if he had remembered ‘Plane Dumb’ well…
‘Plane Dumb’ arguably one of the most racist cartoon ever released. It’s so full of severe racial stereotypes, it’s practically unwatchable, today. The short’s only highlight may be in the animation of the whale, which has some menacing quality.
Watch ‘Plane Dumb’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Tom & Jerry cartoon No. 12
To the previous Tom & Jerry cartoon: The Tuba Tooter
To the next Tom & Jerry cartoon: Redskin Blues
‘Plane Dumb’ is available on the DVD ‘The Complete Animated Adventures of Van Beuren Studio’s Tom and Jerry’
Directors: John Foster & George Stallings
Release Date: June 4, 1932
Stars: Tom and Jerry
Rating: ★★★
Review
In ‘The Tuba Tooter’ Schultz, a tuba player, returns to his homeland Germany, accompanied by his yodeling Dachshund Fritz.
This event is heralded by Tom & Jerry, which fills everyone and everything with joy, including inanimate objects like sausages and cheese(!). Have you ever seen cheese being enthusiastic? Here’s your chance! Soon the whole town is singing and dancing to Schultz’s oompah music, and yes, this includes the buildings themselves. But then the police arrives and arrests Schultz…
‘Tuba Tooter’ is a very joyous cartoon, but also rather empty and nonsensical. After all, Schultz’s arrival is actually the only event in the whole cartoon. The animation is erratic, and at times very poor. Worth of mention is a very risque, yet rather freaky scene of two young women dancing in their underwear.
Watch ‘The Tuba Tooter’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Tom & Jerry cartoon No. 11
To the previous Tom & Jerry cartoon: Pots and Pans
To the next Tom & Jerry cartoon: Plane Dumb
‘The Tuba Tooter’ is available on the DVD ‘The Complete Animated Adventures of Van Beuren Studio’s Tom and Jerry’
Directors: John Foster & George Rufle
Release Date: May 14, 1932
Stars: Tom and Jerry
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
In ‘Pots and Pans’ Tom & Jerry own a mobile canteen.
The cartoon is completely plotless, but very spirited and gag rich, making it one of the best of the Van Beuren Tom & Jerries. It uses a jazzy score, around a close harmony quartet of soup eating customers. Everything joins in, even many objects like kettles and sausages – for this is one of those early 1930’s cartoons in which everything can grow hands and feet. At the end, the wagon suddenly takes off, ends on the rails and clashes with a train.
The cartoon is reminiscent of contemporary Fleischer cartoons, and anticipates their ‘Betty Boop Bizzy Bee‘ from three months later, which covers similar grounds.
Watch ‘Pots and Pans’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Tom & Jerry cartoon No. 10
To the previous Tom & Jerry cartoon: Joint Wipers
To the next Tom & Jerry cartoon: The Tuba Tooter
‘Pots and Pans’ is available on the DVD ‘The Complete Animated Adventures of Van Beuren Studio’s Tom and Jerry’
Director: Rudolf Ising
Release Date: May 14, 1932
Rating: ★★★
Review:
‘It’s Got Me Again!’ finds Harman and Ising at their most Disney-like. This Merrie Melodie is very similar to contemporary Silly Symphonies.
The short features a mouse entering a musical instrument shop at night. The music starts when the mouse accidentally starts the title song on a gramophone. This invites several other mice to join in. After four minutes of musical frolicking a mean cat appears who gets one mouse cornered, prompting the rodent to sing the title track. The other mice, however, come to the rescue and together they get rid of the cat.
The story of ‘It’s Got Me Again!’ is very similar to that of contemporary Disney shorts ‘The Spider and the Fly‘ or ‘The Bird Store‘, but the short’s premise is most akin to the Van Beuren short ‘Toy Time‘ from four months earlier. ‘It’s Got Me Again!’ is much more sophisticated than the Van Beuren short, though. The animation, by Friz Freleng and Tom McKimson, is excellent throughout, and second only to the Disney studio itself.
The mice are Mickey Mouse but in size, only, and the musical routine involves a French Apache dance, as can also be found in ‘Mickey’s Follies‘ (1929) and the later ‘Woodland Cafe‘ (1937). Harman & Ising’s mimicking paid off, as ‘It’s Got Me Again!’ was among the three very first animated shorts to get an Academy Award nomination. Yet, it’s no surprise it lost to Walt Disney’s landmark cartoon ‘Flowers and Trees‘.
Watch ‘It’s Got Me Again!’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘It’s Got Me Again!’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 2’ and the DVD ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Three’
Director: Dave Fleischer
Release Date: August 5, 1932
Stars: Betty Boop, Rudy Vallee
Rating: ★★½
Review:
‘Rudy Vallee Melodies’ is a Screen Song with Rudy Vallee singing no less than three different songs: the sentimental ballads ‘Deep Night’ and ‘A Little Kiss Each Morning’, and the lively college song ‘Stein Song’.
This Screen Song is interesting for its particularly long cartoon introduction: there’s a party at Betty Boop’s large mansion, where she serves punch to her guests. There’s a bunny who plays the piano by ear (literally). He plays ‘Silver Threads Among the Gold’ on the piano, but when Betty proposes to accompany someone on the piano, none of her guests dares to sing. Not even Perceval, a clear homosexual stereotype, who says ‘count me out’, before being knocked down and counted out, literally.
Luckily for Betty Boop, Rudy Vallee helps her out from the sheet music. He performs his three songs, with images of a river, loving couples and a football match, respectively. After these songs, Betty and the gang thank him, and all the guests leave. The cartoon ends with Vallee singing ‘Goodnight Sweetheart’ to Betty in her bedroom.
Because of its long intro, ‘Rudy Vallee Melodies’ almost feels like a Betty Boop cartoon, and indeed it was later colored and released as such, without the Rudy Vallee parts.
Watch ‘Rudy Vallee Melodies’ yourself and tell me what you think:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCYaXwzJYY8
‘Rudy Vallee Melodies’ is available on the French DVD Box Set ‘Betty Boop Coffret Collector’
Director: Dave Fleischer
Release Date: July 29, 1932
Stars: Betty Boop, Ethel Merman
Rating: ★
Review:
‘You Try Somebody Else’ is a screen song with Ethel Merman featuring the rather sentimental title song.
The cartoon opens with a cat being released from prison. He immediately sneaks into a house, emptying a fridge and almost eating a fish, the fish’s wife and his children. But then the owner enters, who turns out to be Betty Boop with a shotgun.
Soon the cat is back in prison again, where he reads the newspaper, with the picture of Ethel Merman in it, who immediately starts singing. The second chorus is accompanied by several prison gags, culminating in a jailbreak. In the end we watch four escaped convicts singing the song in a streetcar, all on electric chairs…
‘You try Somebody Else’ is a typical, yet mediocre Screen Song. Despite Betty Boop’s short cameo in the introduction, the second chorus is the most interesting part to watch, with its combination of silly and morbid gags.
Watch ‘You try Somebody Else’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘You try Somebody Else’ is available on the French DVD Box Set ‘Betty Boop Coffret Collector’
Director: Dave Fleischer
Release Date: April 29, 1932
Stars: Betty Boop, Bimbo, Koko the Clown
Rating: ★★½
Review:
‘A Hunting We Will Go’ is one of the lesser inspired Talkartoons.
In fact, the short’s greatest gag is in its opening scene, when the sun inhales smokes from a log cabin, which makes it sneeze.
We then cut to the inside of the log cabin, where we watch Betty Boop singing the 1925 hit song ‘Then I’ll Be Happy’. As she sings she’ll be happy with a fur coat, Koko and Bimbo immediately set off to go hunting animals. Koko first encounters the worst drawn deer to be found on the animated screen. Unfortunately, the deer shoots back. Then Koko helps a leopard (not quite indigenous to North America) to its spots.
Bimbo, meanwhile, meets a pack of ferocious lions (sure, why not?) and a huge bear. Despite their mishaps, they both return with many furs, but Betty returns them to the former owners, who are staying in line outside, shivering with cold…
When compared to contemporary Talkartoons ‘Chess Nuts‘ and ‘Minnie the Moocher‘ ‘A Hunting We Will Go’ is a disappointing entry. It’s rather low on gags, and its surreal aspects are sparse. It’s not as weak as ‘The Robot‘ or ‘Admission Free‘, but still far from a classic.
Watch ‘A Hunting We Will Go’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Talkartoon No. 38
To the previous Talkartoon: Chess Nuts
To the next Talkartoon: Hide and Seek
‘A Hunting We Will Go’ is available on the French DVD Box Set ‘Betty Boop Coffret Collector’
Director: Dave Fleischer
Release Date: April 13, 1932
Stars: Betty Boop, Bimbo, Koko the Clown
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
‘Chess Nuts’ is by all means one of the Fleischers’ most original Talkartoons.
The cartoon’s setting is a chess game, and it opens with two live action players playing the game. The ashes of the cigar of one of the players falls down on the black queen, revealing it to be Betty Boop, while Bimbo appears to be the white king. Then there’s a cut to a short stop motion sequence of the pieces moving across the board. Only then we really enter the chess world.
In this chess world the black king or ‘Old King Cole’ (the dirty old man of ‘Mask-a-Raid‘ from 1931) tries to force queen Betty to love him, but king Bimbo saves her from his clutches. Most of the action takes place in a castle next to the chessboard game.
There’s a strong sense of stream-of-consciousness in this short, which simply bursts with random and weird throwaway gags, up to the very last shot, in which we suddenly return to the chess players. The result is a wildly surreal film, and one of the most interesting films the Fleischers ever made. Betty Boop is the very sexy star of this cartoon. Koko, on the other hand, only plays a rather insignificant part.
Watch ‘Chess Nuts’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Talkartoon No. 37
To the previous Talkartoon: The Dancing Fool
To the next Talkartoon: A Hunting We Will Go
‘Chess Nuts’ is available on the French DVD Box Set ‘Betty Boop Coffret Collector’
Director: Dave Fleischer
Release Date: March 11, 1932
Stars: Betty Boop, Bimbo, Cab Calloway
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
This talkartoon is completely built around the title song, Cab Calloway’s huge 1931 hit ‘Minnie the Moocher’, which is sung by the great jazz singer himself.
In fact, the cartoon opens with a live action shot of Calloway showing some of his extraordinary dance moves in front of his orchestra. We then cut to a home setting with Betty Boop and her parents, which are apparently of German Jewish descent. Her father scorns her, his jabbering head suddenly changing into a cylinder phonograph. Betty flees crying to her room, and decides to leave home, and she rings Bimbo to come along. This sequence is accompanied by the 1929 hit song ‘Mean to Me’.
The couple flees to the countryside, which quickly becomes very scary, so they hide inside a cave, where the theme song starts. Inside the cave they encounter a walrus-shaped ghost (a rotoscoped Cab Calloway) giving an almost complete rendering of ‘Minnie the Moocher’. During the song we watch images of e.g. skeletons drinking and some prisoner ghosts getting the electric chair. In the end, the ghosts chase the couple back home to the tune of ‘Tiger Rag’.
‘Minnie the Moocher’ makes little sense, and is not as good as the later ‘Snow White’, which also stars Calloway. However, Calloway’s performance is so intoxicating, and the Fleischers’ sense of humor so mesmerizing, it remains a joy to watch the cartoon throughout.
‘Minnie the Moocher’ was the first of handful Fleischer cartoons featuring popular jazz stars, the others being ‘Snow-White‘ and ‘The Old Man of the Mountain‘ from 1933, also featuring Calloway, ‘I’ll Be Glad When You’re dead you Rascal You‘ (1932) featuring Louis Armstrong, and ‘I Heard‘ (1933) featuring Don Redman and his Orchestra.
Watch ‘Minnie the Moocher’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Talkartoon No. 33
To the previous Talkartoon: The Robot
To the next Talkartoon: S.O.S.
‘Minnie the Moocher’ is available on the French DVD Box Set ‘Betty Boop Coffret Collector’
Directors: Harry Bailey & John Foster
Release Date: June 28, 1932
Rating: ★★★
Review:
In ‘The Farmerette’ a sexy kitten applies as ‘farmerette’ at an ailing farm.
The farmer (a goat) asks her if she can get the farm on its feet. And indeed she can, because as soon as she starts singing ‘Some of These Days’, the farm animals start working, and the hens are laying eggs by the dozen, anticipating similar gags in the Warner Bros. cartoon ‘The Swooner Crooner’ (1944).
These scenes are accompanied by Gene Rodemich’s peppy jazz music, showing that he was one of the best cartoon composers of the era. Unfortunately, the embryonic story is soon abandoned, and we witness a donkey, a sheep, a dog and a cow performing a barbershop quartet song.
With ‘The Farmerette’ the Van Beuren studio apparently tried to copy Max Fleischer’s success with Betty Boop. The kitten sings with a voice very similar to that of Betty, and her main feature is her sexiness. Sadly, the cartoon is troubled by erratic animation and poor staging, so typical for the Van Beuren studio, and the kitten never approaches Betty Boop’s charm.
Watch ‘The farmerette’ yourself and tell me what you think:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M41sIICfEI
‘The Farmerette’ is available on the DVD ‘Aesop’s Fables – Cartoon Classics from the Van Beuren Studio’
Director: Walter Lantz or Bill Nolan
Release Date: February 15, 1932
Stars: Oswald the Rabbit
Rating: ★★
Review:
In 1932 Oswald was redesigned to give him a more boy-like appearance. ‘Mechanical Man’ features this new design and opens with Oswald an his girlfriend playing the piano together.
Meanwhile Peg Leg Pete has built a robot, which needs a human heart. Pete kidnaps Oswald’s girlfriend and takes it to his hideout, followed by Oswald. After a long pursuit Oswald manages to get rid of Pete, and rescuing his sweetheart. But it’s a goat who rescues the two from the robot.
When you read this, the cartoon seems to make some sense, but the real thing is rather different: there’s a lot happening on the screen, and nonsensical gags fill every scene. For example, during the chase scene, various skeletons appear at random, giving the cartoon its typical horror atmosphere, but adding nothing otherwise. This gives the cartoon a rather stream-of-consciousness-like character, and at every point one expects Oswald to wake up from this random nightmare.
Watch ‘Mechanical Man’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Mechanical Man’ is available on the DVD ‘Lantz Studio Treasures Starring Oswald’
Director: Dave Fleischer
Release Date: August 26, 1932
Stars: Lilian Roth
Rating: ★★★
Review:
In this Screen Song Lillian Roth sings the entertaining and jazzy title song in a lively performance.
The animated introduction is not particularly interesting, and even a little boring. It focuses on an old man planting (candy) sugar canes, which is then visited by beavers and by a bee, who invites his queen for a walk among the canes. Enter Lillian Roth.
The animation re-enters at the second chorus, and this part is much more interesting to watch than the introduction: in this sequence the animation quite literally illustrates the lyrics, with enjoyable results. In this respect ‘Down Among the Sugar Cane’ is one of the more satisfying Screen Songs.
Watch ‘Down Among the Sugar Cane’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Down Among the Sugar Cane’ is available on the French DVD Box Set ‘Betty Boop Coffret Collector’
Director: Dave Fleischer
Release Date: August 12, 1932
Stars: Betty Boop, Bimbo, Koko the Clown
Rating: ★★★
Review:
‘Stopping the Show’ is Betty Boop’s first cartoon under her own name, starting a series that would only end, after 88 entries, in 1939.
In ‘Stopping the Show’, she’s the highlight of a show that is half cinema half theater. The show starts off with a “noose reel”, followed by a screening of a short cartoon (!) starring Bimbo and Koko. Then Betty enters the stage. She starts with singing ‘That’s My Weakness Now’, which in 1928 had been a hit song for her source of inspiration, Helen Kane. Then she does imitations of Fanny Brice and Maurice Chevalier.
By now, Betty is so well animated, that she feels like a real character, who easily steals the hearts of the audience. She’s a real cartoon star, second only to Mickey Mouse. Her performance makes ‘Stopping the Show’ a delightful watch, even though it lacks the surrealism of earlier outings.
Watch ‘Stopping the Show’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Betty Boop cartoon No. 1
To Betty Boop’s last Talkartoon: The Betty Boop Limited
To the next Betty Boop cartoon: Betty Boop Bizzy Bee
‘Stopping the Show’ is available on the French DVD Box Set ‘Betty Boop Coffret Collector’
Director: Dave Fleischer
Release Date: July 1, 1932
Stars: Betty Boop, Bimbo, Koko the Clown
Rating: ★★★
Review:
In this short Betty and the gang are practicing a show on a train.
The show starts with Betty Boop singing a short song, followed by Bimbo who does some juggling, and Koko performing some rotoscoped tap dancing on Felix Arndt’s song Nola.
This short is unique in the Talkartoon canon for containing no less than two running gags: one is a tiny cat singing the old-fashioned song “Silver Threads Among the Gold” between the main acts, the other is a kangaroo who desperately tries to go to the toilet (or is he?).
The cartoon is lively, but pales when compared to other, more surreal entries of 1931-1933. It was the Fleischer’s last Talkartoon, and the first to carry Betty Boop’s name in the title. The character had become Fleischer’s main star, being second to Mickey Mouse only. Thus, in her next cartoon, ‘Stopping the Show‘, Betty Boop would star her own series, which would last until 1939.
Watch ‘The Betty Boop Limited’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is the 41st and last Talkartoon
To the previous Talkartoon: Admission Free
To the first Betty Boop cartoon: Stopping the Show
‘The Betty Boop Limited’ is available on the French DVD Box Set ‘Betty Boop Coffret Collector’
Director: Dave Fleischer
Release Date: June 10, 1932
Stars: Betty Boop, Bimbo, Koko the Clown
Rating: ★
Review:
In ‘Admission Free’ Betty Boop works as a ticket seller in a penny arcade hall.
We’re watching Koko being knocked out by a boxing ball, a monkey watching a boxing game in a mutoscope, and Bimbo trying his luck at a shooting gallery. When he fails to hit pipes and ducks, Bimbo tries to shoot rabbits. One of these wanders into the forest. Bimbo follows him. Suddenly we’re in the forest, never to return to the arcade. Betty Boop only reenters in the last scene, when the rabbit blows Bimbo up into the air with some fireworks. Suddenly Betty is with Bimbo on a large sky-rocket. Iris out.
‘Admission Free’ makes very little sense, and is terribly unfunny. It’s only noteworthy for being the first cartoon to feature Betty Boop’s very own theme song: ‘Made of pen and ink, she can win you with a wink. Ain’t she cute? (Boop-oop-a-doop), Sweet Betty‘.
Watch ‘Admission Free’ yourself and tell me what you think:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9VkZAeHfoQ
This is Talkartoon No. 40
To the previous Talkartoon: Hide and Seek
To the next Talkartoon: The Betty Boop Limited
‘Admission Free’ is available on the French DVD Box Set ‘Betty Boop Coffret Collector’
Director: Dave Fleischer
Release Date: May 20, 1932
Stars: Ethel Merman, Betty Boop, Bimbo
Rating: ★
Review:
‘Let Me Call You Sweetheart’ is a Screen Song featuring Ethel Merman singing the 1911 hit song.
The cartoon opens with Betty Boop being a baby sitter in a park where Bimbo is a park warden. Bimbo doesn’t try to hide his lust, panting in front of our female hero. To be with Betty, Bimbo kicks off the baby-carriage. The baby falls into the water, steals a hot dog and plays with a fountain. When he returns to the loving couple, it’s night already. Enter Ethel Merman. At the end cartoon there’s some strange sequence with a chicken hatching three eggs, and the chicks being followed by a cat.
Unfortunately, this scene cannot rescue the short, and the cartoon remains completely forgettable.
Watch ‘Let me Call you Sweetheart’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Let me Call you Sweetheart’ is available on the French DVD Box Set ‘Betty Boop Coffret Collector’
Director: Dave Fleischer
Release Date: April 22, 1932
Stars: Les Reis, Artie Dunn, Betty Boop
Rating: ★★★
Review:
In this Screen Song Les Reis and Artie Dunn, a.k.a. The Wandering Minstrels, make their screen debut to sing the World War I title song by Irving Berlin.
The cartoon sequence contains many military gags, while Betty Boop introduces the bouncing ball. The most interesting part of this mediocre cartoon is the morning scene, in which we watch trees, a cannon, and even fire and smoke waking up.
Betty Boop already had her picture featured in ‘Any Little Girl that’s a Nice Little Girl‘, and Kitty from Kansas City in the Screen Song of the same name could also have been her, but it’s this cartoon that marks Betty Boop’s first appearance in a Screen Song, underlining her popularity in 1932. She would appear in six more Screen Songs, the last being ‘Popular Melodies‘ from 1933.
Watch ‘Oh! How I hate to Get up in the Morning’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Oh! How I hate to Get up in the Morning’ is available on the French DVD Box Set ‘Betty Boop Coffret Collector’
Director: Dave Fleischer
Release Date: April 8, 1932
Stars: Betty Boop, Bimbo, Koko the Clown
Rating: ★★
Review:
In ‘The Dancing Fool’ Bimbo and Koko are painters, who try to paint the outside of a large building in a lengthy and boring intro.
Then they go painting the words ‘Betty Boop’s dancing school’ on the window of that very school. Immediately they go inside themselves, where Betty’s teaching several animals how to dance. This leads to several shots of dancing animals.
This short contains no plot and only a few gags. Its highlight is a scene of strange birds, who dance through, above and under each other. The animators must have thought the same way, for these weird birds appear no less than three times on the screen.
Watch ‘The Dancing Fool’ yourself and tell me what you think:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjJRbMIuF5g
This is Talkartoon No. 36
To the previous Talkartoon: Crazy Town
To the next Talkartoon: Chess Nuts
‘The Dancing Fool’ is available on the French DVD Box Set ‘Betty Boop Coffret Collector’
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 