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Director: Unknown
Release date:
May 7, 1920
Stars: Judge Rummy
Rating:
 ★★★★
Review:

Tad Dorgan’s Judge Rummy was a comic strip that run from 1910 to 1922. Between 1918 and 1922 it was also an animated cartoon series, directed by the likes of Jack King, Burt Gillett and Grim Natwick, who would all become animation legends, and, surprisingly, Gregory La Cava, later director of live action comedies like ‘My Man Godfrey’ (1936) and ‘Stage Door’ (1937).

I’ve no idea who’s responsible for ‘A Fitting Gift’ but the animator has a very pleasant animation style, with unexpected touches of metamorphosis, original staging, and surprising movements.

In this short Judge Rummy wants to buy a gift for a girl he admires. His friend Silk Hat Harry suggest a corset, but Judge Rummy is too bashful to enter, so Silk Hat Harry suggests the two dress as women themselves, but then Judge Rummy’s wife appears. The gags themselves in this cartoon, one including a homosexual stereotype, are pretty trite, but as said, the execution is much fun, making this short a pleasant watch.

Watch ‘A Fitting Gift’ yourself and tell me what you think:

‘A Fitting Gift’ is available on the Blu-Ray-DVD combo ‘Cartoon Roots: The Bray Studios Animation Pioneers’

Directors: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera
Airing date
: November 23, 1962
Stars: The Flintstones
Rating: 
★★★★½
Review:

Until this point in the third season the Flintstones episodes were only mildly funny at best, and frankly more often than not dragged a little, but ‘Ladies Day’ is over before you know it.

The story starts rolling when Fred wants to go to the ball game, but he’s both flat broke and he has to work. When he learns from Barney it’s “ladies’ day” at the ball game he gets an idea. What follows is a comedy of errors that involves the wives, the police and Fred’s boss and the boss’s South American customer, who appears to be a ladies man.

For once the story stays surprising throughout and the writers play nicely around with the four main characters. Naturally, there’s less room for stone age gags, and we have to do with a single crocodile acting as Betty’s laundry machine. But it doesn’t matter, for ‘Ladies’Day’ is one of the best written Flintstones episodes of all.

Watch an excerpt from ‘Ladies’ Day’ yourself and tell me what you think:

This is The Flintstones Season Three episode 11
To the previous The Flintstones episode: Hawaiian Escapade
To the next Flintstones episode: Nuthin’ but the Tooth

‘Ladies’ Day’ is available on the Blu-Ray ‘The Flintstones – The Complete Series’ and the DVD-box ‘The Flintstones Season 3’

Directors: William Hanna & Joseph Barbera
Airing Date: March 17, 1961
Stars: The Flintstones
Rating: ★★½

In the Dough © Hanna-BarberaWilma and Betty enter a baking contest with their recipe for an upside down bubble cake.

Fred ain’t too enthusiastic, until he hears of the prize money of $10,000. Indeed, Betty and Wilma get to the finals. But they get the measles, and cannot leave home. Enter Fred’s lunatic plan to take their place, impersonating Mrs. Rubble and Flintstone.

Following Betty’s and Wilma’s recipe, Fred and Barney even manage to win, but as Barney had used flour brand B instead of the sponsor’s Tastry Pastry flour, they never get the $10,000. Even worse, their plan only backfires on them, with the wives blackmailing them to tell their friends of their temporary womanhood.

‘In the Dough’ is a rather run of the mill episode, with the most inspired gag being a throwaway gag at the start of the show: Wilma packing Fred’s enormous lunch box. Moreover, this is another episode unwillingly revealing the plight of 1960s housewives: they pack their husbands’ lunchboxes, and only by using blackmail they can make their husbands doing the dishes…

‘In the Dough’ is available on the DVD-set ‘The Flintstones: The Complete First Season’

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