After
Foxy and Piggy were given the boot, Rudolf Ising changed
Merrie Melodies to a one-shot series, and It's
Got Me Again!
(1932) is a prime example of the series' new direction. While not an
extraordinary cartoon, it holds the distinction of being the first
Warner Brothers short to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best
Animated Short Film, 1931-1932 being the first year the Oscars
recognized such a category. It lost to Disney's Flowers
and Trees
(Disney would win the first 8 Oscars for animated shorts). It's Got
Me Again! follows a group of Mickey Mouse-caricatures singing and
dancing in a house as it pours down rain outside. As is typical of
the early Warner Bros cartoons, there is an over reliance on the same
generic happy-go-lucky music, performed by wide-smiled characters, or
who perform actions synced to these songs. Watching several
Harman/Ising shorts in succession can be a tedious affair because of
their reluctance to break formula, their cartoons
often aiming for one mood, and rarely diversifying. It's
Got Me Again!
has a couple passable minutes near the end, when an antagonistic cat
observes the mice from afar, and breaks into the house and chases
them. But because he's introduced too late, the mice scare him away
rather easily, deflating any menace he's supposed to present.
I
Love a Parade
(1932) is a plot-less Merrie Melodies of little interest. It simply
goes through the motions of showing a circus, cutting from one act to
another, after the audience-opening musical performance of the title
song. It's structured as a compilation of thirty second bits, as we
go from varying acts such as a strong man, a rubber man, a bearded
lady, clowns, and animals. Often time characters are positioned
centre frame staring at the camera. In animation, structure, gags, or
plotting, there's just nothing interesting here.
Ride
Him, Bosko
(1933) throws its hero in the wild west, with many of the expected
gunslingers shooting and stagecoach chasing one comes to expect in a
comedy western cartoon. There are several lengthy sequences that
don't even feature Bosko.
There are a couple worthwhile gags, such as a male piano player who
downs a glass of foamy beer, catches on fire, and transforms into a
woman, strutting off-camera. And another, when a stagecoach driver's
luggage suitcase falls off and lands on the ground, cracks open, and
every article of clothing – each one a living creature – stands
up and runs away. Moments later, the same driver – who is being
chased by robbers – is blown off his ride and lands on a pile of
bull bones, which then spring to life and ride off with the old man.
Ride Him, Bosko is most famous for its ending, which ends on a
deliberate anti-climax. Honey is still kidnapped, and Bosko chases
after the robbers to rescue her, and the camera pans out in
live-action to the animators – Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising, Friz
Freleng – discussing how they'll write Bosko out of this mess. They
shrug off his troubles, grabs their coats, and decide to go home,
leaving Bosko's story on an indefinite hold. This is one of the first
instances of meta storytelling in a Looney Tunes film, although they
would learn to break the fourth wall in far more satisfying ways in
years to come. This scene partly feels like a cop-out, because as earlier
shorts have shown, Harman and Ising are not invested storytellers. In
this instance, they ran out of time for Bosko save the day. It feels like an ending they approached as a way to quickly end the
picture without removing any earlier scenes. Considering Harman and Ising's other cartoons, it's difficult to say for sure if Ride Him, Bosko's fourth-wall-breaking ending is a result of innovation or inertness.
Bosko in Person
(1933) is a carefree Looney Tune featuring Bosko and Honey performing a
vaudeville set to an approving audience. And that's it. Nothing goes
wrong, there are no distractions. A series of gags are performed without
a hitch. As can be expected, it is smoothly animated and well timed,
but there is little to remember. There is a little too much tap dancing
and singing and celebrity impersonation (from Greta Garbo to Jimmy
Durante), but there are a couple enjoyable moments, like when Bosko's
glove comes to life and leaves his arm, while the two pull off a
variation of a ventriloquist routine, or later in the film when Honey
performs a solo dance while a strobe-light effect flashes, inverting the
blacks and whites on-screen back and forth for several moments,
creating a freaky - and perhaps unintentionally disturbing - sequence.
Bosko in Person is a basic song-and-dance short that does little to alter formula.
Rudolf Ising's I Like Mountain Music (1933) may seem familiar at first-glance, a precursor to Bob Clampett's classic Book Revue
(1946), in the books-come-to-life genre of animated short. Instead of
the more common choice of classic literature (also seen in another
Warner Bros short from 1933, Three's A Crowd), it's magazines on a
magazine rack. There are cowboys who exit a western magazine and fire
guns, detectives who exit a crime mag and snoop for footprints, and
Edward G. Robinson is seen leaving a movie mag. And of course, it
wouldn't be a post-Piggy Merrie Melodies without a cast of characters
singing the song the short is named after.
Shuffle off to Buffalo
(1933), another Merrie Melodies, has an interesting setting: baby
heaven, as Jerry Beck describes it. And it sorta is. It's an
interpretation on the storks-delivering-babies story, with a daycare far
up in the clouds run by a bearded old man who prepares the children for
their eventual life on Earth before being sent away to a loving couple
via stork. There are some racist elements to this one, with Jewish and tribal stereotypes in an attempt to represent a diverse
selection of children. This short is naturally cutesy, but nauseatingly
so; schmaltzy takes on storks and babies and perfect hetero-normative
couples. The baby voices used throughout fall on the shrill side, and
there's a little bit of screeching, so when it does break out into song,
the musical performance is a welcome distraction.
We're in the Money (1933) is sorta like Toy Story
only without any comedy, emotion, story, it's only seven minutes, and
you'll easily forget ever having seen it. A night watchmen leaves a toy
store, and all the toys come to life and dance and sing along to "We're
in the Money", then-recently made famous by the Warner Bros film Gold Diggers of '33. This is generic even by Merrie Melodies' already low standards in 1933.
This time in inanimate-objects-gaining-sentience, silverware run amuck in The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon
(1933), before banding together to save their house from a monster made
of dough. That last part only occupies the last couple minutes, so most
of this is plates and spoons doing tasks like washing the dishes, which
is sorta like people taking showers, only in this society, it's more of
a communal experience. Romantic songs are sung while budding lovers
with ugly barely-visible faces reflected on their silverware bodies
dance. None of the gags in the early going are particularly funny, but
the dough-monster transformation is very well animated, and seeing it
attacked by things like cheese shredders and rolling pins makes for a
cleverly executed final act.
Bosko's Picture Show
(1933) puts its title character on the back-burner for most of its
duration, as Bosko programs a features of short films and news clips for
a movie house, none of which he appears in. The news reels are
painfully lame; for instance, a title card predicting good weather
followed by a video clip showing snow and rain instead. There's one
accurate gag that shows a diplomatic peace talk which is actually a
roomful or politicians hitting each other and screaming. There's a
pretty weird bit where Adolf Hitler chases actor Jimmy Durante with an
ax. Then, Bosko's Picture Show transitions into comedy shorts, if
uninspired caricatures of movie stars the Marx Brothers and Laurel and
Hardy is your idea of comedy. Even calling these gags parodies would be
a stretch, as there's nothing here being made fun of or commented on.
This short tries to get by on the recognition of its familiar faces
alone without having to supply jokes. Bosko inserts himself into the
action at the end when he jumps through the screen to rescue Honey (who
is trapped inside the film) from an old fashioned movie villain.
Hugh
Harman and Rudolf Ising routinely wanted higher budgets to produce
cartoons, butting heads with Leon Schlesinger, who refused to cut his
own profits to give the animators more money. Partway through 1933,
Harman and Ising cut ties with Warner Brothers, and took Bosko with
them. Harman and Ising had a prior career mishap when their lost the
rights to their character Oswald the Rabbit to Disney, so made sure in
creating Bosko they possessed ownership. They took Bosko to MGM, and
later revived the character over there (in a more blatantly racist
depiction than before). In the long-run, ridding themselves of Bosko was
a step forward for Warner Brothers Animation, but in late 1933 it put
them in a tight spot, with no Looney Tunes star, and no head animation
director. The young animators Friz Freleng and Bob Clampett were hired
by Harman-Ising and had worked for them. Additionally, Schlesinger hired
them in their absence to ensure they stuck around. Schlesinger brought
in talent from Disney to be the supervising animators/directors, Jack
King and Tom Palmer.
Looney Tunes debuted its second star character in September 1933, with Buddy's Day Out
(1933), directed by Tom Palmer. Buddy is a lot like Bosko, except he's a
white child with more obvious human features, and shockingly has even
less personality, probably making him the most bland leading man in the
history of animated shorts. He goes out with his girlfriend Cookie, and
his dubious baby brother Elmer and his dog Happy. Buddy and Cookie
attempt go for a drive, and a date, but the fiend from hell that is
Elmer causes ruckus after ruckus, putting a damper on the couples' day.
Bosko cartoons are often hampered by lazy comedy, but Buddy cartoons are
often devoid of humour entirely. Buddy often finds himself in
situations where comedy is often expected, and as a viewer we can see
where amusing situations are supposed to be utilized for gags, but Buddy's Day Out
makes no effort to put a smile on anybody's face. It's like a rough
outline of a cartoon where the writer inserted a lot of "[insert joke
here]" throughout but never went back to put in the jokes. It's also a
step below Bosko cartoons in the animation department. Under Tom
Palmer's supervision, Buddy's Day Out is much cruder and uglier
drawn than any Harman and Ising Warner Brothers short. Harman and
Ising's style could be basic, but it was competently attractive. Buddy's Day Out
is amateur in comparison, with its lumpy figures and unflattering
characters. Its backdrops are fine, but nothing happening in the
foreground is ever fun to look at.
I've Got to Sing a Torch Song
(1933) is Tom Palmer's second and last film with Warner Brothers. With
both this and Buddy's Day Out, his supervision was infamously loose, to a
point where he failed to create any gags in story meetings, and
expected the animators alone to carry the load. Warner rejected this
lazy approach and promptly fired him. Friz Freleng had to extensively
rework Palmer's shorts, and was soon after promoted to director (Earl
Duvall was the director immediately following Palmer and preceding
Freleng). I've Got to Sing a Torch Song is a formulaic Merrie
Melodies made up entirely of isolated gags from around the globe, of
various radio listeners responding variably to the title song being
broadcast. There's even a montage of racist caricatures in the midway
point, cutting from listeners who are Chinese, Eskimo, Arab, even
African cannibals. It's as if the film is trying to outdo its awfulness
with every succeeding scene. Palmer's shoddy supervision and subsequent
firing is probably a big reason why his two shorts are badly
animated. Without proper direction for the animators, and a reworking
period that couldn't have possibly allowed for entire scenes to be
redrawn from step one, the resulting animation is crude and unappealing;
the faces in I've Got to Sing a Torch Song are ghastly to look at, particularly the celebrity likenesses.
Earl Duvall replaced Tom Palmer, his first short being Buddy's Beer Garden
(1933). Duvall only lasted slightly longer than his predecessor,
cutting ties with Schlesinger after completing five shorts, departing in
1934. Of note about Buddy's Beer Garden is that it maybe
contains the first title card credit of young animator Frank Tashlin for
a Looney Tunes or Merrie Melodies cartoon, though he started working
for Warner earlier in the year with uncredited contributions. Buddy's Beer Garden
is an unremarkable and plot-less affair, with Buddy and Cookie running a
brewery and serving a rowdy group of German patrons, while live
entertainment is performed. Barely anything in this film could register
as humour; it's cutesy fluff that goes down easy.
Sittin' on a Backyard Fence
(1933) is an Earl Duvall Merrie Melodies about two male stray cats
fighting for the affection of a lady cat. In the end the two strays
discover their fighting was over nothing, as the woman already has a
partner, and a litter of kittens to boot. Like every Merrie Melodies of
the era, there are a lot of brief sequences with animals and/or
inanimate objects springing to life to sing a few lines of whatever song
is playing, but what's surprising about Sittin' on a Backyard Fence
is that it actually tells a story in-between these moments. It's a
simple narrative, but most of these tend to be plot-less, so it's a
welcome change. It's not a particularly memorable cartoon, but it does
have a visually interesting climax action scene atop telephone wires,
wherein the two cats are balancing on a rolling pin going across the
wires, while they still attempt to fight. The perspective changes
without any frame cutting, as it gives the illusion that the cats are
traveling across multiple blocks of telephone wires. The action swifts
from left to right or top to bottom, but always stays with the cats.
It's a reworking of the classic action climax used previously in Bosko
and Foxy films. In those, it was usually on a train and train tracks, or
an open road and a vehicle; here, it's been remodeled to take place up
high, as the camera points downward at the passing buildings below. It's
not a ground breaking piece of animation, and some of it does look
awkward, but it's one of the more formally interesting sequences the
Warner Brothers animators have attempted up to this point, and is a step
in the right direction.
1933
was a tumultuous transitional year for the Warner Bros animation
studio, but the key players are slowly coming together. Friz Freleng is
promoted to director following Duvall's departure. Frank Tashlin, Bob
Clampett, Robert McKimson and Chuck Jones are all working - mostly
uncredited - in the animation departments. And Schlesinger is close to
hiring the radical young genius who would help shape the Looney Tunes identity by pushing it away from its Disney copycat incarnation of the early '30s, in
Tex Avery.
Note: I will not be watching every single Looney Tunes and Merrie
Melodies film, only the ones made easily available across the essential
DVD and Blu-ray video compilations (Golden Collection, Looney Tunes
Super Stars, Chuck Jones Mouse Chronicles, Platinum Collection, Warner
Archive's Porky Pig 101)
Historical information in this and following installments come from three invaluable sources:
Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons, by Leonard Maltin
Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in its Golden Age, by Michael Barrier
Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons, by Jerry Beck & Will Friedwald
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