If there’s one thing we can say about Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, it’s that they did not want their shorter and less expensive pictures to reflect adversely upon their big pictures. Even live action shorts, such as the Pete Smith Specialties or Crime Does Not Pay series, had to display a certain sheen, a look like they came from Leo himself. This had been the case with the cartoons, at least up to 1937. So, the decision of the suits at Loew’s Incorporated to put a temporary kibosh upon their ongoing cartoons, switching to Sepiatone and going with a well-known property of “The Captain and the Kids” seems counter-intuitive. Yet, that’s exactly what the suits did – even going to the length of pinching Isadore Freleng from Termite Terrace. The result was a series of bland sitcoms, that didn’t even use the characters to their potential. One can only wonder what the exhibitors must have thought, and what research from the remarks in the trade magazines might reveal. The exhibitors must have been overjoyed when The Captain’s Christmas appeared in full Technicolor. Yet, the suits were still not satisfied, switching gears again to Milt Gross’s “Count Screwloose and J.R. the Wonder Dog”, a strip not as well-known as the Captain, which sustained only two episodes for the studio. In the 1939 season, the suits relented, and Harman and Ising came back, each heading their own unit, and offering once again the benefits of full Technicolor.
The Pygmy Hunt (8/9/38 – I. Freleng, dir.) – The Captain and the Inspector are heading up an African expedition, and are succeeding in capturing a number of animals alive. They are determined to bring back with them a pygmy. The chase ensues, with the Captain, the Inspector, a pygmy, and a lion chasing one another, several of them seeming to take turns being under the lion’s skin. The “Kids” are nowhere to be seen in this cartoon at all. Song: “The Donkey Serenade”, introduced in the 1938 MGM musical, The Firefly, starring Jeanette MacDonald, and providing a musical hit for her co-star, Alan Jones. Jones would record the number on Red Seal Victor. Artie Shaw had a Bluebird swing issue. Frank Parker got the black label version for Victor. Das Meisters Sextett performed a version on Electrola, reissued in the U.S. as by the Comedian Harmonists (although only three members were from the original group). George Hall and Dolly Dawn performed a cover on Vocalion, as did Horace Heidt on Brunswick. Sidney Torch performed it in England on Vocalion, as did Mantovani for English Columbia, and Ambrose on British Decca. Gracie Fields gave it a female vocal treatment on Regal Zonophone. Felix Knight and Russ Morgan’s Orchestra would issue a 40’s version on Decca. In the 50’s, it was revived by Mario Lanza for RCA Victor. Homer and Jethro issued a version, with comedy touches but slightly straighter than their usual product, on King. The Orioles tried (but failed) for an R&B version on Jubilee. Jackie Lee had a version on Coral. Ken Griffin issued an organ solo on Rondo. Marty Gold issued a stereo version on the “Sounds Unlimited” LP for Victor.
The Captain’s Christmas (12/17/38) – One of two Captain and the Kids shorts produced in Technicolor. Pirate Long John Silver observes through a telescope the Captain, preparing to play Santa Claus with a sleigh for Hans and Fritzie. Silver’s crew members convince him he could make a better Santa than the Captain any day. Silver thus confronts the Captain at gunpoint, hijacks the costume, sleigh and toys, and proceeds to do the honors down the chimney himself. Unfortunately, Silver’s antics are too rambunctious, shooting up the house in celebration with his pistols, and playing too violently with the toys, until everything is a total wreck. The kids start crying as Silver takes his leave, and Silver’s conscience (an image of the little boy he used to be) haunts the old pirate for his misdeeds, insisting that he do something for spoiling everyone’s Christmas. Silver takes his crew into the center of town, declaring that if his “pipes” are as good as they used to be, they’ll soon have enough money from caroling to buy replacement toys. Their singing achieves an unexpected reaction. Instead of being tossed money, every person in town starts throwing everything else they can get their hands on at them to drive them away. But Silver and the crew keep on with their serenade amidst a deluge of hardware and bric-a-brac, until the townsfolk have nothing left to throw, except – toys! Silver returns with a full sack of suitable gifts to pour down the Captain’s chimney, and receives the approval of his boy conscience for the iris out. Song: An original carol, “Hang Up the Holly in the Window”, sung by Silver and the crew, who at one point take liberty with the lyrics, remarking, “Aw, hang the holly!”
Mama’s New Hat (2/11/39 – I. Freleng, dir.) – Hans and Fritz decide to get Mama a new hat for Mother’s day. But the hat they purchase ends up in a mud puddle and unusable, so they grab a substitute from the head of a local junk dealer’s horse. Mama is overjoyed with the gift, seeing herself in the mirror as the image of Greta Garbo, and setting off to show a neighbor, with the remark “Will I burn her up.” But the junk dealer’s horse wants the stolen hat back, leaving Mama in total confusion as to why she is being constantly pursued by the nag. The kids sideline the horse with a fashion show, trying to find any alternative headwear from Mama’s wardrobe closet the horse will accept. But the horse’s motto is, accept no substitutes. Papa somehow winds up in the chase, which climaxes with a flying serving table, a tangle with exterior wires and the power company generator, and a landing upon a rotating clothes pole in the backyard, with Mama and the horse taking alternating turns to grab the out-of-reach hat like a merry-go-round’s brass ring. (Notably, the finale seems to have been remembered by Hanna and Barbera, who nearly duplicated it for “Triple Trouble” for Tom and Jerry.) Songs: a revisit for Over the Waves”, and a new oldie, “M-O-T-H-E-R”, a 1915 favorite. Henry Burr recorded it for Victor. Bobby Breen (billed as 8 years old) issued a 30’s version on Decca. Eddy Arnold revived it in (probably in the 1950’s) for RCA Victor. Ian Whitcomb issued an LP version on the Album, “Rare Treats”.
Jitterbug Follies (2/25/39) – Count Screwloose and J.R. (the Wonder Dog – a title as unbefitting the mutt as the later Mighty Manfred) are putting on a musical talent show. They’ are hoping to abscond with the “gate” money, rather than award the $10,000 prize. Their plans are upset when they are harassed by a representative of the Citizen’s Committee for Fair Play, who is determined that this show be conducted on the level. Not all of the acts could be classfied as jitterbugs, include a concert soprano named Lizzie Swish (a name take-off on a character from Al Pierce’s radio show), and a dramatic recitation by two penguins. Screwloose and J.R. do not succeed in making off with the receipts, and barely escape arrest, aboard a train, with the penguins continuing along with them for the ride. Songs: “Mother Goose Goes To Town”, an original number by an entrant who tries to sound like Martha Raye, and an unidentified concert-style vocal, also possibly an orginal.
Wanted: No Master (3/18/39) – A vehicle for J.R. the Wonder Dog. J.R. awakens from a night’s sleep, dealing with the daily eccentricities of Screwloose, who hogs the bathroom, then selfishly wolfs down breakfast. J.R. can’t get a bite to eat, in the face of the Count’s ravenous appetite, and endures other humiliation and abuse from the Count. J.R. spots an ad in the morning paper that intrigues him – a wealthy widow at 13 Flirtation Walk has an “object: matrimony” ad prominently placed – but with a picture as homely as a mud fence. J.R. cuts out a picture of a movie star from another page of the paper, and pastes it over the widow’s with maple syrup from the table. Screwloose is hoodwinked by the picture switch, and travels to the widow’s home to apply for the ad. In the widow’s parlor he observes a hope chest, another hope chest, and a “I hope-I hope- I hope” chest (reference to a catch phrase of salesman character Elmer Blurt from the Al Pierce radio show). The widow is well prepared for prospective applicants – with a persistent parson at the ready. We also discover that she’s been around the block before – with a gallery of photos of former husbands, and a closet full of well-grown offspring. The cartoon winds up in an extended chase, Count Screwloose trying to get the h— out of there. But J.R. keeps tripping the Count up, and eventually, the parson performs his duty. J.R. doubles up in laughter, thinking he’s finally gotten rid of the Count for good – but instead, the widow and children move in on the Count’s home, leaving J.R. in a worse and more famished position than ever. Songs: “Camptown Races”, “Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes”, “Auld Land Syne”, and the newcomer, “Tramp Tramp Tramp”, recorded around 1908 by Byron Harlan and Frank C. Stanley, who seem to have had nearly an exclusive on the recording of the song.
The Little Goldfish (4/15/39) – A goldfish in a bowl yearns to be free, and back in the swim. The goldfish gets his wish when his mistress changes the bowl’s water while distracted by a telephone call. The fish finds life in the open sea to be more perilous than expected, and piscatorial puns abound, including catfish that go “meow”, and crabs that have scissors for claws. Fortunately for the goldfish, the plot resorts to the eternal cop-out – it was only a dream. (There is a possible mystery in character design solved by knowing some of the background of this film. The design of the crab is remarkably similar to one designed the preceding year for the Walt Disney film “Hawaiian Holiday”, with the crab wearing its upper shell at a rakish angle, resembling a derby hat. But Rudy Ising’s brazen lift of this design may have been with the blessing of Walt rather than plagiarism – as the film was made on speculation with intent to sell it to Disney as a Silly Symphony, in the wake of the production of “Merbabies”.) Song: one original song, which I’ll just call “Little Goldfish”, providing exposition for the film, sung by the Rhythmettes.
The Bear That Couldn’t Sleep (6/10/39) – Barney Bear, in his screen debut, is trying ti hibernate. But nothing works out for him, and his slumber is constantly disturbed, by clattering shutters, errant embers from the fireplace, icy winds, and everything else imaginable. By the time Barney counts one million sheep, he is awakened by his alarm clock – as it is spring already. Songs: “Sleepy Head”, a 1934 song originally introduced in the MGM feature “Operator 13″, where it was performed by the Mills Brothers (embed below). They recorded it for Brunswick concurrently. Todd Rollins recorded it for Melotone with Chick Bullock vocal. Columbia issued a royal blue version by Ben Pollack. Victor gave it to Rudy Vallee, and also issued a Vincent Lopez version on Bluebird. Other old standards include “Sleep, Baby. Sleep” (which we’ve covered before), and the “Yale Boola March” (played as unexpected alternate sides of the same phonograph record in the cartoon). The Boola March can be heard in an early Yale Medley by the Shannon Four on acoustic Columbia. Arthur Pryor issued a version on Victor in 1910, and the Haydn Quartet a vocal in 1911. A Little Wonder, issued anonymously, appeared in 1915. The Yale University Band would eventually issue a version in a medley for Decca in the 1930’s.
The Bookworm (8/26/39) – Another Gothic from Harman and Ising, directed by Friz Freleng. Three witches in a copy of the literary work MacBeth are whipping up a potion, but lacking one ingredient – a worm. The Raven from Edgar Allen Poe (who interestingly, never says “Nevermore”) volunteers to capture for them a bookworm. An original song: “A Bookworm”, is chanted by the title character, who claims he is full of science and philosophy, but nothing ever happens to him. But action will be on his menu today, as a wild chase ensues through the old bookstore, including a frightening encounter with many classic monsters in the horror section. The worm is saved from capture by a battalion of boy scouts, who construct for him a bridge made of boy scout matches, then set it afire when the Raven also attempts to cross. The film ends with a quote from Columbia’s Moran and Mack “Two Black Crows” routine. “Aw, who wants a worm, anyway?”
Next time: Probably into 1940.
James Parten has overcome a congenital visual disability to be acknowledged as an expert on the early history of recorded sound. He has a Broadcasting Certificate (Radio Option) from Los Angeles Valley College, class of 1999. He has also been a fan of animated cartoons since childhood.
So many interesting and great cartoons here! One thing I have to mention, however, in “a little goldfish“ you do hear strains of a piece that I believe is called “lost in the cradle of the deep“. Would love to have this cartoon on a collection on Blu-ray someday, but OK, I’m sure it will happen at some point in the future. This is especially true of that captain and the kids cartoon, “the captains Christmas“ which leaves out John Silvers’s reading of “the night before Christmas“ as the cartoon opens before he peers with his telescope out toward the captains house to realize that the captain is going to place Santa Claus. Again, hopefully this cartoon can be restored some fine day! Thank you for letting me hear the Mills Brothers original recording of “sleepyhead“.
Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if Hugh Harmon could have gotten the Mills Brothers to sing that track over the opening credits of this, the very first Barney bear cartoon as well as closing it with rendition of the song. And wouldn’t it also have been very, very amusing if, as the raven delivers his final line, just before the iris out he does mutter that all too famous phrase “never more!“(You can see I want a happy harmonies collection very badly!)
Strangely, when MGM/UA home video released this on the VHS release “MGM cartoon Christmas ” Long John’s narration of the Night Before Christmas was intact.
Subsequent Warner Home Video releases have omitted the recital.
it makes me wonder if that part of the element has gone “walkies” in between theMGM/UA release and Warner’s release of the cartoon.
I still consider MGM’s Captain and the Kids series underrated. Yes, it should have taken better advantage of the potentials that John Dirks’ strip offered, and it’s odd that Hans and Fritz are so neglected in the stories, but a few entries do manage to capture the strip’s feel (Bill Hanna’s “What a Lion!” is effectively an animated ‘Captain’ Sunday strip) and I like Charlie Thorson’s character designs. There’s also an appealing elasticity to the animation that doesn’t quite feel like any other studio.. such as the fight sequence in “The Honduras Hurricane”. Incidentally, John Silver’s crew are known as the Herring Brothers in the ‘Captain’ daily strips.
The black-and-white Captain and the Kids cartoons like “The Pygmy Hunt” all have a musical introduction made up of snippets of German folksongs, just as MGM’s Our Gang shorts of this period opened with a montage of children’s nursery songs like “London Bridge is Falling Down” and “A-Hunting We Will Go”. My parents liked to listen to their German records on Sunday afternoons, so all of these tunes sound familiar to me, though I can’t identify most of them by title. There’s one bit in the low brass that splices together “In Lauterbach hab’ ich mein’ Strumpf verloren” (I lost my stocking in Lauterbach, known in English as “Where, Oh Here Has My Little Dog Gone?”) with the old chestnut “O Do lieber Augustin”. A possible clue: the six-note motive heard at the beginning and end of these cartoons is identical to the opening of the song Betty Boop sings in “A Hunting We Will Go”, “Why did you scare those bears?” There are a lot of German folksongs about hunting, and the melody delineates the notes of the tonic triad, suggesting the sound of a hunting horn.
One seldom encounters numismatic detail in cartoons, so I was delighted to note that the copper coin thrown to Long John Silver and his cronies in “The Captain’s Christmas” can be identified as a Japanese wadokaichin, the first official currency of Japan, first minted over a thousand years ago. “Wadokaichin” is the Japanese pronunciation of the four characters imprinted on the obverse, read clockwise; it means “Japan first currency”. The kanji are inexpertly transcribed in the cartoon but still recognisable, so it’s clearly not one of the many similar Chinese coins with a square hole in the middle. Wadokaichin are not particularly rare; you can buy one in decent condition today for under a hundred dollars.
Long John Silver, like Al Capp, seems to have lost his leg early in childhood.
I think the operatic number sung by Lizzie Swish in “Jitterbug Follies” is meant to be a takeoff on the Mad Scene from “Lucia di Lammermoor”, in which the coloratura soprano is likewise accompanied by a solo flute. The Mad Scene lasts more than ten minutes; how much more depends on how much the singer wants to milk the cadenza. It’s one of the most demanding arias in all opera; I once had the good fortune to hear it sung by the great Ruth Welting, one of the few sopranos capable of singing it in its original key (most transpose it down a tone or two) and really nailing the high F at the end. To hear it attempted by a substandard soprano like Lizzie can be absolutely agonising. No wonder the Jitterbugs wouldn’t stand for it.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention “The Bookworm”‘s use of the nursery rhyme “A Tisket, A Tasket”, which had been a big hit for Ella Fitzgerald the previous year.
Thanks for this post, James. Barney Bear’s sleepiness was patterned after Rudy’s tendency to fall asleep on the job, for which Walt Disney fired him. I agree with Aaron that the animation in the Captain and the Kids series is underrated. The fight sequence in The Honduras Hurricane is mainly the work of Emery Hawkins, especially that hilarious scene where the rooster puts an anvil in his glove. Bill Littlejohn did that wonderful scene of J.R. the Wonder Dog “doubling up” in laughter near the end of “Wanted: No Master”. The title is a take off on the MGM live action short, “Wanted: A Master”, about a homeless dog. The main fault with The Captain and the Kids cartoons, is that the kids don’t pull the insane kind of pranks on the Captain that they do in the strip. The possibilities for animation would have been limitless, maybe the “suits” at MGM thought that such antics would be “beneath the dignity of MGM”, as phased in their curt dismissal of the Milt Gross cartoons.
Thank you, Mark, for cluing me into who animated those scenes in “Honduras Hurricane”! Was Hawkins also responsible for the scene of J.R. kicking all of the box office cash into the Count’s bag at the beginning of “Jitterbug Follies”? That’s one hell of a successful translation of Gross’s style into animation.
Hi Aaron,
I think that scene at the beginning of Jitterbug Follies is Irv Spence’s animation. In that sequence, Count Screwloose tries to hide the bag full of cash in his shirt, doesn’t he? That’s Irv’s drawing as well.
Mark
That’s the bit. He stuffs the bag up his shirt. Every single frame of that sequence looks like a perfect Milt Gross drawing. Incredible stuff.
I’ve never seen the comic strip, but like everyone who grew up in a German-speaking family I’m very familiar with Wilhelm Busch’s illustrated poem “Max und Moritz”, upon which the characters of Hans and Fritz were based. The pranks of Max and Moritz are not only “insane”, but disturbingly cruel; for example, they put gunpowder in the schoolmaster’s pipe, which leaves him disfigured after it explodes. In the end, a miller grinds the boys up into flour and feeds them to his ducks, and everyone in town is relieved to be rid of them.
At first I assumed that Beavis and Butt-Head must have been inspired by Max and Moritz, but apparently this is not true.
Years ago I saw an animated Max und Moritz cartoon made in Germany in the 1970s. It was explicitly pornographic, and the boys’ “lustige Streiche” (merry pranks) involved the schoolmaster’s wife and the police constable’s daughter.
The Captain’s Christmas was the best entry in the lackluster series. For the most part (with a few exceptions) I don’t think comic strips adapt very well to animation, due to the differences in the mediums. I’m thankful they very rarely did it.
The “Little Goldfish” mistress’s theme is a cute “Whispering” knockoff..:)
After reading about some of these shorts in “Of Mice & Magic” years ago, I finally decided to check them out after seeing this article. I’m glad I did, because the two Milt Gross shorts are riotous and offer a glimpse into a studio that had successfully gone against Disney and were proving capable of competing against the likes of Clampett and Avery.
Speaking of Warner alumni, I hadn’t really seen any of Freleng’s MGM work before now, but I’d argue that even if his time there didn’t pan out it still left behind some well-made pictures and a great impression on both – the gags in “Mama’s New Hat” are as funny as any Tom & Jerry short.
I wonder if The Bookworm has an uncredited co-direction by Hugh Harman, the way in which Freleng directed this movie, with the great climax at the end, is very similar to other examples of the period by Harman, like Art Gallery, Circus Daze or all the 5 cartoons with the Jazz Frogs. Most of the better cartoons by Hugh Harman, probably my favorite director of the Golden Age at his best, have this chaotic, full of things and with high music final, like an explosion, and The Bookworm has this style.
The Mad Maestro, the other Freleng-directed movie of the time at MGM, have a totally Freleng-style instead.
I love the two Milt Gross cartoons. I wish he could’ve made more.
Hi William,
Milt Gross started at least seven more cartoons, but they were all stopped when he left MGM cartoons. Here are some of the titles: Prod. no. 17: Fly Story, #19: Sheep Herders, #20: No Dogs Allowed, #21: This Pill, #23: The Restaurant, #24: The Sand Man and #25: Help Wanted. “This Pill” really has a Milt Grossian ring to it.
Mark