The 1942-43 season saw a new hand at the studio settling in. Fred “Tex” Avery had gotten his start at Walter Lantz studio, and cartoon afficionados can have fun trying to pick out the gags that show his influence. Then came five years at Warner Brothers, where Avery established his reputation as an up-and-comer in the industry. Even in his earliest MGM efforts, Avery would further establish tropes that would recur again and again in his productions, including the subversion of nursery rhymes, and the provocative use of the female figure, playing for as much cheesecake as the Hayes office would allow. And, as we were at war, soldiers had to have their share of cheesecake as well (e.g., Red Hot Riding Hood, discussed below).
The Field Mouse (12/27/41) – A family of field mice is living in a wheat field that is about to be harvested. One of the mice (Herman) is a lazy sort that doesn’t want to get out of bed to gather wheat kernels for their provisions. Then there’s Grandpa, old and crotchety, with his foot all bandaged. Grandpa and Herman have a close encounter with a threshing machine and other farm equipment in the gill where the wheat is processed. The mouse family finds new digs for the winter, and are pretty much resigned to life without Grandpa, who is believed to have been lost in the machinery. But Grandpa turns up very much alive, inside a bag of grain in a part of their new dwelling. Grandpa and Herman end the film singing the work song the other mice have been singing since the film’s titles, an original number entitled “Sow What You Reap, and Reap What You Sow”.
Puss ‘n’ Toots (5/30/42) – Tom is engaged in his usual chase of Jerry, when the doorbell buzzes. Mammy Two Shoes answers it, and agrees to take care of somebody gor the day – a cute female cat (not Toodles). Tom is immediately smitten, and Jerry reacts by trying to break up the romance. While To tries to offer Jerry as a gift to the female, Jerry gets Tom mixed up in with a console phonograph, one of the fancier models with an automatic changer and a wide variety of records (ranging from Asiatic to conga). Tom winds up going around in circles, in more ways than one. Songs: “Sweet and Lovely”, a 1931 pop song, written and recorded by Gus Arnheim and his Cocoanut Grove orchestra for Victor (Gus would use it as his theme song). It was further recorded by Ben Bernie on Brunswick, and vocally by Bing Crosby on Brunswick and Russ Columbo on Victor. Ben Selvin (as Phil Hughes) performed it on Harmony, Velvet Tone, and Clarion. The Savoy Hotel Orpheans with Al Bowlly covered it for English Columbia. Benny Goodman would revive it in the 40’s for Capitol. John Laurenz (a quite competent Crosby imitator) did a version on Mercury. Eddie Heywood’s version appeared on Decca. Georgia Auld, likely on Musicraft, also gave it a blow. Claude Thornehill performed it for RCA Victor circa 1950. Keely Smith would vocalize it on Capitol. Gerry Mulligan jazzed it on Emarcy. Theloneous Monk and John Coltrane performed it in a live Carnegie Hall recording in 1957, and Monk performed it as a studio date on Columbia. Marian McPartland (pianist) recorded it on an unknown label. Erroll Garner performed it on the Mercury album, “Contrasts”. Ralph Marterie used it as the title song for an LP on the same label. The Vince Guaraldi Trio got it on Fantasy Ella Fitzgerald included it on the album, “Sings Sweet Songs For Swingers”, likely on Capitol. April Stevens and Nino Tempo revived it on Atco in the 1960’s. The film also features returns for “The Darktown Strutters’ Ball”, and “Tiger Rag”, plus includes unidentified Oriental and conga numbers, which may be originals.
Bats in the Belfry (7/4/42) – No real plot, but a mood piece, featuring three bats who are just that – bats! Namely from hearing bells all the time, which make them “Dingy in the dome.” Pinto Colvig supplies the voice of the lead bat, plus hiccups for the smallest. Songs: “Bats in the Belfry”, an original song with several extended patter sections that runs throughout the film.
Wild Honey (11/7/42) – Barney Bear, realizing that honey is hard to come by in rationed wartime conditions, decides to go and hunt up the stuff in the wild – without setting up an apiary of his own. Barney is also armed with a high-tect listening device (if you all a contraption that uses a gramophone horn state-of-the-art), and a “How To” book from which he hopes to learn the proper techniques. Barney decides that he should obtain his supply while the bees are off somewhere else engaged in their own “beeswax”, so relies upon a wind-up queen bee to seduces the hive, dancing off the swarm in a conga line. Unfortunately, she collides with a tree and falls to pieces, and the bees get wise. Barney’s book warns as the swarm approaches, “If the bees return….SCRAM!!” The bees take the form of a “Bee-19″ Bomber, and drop in bomb-shaped clusters upon the sadder but wiser bear, who winds up in a stream with a face full of welts. His book floats by, with the final thought, “Next time, use your ration book.” Songs: “Wild Honey”, a 1934 pop song, recorded by Jan Garber on Victor, Anson Weeks on Brunswick (below), Archie Bleyer with vocal by Buddy Clark on Vocalion, and Joe Haymes on Melotone, Perfect, et al.
Barney Bear’s Victory Garden (12/26/42) – During the second world war, one of the most popular avocations on the home front was gardening – specifically, growing vegetables for home consumption in a “victory garden’. Barney Bear decides to take a crack at it, so brings out all his tools to address what he believes to be a promising stretch of land for his crops. The soil turns out to be rock hard, bending Barney’s tools. The only way he can soften-up the ground for furrowing is to place objects atop it that, from the air, depict an image of the face of Adolf Hitler. A passing squadron from the local air corps drops a bomb on it – instantly readying the soil for the planting of crops. Barney’s luck runs bad as usual, as he encounters a gopher, who has a liking for the root crops. Barney’s final play is to attempt to flush the gopher out. But a blockage of the water flow inflates his land with water until the whole place explodes. So much for a bumper crop. Songs: mostly nursery melodies, especially “The Farmer in the Dell” (same melody as “A “Hunting We Will Go”!) Commercial recordings included Dick Robertson on Decca, as well as any number of later versions on children’s labels.
The Boy and the Wolf (4/24/43) – A little Mexican shepherd boy is leading hs sheep in the desert of Northern Mexico, with the assistance of his “Perrito”, a faithful dog. Unfortunately, the dog has no experience with the sheep’s natural enemy – the wolf – and is spooked by even the sight of the beast on a bounty wanted poster. Comes siesta time, and the boy and the sheep each find their own sources of shade behind boulders and cactus. The only vacant space left is in the shadow of one very twisted cactus, forcing the dog to assume contortionists’ positions in order to match the outline of the shade. Eventually, the flock draws the attentions of the real (and very hungry) wolf. The boy meanwhile is playing upon the dog’s fear, with the old “Boy who cried wolf” routine, making the dog respond to false alarms. When the real wolf arrives, the boy’s cries go initially ignored by the twice-tricked dog – until he catches a glimpse of real wolf tail amid the site of the boy’s cries. Suddenly, courage returns to the dog, and he transforms into a brilliant matador, addressing the wolf with bullfighting tactics, aiming the wolf’s charges at boulders, ad finally into a patch of spiky cactus. The boy affectionately reconciles with the dog in apology for his tricks, and all ends happily. Songs: “La Golondrina”, recorded by The Castillians on Vocalion, Max Dilon’s Orchestra on Victor acoustic, the International Novelty Orchestra directed by Nat Shilkret on electrical Victor, a short version as an added extra on a Hit of the Week, Xavier Cugat for Columbia, Harry James on Columbia, David Carroll on Mercury, and the Trio Los Panchos on Mexican Columbia. Also, a theme from “Jarabe Tapatio”, and “Pajarillo Barranquero” (little bird of the Barranca), the only domestically-available recording if which I know showing up in a medley along with “Alla En El Rancho Grande” by Emilio Caceras and his Club Aguiila Orchestra on Bluebird.
Sufferin’ Cats (1/16/43) – One long chase between Tom, a rival cat, and Jerry. Featuring a shoulder devil who eggs Tom on to double-cross the other cat and do him in to get Jerry. A loose axe-head spoils the plan, and Jerry delivers the final blows to the two felines as they find themselves stuck in a wooden gate, bearing a sign reading “Make All Deliveries In Rear”. Mothers’ groups may find this cartoon way too violent for the tiny tots. Songs: “Wonderful One”, composed circa 1922-23. The song became strongly associated with Paul Whiteman, who recorded it for Victor. John McCormack issued a red seal Victrola, while Henry Burr got Victor’s black label version. Walter Scanlan performed a vocal on Edison Diamond Disc. Colin O’Moore, a poor-man’s John McCormack, performed it on red Vocalion. Columbia gave it to Lewis James for vocal, and the Columbia Dance Orchestra (probably directed by Robert Hood Bowers) instrumentally. It was revived by Roy Newman and his Boys on Vocalion for a country version, Glenn Miller for Bluebird, Bob Stanley’s Orchestra on Sonora, and David Rose for MGM records.
The hideously ugly MGM one-sheet poster – drawn by Bela Rieger
Next Time: more 1943, and likely beyond.
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.
As always, some beautifully produced cartoons, outlined here along with the music that appeared in them. I especially like “the boy and the Wolf“. It is not only a beautiful, looking cartoon, as you would expect from Rudolph Ising, it’s opening from the lion roar on Scored magnificently!
Excellent post – as usual from you, Mr. Parten!
The classic “Red Hot Riding Hood” – along with Avery’s other classics on a similar – um – note, “Swing Shift Cinderella” and “Uncle Tom’s Cabana” – are _proof_ (if anyone needs it) that NOT ALL CARTOONS WERE MADE FOR CHILDREN! There are some ignorant on-line posts in various places that “cartoons were meant for children, and this is an awful cartoon.” (I’m thinking about an ignorant post I read several years ago about “Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs.”) Avery made his trio of jaw-dropping cartoons for U.S. servicemen overseas, for example.
I think it was Charles M. Jones who said that cartoon directors made cartoons for _themselves,_ and hoped that the audiences – adults, teenagers, and children – would go along.
Not EVERYTHING should be “for children”.
One doesn’t expect rural farm wives to be terribly fashion-conscious, but even Grandma Field Mouse ought to know better than to wear blue shoes with a green dress. Every scene she’s in makes my eyes hurt.
I for one find Barney Bear’s listening device in “Wild Honey” very clever and inventive. Not only has he painted the gramophone horn to resemble the morning glories the honeybees like, but he’s rigged it to function as an ear trumpet enhanced with electronic amplification. The ear trumpet, an effective if low-tech form of hearing aid, was still being manufactured in the 1940s, though of course it had been around for a long time before that. When Beethoven was losing his hearing in the early 1800s, he used several ear trumpets — you can see them in the Beethoven-Haus museum in Bonn — that had been made for him by Johann Nepomuk Maelzel, who, if not the inventor of the metronome, was at least the first person to patent the device and manufacture it commercially. Maelzel was also famous as a maker of mechanical automata and as such would have taken a keen interest in Barney Bear’s mechanical queen bee with the Veronica Lake hairstyle.
There are two main problems with Barney’s contraption: (1) it needs a screen or filter to keep insects out of the internal circuitry; and (2) in real life honeybees aren’t especially attracted to morning glories, which are pollinated mainly by butterflies and moths.
Bobby Troup composed “Daddy” for a college musical revue at the University of Pennsylvania when he was just twenty-one, and he absolutely stole the show with it. His biggest hit, some years later, was the well-remembered “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66”.
To look at Bela Rieger’s poster for “Red Hot Riding Hood”, you’d never guess that it was one of the sexiest cartoons ever made.
This era shows the completed transition from Harman-Ising to Hanna-Barbera-Avery: MGM cartoons finally got the lead out, becoming faster-paced, breezier and funnier.
I suspect Bela Rieger did the posters for Warner Bros. cartoons as well, since the characters are equally off-model and unattractive.
As I understand, the three bats in “Bats in the Belfry” were supposed to be based on the Ritz Brothers, a comedy team whose antics made often made the Three Stooges’ humor seem arch and cerebral.
My own impressions of the Ritz Brothers, gleaned as a youth discovering old musicals back when movies made before 1950 were shown on TV nearly every day, are far more positive, and I think posterity has given them a bad rap. A big part of the problem, as with other early screen comedians like Joe E. Brown, is that their films are now seldom seen and hard to find — all except their horror spoof “The Gorilla” with Bela Lugosi, which is by far their worst film. I’m not arguing that the Ritzes were the equals of the Marx Brothers or the Three Stooges, but neither were they vastly inferior — just different.
There’s an episode of “Leave It to Beaver” in which Beaver is assigned to write a book report on “The Three Musketeers” but never gets around to reading the novel, so he bases his report on the Ritz Brothers version of the story after watching it on TV. He gets in big trouble with Mrs. Rayburn and his parents, of course; but my point is, he thought the Ritz Brothers were really funny!