Go East, Young Toon (Part 4)

Today’s survey might be called doubly-pleasurable, as it abounds in doubles. Two Sultans. Two Oswalds. Two ComiColors. Two retellings of “Ali Baba”. There’s a few singles also, including another, very odd, foreign legion epic from Warner Brothers. Disney and Fleischer stay out of the action for this go-round, but their presence remains a factor – Disney continuing to influence the genre and the adventure tale form of story-telling among rival studios, and Max Fleischer doing some careful observing, in preparation for his own deep dive into the arena of Arabic folklore.

Sultan Pepper (Van Beuren/RKO, The Little King, 3/16/34 – George Stallings, dir.) – Rather than travel to the East, have the East come to you. That seems to be the Little King’s idea, as he welcomes to his palace visiting royalty. Actually, it’s a bit unclear if the writers really are sure from which whereabouts the portly presence of Sultan Pepper hails from – as he looks a bit more like a Rajah from India than an Arabian sultan – and comes complete with what appears to be an Indian elephant for transportation of himself and his harem. Nevertheless, we’ll consider for the sake of argument that he is in fact an Arabian potentate.

Though this remains among the more “saucy” of the installments from this series, there are strange signs of censorship in what otherwise appears to be a rather innocent introduction sequence, where the King passes the time practicing tricks with a royal mutt, and determined to show the dog that anything the pup can do, the King can do better. An odd, uncharacteristic for the studio fade out/fade in appears in mid-sequence after the King tosses the pup a cane to fetch, then repeats the trick when the dog throws the cane to him. Then, we return to the same throne room, with the King still duplicating every trick the dog can do, until the pup gets an idea to top him, and simply wags its tail. The King holds his chin in one hand, pondering the problem in thought, then suddenly raises one hand in a gesture suggesting he has an idea. Then, an abrupt cut to the sultan’s elephant approaching outside! So, what was the King’s idea? And who performed the awkward edit, when a simple cropping of a few more frames would have removed the gesture suggesting that the King wasn’t simply stumped by his lack of the dog’s appendage?

The Sultan arrives, riding in a self-enclosed chaise (its formal name is apparently a howdah, again usually used by Asian royalty) atop his elephant’s back, equipped with a stovepipe out its roof, and a protruding “Stop” and “Go” wooden arm like an old truck turn signal to tell the elephant what to do. The elephant uses its trunk as a digging implement, boring a hole in the palace wall for its entrance. Though a herald announces the arrival with a trumpet sound, the King is so startled by the huge beast’s entrance, he climbs high to the top of his throne chair and hides behind it. The elephant makes him somewhat more welcome, by converting his trunk into escalator stairs for the King to ride up to the royal chaise. Knocking on the chaise door, the King is greeted by the Sultan, but mistakenly shakes the wooden stop signal arm instead of the Sultan’s hand. The Sultan disembarks – followed immediately by about a dozen beauties in Arabian garb. The childlike King, with a slightly lascivious mind, is both struck with embarrassment, but at the same time going ga-ga over the damsels. When the Sultan takes an interest in the King’s trick-performing dog, the King, possibly with known intentions to obtain a souvenir of the moment, tosses the cane again for the dog to fetch – straight into the middle of the huddle of harem wives. There is a small scream from at least one of them as the dog leaps into the center of the huddle – then emerges, carrying the cane, which has hooked as a prize one of the girl’s frilly lace panties! The Sultan observes the dog returning the garment to the King, and intercepts it, taking it off of the cane. It is unclear whether the Sultan understands completely the King’s motives, or makes the mistake of believing that the garment is part of the King’s wardrobe – but he cordially hands the panties to the King, merely saying, “Your majesty…” The King pantomimes as if slightly blushing, and stuffs the panties inside his royal robes. This didn’t get censored, while the King’s dog trick did?

Dinner is served! Well, maybe not “served” exactly, as no servants enter the dining room to attend to the guests. Instead, one wall of the dining room is set up with multiple rows of small coin-operated windows, and a sign that says, “Self-Service”. The King’s own private New York Automat! The King keeps a waist-strap change dispenser on his belt, to break the large bills the Sultan carries. The Sultan, however, is a thrifty cus, and, even after receiving change from the King, tries to see what he can get away with, cutting a metal button from his robes, and inserting it into the slot of a window marked “Tomato Surprise” as a slug. All he gets when the window opens is a tomato thrown in his face. And, just for wasting the tomato, the arm of an unseen attendant behind the machinery reaches out from another window, to pick a gold pocket watch out of the Sultan’s robes while he is distracted, then gives the watch to the King when he comes along. Finally using a real coin, the Sultan settles on a dish of Stewed Pears – two “live” fruit, who stagger around on the plate, wearing top hats and canes like men who’ve been doing the town. The Sultan settles himself at the dinner table, surrounded by his many wives. (In a continuity error, the food on his plate now looks nothing like the two pears he has just purchased.) But then, a disturbing realization strikes the Sultan. He counts those sitting at the table (is this including the King and himself?), and reaches the number 13! He immediately drags one of his wives by the wrist into an antechamber, producing a pistol in the other hand – and a gunshot is heard once he disappears into the room. The Sultan emerges alone, and returns to the table, observing to the King that 13 at a table is bad luck! (Too bad the King couldn’t have just taken charge of the surplus bride in his own way.)

As dinner progresses, the King gets more friendly with the wives on his end of the dinner table. One whispers a suggestion in his ear, and the King, despite his obvious romantic proclivities, finds the suggestion too shocking even for him, and slaps her face. Another wife seems receptive to having the King steal a kiss, but wears a face veil. The King pushes the veil down to reveal the rest of her face – but can’t find any mouth! He pushes the veil still further down, down, until her lips are finally located, revealing that her entire face resembles an elongated horse. Disenchanted by this image, the King pushes the veil back up to original position, and turns away. (Incidentally, what happened to the Queen, who is usually a regular member of the cast, during all these off-color (or should we say black and white) doings? Heaven help the King if she ever finds out. Or is this supposed to be a flashback to a time before the royal marriage?) Bedtime is announced by the herald, and the Sultan shoos his wives off to the royal bedchamber, the Sultan and King following up the stairs in a childish game of leap frog. The wives all climb into a large canopy bed. The Sultan enters the room behind them – then, so does the King! The bedchamber door closes, until the arm of the Sultan emerges, putting outside the door a cat, a milk bottle – and the King! The King tries to take a peek through the keyhole, but the Sultan’s arm emerges again, peeling the keyhole right off the metal lock plate, and taking the hole inside the chamber, leaving the lock plate a solid object with no viewing point. The King, utterly frustrated at the exclusiveness and luck of the Sultan, sulks on the staircase below the bedchamber. He sheds a small tear at missing out on all the fun, and reaches into his inner pocket for a handkerchief – but awkwardly blows his nose into the lace panties he had earlier received, instead of a hankie. Inside the bedroom, the girls all sidle over as if to make room for the Sultan to bed down.

Instead, the Sultan only uses the mattress as a stepping platform, climbing up into the canopy to sleep alone as if in a hammock. Once he is settled in, a plot is conspired between the girls, and they all sneak out of the room together under a sheet. As the King sadly descends the staircase, something is tossed at him from above, knocking his crown off. The King turns to find the giggling girls, out of the room, and ready to play a friendly game of catch-me-if-you-can. The King spends the next 40 seconds or so chasing girls every which way (although it seems the only one he can actually catch is the horse face, whom he turns away from again). All the girls finally decide to duck back into the bedroom, and the King finally follows through the now-open door. Although there still appears to be a visible lump among the canopies above the bed, there is also one in the lower berth, which the King assumes is the girls. He leaps under the covers in playful abandon – only to find within not the girls, but the Sultan, who somewhere in the night has decided to change bunks. The Sultan gives the King a suspicious fish-eye, as the King finds himself awkwardly wearing the Sultan’s hat as he emerges from the covers. The girls reveal themselves out of hiding from around the room, having never re-entered the bed (and perhaps arranging the fake lump within the canopy), and giggle with glee at the both of them, for the iris out (leaving the King with a lot of explaining to do – perhaps not the best way to end a diplomatic visit).

Beau Best (Lantz/Universal, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, 5/22/33) – Oswald in the Foreign Legion? Despite the title, not on your life. Instead, it’s another visit to an Arabian bazaar, and another typical chance to rescue a damsel from the whims of Putrid Pete. Sometimes it seems like Lantz just milked the same love triangle to death over and over again with minor locale changes. Disney, and later Max Fleischer with Popeye, could do the same thing basically, but somehow always manage to keep it fresh with variations. Ozzie often feels more like they poured it out of a can. Nevertheless, there is some improvement here over the last Middle East adventure. Pacing is considerably more measured, allowing some appropriate time to react to gags before plunging you into another one. And score does something to match the action more appropriately, including a clever musical interlude where an Arabian street band plays a minor-key rendition of “Turkey in the Straw”, which is itself enough of a concept to induce a laugh.

Talking about the “canned” elements – the first half-minute of the film, though not re-using any drawings but instead re-creating them nearly identically, is a shot-for-shot remake of the opening scenes of Ozzie riding a camel from “Africa” – even re-using the identical musical score. Then we get to the bazaar, and various spot gags of the locals. One individual, bowing in prayer in the street, finds himself too close to an earthen jug in which two playful mice are hiding. The mice emerge from the jug on roller skates, and use the bowing figure as a roller skating ramp, then pull his beard, flipping him backwards into the jug, where his rear end gets caught. The Arab turns over, with the jug attached like a shell atop his mid-torso back area. Two small turtles see him pass, crawling with the jug on his back, and follow him off, calling “Daddy. Daddy.” Oswald laughs. A snake charmer (who oddly looks a lot like Mahatma Ghandi) upsets a mule with his dancing “serpent”, which emerges from a basket to tickle the mule’s rear. The mule lifts the basket from the ground with his tail, revealing inside not a serpent, but a crouched cat, whose tail has been wiggling out of the basket to simulate a snake. Disgusted with the act, the mule gives a swift kick to both participants. The snake charmer falls headfirst into another jug, his feet flailing wildly out the top, while the cat lands seated nearby with the snake charmer’s flute. The cat gets the idea to reverse roles, and begins playing the flute – causing the charmer’s feet to stop kicking, and instead wiggle and sway as if the two legs were a pair of charmed serpents. Oswald laughs again.

Putrid Pete’s role is rather unclear in this film. He is dressed in typical Arabian garb, more or less the same as he appeared in “The Shriek”. However, he does not appear to be either a sheik or sultan, since he acts as one of the performers in the Arab band playing “Turkey In the Straw”. He later is seen ordering a hoard of warriors to get Oswald – but under what authority? Maybe he’s just a local heavy, bossing a street gang. Anyway, for no good reason, he takes a dislike to the dancing of an Arabian belle, who wears a full face veil while dancing in the street – so he pushes her into a pool, just for kicks. (Before progressing with the story, it should be mentioned here that two scenes are included during the musical number which make absolutely no sense to include in this film – reused animation of musical mutants (half creature, half instrument) who previously appeared in the 1930 film “Mars”, and have no explanation for their unexpected presence on Earth!) Oswald intervenes, tripping Pete into the pool himself, then escapes with the girl. “Get him, men”, orders Pete to a band of spear-throwing warriors. (Then Pete is never seen again!) Oswald and the girl run for the safety of a small building, but a tossed spear narrowly misses Oswald. Ozzie picks up a small jug and a wooden cane, then hollers, “Fore!”, smacking the jug toward the spearman with the wooden stick. The jug does not shatter upon impact, but is amazingly forceful – slicing a large round hole through the spearman’s torso. “A hole in one”, observes Oswald to the girl, in a rare punny quip for the series. The spearman apparently doesn’t care for the pun, hurling back at Oswald another jug, which merely breaks upon impact as expected rather than driving a hole through Oswald. (I guess weapons are only meant to work on bad guys.) Oswald and the girl flee inside the building, temporarily leaving the door open. Oswald tosses out at another warrior a large painting of an Egyptian cutie. The paining lands across the warrior’s head, his own face taking the place of the painted one through a hole made in the canvas. Looking down at the shapely girl image now below his neck, the warrior registers a facial expression which communicates the thought, “Not bad!”, then reaches one arm around the frame toward the painted lady, a finger extended to tickle her, while saying “Kootchie kootchie kootchie.” One hand of the painted body reaches upwards, and soundly slaps the warrior’s face, sending his head spinning 360 degrees.

Oswald finally bolts a large wooden door at the building entrance. The warriors attack it, one after another, rushing the door in attempt to break it down. Fearing the door may not hold, Oswald spots inside the building an old washday wringer. He positions the device just behind the door, while the girl opens a trap door to the building’s basement. Then Oswald flings the door wide open, just as one of the warriors attempts to rush it. The warrior unexpectedly thrusts himself into the wringing machine, and is rolled flat out the other side, where his flattened form sails through the trap door and down to whatever waits below. (A natural opportunity is missed entirely, as we are never shown any crocodiles or other terrors waiting for him in the basement pit.) The rest of the warriors follow through the wringer and into the basement in like manner, then Ozzie and the girl shut the trap door upon them. The girl, inviting Oswald to kiss her as a reward, turns out to be not what anyone thought behind the veil. Not Hortensia. Not Tillie. Instead, she is a wart-faced, horrendous old hag. Oswald lets out a scream – and the film abruptly ends without further payoff. Perhaps Fred “Tex” Avery decided on this closing gag, considering that it would appear again in the Avery MGM short, “Big-Heel-Watha” and in variation in “The Chump Champ” – by which time Avery realized it needed more of a payoff for proper impact than just a scream and a “The End” card.

Insultin’ the Sultan (Ub Iwerks/MGM, Willie Whopper, 4/14/34) – As an opening note, you just couldn’t get rid of Iwerks’s “old crone” character, even when Flip the Frog went out of production. The homely schoolmar’m and man chaser would span four different series of cartoons – her original run-ins with Flip, here as schoolteacher for Willie Whopper, in two of the ComiColor series (“Don Quixote” and “Mary’s Little Lamb”), and even in Iwerks’ contract work for Columbia (“Blackboard Revue”).

A country school sets up the framing for today’s tall tale from Willie. It is probable that some opening gag with the crone was removed through censorship before the release of this episode, given a noticeable break in the music score between the establishing shot of the old crone’s classroom, and the next close-up on Willie and another student (named “Goofy”) at their desks. The censors again were just coming into positions of influence as to animation, and the first Willie title is known to have traces remaining of a removed gag with a vehicle bedecked in scattered ladies’ underwear from a collision with some laundry. So there’s no telling what scandalous doings of the crone may have opened the morning class. (Perhaps she was secretly reading some controversial book while assigning the morning geography reading.) Willie’s opening dialogue gives away the nature of the omitted assignment. Turning to Goofy, he asks, “Talkin’ about geography, was you ever in Constantin-uh…Constantin-uh…” “Huh?” responds Goofy, allowing Willie to escape his awkward lapse of memory by excusing himself from completing the sentence, with the further remark, “Aw, you don’t know nothin’.” Willie then launches into today’s far-fetched yarn of bravery, telling of the time he and his girl went there to look over the place. As usual, we find ourselves in the Mickey Mouse situation of visiting an Arabian bazaar. As Willie walks through town whistling, with Mary on his arm, they pass a snake charmer who is sleeping, and whose snake is tired of the snoring. The snake becomes attracted by Willie’s whistling, so departs its basket, and follows unnoticed behind Willie up the street. At the end of the thoroughfare stands an auction platform, advertising dancing girls bought, sold, and exchanged. A wealthy Sultan is on the platform with the auctioneer, checking out today’s “merchandise”. An enormously overweight girl receives the boot from the auctioneer after her disappointing performance, and likewise a skinny antique of a damsel whose bones creak with every joint-bend.

Willie and Mary watch the proceedings for laughs from the street below. The snake slips up between them, still unnoticed by both, and playfully begins to rub up against the pair’s legs like an affectionate cat, alternating between Willie and Mary. Neither of them at first looks down to see where the rubbing is coming from, instead assuming each other is getting uncomfortably fresh. But Mary is finally the one to first see the snake, wrapped in a spiral around one limb. She screams, and leaps high into the air, landing on the platform above. One look at her by the Sultan, and a sale is in the making. “Wrap her up”, orders the Sultan, handing the auctioneer a sack of gold. The auctioneer obliges, picking up Mary, placing her on a table, and wrapping her in paper like a gift, while ringing up a sale on a cash register. Willie jumps up to the platform to protest, but gets knocked away by the Sultan with one side-twitch of his ultra-wide hips. As the Sultan leaves, Willie takes out his frustration upon the auctioneer, kicking him in the rear, dislodging his sack of gold, and slamming his head into the cash register, which changes to a reading of “No Sale”. Willie departs the scene, carrying the gold sack.

The Sultan, with the bundled Mary in hand, departs for his palace in a slave-carried chaise (the interior of which includes a steering wheel?). Willie follows, by coaxing the snake to coil into the shape of a wheel, then riding him as a unicycle. The Sultan enters a palace guarded by four huge but effeminate black guards, and slams the doors in Willie’s face. The guards stand in front of the door, and dismiss Willie with the less-than threatening words, “Go ‘way, you.” But Willie falls back on an old stereotype gag to distract them – by producing a pair of dice, shaking them in his hand, and shouting, “Come on, seven”. Willie rolls his point, and all four guards dive for the dice in attempt to join the game. Willie calmly saunters into the palace unnoticed. (The snake never follows.) Inside, the Sultan seats himself on his pillowed throne, unwraps Mary, and orders her to dance. Mary does, as a slave beats out an exotic tom-tom rhythm on the super-jumbo pot belly of another slave instead of a drum. The Sultan busies himself with a hookah, which he fills with soap to use as a bubble pipe. Mary uses the opportunity to attempt to slip away, but is quickly returned at spear-point by two more palace guards. The Sultan offers her a banana, but she smashes it into the Sultan’s face.

Willie enters the throne room, and angrily tosses the gold sack at the Sultan’s belly. “Take back your filthy money”, he says. The Sultan just laughs, as the sack rebounds off his tummy, smacking Willie in the head. Now the Sultan blows a huge bubble from his hookah, which encases Willie and floats him up to the ceiling. There, Willie spots the sharp point of a spear facing upwards nearby. Running inside the bubble like a hamster wheel, Willie floats the bubble to the spear point, and pops it, landing atop the Sultan. Wille grabs the Sultan’s long beard, but the Sultan snaps it like a whip, flinging Willie into the next room, and into the midst of his harem girls. As with Flip, the sight of anything in pants prompts the girls to mob Willie with kisses. Willie, however, leaps out of the huddle – from the frying pan into the fire, running face-to-waist into two palace guards. Willie swings his fist high, socking each guard in the jaw, but having no effect upon them. Lifting a catch-phrase from Joe Penner, the guards respond in effeminate unison, “Oh, you nasty man.” Well, Willie can still cause pain, by instead kicking each guard in the shin. He returns to battle with the Sultan, giving him a few judo tosses, and twisting one of the Sultan’s ankles in a wrestling hold. The prone Sultan reaches for a summoning cord hanging from the ceiling, and pulls it several times, prompting a flock of guards to protect their ruler, entering from both sides of the room. Willie, faced with superior numbers, battles in two directions at once, by flinging the Sultan around himself in a circle, performing a feat that would become commonplace for Mighty Mouse in later years, knocking away both rows of savage guards with every revolution of the Sultan’s fatness.

Then, as the guards subside, Willie stops spinning, allowing the Sultan to fly straight away from centrifugal force. Willie holds on to the Sultan’s whiskers, which begin to break away, then send the Sultan into a top-spin as the last whiskers snap. The Sultan briefly transforms into a spinning barber pole, as various items of his clothing are thrown free of the spinning. As the Sultan crashes into a pillar, stopping his rotation, he is revealed to be none other than Mahatma Ghandi without his clothes and whiskers, and he shrugs his shoulders to the audience. Mary reappears, and poses to deliver to Willie a reward kiss. But the harem girls also reappear, doing all the kissing for her. Willie is left with a face full of lipstick marks, as the scene dissolves back to our schoolhouse, where Willie completes his story to Goofy with “…and was my face red.” But it gets even redder, as the old crone appears, peering behind Willie’s upturned textbook cover to find Willie loafing and daydreaming. She places a dunce cap on Willie’s head, and points for him to get busy with his reading. Willie gets back to his studies, while Goofy shares a derisive horse-laugh at him with the audience, for the iris out.

Wax Works (Lantz/Universal, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, 6/25/34) – This may rank as one of the most Gothic cartoons in the Oswald series – or perhaps anywhere, as it must be the only classic cartoon in which an innocent waif is painfully done in by monsters – at least in what is eventually revealed to be a dream, though making the moment no less unnerving. It also takes a place in cinema history as the first cartoon (and possibly predating any live-action film as well) in which a massed get-together of the famous Universal monsters – and even a few they didn’t own rights to – occurs. Not what we’ve come to expect from standard Oswald fare.

Inspired by Warner Brothers’ recent Technicolor hit, “Mystery of the Wax Museum” (the nearly-destroyed masterpiece that was later reworked into the 3-D remake, “House of Wax”), our scene is a wax museum run by Oswald, but after hours in the middle of the night. Amidst a storm, a bundle is left on Oswald’s doorstep by a mysterious cloaked figure, which Oswald discovers holds an abandoned waif needing caring for. In an unusually baritone voice, Oswald grumbles that they can’t make a fool out of him by dumping an infant into his lap, and is about to cast the kid outside, until the severity of the storm softens his heart, and he invites the kid back in. “Swell joint ya got here”, remarks the kid, as Oswald leads him through the museum hall to an upstairs apartment above, where Oswald shares his bed with the child for the night. In the wee small hours, the kid goes downstairs for a drink of water, then starts snooping around the museum displays.

The waif’s drop seat of his pajamas has fallen open (though we did not see him utilize the rest room for such purpose), and he approaches one of the statues with the request that someone “button him”. Unfortunately, the first statue he asks is Venus Di Milo, who gestures with her shoulders her inability to help him for lack of arms. The Thinker provides the necessary buttoning. Then the waif asks, “What’cha thinking about?” The statue replies he is thinking about everyone having fun, and invites the statues around him to wake up and join him. Nero stomps out a beat, and begins with a violin solo. Romeo and Juliet perform the balcony scene in an operatic mode, though disrupted by a Groucho Marx statue, who takes the girl for himself, and (in a terrible impression sounding nothing like him), quips, “Not tonight, Romeo.” Sally Rand (wearing underwear) performs a fan dance, while the waif comments that she’s got rhythm, and the Thinker adds, “Yowsaa!” Napoleon wanders after Sally, but is again intercepted by Groucho’s “Not tonight, Josephine”, causing Napoleon to deck Groucho and knock him cold.

But the real fun is yet to come. The waif ventures too near a door to the “Chamber of Horrors”, and is pulled inside by a hairy hand. The appendage belongs to the Hunchback of Notre Dame, who introduces a rogue’s gallery of villains – Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, and the Invisible Man (who wears a few garments suspended on nothing, so that we can keep track of where he is). For good measure, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde also makes an appearance, giving a nod to Paramount’s horror hit of a few years back, as well as Bluebeard. The waif snaps a stocking garter on the Invisible Man’s ankle to cause him pain, and makes a break for it, causing Mr. Invisible to rally the others to “Get him, boys.” The waif runs, a step ahead of the sinister clutching hands, and collides with a work table, upon which is a lit candle and a blow torch. The candle is knocked over, lighting the torch flame. Bluebeard approaches, but the boy turns the fire upon him, melting him into a pile of goo. The other monsters shudder in horror, and turn tail, as the boy pursues them with the flame. They pile up against a closed door, and form into a dog pile of scrambling limbs, resulting in an odd configuration where they are all spinning like the steps of a wheel, with the Mummy in the middle playing the role of a running hamster. The boy keeps the flame upon them, but they do not get enough of it to dissolve, because the Invisible Man creeps up behind the boy, and yanks the torch away, also grabbing up the boy by his pajama collar. Invisible has plans for the boy, mirroring the intentions of the mad wax-works operator in Warner’s feature – to dip the boy in boiling wax, and make him a statue. As the fiend tips a pot of the stuff to pour upon the boy, the camera cuts to Oswald’s bedroom, as a scream is heard offscreen. Oswald races to the source of the sound, to find the boy fully coated, and indeed turned into a statue! (It would seem quite doubtful that the Hays Office would have ever approved such a shot after code enforcement went into full effect – too horrific.) The Invisible Man appears again, and announces that Oswald will be next. Oswald is manacled to a table, and the Invisible Man again holds a container of the boiling goo above him to drop down upon his head. As Oswald struggles, the scene dissolves back to Oswald’s bedroom, where it turns out Oswald is dreaming, but a very similar situation is about to happen for real. The little boy holds a dripping wax candle over Oswald’s head, and the hot wax gives Oswald a mild burn on the forehead, sending him screaming and leaping into the air. The boy laughs at causing Oswald such a fright, then turns around to reveal his pajama drop seat is open again, and asks, “Button me up.”

Hot Sands (Terrytoons/Educational, 11/2/34 – Paul Terry/Frank Moser, dir.) – As if to make up for the previous disappointment that was “The Forty Thieves”, Terry decides to tell the story of Ali Baba the right way – sort of. By this time, Placide the mouse had been largely abandoned, and replacing him was a white puppy with one black ear. Though the puppy acts and talks for all intents and purposes like a human, he is in appearance a sort of predecessor for what would become the more truly-canine Puddy the Pup. For this performance, however, we’ll call the nameless pup Ali – for Ali Baba.

Ali makes his entrance riding a camel through the desert – a camel who is truly road-worthy, carrying automotive license plates on his neck and tail. The camel approaches a tall Arabic apartment tower, at the base of which is a watering pail and a water faucet mounted in the wall. Ali positions the camel next to the pail, and turns on the water. The scrawny camel bloats massively as he ingests the drinking water – then, his hump begins to rise like a hydraulic lift. Ali rides the hump up to one of the top story balconies, where he meets his lady love – a female pup, her face concealed by a veil. Ali calls her to the balcony, then plays a few notes of a tune on a small flute – at intervals, blowing under the girl’s veil, revealing her face momentarily, allowing him to steal two kisses. (Through she is a dog, she is not a “dog” as to looks.) Then, he and the girl descend upon the hump (how does it lower, unless the camel is taking a “leak” off camera?), and go joyriding upon the camel through the desert. They scale one side of a pyramid like steps, then the “stairs” retract on the opposite side, allowing them to slide smoothly back down.

Then, a foreboding sight fills the skies. A human bandit chief appears, riding a flying carpet, followed by a flying armada of thieves, riding in pairs atop more flying carpets. Ostriches on the desert below hide their heads on the sand, and the Sphinx runs away like a frightened puppy. Speaking of our pippy pair, they take refuge high in a palm tree, as the chieftain lands his carpet before the face of a rocky cliff. “Open sesame!” shouts the chief. With the sound of an oriental gong, a massive wooden door appears by cross-dissolve in the cliff face, opening like a portcullis to admit the chief, followed by eight of his thieves. The pups watch from outside, with no visible clue given as to what the thieves are doing inside, since they enter and exit carrying no spoils of their thievery. As the carpets and men fly away, the curious pups descend from the tree and approach the cliff. “Open sesame!” calls Ali, and the door reappears. Once inside, the door dissolves away, but the pups find themselves in a cave loaded with treasure. They use a wheelbarrow to load up on the stuff, the girl opening money sacks suspended from the ceiling with a pitchfork, depositing piles of gold coins within the cart. Returning to where the door was last seen, Ali again calls out the magic words. The doorway reappears – but the chieftain is standing right in it, a scimitar clutched in one hand. The pups and the bandit chief play a game of hopping in and out of various empty oil jars which seem to have no bottom and be interconnected by tunnels at the base (as seen when one jar is broken with a mallet slam by Ali, conking the bandit and revealing an empty hole in the ground below where the broken jar had been). Outside, the remaining thieves approach on their carpets. We see at least 16 in a flying shot, then 24 in a repeating cycle entering the cave. At least as many are seen inside in a running cycle, chasing the pups. Ali leads the thieves outside, where Ali’s camel has rejoined the action, and waits outside the door. The camel kicks like a mule, launching thief after thief across the desert to horizon. (Despite 24 pursuers, only seven are seen being kicked. Oh, well, at least the head count was higher in this cartoon than in the previous one.) Ali and the girl make an exit upon the camel, happily tossing gold coins into the air from a pile stacked atop the camel’s hump. (Since we never had verified proof in this version that the gold was stolen, are Ali and the girl really justified in stealing it themselves?)

Buddy of the Legion (Warner, Looney Tunes, 4/6/35 – Ben Hardaway, dir.) – It seems that during the 1930’s, Warner was the only cartoon studio with its eyes on the Foreign Legion as a source for plot material. However, this, their second Legion picture, takes some strange turns – especially as to whom the Legion is battling. Though the story-within-a-story takes place in the Middle East, there is not a single Arab to be seen.

The film opens in rather pedestrian fashion, with Buddy applying for a job as a helper at an old woman’s bookstore. He is left to mind the store and to stack books away on the shelves. The books squirt out from between his hands as he attempts to manage a tall stack with one lift, then a fly landing upon his nose causes the books to be scattered once again. As Buddy begins to pick them up, he becomes fascinated with a volume about the Foreign Legion. He envisions himself in one of the illustrations, at the head of a marching column of legionnaires on patrol through the desert. In their traveling, they pass close to the fortress of a society of Amazons. (Oddly, the cartoon sort of gets the locale right, as earliest Greek myths of Amazon women placed their point of origin as somewhere near Turkey.) Their leader is an overweight giantess of a woman, who delights in capturing legionnaires to use as slaves. Several previous male captives toil all day in washing out ladies’ unmentionable underwear, pumping water by marching on treadmills, and turning grinding stones, while the Amazon queen cracks a whip over them. Spotting the approaching column of more potential slaves, the Queen calls for the delivery to her of a mummy case. The occupant of the case, however, is very much alive, and seems to be the only genuine beauty among these women – of normal proportion, and shapely in all the right places. She apparently remains in the container just to keep her well preserved, as man-bait for any passers-by. The Queen sends her on a magic carpet out to where the troops are passing. Sure enough, everyone in Buddy’s column has his head turned at the sight of her dancing for them, and perform an about-face to follow her back to the gates of the Amazon fort.

Buddy is left marching all alone, giving orders to troops that aren’t there. Back at the fortress gate, every legionnaire who enters the walls receives a sock in the jaw from the Queen – even a legionnaire wearing glasses, which she removes before socking him. Buddy also enters in search of his troops, but, being so short compared to the others, causes the Queen’s punch to sail right over his head, her fist lodging in a hole she has punched in the wooden gate door. She also misses with a scimitar swing, cracking her blade upon the stone floor of the fortress. Buddy slips through a small hole in a wall, too small for the queen to fit through, and gets her stuck within, clamping down a gate upon her back to hold her. Other Amazons appear to chase Buddy, but Buddy dispatches them with a revolving well bucket, which knocks each Amazon over a fence as they appear one-by-one through an archway. All except the Queen, who makes a surprise reappearance from within the well, and gets a stranglehold on Buddy. But it is not the Queen who really holds him. It is the lady shopkeeper, shaking him awake from his Legion dream, and giving him the heave-ho out into the street. Buddy calmly accepts his loss of his position, bids the owner an “Okie Dokey”, and goes merrily on his way.

• “Buddy of the Legion” can be viewed online at dailymotion.com

Sinbad the Sailor (Ub Iwerks, ComiColor, 7/30/35) – The first of our subject titles to be produced in color (though it was not the first color Arabian Nights cartoon – Iwerks had already taken that honor the preceding year with his ComiColor version of “Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp” – outside this article’s purview, due to our “No genies” rule of limitation – see Part 1 of this article trail). This is a typically eccentric Iwerks take on the story, concentrating mostly on pirate action, with no particular acknowledgment of Arabian roots, and only one character aside from Sinbad deriving from his fabled adventures.

Sinbad sails the open seas, with no particular mission or destination indicated by the film – presumably, just out looking for adventure. He wears a large turban with a medallion embedded in its forward center. The medallion is actually a hatch door, as the hat is the abode of his unnamed parrot, who pops in and out whenever the whim possesses him, or whenever action is afoot and Sinbad needs an assist. Sinbad’s vessel carries at least a nine-man crew, and is equipped with a single mast with large square sail, and a figurehead resembling a sort of swan-neck. But he is not alone on the ocean. Another ship is sighted through his telescope, structured somewhat like an old Roman galley, with rows of long oars out its sides, a battering-ram bow, three masts with square sails of varying size, and bristling with bow and side cannons. Worst yet, it flies the traditional skull and crossbones flag. Pirates! Its captain and crew perform a verse of a modernized sea shanty: “We are Pirates of the Deep Blue Sea (Yo-Ho De Heidi-Ho!)” An obviously “gay” pirate repeats the line, only to get pinned to a cabin wall by daggers thrown at him by the others (a slight variation on a similar Disney gag, swiped by Iwerks from the preceding year’s Mickey Mouse, “Shanghaied”). Then the flag’s skull uses the hollow crossed bones below him as a pair of binoculars, spots Sinbad’s ship, and signals its presence to the Captain. The pirate ship puts on full oar power, and the Captain increases the ship’s speed by blowing his own strong gusts of wind into the mizzen sail (a trick Popeye would repeat years later in “Mutiny Ain’t Nice”). Sinbad’s ship reacts, its bird-like figurehead squawking, as the ship rises out of the water to reveal two giant bird’s legs emerging from its hull, allowing it to run with speed atop the water. The pirate crew begins to fire their cannons, including a large bow gun that droops like a withered flower after firing (looking like it stepped out of a standard Terrytoon arsenal), and a deck gun with a case of the stutters, that can’t say “Boom” until a pirate kicks it in the rear. (Ow, the pirate’s poor foot after kicking solid metal.) As the cannonballs fly over Sinbad’s head, Sinbad grabs a belaying pin, and begins batting the balls back at the pirates as if baseballs. He scores direct hits on the barrels of each of the cannon on one side of the pirate vessel, putting about half of the pirate weapons out of commission. But the pirate captain isn’t going to let this prize get away. He bends the points of an anchor in the opposite direction than normal, then flings the anchor and its chain at the stern of Sinbad’s ship. The anchor points act like pincers, clutching to Sinbad’s stern, as the figurehead bird lets out another squawk of surprise.

Sinbad’s ship is dragged backwards by the anchor chain, and the two vessels are brought alongside one another, as half of each crew board the opposing vessel and engage in hand-to-hand combat. One battle is a dead heat, as each clash of swords lops off an equal amount of blade from both weapons, until both swords are reduced to their hilts. The disgusted combatants throw the useless weapons away, and resort to their fists – but both land a sock on each other’s jaw, and simultaneously drop to the deck, down for the count. Sinbad takes shots from atop one mast at the pirate captain below, but the bullets do no more damage to the tough captain than to part open his shirt, revealing a tattoo of a topless mermaid on a rock, who, frightened by the shots, dives for cover into the tattooed ocean waves below her. (How inconsistent early censorship was, as this film appears to receive no cuts.) Sinbad’s parrot does battle in the rigging with the pirates’ parrot, until the pirate parrot removes a peg leg, to bop Sinbad’s bird over the head. Sinbad’s parrot recovers and retreats inside Sinbad’s turban, where he produces a pistol, and begins taking pot-shots at the pirate bird out of Sinbad’s hat-hatchway. The pirate bird ducks several times, then boasts, “Never touched me.” He spoke too soon, as the nest shot blasts him out of the rigging, and overboard with a splash. Finally, the captain seems to be the only pirate remaining aboard Sinbad’s ship, and Sinbad and nine crewmen approach him menacingly, swords drawn. Of course, put 10 cartoon sailors together, and they will inevitably line up in bowling-pin formation. So, grab a cannonball, and roll a strike. (Even Popeye would perform this feat, himself acting as the ball, in “Popeye Meets Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves”.) Sinbad’s entire crew is knocked overboard, leaving the sailor at the mercies of the captain.

Sinbad is forced to walk the plank, by the captain and what is left to regroup of the pirate crew (possibly the half of the crew that remained aboard the pirate vessel). With his hands bound, Sinbad drops to the ocean bottom. Sinbad’s parrot, however, is still inside the turban, and pops his head out, first to send a call for help to the surface in the form of popping bubbles, which emit his spoken words: “Man overboard! Heaven help the sailors on a night like this.” Receiving no response of rescue, the parrot swims out of the hat, and puts his beak to work, snipping Sinbad’s bonds. Sinbad is now able to swim to the surface (with the parrot hopping back into the turban), and pours on the speed in overhand swimming strokes that resemble two spinning paddlewheels, in search of the nearest shore. He finds one quite suddenly, paddling up the shore of a small palm tree island, and colliding headfirst with the trunk of one of its trees. Sitting at the foot of the tree in a daze, Sinbad hallucinates the images of three native female dancers performing a hula, each clad only in grass skirt and floral lei. (Another miss by the censors.) But their dancing tune slowly fades into a repeated vocal chorus of “We are Pirates of the Deep Blue Sea”, as Sinbad snaps out of it, and the girls fade from view. Sinbad climbs the tree to see where the singing is coming from, and spots the pirate crew on the other side of the island, hauling treasure ashore from their ship and digging holes in the sand in which to bury it. Sinbad tries to break up their little game, by hurling coconuts from the tree at their heads. But one “coconut” turs out to be the head of a gorilla, hiding in the palm fronds. The ape hurls Sinbad out of the tree, right into the center of the pirate party. “Give him the works”, orders the Captain, and Sinbad is quickly recaptured once again.

Sinbad is tied to what appears to be the trunk of another tree, while the Captain playfully takes swipes at his ducking head with a sword. However, the pirates are in for an unexpected surprise, as is Sinbad. They have not tied Sinbad to a tree, but to the leg of a sleeping giant bird creature – the fabled Roc. The angered bird kicks and flaps its wings at the scattering pirate crew, and breathes fire at the captain, while shaking one leg to see if it can get the bound Sinbad loose. Seeing no other available means of defense or offense, the captain picks up his treasure chest, and hurls it at the bird’s head. The bird is too quick for him, and catches the chest in its beak – then flies into the skies, taking away the treasure, and Sinbad too. How does Sinbad escape? Leave it to his parrot to again escape from the turban, cut Sinbad’s bonds again with its beak, then perform a “tail-spin” maneuver by biting onto the Roc’s tail, revving up his own tail like an outboard motor, and braiding the giant bird’s tail feathers until he cries out – causing him to drop the treasure chest. Sinbad falls through the skies, but his turban billows open like a parachute, allowing him to make a soft landing aboard the deck of his own ship. The parrot dives inside the turban fabric just before it retracts to normal size – then both of them are struck by the pirate sea chest, which bursts open, scattering gold and jewels around them. None the worse for the blow from the heavy chest, Sinbad, and the parrot from the turban, survey with wide eyes the wealth around them, with their eyes falling upon an added surprise within their riches – an expensive-looking box of cigars. They each decide to light up to celebrate their good fortune, Sinbad passing a stogie to his parrot while taking one himself. A lighted match, a few flavorful puffs, then BOOM! The cigars are nothing but novelty exploding fakes, as Sinbad finds his face charred black. The parrot laughs uproariously at the joke on Sinbad, forgetting that he has lit one up himself. BOOM! Sinbad has the last laugh, as the turban hat is reduced to a skeletal framework resembling a bird cage and perch, with the featherless parrot swinging on the perch trapeze, stewing over having never been so embarrassed in all his life.

Ali Baba (Ub Iwerks, ComiColor, 1/30/36) – Though it’s probably doubtful many audiences got to see this film, due to Iwerks having to arrange his own independent distribution, this cartoon seems to have had a particular influence on Max Fleischer, who would in the late part of the year launch into his own trilogy of Arabian Nights specials for Popeye – notably choosing the same three classic tales that the Iwerks studio chose as their subject matter. While Fleischer copied virtually nothing but the bowling pin gag from Iwerks’s unique slants on the stories of Sinbad and Aladdin, the number of similarities (and outright lifts) between “Ali Baba” and “Popeye Meets Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves” is a bit astounding, ruling out mere coincidence in creation. Though Iwerks was far from out of the business by the time of Fleischer’s Popeye “Color Feature”s, still doing work for hire for Warner and Columbia, Pat Powers, who probably largely controlled the film rights, was no longer in active production of Iwerks’s animation, so Fleischer may have felt quite safe in lifting material from Iwerks’s past films – especially in hopes that not many would have seen, let alone remembered, such works.

After a brief introductory night shot establishing the existence of the bandits’ cave (with the proper incantation of the magic words “Open sesame”), the bandits (nowhere near 40, but averaging in most sightings between 8 and two dozen) are seen galloping across the desert on camels. (Fleischer’s Bluto and his band would open their film in similar charge across the desert – though Max would choose fine Arabian horses for their steeds, given that, in reality, a camel is hardly to be known for maintaining any blinding speed). A holy man in a minaret observes their approach at break of dawn through binoculars, and shouts an alarm. (Fleischer would spread the alarm through a radio broadcast, since his story was cast in modern-day.) The bandits engage in an extended raid of the town, stealing or laying waste to virtually everything in their path at high speed. (Bluto’s horde would do the same.) One notable new gag has the thieves break open a bank in their passing. Each one of the thieves has a jolly time scooping up dollar bills left floating in the air currents as they charge on – with one bandit taking a different approach. His camel has a flip-top hump, in which he rides inside as if piloting a tank, popping the top to scoop up whole sacks of cash also being swept along in the bandits’ wake.

The bandits storm through the establishment of Ali Baba and Son – dealers in mugs and jugs. When they are through, nearly all of Ali’s wares have been stolen or smashed, excepting one large jug stuck upon Ali’s head, which his son gets off by cracking it open with a stone shot from a slingshot. Angry Ali grabs up Junior, determined to follow the thieves and recover his merchandise. So where do they go, but a combination rental agency and service station, dealing in used camels. The proprietor pops open one of the camel’s two humps, and pumps in a supply of water through a hose, gasoline gauges appearing in the camel’s eyes, progressing from “Empty” to “Full”. The camel then carries Ali and Son through the desert, its humps rising and falling like pistons. (Popeye would also rent a camel, pumping in water with a gas pump, giving readings increasing from 1 to 7 days, then have the same piston action from the humps. Of course, both of these films can trace such similar gags back to Mutt and Jeff’s “Mummy O’Mine”.) The bandits outrace Ali and Son to their secret cave, so that, when father and son finally arrive, following the bandits’ tracks, they are just in time to hear the call of “Open Sesame” from within the rock walls. Ali and Junior hide behind a boulder, and observe the bandits emerge from opening stone doors within the cliffside. Then, a call of “Close Sesame” shuts the doors, as the bandits leave for another crime spree. Ali and Son cautiously approach the cave doors, but Ali gives a signal to his Son that he is not worried, gesturing a message of “I got this.” “Open Sesame” shouts Ali. A pair of speaking lips appears across the doorway, inquiring, “Says-a who?” Not to be intimidated, Ali replies, “Yeah, sez’ me!” “Okay”, respond the doors, parting wide to admit them. (Popeye would paraphrase Ali’s line to get his spinach can to open, with the magic words “Open, sez’ me!”)

An interesting, and to modern audiences quite familiar, piece of special effects work occurs inside the cave. Virtually every open treasure chest within is bedecked with pearls and jewels that actually glitter in the light as if they were real. The reason is, they are real – or at least real-life paste jobs. Iwerks superimposes images of real three-dimensional model jewelry within the drawings of the cartoon chests and urns, with light on the live-action images provided from a moving source to create the glittering effect. (Fleischer would later duplicate the same creation of 3-D model jewels and changing lighting to produce glitter – but take it one better by also building an entire three-dimensional miniature set for Popeye to walk through, via the turntable camera.) Ali orders the doors to close behind them as they enter the cave, then he and his son begin filling up the legs of their trousers with all the coins and jewels they will hold. However, they are terrified by the gathering sounds outside of the returning thieves, about to make an entrance. Both of them try to run, but are unable to move their legs, which are entirely weighted down by the booty within their pantlegs. So, each tugs at the threads holding the seams of their trouser legs together, unravelling the fabric as if opening a zipper, and dumps out the stolen spoils back onto the floor. Then, they both race up a staircase to the highest point within the cave, where many large jugs (probably Ali’s own stolen from the marketplace) are stored, each of them diving inside of a jug to hide.

The bandits enter upon repeating the magic words, and each dumps a sack of newly-stolen loot into a metal vault for safekeeping as he passes. The bandit chief takes time out for a celebration, singing to his cronies “I’m a robber bold!” Junior, high above them, can’t resist taking pot-shots at the chief with his slingshot, which repeatedly ding the chief in the back of the head. Every time the chief feels a clunk on the noggin’, he turns and socks in the jaw the nearest bandit standing, assuming that each must have been the one who clunked him. Thus, a few thieves are placed out of the running. Ali peers out of his jug, and spots what Junior is doing. Ali grabs for the slingshot to stop him, but tips his jug too far, causing both jugs to collide, and roll together down the stairs. The jugs crash and crack at the foot of the stairs, revealing Ali and Junior right in front of the robbers. The bandits give chase. One good gag may have been remembered at another studio by Tex Avery, as a cross-eyed bandit attempts to fire a double-barreled shotgun at our heroes, but instead brings down from the sky (inside a cave?) about eight ducks – and a camel! (In “Porky’s Duck Hunt” (1937), a cross-eyed hunter would bring down two airplanes with a similar shot.) Ali and Junior run back up the stairs, and use the remaining jugs as weapons, bowling over thief after thief, and finally conking out the chief and his last gunman. With everyone temporarily unconscious, Ali and Junior begin carrying sacks of gold outside to load upon their camel. (One might ask, what happened to the bandits’ camels, who should have been easily up to the task of carrying away the same loot they carried in.) Piling everything on one camel is the straw that broke the camel’s back, and the beast collapses under the weight. So, the bandit chief, and eight of his thieves, are harnessed as beasts of burden, each toting a sack of stolen goods upon their back, and together dragging behind them the loaded camel, with Ali and Junior victoriously riding atop the camel’s back, for a closing of the storybook. (Nearly everyone will of course remember that Fleischer copied this exact ending for Popeye, although he was meticulous enough to not only have the gold and jewels depicted by another 3-D model, but to include all 40 thieves and Bluto in the harness!)

NEXT WEEK: We’ll get a dose of Fleischer’s answer to Iwerks, as well as more legion action – join us then!