
The Van Beuren Studio’s cartoons, while pretty scrappy (with a lower ’s’!), have enjoyed a little bit better of a shake in more recent years, thanks to the internet and home video releases. A Little Bird Told Me (1934), along with the other two ‘Toddle Tales’ that Van Beuren produced that year, have always been favorites of mine for their strangeness and appeal.
In this live action-framed cartoon, Bobby’s big sister (unnamed) finds her little brother has broken into the world’s largest jar of jam. Bobby, who is nearly outperformed in his overacting by his sister, wonders how his big sister knew he was in the jam. She explains that “A little bird told me” and, with that statement, somehow an animated little bird shows up at their window, telling them an animated story explaining how reporters at the Birdland Daily Bugle reported on it. It’s a cute little film, featuring animation by Jim Tyer, who receives co-director credit.
The three b/w ‘Toddle Tales’ shorts, all produced in 1934, are the first films under the new directorial leadership of Burt Gillett, fresh from Disney. Immediately the technical and artistic qualities of the films get an upgrade, and one has to wonder how long the ramp-up took after Gillette’s arrival. Along Came a Duck appears to be the first produced in the series, with the animation layout and production qualities closer to the pre-Gillett shorts.
The background layout and painting is especially nice in “Bird” and Grandfather’s Clock, along with an improved quality of animation. Inking and painting is also very nice. Clearly there is great effort to make this film and the others a quality product. In this film, Winston Sharples’ score is breezy and enjoyable, with particular attention paid to synchronization throughout.
I’ve always wondered if there’s any way to find out who the uncredited child actors are in this film, and the other Toddle Tales. The child who plays Bobby returns in the later color Rainbow Parade short Spinning Mice (1935), and the kitchen that appears in The Picnic Panic seems to be the same one in “A Little Bird Told Me”. These two color films were clearly originally meant to be part of the Toddle Tales series, and were repurposed as Rainbow Parade releases. I wonder if these were children of people that worked at the studio, or if they were kid actors in New York stage or radio. Does anyone recognize them from anything else?
Back in 2014, we did a post here about A Little Bird Told Me (1934), and at that time I was debating doing an HD scan to upgrade the film. We did of course eventually!
Film collector friend Ralph Celentano was nice enough to sell his nice old original film print of the title, so the newer HD scan we’ve done of the film was from his print. We cleaned this up for the ‘Rainbow Parades, volume 1’ Blu-ray. We’re working hard right now on volume 2 right now.
Have a good week all!
A little bird didn’t need to tell Sis that Bobby had gotten into the jam. His handprint was on the refrigerator door, and the stuff was all over his face. The jam jar looks like a ceramic cookie jar my family had when I was little, though ours had a picture of a windmill on it.
Certainly the animation here represents a huge improvement for the Van Beuren studio: not nearly up to the Disney standard, but leaps and bounds ahead of what Terry was putting out in 1934. On the other hand, Burt Gillett’s habit of timing absolutely everything to an inflexible musical beat, criticised by Disney colleagues like Eric Larson and Jack Kinney, gives the little bird’s vocal delivery a weird and unnatural quality, and not even a particularly musical one. Gillett may have been the kick in the pants Van Beuren needed at the time, but by all accounts he made the place a very stressful place to work.
There are a lot of funny moments in this cartoon. I love the statue of a buckskin-clad bird with a feathered headdress and tomahawk outside the cigar store. The ultraconservative editor, stubbornly persisting to write with a quill pen even when his staff have been equipped with newfangled typewriters, just kills me; I imagine he’s scribbling an editorial furiously denouncing the radicalism of every U.S. president since Chester A. Arthur. But the funniest thing of all is the conceit that little birds would take an interest if a little boy ate jam out of the jar.
It would be nice to know who those children were, what they did with their lives, and whether they’re still with us as nonagenarians. But that information, like the identity of every single actor who ever provided voices for the Van Beuren cartoons, may unfortunately be lost to time. I think it’s a safe bet, however, that these kids weren’t professional actors on the New York stage. Their performances are simply too unaffected — and that, right there, might just be the most appealing thing about this film.
It is possible that this cartoon may have been run as part of my enjoyment of early morning animated cartoons on local television back in the day, that is during the 1960s. Oh, there was so much on our major networks back then! You’d be hard-pressed to find any classic animation on mainstream television that early in the morning anymore that’s for sure! Thank you for this offering again, and good luck on more cool Blu-ray releases!
The name Toddle Tales is intriguing because it seems like an explicit identification of the series as being for small children – I’ve always wondered the dichotomy of which shorts were considered exclusively children’s shorts and which shorts were considered general audience shorts in the theatrical days. We know Disney, WB, and MGM were played in front of general audiences but what about stuff from the other studios?
Interesting question. All cartoons back then were aimed at the general movie-going population – which was essentially people of ALL ages: kids and adults. The “Toddle” aspect of this short-lived series was in line with other kids-centric (live action) series – think ‘Our Gang’ in particular, but lesser known ones today like ‘Baby Burlesks’, Mickey McGuire, etc. Educational started a ‘Cabin Kids’ series in 1935. The cartoon itself was certainly aimed towards the grown ups with its ‘Walter Winchell’ reference and the whole newspaper production spoof…
Don’t take the series title too literally – otherwise the next thing you know, you’ll assume the MGM ‘Dogville’ shorts were aimed… at dogs!
“The RKO Newsette” for Sept. 1, 1934, a four-page handout distributed by neighborhood RKO theaters, claimed “the Van Beuren ‘Toddle Tale’ unit returned from a three-day visit to Westchester County on location where outdoor scenes were shot for ‘A Little Bird Told Me.’” Of course, this is nonsense—the only “Toddle Tale” to have any outdoor footage was “Along Came a Duck,” and even that wouldn’t have taken three days unless the weather was unfavorable the first two—but it’s indicative of the many ways major studios got the name of forthcoming product out before the public.
One shame about the “Newsette” is they give the feature program for the participating RKO Theater (in this case, the Oprheum, NYC,) but don’t mention short subjects. A handout I bought at the same time for the Forum Theater in the Bronx, one week starting April 27, 1935, not only lists multiple shorts for each program, but also says:
“Special Stage Attraction—Monday, April 21 (Aft. Only)–Max Fleischer presents BETTY BOOP’S ARTIST (In Person)—See Miss COMANOR draw all the Famous Cartoon Characters with lightning speed—Popeye, Mickey Mouse and etc.”
An ad reprinted in Cabarga’s book identifies her full name as “Pauline Comanor.” “Red Hot Mama” is being shown in conjunction with her appearance, but otherwise they’re showing “Buddy’s Adventures” instead.
I believe the little bird was voiced / tweeted by NYC “bird lady” Virginia Belmont. Here is a 1970s album of hers (“the only record of its kind”) for comparison. https://moaph.org/article-archives/virginia-belmonts-famous-singing-and-talking-birds/
Virginia Belmont was the daughter-in-law of singer and bird impressionist Joe Belmont, a popular theatre performer and recording artist from the 1890s onward, known as “The Human Bird.” In the 1920s he had a trained bird act in the Ziegfeld Follies called the Belmont Canary Opera; Virginia, a dancer in the Follies, assisted Belmont in the act and later married his son Walter. In 1935 they opened a bird store in Rockefeller Center; Joe died in 1949, but Virginia and Walter continued to operate the store into the 1980s.