Title: Jitterbug Knights
Studio: Columbia
Date: 8/11/39
Credits: None on viewed print
Series: Color Rhapsodies
Running time (of viewed version): 7:00
Synopsis: A prince is born, and people jitterbug.
Comments: More Wolverton looking people; well at least one guy is. Nice lettering in this cartoon. An heir to the throne is born and three fairies are invited... sound familiar? Incidentally, the baby is balding, jowly and big nosed; I think Fudd was just born here. "His Best Friend Won't Tell Him" is an ad slogan. The dancing isn't as smooth as in the Lantz jitterbugs; it's more cartoony and fluid, and doesn't look uncanny like the Lantz entries. The short is also not crippled by being an obvious gag bucket. The fairies names are Mabel, Ann and Toots, but they seem to wear trousers and look like little boys. I'm not sure what to think. The fairies are a holdover of the old cute style; everyone else is more cartoony. The prince sounds like Screwy Squirrel. The cartoon suffers from too many perfectly symmetrical compositions. Race minus: two black guys are playing dice; Race plus: they're knights. An interesting amalgam of people run back into the hall. I wonder if they were in-studio caricatures.
The guy who gets the "His best friend won't tell him" sign reminds me a LOT of Gabby from "Gulliver's Travels." Wonder if one of the Columbia animators who worked on this film went down to Miami.
ReplyDeleteI would guess it was just parallel evolution. If anything, Columbia had more of a history of that style of character design in '39 cartoons than Fleischer did.
ReplyDeleteSame old stereotypical garbage.
ReplyDeleteSame old stereotypical garbage.
ReplyDelete