A blog reviewing all the available American animated cartoons of 1939, in approximately release order (or reverse order from the perspective of someone reading the blog after it is done).
Sunday, March 21, 2010
037 The Nutty Network
Title: The Nutty Network
Studio: Terry
Date: 3/24/39
Credits:
Story by
JOHN FOSTER
Directed by MANNIE DAVIS
Music by
PHILIP A. SCHEIB
Series:
Running time (of viewed version): 6:51
Synopsis: Monkeys broadcast in bandstand form, then switch to their "the moon men are coming" spiel; the king lion fights phantoms, calls the monkeys to task and visits the moon himself.
Comments: Presumably this was based on the Orson Welles's Mercury Theater War of the Worlds broadcast from October '38.
http://www.archive.org/details/OrsonWellesMrBruns
The hallucinated moon men the king sees look great (except to the extent the print makes them unviewable, which happens a fair amount). The opening music is also quite good. The thrown brown items look like feces again, just like in the Owl and the Pussycat, tho here they are explicitly nuts. For some reason the monkeys seem to be tossing them in perfect harmony, which doesn't exactly look good on screen. Yet more silhouettes; it's practically a trope. I'm not sure if the parachuting gingerbread men are a novelty available at the time. The lispy lion would be used again in The Wizard of Oz. This one's a little more Paul Lynde, tho.
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