Title Cards of 1939 in Review

As with yesterday's post, I present to you a compilation of all the title cards, as seen on this blog (I think). These each last for a second, tho, so you can see them much more clearly than any given image in yesterday's video, wherein each image lasted for about 1/10th of a second.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzIXz4mGBZw

A quick visual review of 1939

Here for your perusal I present screen caps of all the US theatrical shorts as they have appeared on this blog. I tried to remove all the other things, but I notice that I at the very least missed clearing out the Mickey Mouse Nabisco short. Think of it as A Clockwork Orange meets animation history. It'll be real horrorshow.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzIXz4mGBZw

155 Park Your Baby

Title: Park Your Baby
Studio: Columbia
Date: 12/22/39
Credits:
Story
Allen Rose
Music
Joe De Nat
Animation
Harry Love
Lou Lilly
Series: Scrappy
Running time (of viewed version): 6:04

Synopsis: Thug leaves kids with Scrappy, who is hassled by and then reforms them.


























Comments: This cartoon supposedly released on the same day as Gulliver's Travels. Only Columbia was brave enough to launch in the 6 days before and the six days after Gulliver, and they did it twice. Or maybe Guliver had no effect on shorts and it just happened that way. Great title painting and lettering. Deco in the cartoon, too, starting at the establishing external building shot. Pale background characters painted in in the quick pan. Screwy Squirrel style voice on the tough dad. The threatening guy and the hapless clerk setup feels more like a Porky Pig story than a Scrappy story. I'm not sure if the babies were doing sumo moves. Baby fight. For some reason, the department store has wooden siding and a backyard with a clothesline. Maybe they lifted the animation for the sequence from another cartoon, with its singing drying diapers? Scrappy's design is more modern looking than the Snooks kid in the last cartoon, but the tough's design is less modern than the dad's design from the last cartoon. Baby torture machine. The tough actually makes to physically attack Scrappy, who's still a little kid even if he's not a baby. On the other hand, it's the babies beating up Scrappy that make the cartoon good... The twinned motions aren't really a good idea. Scrappy cartoons sometimes feel like they're happening in a different city in the Popeye universe... The only thing to fear in Scrappy cartoons are the generic credit title cards; they always fill me with dread; but then I am pleased by the cartoon, so it works out. You just have to get by the opening...

154 Mother Goose In Swingtime

Title: Mother Goose In Swingtime
Studio: Columbia
Date: 12/18/39
Credits: -
Series: Color Rhapsody
Running time (of viewed version): 6:06

Synopsis: A kid gets her dad to tell her a story, which ends up being a musical number full of celebrities.



























Comments: An amazingly full cartoon, with lots of short shots, and each shot full of people I mostly can't identify but presumably a 1939 audience would have been able to. Baby Snooks style little girl, with her baby Edward G. Robinson voice. Her visual style is archaic compared to her dad, both are markedly different from the caricature style of most of the characters in the cartoon. Mother Goose has a very specific face, presumably a caricature, as the people in the land presumably also are. I think Martha Raye (as the main singer; thank you denture cream ads for helping me remember her and her big mouth) and Edward G Robinson, maybe James Cagney, but those are guesses amongst a sea of "who the hell is that supposed to be?". Cary Grant on trumpet? W.C. Fields maybe? Hugh Herbert (the woo hoo guy). Shirley Temple? Mickey Rooney (I only recognize him because the caricature is close to the one in Autograph Hound). Laurel and Hardy. Glasses with a clarinet; does that describe Woody Herman? Marx Brothers. There are obvious actors playing instruments, so this muddies ID. David Letterman and Bing Crosby and someone else (at least one of those IDs is wrong). Clark Gable. I think Jack Benny on violin, only guessing that because of the violin association. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing, I think. Red nose: "aw gee, tanks". Grumpy Bogart? I think Greta Garbo has closed eyes and an accent. Might be dancing with Leopold Stakowski? Katherine Hepburn singing Little Jack Horner. Horner himself is Fred Allen or that guy who is like Fred Allen maybe? Bunch of wall eyed female caricatures. Virtually nothing to do with Mother Goose in this cartoon, thus successfully ditching the title character in classic '39 style. Someone (not me) should do a blog identifying all celebrity caricatures from cartoons. I think this is the most interesting of the celebrity cartoons of the year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBx-u6eXasc