013 My Friend the Monkey

Title: My Friend the Monkey
Studio: Fleischer
Date: 1/27/39
Credits:
Series: Betty Boop /Pudgy (?)
Running time (of viewed version): 6:13
Synopsis: Betty is enticed by an organ grinder's monkey, who fights with her dog Pudgy while she buys the monkey from the grinder.














Comments: Betty calls the monkey a jittermonk, in keeping with the overall jitterbug character of the cartoons of the time (I think I forgot to mention a passing reference in another cartoon to the fad already). Man, these Mill Creek 600 discs make my drives want to die. Most of the drives fail to read them. I need to use an external HD-DVD drive to get it to work on a computer, and it still sounds like it's going to explode. Remember kids, monkeys do not make good pets. In some ways this is trying to do what Krazy's Bear Tale was; namely, trying to ditch the series anchor (Betty), tho with much more of her than Krazy on screen (it opens with a shot of her walking fro behind, wink wink nudge nudge); . On the other hand, here they were trying to replace her with Pudgy instead of no one, and the cartoon didn't out and out suck. Tho Pudgy is inherently terrible. Kinda the "Bimbo Babies" approach. This is one of three Fleischer cartoons released over a two day period; all three had recurring characters. Two of the three had big head young animal protagonists; I wonder why they didn't put Sweet pea in the Popeye and make for the trifecta... Another odd thing; no more Fleischer cartoons for more than two months; then two in eight days, one of those being the two reel Popeye Aladdin.

012 Customers Wanted

Title: Customers Wanted
Studio: Fleischer
Date: 1/27/39
Credits:
DIRECTED BY
DAVE FLEISCHER
ANIMATED BY
SEYMOUR KNEITEL and WILLIAM HENNING
Series: Popeye
Running time (of viewed version): 7:09
Synopsis: Penny arcade operators Popeye and Bluto try to entice Wimpy to watch their animated flip machines.














Comments: I dislike this era of Bluto's voice (like Moose from Archie...). Great, another year of it. I like Wimpy's tho. The Fleischers didn't have the most inventive title system. And we luck into a clip show as the first Popeye of the year. That was sarcasm. Even tho the bits are supposed to be good (and they're fine), it's not exactly a regular episode, and clip shows are notoriously bad. They didn't chap out here tho. It seems like the effort of controlling the visuals for the machines and rerecording the audio (right?) to match the old animation would nullify the benefits of having a cheater. The Coney Island backgrounds look great, too. Check out the apparent super gigantism of Popeye's arm in the rear shot screencap. This is one of two Fleischer cartoons released on this day, and one of three released in the week. Odd pattern, that.

011 Krazy's Bear Tale

Title: Krazy's Bear Tale
Studio: Columbia
Date: 1/27/39
Credits:
Story
Allen Rose
Music
Joe De Nat
Animation
Harry Love
Lou Lilly
Series: Krazy Kat (?)
Running time (of viewed version): 7:10
Synopsis: Krazy Kat (imitating Fred Allen; at least I think it's an imitation) narrates a version of Goldilocks and the Three bears. She ends up staying with them at the end.















Comments: THe ugliest cartoon of the year so far (tho I' not sure I'd say it's the worst so far). Krazy shows up animated for all of 11 seconds standing in front of a microphone. Guess the boys at Screen Gems weren't allowed to not make Krazy Kat kartoons, but no one cared if they more or less ignored him in the cartoon; they also seem to have not cared if the cartoon was bad. I assume Krazy wasn't always in an Allen voice, but time will tell. Allen was notoriously squinty, and the screencap of Krazy I chose is squinty, tho I may be overstating the case with the chosen image as it is not really representative of the overall scene. The papa bear has the funniest vocalizations, really. The narration largely just sits there, presumably trying to be funny simply based on association with the voice. There's a bit with a glamourous brunette who's in the wrong picture; can anyone ID who it's supposed to be (it's almost certainly supposed to be someone, presumably a Columbia actress). Goldilocks kinda looks like Winston Churchill. They simply reverse the animation for the return of the three bears. Just plain talking backwards through magically opening doors. Papa bear's eyes are very weirdly placed from side shots. Papa learns mama is knocked up during the cartoon... Goldilocks sits there with her mouth in a locked open position after discovery as if she is physically incapable of breathing through her nose. Tell me if you can figure out what the roof in the post-discovery shot (second screencap from the bottom) is supposed to be doing. It's consistent with earlier shots of the house, but I don't know what it means...

010 Always Kickin'

Title: Always Kickin'
Studio: Fleischer
Date: 1/26/39
Credits:
Direction:
Dave Fleischer
Animation:
Myron Waldman
Arnold Gillespie
Series: Color CLassic
Running time (of viewed version): 7:11
Synopsis: Young donkey Spunky doesn't want to engage in donkeycise, befriends some birds who are mean to him, and in battling a vulture learns the valuable lesson that he should always be donkeycisen'.











Comments: Hunky and Spunky sound like apes. I'm going to have a fair amount of artefacting on the non Popeye Fleischers, as they're coming from PD comps. Spunky's head is massive, bigger than his body. Why would a vulture (that looks a lot like Spunky, really) tie up a smaller bird? To sacrifice the bird to the vulture god? To pander to the nascent bondage crowd? I can't believe this is the sequel to an Oscar nominated cartoon. There was almost nothing to put into the synopsis. Maybe it's the terrible colors in the print, but this just feels worse than it probably objectively is. And why does the music sound like a '50s Famous Popeye piece? Maybe I'll be surprised and find the contemporary Popeyes sound like this...

Note that this cartoon is in the midst of an extremely busy week. In the period of Monday, January 23 to Saturday, January 28, the majors released 10 cartoons, compared to 7 in the preceding three full weeks of the new year.

009 Peaceful Neighbors

Title: Peaceful Neighbors
Studio: Columbia
Date: 1/26/39
Credits: None on print
Series: Color Rhapsody (on end titles)
Running time (of viewed version): 7:50
Synopsis: Chickens are at war; one side sends out a suicide bomber; his bomb fails and the other side beats him to death; doves sabotage the weapons; the roosters flirt with each other and the war is over.




















Comments: Those roosters sound a lot like Nixon at the beginning; you can hear him waggling his jowls and providing the voice for "Something's got to be done". I guess it saves a lot of effort in your crowd scenes when you have identical sides doing the exact same things over and over again. The head dove looks like Nero. Interesting to see viciously ugly doves, compared to cute little war mongering chicks. The conflict ends with neither side winning more space; they must have killed enough of the chicks to alleviate the overcrowding. Not many cartoons nowadays would have suicide bombers in them...