Countdown to Halloween: The Ghost Town (1944)

The Ghost Town (Terrytoons, 1944)
Dir.: Mannie Davis
TC4P Rating: 6/9

I first ran into the Terrytoons cartoon team Gandy Goose and Sourpuss sometime before I was ten. Fiddling around with the UHF channels on a whim one day – while also adjusting the rabbit ears on top of the old school black and white television we owned, and yes, those rabbit ears had big tinfoil flags wrapped onto them – I ran across a Heckle and Jeckle cartoon. I had seen one of their cartoons before, so there was nothing remarkable about the discovery except that I had found them in a previously unknown location. I don't even remember which short it was except that they were in a hotel room (I never saw the title at the beginning of the film). Time and overfamiliarity with the characters has wiped away the memory of that scene, but another cartoon came on next featuring Mighty Mouse. It was the one where he fights a big bad wolf (the cartoon is named Wolf! Wolf! in most versions) and saves the mice as he usually does. Once again, I knew who Mighty Mouse was (mostly from comic books), and so apart from the joy of finding a new cartoon to watch, the moment was just what it was.

And then I met Gandy Goose and Sourpuss. The next short was a cartoon in which a goofy looking bird with a large beak and a cranky mostly black cat were dressed as soldiers fighting in World War II. Years later, actually having remembered scenes from it (in a marked difference from the Heckle and Jeckle short), I discovered the title of the cartoon was Scrap for Victory. As I had not seen Disney's version of Alice in Wonderland quite yet (I would see it first in 1974), I did not know who Ed Wynn was yet, so I had no way of connecting Gandy Goose's similar voice to the great comic actor. But Jimmy Durante I did know, and so it was easy to equate him with Sourpuss the Cat's rough, New York accented voice. I thought the cartoon was pretty swell, but then again, I like nearly every cartoon at that age. When the Gandy and Sourpuss cartoon was over, the cartoons went away. The station switched to an old movie that we chose not to watch, and so we switched the TV back to a regular channel.

The reason I remembered Gandy and Sourpuss so vividly over Heckle and Jeckle – even though I like the talking magpies (who look more like crows) a lot more – is because Heckle and Jeckle were a regular part of my youth in my teens, with Filmation producing a new Saturday morning show in which they co-starred with Mighty Mouse. As a result, my memories of H&J were largely built around that show's version of them, while my only memories of the other team were from that single cartoon showing on UHF a few years earlier.

It would be about 15 years between that UHF viewing and my next meeting with Gandy and Sourpuss, when a couple of their shorts would get played on a different UHF channel airing in Anchorage, Alaska (in a studio not far down the road from where I lived too) called The Cartoon Channel, the first such station in the country (predating Cartoon Network by a few years). Most of the cartoons on the station were of the public domain sort, but they did have some sort of Hanna-Barbera package (The Funtastic World of...) that allowed them to show Space Ghost, Frankenstein Jr, the Herculoids, Jonny Quest, and many other HB adventure cartoons, along with the Blue Ribbon versions of many Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts. In this mix came a handful of Terrytoons, including Gandy and Sourpuss.

Today, I am far more familiar with the pair. While there has never been a major, authorized VHS or DVD release of the Terrytoons catalogue, one can find a wide selection of their cartoons on YouTube. I have more than caught up with the weird goose-and-cat team, and they have become a regular part of my cartoon viewing. I will admit that they are not favorites of my mine; like many later Terrytoons series, I find their cartoons a little too rote and unimaginative for me, and I tire of their recycled antics pretty quickly. That is not to say that every once in a while I might find a cartoon short that has just a little bit extra contained within it, sometimes in rather shocking ways. The Ghost Town, a Gandy Goose and Sourpuss short from 1944, directed by Terrytoons' mainstay Mannie Davis, is one such cartoon.

The credits for The Ghost Town feature a music credit for Terrytoons regular composer Philip A. Scheib, but as xylophones tinkle up and down the scale and the music lurches along, there seems to be a trace of another song in the opening theme. I detect a bit of Mendelssohn's The Hebrides Overture (aka Fingal's Cave) in there, but in a jazzed up, quicker paced way. Of course, when I "detect" it, I do not do so with any massive knowledge of classical music, where I can dip easily into my memory archives and bring up the exact composer and his life history in a moment's notice. What I actually did was say "Oh, that reminds me of... Chuck Jones' Mynah Bird!" (Because I really did, like many people of my generation, learn all about classical music from Looney Tunes and Walt Disney...)

Mendelssohn or not, I really like the opening theme to this cartoon, which informs me right away that I am up for some spooky hijinks. Following the credits, we see some rather odd-looking cacti in a desert. Each cactus has a face, which when combined with a cactus' normal outstretched limbs, lends the plants a rather human quality, like the faces and arms of people who have been frozen in place. The camera tracks across the desert briefly and stops on a small mound, empty at first until what seems like the ghost of a wolf materializes for a quick second or three to howl loudly before disappearing from view.

A male chorus begins to sing on the soundtrack as the camera starts to pan left again, and as they sing, we see cactus after cactus, each one bearing an oddly grimacing human face...

"It's Ghost Town!
It's Ghost Town!
Ghosts are lurking everywhere...!"

The camera leaves the cacti behind to show us the houses of the ghost town. The buildings, like the cacti, also seem to have very human eyes, along with noses and mouths designed and built right into their structure. Traditional "white sheet"-style ghosts fly through the air and in and around the houses as the film and its song continue, with the singers pausing for dramatic effect sometimes between words...

"...Waiting for some
poor, wretched victim
that...
they...
can scare!"

The camera stops at a sign at the front of the town, which consists of a ragged, tattered banner that says "Ghost Town Welcome" strung atop two long poles. A goofy looking, gap-toothed ghost wearing a derby hat flies at the camera and giggles, sticking a finger in each ear and waving the rest of his fingers while he does. The chorus continues with the song...

"In Ghost Town
In Ghost Town
Something's doing every night!
Hear that moaning!
What is that awful groaning?
It's the spooks,
the spooks,
of old Ghost Town!"

As the song concludes, we end up inside of Ghost Town Bar, where we see that the voices of the chorus belong to three beer-drinking ghosts, two of them wearing cowboy hats. The cowboy ghosts are leaning against the saloon bar while a bartender ghost (who is also singing) sways along with them. When the song stops, all four ghosts crane their necks towards the camera and say in unison, "Boo!"

At a nearby pool table, a skeleton is seen readying his next shot. Eyeing the table, he pulls his right leg off his body and uses it as a bridge stick to sink a red ball in the far corner pocket. He pops his leg back into place and walks to the other side of the table. Smacking the cue ball as hard as he can, the skeleton causes all of the balls on the table to clatter and rebound over and over again against each other loudly. Perhaps in recognition of his own abilities, the skeleton turns away from the table immediately after taking his shot, and racks his cue and leaves the room while the balls are still falling into each pocket, including the cue ball.

A rowboat with a single determined ghost bearing oars comes gliding across the room through the air. The chorus (unseen) sing "Row Row Row Your Boat" as he does. At a slot machine, a gentlemanly ghost wearing a fine purple suit, a top hat, and boots with spurs – but with no visible body at all – drops in a coin and pulls the lever. He gets nothing, so tries another coin and pulls again.

There is a wipe upward and the scene changes to a trio of skeletons seated on a bench all looking to the right. Suddenly, they all look straight forward, and then a pair of ghostly hands reach into the frame and pulls the head off the first skeleton. Once the head is removed, the skeletons all reach to their left and pull the head off the next skeleton and place it atop their own bodies. (There is a presumed fourth skeleton offscreen, as the third one is able to replace his head as well...) We then see the ghost standing with the first skeleton's head in his hands as he prepares to use it as a bowling ball. He bowls a strike (unseen) and then reaches over to grab another skeleton head. He bowls again, and this time we see the group of ten long bones that are being used for pins. He clears the pins again, and the head he used as a ball lands on the alley and handily yells, "Strike!"

Back out in the desert, from a distance we see two lowly characters riding on horseback. With a closer look, we see the cat Sourpuss and his friend Gandy Goose (who is wearing a giant backpack) looking not all that comfortable while the horse underneath them seems to be on its last legs. The horse's tongue sticks out of his mouth from thirst, and the poor old nag trudges through the desert with very little energy, while ghosts zips under and around its body. Sourpuss says to Gandy, "Listen! How far is this ghost town you're talkin' about? I'm gettin' hungry!" Suddenly, a ghost vulture fades into view on top of the pick strapped onto Gandy's backpack and says, "I'm getting hungry, too!"

Sourpuss and the horse turn to look at the vulture, but Gandy only looks behind himself and doesn't see the ghostly bird. The horse screams a loud whinny, and Sourpuss ends up eye to eye with the vulture. The horse runs away, sending Gandy and the vulture tumbling to the ground, where they too end up eye to eye. The vulture raises his wings in attack and dangles his tongue as Gandy steps backwards to match the carrion eater's approach. But Gandy thinks quickly and pulls out his pick and chases after the much bigger bird, taking swipe after swipe at him with the pick. The vulture mysteriously disappears and Gandy falls onto the dirt.

Gandy runs up to Sourpuss, who is standing next to a signpost with a pointing board that reads "Ghost Town 1 Mi." On top of the signpost is a single skeleton head with a wide grimace that is missing some teeth. Gandy tries to point Sourpuss' attention to the vulture, but the skeleton head laughs maniacally and deep. Gandy asks, "What's he laughing at?" but then the sign stretches out further to point the direction to the ghost town. The pair then turn to see the vulture leaning nonchalantly against a cactus while picks his teeth. There are four horseshoes left lying on the ground. "Where's my horse?" demands Sourpuss, but the vulture just whinnies in smirking reply. The big bird pushes against Sourpuss' hands with his beak and head as the cat throws out his hands to fend off the creep. Finally, Sourpuss turns and runs, joined by Gandy, and they both reach the door of the saloon in the ghost town (that is supposed to be a mile away) in what must be record time. They slam the saloon door shut behind them, and the vulture runs straight into it. Ending up sprawled out on the ground, the vulture then dematerializes.

Inside the seemingly empty saloon, Gandy Goose yells out, "Is anybody here?" and then scores of ghostly voices yell back, "NO!!" This frightens Sourpuss enough that he crashes through the wall of the saloon and hides outside. He finally works up enough courage to look back through a set of swinging doors, where he sees Gandy watching a cowboy ghost twirling a lasso. The singing ghosts pick up their original song where they left off earlier...

"In Ghost Town,
In Ghost Town,
Something's doing every night!
So take warning,
Stay away until it's morning!
Watch out for spooks,
the spooks of ol' Ghost Town!"

Through the song, the lasso ghost performs variations on traditional rope tricks, only with a ghostly twist, like having his body disappear gradually as the loop moves up and down over him. Finally, he throws the rope into a circle that he dives through and disappears. The rope continues twirling, so Sourpuss tries to leap through as well, but the rope transforms into a big tub of water at the last second, and the cat ends up completely drenched. Gandy laughs at his partner's misfortune, but then gunfire is heard. The pair flee for safety as a ghost cowboy riding a ghost horse rides inside the saloon to shoot up the place. He and the horse pose for a second before they ride up to the second floor, continue to shoot along the way.

Sourpuss carefully makes his way along the wall of a hallway, but he is distracted by the sound of a ghost playing ragtime piano. He runs into the room, where he sees the piano player ghost seated there. A large, mostly intangible mug of beer sits atop the piano. Another ghost materializes and starts singing...

"Every ghost can boast
from coast to coast
what he likes to be most
is a ghost."

Another ghost appears in a lounging position on top of the piano and picks up the next verse...

"How he laughs at life
with all its strife
and he's glad that he's
just a ghost!"

The first singing ghost, now wearing a dickey like a butler, walks through a door back into the room. He pulls out a small platter from behind his back with a heaping pile of butter on it, and another larger platter with an entire cooked turkey with all the trimmings. He sings...

"He can play the host,
serve butter on toast.
and a nice big ten pound roast!"

The second ghost is now on the floor and takes over the verse, adding a World War II era reference to boot...

"And do it every day,
no ration points to pay...

And then both ghosts join together and sing "He is just a ghost!" to conclude the song. During the finale, the piano player ghost grabs his mug of beer and downs it in a huge chug. The beer fills up his entire body from feet to chest, and he hiccups with delight.

Sourpuss has been watching the entire song from behind the piano, and at its conclusion he turns about and is flabbergasted, and rather envious to boot, to see his pal Gandy cutting a rug on the dance floor with a rather shapely female cat. She is dressed like a cowgirl, but is very clearly a ghost from the fact that she is translucent like the other ghosts. Sourpuss, naturally, wants to cut in on this action, and so he steps up to the pair and moves Gandy bodily out of the way. He bows to the cat-girl ghost and takes her arm to kiss all the way up it, but she turns into one of the regular ghosts as his lips reach hers. After the last kiss, Sourpuss opens his eyes, and is shocked to see he has kissed a guy ghost instead.

He paces backwards, but the ghost matches him step for step, looking Sourpuss right in the eyes. Sourpuss turns to run and the ghost chases after him, firing two six-shooters in the air as they do. Luckily for Sourpuss, he ducks behind a corner and the ghost keeps running.

Meanwhile, Gandy has found the one-armed bandit that the gentleman ghost was having no luck with earlier. He pulls the handle and comes up empty. However, he tries it again, and this time three lemons come up on the wheels. Sourpuss holds open a large bag as a shower of gold coins come spitting out of the machine. Gandy yells "Gold!" at his success. They tie the bag up and attempt to make their retreat, but a pair of ghosts block them in every direction. The buddies make a run for it, with the ghosts giving hot pursuit, with even the rowboat ghost seen earlier (along with another Indian ghost in a canoe) joining in the chase.

Sourpuss and Gandy run all over the saloon environs trying to find a way past their ghostly tormentors. At last, they zip behind a door and all of the spooks run outside the saloon. Sourpuss closes the door and the pair head to another exit, where they find a ghost horse waiting. Sourpuss, bearing the large sack of gold, jumps onto the horse's back, and is soon joined by Gandy. The horse takes off with lightning speed, but soon enough, the steed dematerializes and they are shown to be riding along in midair without assistance. Unfortunately for them, they crash into a tall cactus and fall hard to the desert floor. Still, they have their bag of gold and decide to open it to look at their treasure. However, when the bag is untied, they only find the ghostly vulture. They start running again, as the ghost chorus starts singing...

"Ghost Town!
Ghost Town!
Oooo-oooo-oooo-oooo!
So take care.
Ghost Town everywhere!"

Sourpuss and Gandy run off over the desert hills into the horizon, followed by the vulture flying after them. The film fades to black, but over the normal Terrytoons closing card, the three cowboy ghosts appear and thrust their heads towards the camera, yelling out "BOO!"

I'm cannot lie... I like this cartoon. It is just pure fun, without any concern about being anything but that. I am not the biggest fan of Sourpuss or Gandy, but they definitely play second fiddle to all of the antagonists here, with the cat and goose pretty much coming off like extras here. This short makes no bones about being a showcase for its ghost and skeleton gags, with some special space reserved for that really creepy vulture character. He's a ghost vulture, but he is able to devour an entire horse in seconds. Any way that you approach it, that is some gruesome gag for 1944. But it's exactly the sort of gag that moves this cartoon from out of the average pile and makes it a little bit more memorable. And if Gandy Goose and Sourpuss come packaged with it and don't make a mess of things, all the better.

Scare ya next time,
RTJ

***** 

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