Countdown to Halloween: Spooks (1930)

For the month of October, Cinema 4: Cel Bloc is taking part in an annual internet celebration known as the Countdown to Halloween. This is the fourth year that I have participated in this countdown, but the first with my Cel Bloc site. To find out more about the Countdown to Halloween, and to see a list of participating websites and blogs, go to http://countdowntohalloween.blogspot.com/.

Spooks (Universal, 1930) 
Dir.: Walter Lantz 
Cel Bloc Rating: 6/9

As the first offering of several Halloween-themed cartoons that I plan to feature throughout the month of October, I felt it was important to go with a film that captures an overall Halloween mood, rather than one that concentrates on a single featured character. Yes, Spooks, a 1930 short directed by Walter Lantz (he of Woody Woodpecker fame) does eventually settle into a full-on parody of Lon Chaney's version of The Phantom of the Opera, and indeed, that action is built around series star Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. But Oswald is really a secondary character in his own cartoon, and much of the shenanigans are built around other characters instead.

And as for setting the Halloween mood, the early portions of this film have it in spades. Over the title card, we hear whistling wind effects as an orchestra sputters and seems to churn to life. An actor attempting to replicate the supposed voice of a ghostly apparition repeats the title word "spooks" twice, and on the second turn, pronounced harder and louder than the first, the letters in the title quiver in place. After the credits card, a black curtain seems to be drawn across the screen, and then the blackness transforms into the shadowy branch of a tree overlooking a cemetery.

The orchestra, with the wind effects still whispering along in the background, begins to play Charles Gounod now-famous Funeral March of a Marionette, which gained even greater popularity starting in the mid-1950s as it was chosen to be the theme song of Alfred Hitchcock's television series for a solid decade. In fact, for me, it has been hard to see any image of Hitchcock without immediately thinking of that theme music, so hearing it in a cartoon that was released twenty-five years earlier than the first episode of the show – and about a year after Hitchcock released his very first sound feature, Blackmail, in 1929 – seemed to hold some special importance (even though it really doesn't).

After we see the branch wave about in the wind as we view the marvelously sketchy background image of the graveyard (and not the first time that a Lantz Oswald film has reminded me somewhat of a Herriman Krazy Kat drawing, also of that relative time), the action begins with a visit to a coffin sitting upright from the ground. The door swings open, and a skeleton lets his fully fleshed black cat out for the evening. The cat, who has been hung out by the tail, yowls at its master and stomps away with its head in the air, blowing a raspberry at the skeleton at the last second. The skeleton then puts out an empty milk bottle on what I presume would serve as his doorstep, the mound of dirt over the grave. He drops a nickel into the milk bottle as payment, closes the door to the coffin, and through a window on its door, we see the shadow of the skeleton blow out a candle, creating a second blackened frame effect.

This time, the blackness pulls itself away from the borders of the frame into the dark cloak of a masked and hatted figure with tall, skinny legs marching through the cemetery. "I'm the Phantom!" says a voice beneath the mask, as his cloak trails out high in the wind behind him. On a branch in a tree, an owl surrounding by the outline of the moon makes its trademark "Who?" noise in the direction of the figure. The Phantom looks up and points a finger at the bird, yelling "Not you, you fat-faced buzzed!" The bird stretches his neck towards the camera until its bulbous eyes overtake the screen, its pupils making somewhat of a kaleidoscopic effect in the middle of each eyeball. The owl then retracts it neck and resumes its usual perch on the branch.

Nearby sits a low-rent looking Opera House, where we are shown the stage door. The Phantom stalks across the screen to the door, and when it opens on its own, he lifts his cape and almost seems to fly through the door. Inside, a small orchestra comprised of various animals is rehearsing. On the kettle drums, holding a pair of sticks, is a small mouse who looks almost exactly like Mickey Mouse, the character who replaced Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks's shorts when Disney left Charles Mintz's employ a couple of years earlier. (To be clear, Lantz did not steal Oswald; he was merely directing the character after Universal gained the rights to him. Mintz is the culprit, who basically conned Disney out of a job and thus, his main creation to that point. Lantz went on to produce over 140 Oswald shorts.)

Of course, the kettle drums that the Mickey doppelgänger is playing is nothing more than the ample rear end of the conductor, who doesn't seem to mind having his hindquarters used in such a way as he leads the rest of the orchestra in the pit before the stage. The cats and dogs in the band play the overture wildly, and then the curtain grinds open to reveal Oswald the Lucky Rabbit wearing a small hat and standing next to a female hippopotamus. The hippo lady grasps her hands together and starts to sing in an operatic voice. The gag here is that the hippo sings the low parts, while Oswald sings the higher parts...

Hippo: "Oh my heart cries out to you dear..."
Oswald: "Oh my heart cries!"
Hippo: "Oh my heart cries!"
Oswald: "Oh my har-har-har-har-heart!"
Hippo: "Har-har-har-har-heart!"
Both: "H-E-A-R-T! Heaaaarrrrt! Ooohhhh!"

On the final note, both of their heads jut out toward the viewer, much like the strange owl had earlier, thereby distorting their features wildly. As the voice of the hippo is none other than Pinto Colvig, it is not hard to hear his eventual character of Walt Disney's Goofy in some of the intonations.

Backstage, a female cat named, somewhat unsurprisingly for the day, Kitty (who today is now known as Ortensia, Oswald's beloved) cries into her paws at the performance. She is jealous of the hippo being onstage and desperately wants to be the star of the opera. Enter the Phantom of the Opera, who slithers up and out of a crack in the floorboards and opens his arms wide to greet the crying kitten. Animated hearts flutter from his chest in great profusion, telling us of his stalker-like affection for the girl. "What behooves thee, fair maiden?" asks the Phantom into her ear, as her back is still turned to him. She stops crying and points to the stage. She tries to tell the Phantom her troubles, but a closeup of her head and open mouth reveals a long tongue that is tied completely in knots, so that everything comes out as gibberish. But the Phantom knows precisely what she desires, and after thinking for a second, says "Hmmm... fear thee not!" and then disappears as swiftly as he arrived.

On the stage, the hippo is singing an aria, but the Phantom's long arm shoots up through a knothole in the floorboards. Bearing a knife, his hand thrusts towards the hippo's prodigious rear end and stabs it with the knife. Air escapes the hippo like a balloon being deflated, and the opera sings flattens out completely on the stage. (Take it for what it is – after all, none of this was ever meant to be taken seriously – but taken from a logical view, we have essentially seen a murder in a cartoon, since we never see the hippo again for the remainder of the cartoon to know that she is alright.) Backstage again, the Phantom reappears to Kitty, who seems only briefly shocked at the demise of her rival. The Phantom announces, with a grand flourish, "I will make you a great singer!" but when he does, another Mickey doppelgänger, or perhaps even the same one from before, pops up through the floorboards and blows a raspberry at them.

This only distracts the Phantom for the briefest of seconds, for as Kitty turns her back to him, he tries to lift up her skirt. She stops him, and shoots the Phantom down with a glare, as she taps her foot and drops her fists to her hips. He whispers to Kitty what he was actually planning to do, and she agrees. Shockingly, she sticks her butt high up in the air, and he turns around to place a large phonograph inside her stretched-out skirt. The Phantom puts the phonograph needle to the record on its turntable and sends her to take her place as the opera's new star. Kitty takes the stage and starts to sing, "For I am the queen of the Mayflower--" but after the third go at the lyric, the needle on the record starts to skip after the word "May". Each time it skips, it causes Kitty's rear end to sway from one side to the other, while her arms flail about in panic.

In the opera's gallery section, so noted because that is what is written across its front, a pair of jokers (while a third sleeps several rows behind them) start to mock her and begin counting down the months following May: "June... July... August... September... Merry... Christmas!" Back onstage, Kitty is still flailing about while the record continues to skip. The Phantom's hand reaches from stage left and resets the needle, which shortly corrects the skipping, but then the music starts to wind down slower and slower, until Kitty collapses into a puddle on the stage, much like when the hippo was deflated with a knife earlier. Unlike the hippo, however, Kitty is resurrected by the Phantom reaching in and cranking the lever on the phonograph so that the music can continue once again to play unabated. Kitty finishes the performance, and somehow receives "Bravos" from the audience in triumph.

Backstage, Kitty is greeted by the Phantom and Oswald, who are applauding wildly. When the Phantom says, "My beloved!" to her, though, she leaps completely over his outstretched arms and into the arms of Oswald instead. The two embrace happily, and Oswald says, "Gee, Kitty! You were wonderful!" The Phantom growls at this, and yells "Curses!" in the classic villain mold. He grabs Kitty and pulls her completely out of her bloomers, which are left sitting in Oswald's hands, who doesn't even realize she is gone until he opens his eyes and realizes in shock he is holding her clothing. Crying out, "Kitty, where are you?," Oswald pokes his head through the flap of her drawers while looking about for his beloved.

Spooks then makes an absolutely dead-on reference to the 1925 Chaney version of The Phantom of the Opera by staging its own replica of the film's arguably most recognizable scene: the unmasking of the Phantom as he plays the organ. (True, thin plot elements were involved before this, but this section is very on target.) The Phantom drops the girl on the ground and then takes his place at the instrument, but before he begins playing, he turns to Kitty and warns her, "If you ever remove this mask, I'll---!" and then drags a finger across his throat to signify cutting it. He starts to play the organ, and of course, Kitty cannot help but try to remove the mask. He sneaks forward, her legs stretching higher and higher so she can reach his face, and when she reaches a certain point, her bloomers fall down from under her skirt. (Somehow, she got another pair between being kidnapped and now.) The Phantom turns and catches her in the act, growling at her, but she tap dances back to her original spot singing "La la la la la" and then kisses both of her hands, to the tune of Shave and a Haircut.

The Phantom returns to playing on the organ, and this time, Kitty makes it all the way to the bow of his mask tied behind his head. Tentatively, she undoes the knot, and the mask drops away. The Phantom turns around and roars at her as his skeleton-style face is revealed. Kitty cries in fright, and the Phantom clasps her hands about her neck and ankles and starts to stretch her apart. Suddenly, a knock arrives at the Phantom's door, provided by a knocker set into the wood just below a small window. Yet another Mickey-type mouse answers the window, and Oswald's angry face is seen through it. The mouse closes the window and alerts the Phantom on a small trumpet. He opens the window to show Oswald to the Phantom, but the Phantom floats straight through the window, his frightening visage sending Oswald scurrying away. Yet again, blackness starts to fill the screen as portions of the Phantom's strange body continue to cascade through the window on the door.

Oswald is shown running as fast as he can from the terrible Phantom, but the villain keeps attempting to grab the rabbit by the ankles, failing each time. Oswald finally leaps down through a long shaft, where he bounces off several ledges along the wall, yelling "Ouch!" over and over again. He lands on the upturned shoes of a giant spider, who is stretched across a web at the body. The spider dwarfs Oswald several times over, so you really have to wonder what other horrors lie below this Opera House? Well, we find out quickly, as the spider – to a variation on Funeral March of a Marionette – tires of juggling Oswald atop his numerous shoes and kicks him away. No sooner does Oswald land on the floor than he finds a series of dragons running through his legs. Each dragon has several sharp-looking scales along its spine and as they make their pass between the Oswald's legs, he screams in pain over and over again as the scale seem to break right off when they hit his crotch. ("Lucky Rabbit" indeed...) The last dragon in the line is completely black, and though it produces the same painful result as the others, the dragon is ultimately revealed to be the Phantom instead.

The Phantom continues to chase Oswald faster and faster through the creep-inducing atmosphere of the Opera House underground, until at last he stops the rabbit by placing a large gloved hand about the poor lad's neck. The music stops as well, and then, surprisingly, the Phantom asks Oswald this question: "What does a chicken say when it lays a square egg?" Oswald is mystified by this, and scratches his head, as sputters as he fails to come up with a proper answer. The Phantom slaps Oswald hard across the face, and the rabbit yells out, "OUCH!" "'OUCH!' is correct!" responds the Phantom, and then gives the camera a goofy look. The villain then squares himself up and disappears in place, like a pair of elevator doors closing into nothingness. Oswald turns to the camera and gives a smile and then a curtain closes on the whole affair. We see a cartoonist’s version of the Universal Pictures globe logo, and then we hear…

“Boop-boop-a-doop
Boop-boop-a-doop
Boop-boop-a-doop
That's Oswald!"

Sure, the final gag drops with a thud. But that aside, this film rocks as a spoof of The Phantom of the Opera, released only five years earlier than this short and at the time (1930) was itself in a national rerelease, which included some added sound sequences. Spooks may not be as accurate as a Phantom fan would wish, with only a light touch on a couple of prime scenes, but the intent was never more than a gentle ribbing here, happy to hopefully warrant a little more attention by tying itself to a highly popular film of its day.

The one element that I find the most intriguing about Spooks is that the character of the Phantom of the Opera is truly allowed to be quite scary, at least by the standards of a 1930s cartoon villain. I was expecting him to be unmasked in a far more comic fashion, where perhaps he would turn out to be some recognizable celebrity/actor of the day, but instead they pretty much, except for Kitty's underwear falling to the floor, play it for the full scare of the movie version. The Phantom does not have a pleasant countenance underneath the mask, and is exactly the disfigured, cadaverous-looking monster that is revealed à la Chaney.

And he never lets up being scary until that very last gag. He is almost always angry at everyone, murderously jealous of Kitty, stabs the hippo, strangles Oswald and Kitty at separate times, curses out the owl, slaps Oswald in the face and growls menacingly at him in another scene, and seems to have a corps of hideous monsters at his beck and call. He can shapeshift into other forms, flight seems to be a power at his beck and call, as is disappearing at will. In other Oswald cartoons, the lucky rabbit often takes on the hero role and when danger rears its head, he often is up to the task. But in Spooks, you get the very real feeling that they simply had to end the film on a truly stupid joke because there was no other way out for them. The Phantom was simply too powerful to stop, and even though Oswald gets his Irish up when Kitty is kidnapped by the villain, the second he actually confronts the roaring, drooling cretin, any pretense of being a hero wilts away from Oswald's being. He hightails it and is pretty much on the run for the remainder of the picture. 

Until that slap and the stupid joke bit, that is. I suppose if they had found some lame weakness for their villain, and had Oswald blunder into stopping him cold at the last second, I probably would have taken it even harder than simply ending the film on an old vaudeville punchline. I suppose for comedy's sake, or even to bring the film back into the general vicinity of comedy and not animated terror, they had to thrown in that last joke. I suppose that I will have to make my peace with it after all.

Putting this aside, as a film rife with Halloween atmosphere, this fits right in to what I wanted to kick off the month. A graveyard, spooky noises, skeletons, black cats, coffins, owls, creepy music, gentle mocking of a horror film classic, spiders, dragons, and a genuinely fright-inducing villain... Spooks is a pretty enjoyable start to any Halloween celebration. I have several other grand shorts, some quite famous, some not so much, chosen for the spotlight in counting down to Halloween throughout October here on the Cinema 4: Cel Bloc. I hope you will join me through the month for more animated fun!

RTJ

*****

And in case you haven't seen it...

It's a Very Special Cel Bloc Xmas: Toyland Premiere (1934)

Toyland Premiere (Universal Cartune Classic, 1934)
Dir.: Walter Lantz
Animators: La Verne Harding, Lester Kline, Fred Kopietz, Bill Mason, and Manuel Moreno
Cel Bloc Rating: 6/9

I do have a small fondness for parades. Not a big love for them, but just enough of a fondness where if I hear one is going on, I would not be upset if it blocked my path for a while. I have taken part in many parades as well -- mostly for the Fourth of July -- thanks to my old theatre friends, who make it a point to join in on the fun on a regular basis whenever they are asked. (I have certainly taken part in many things I would not have normally because of them.)

As for holiday parades, well, I have only participated in a couple of those. I suppose that if I lived in a much bigger city like New York, I would probably at least attend something like the Macy's parade just to say I had seen it in person once. Growing up as a fan of the original version of Miracle on 34th Street, it is naturally an attractive idea to me, and I have always liked Macy's as well just because of that film (even though I have only shopped in Macy's just a very few times). 

So, how about a cartoon involving a similar parade, where Santa Claus is invited annually to lead the spectacle, along with his elves and reindeer, and delight thousands of children and their parents? Toyland Premiere is the film that fulfills this need, released in December 1934 by Walter Lantz, the future creator of Woody Woodpecker. Technically, Toyland Premiere is an Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon, even if the character is only seen briefly in a few quick scenes and does little to nothing in the way of advancing the plot or fully taking part in the action.

Instead, Toyland Premiere is focused mainly on the character of Santa Claus, the one from the North Pole with the sleigh and the presents and the reindeer and the "Ho Ho Ho". You know... that guy (the one we mentioned just a paragraph ago). After we, the viewers, enter through the gates of Toyland, his presumed home in this film, we see an elven creature dressed in a telegram delivery uniform running as quickly as he can without tripping fully over his long, white beard. (He does stumble here and there.) He yells, "Telegram for Santa! Telegram for Santa!" over and over as he runs.

When we first spy Santa, he is not what we have come to expect. He is sitting on a low stool, clad in bright blue overalls and a matching cap, and also wearing what I presume to be the requisite red under-garments beneath the overalls. He is adding tails to a series of toy horse so slowly, that I can only believe that I can only surmise that he delivered presents to only 452 children that year. (Not the most efficient guy...)

The Western Union telegram reads, "MY DEAR SANTA WE ARE READY FOR YOUR BIG TOYLAND PREMIER PARADE STOP HAVE ARRANGED A RECEPTION AT CITY DEPT STORY" and is signed simply, "OSWALD". Santa immediately laughs heartily, and tells his entire squadron of elves, "Get ready, boys, for our big show!" The elves respond in unison, "OK, Santa! Here we go!"

The elves start dressing themselves as a team in preparation, with two elves holding a costume open while a third elf jumps inside. One elf, much smaller than the rest, is dwarfed by his outfit and ends up running hard with his head into a nearby post. Santa is seen opening a decorative storage box held shut with a ribbon, and we assume he is going to retrieve his famous costume from within it. However, when he pops the lid, scores of moths fly out, and his costume has been rendered down to a single, small, tattered remnant. As he holds it up sadly, a single moth returns to pull the remnant from Santa's grip and take it away from him.

Santa returns to the low stool, puts his head in his hands, and begins to weep. "Woe is me! Woe is me!" When he explains to the concerned elves that he can't lead the parade without his suit, they jump into action. They fill a Flit gun (look it up, kids) with red paint and then spray his blue overalls until this match his red under-garments. They string a bunch of popping corn (unpopped, so that needle must be amazing), and then wrap it around his prodigious waist and his cuffs. They hold a match to the string and the popcorn pops instantly all around Santa, giving him a white sash like he had on his original coat. When Santa stands up to inspect their handiwork, another elf runs up with a paintbrush to cover the area where he had been seated on the stool in red as well. (Technically, we never see him finish painting the tiny blue hold in the photo to the right.)

Trumpeters sound the clarion, and as Santa, his minions, and a series of giant balloons march out of Toyland to make their way to the big city, we hear some female voices sing these words...

"One day in every year,
Ol' Santa takes a rest,
and leads the big balloon parade
dressed in his very best!

He leaves his Arctic palace,
and drives off in his sleigh
to tell the population that
the toys are on display!"

As they sing, we see huge clown, pig, and penguin balloons, and then we see the entire procession flying off over the Arctic mountains. To the slightly modified tune of Jingle Bells, we see Santa fly down to the streets of the city followed by his parade. Then, as he slides along in his sleigh and is covered by confetti from the crowds, the original song resumes...

"He calls on ev'ry city
in ev'ry land and clime
so all the boys and girls will know
it's almost Christmas time!

The people on the street
have come from far and near
to follow Santa to the store
and see the toy premiere!"

As the parade passes before us, we see more of the giant balloons he has brought, including Mother Goose, a very fat baker, what looks to be Humpty Dumpty in a fine suit, and a truly wicked-looking clown. Elves leap about and perform acrobatics, and a float is shown with seals balancing balls on their noses, while other elves spin about on top of the balls. The song continues as we are shown more elf acrobats and jugglers.

"See the dwarfs, funny-men,
each one is a clown.
They cause a lot of laughter as
they travel through the town."

For He's A Jolly Good Fellow is then heard as more balloons amble down the street to the corner where the City Department Store sits. Santa is greeted by the 1934 Universal version of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, who has been scrubbed of his rougher elements, and is now pretty indistinguishable from many of the other Mickey clones of the era. (Keep in mind that he started out as the original Disney character, and was only replaced by Disney and Ub Iwerks with Mickey when Oswald was stolen from them.) "Welcome, Santa Claus!" says Oswald, and then he leads Santa to a curtain. When it is pulled back, the Toy Department is revealed, and in front of it is a banquet table featuring many stars of the day.

"Meet the gang, Santa!" says Oswald, and we then get closeups of each celebrity at the table. Johnny Weissmuller is first, though it seems as if one of the animators really hated Maureen O'Sullivan. (While her caricature isn't too bad at first, she seems more like Joan Crawford later in the film.) Johnny, dressed and acting as Tarzan of course, says in broken English, "Me... like you!" and points at Santa. Shirley Temple, standing on the table, greets the jolly old elf, and then Laurel and Hardy do a little fancy tipping of their bowler hats in unison. 

Eddie Cantor, completely in blackface, makes a few of his signature lip-popping noises (or that at least served as a signature when he was being lampooned by others) and waves, while Boris Karloff dressed as the Frankenstein Monster sits silent and glaring to his left. Next is Bing Crosby, who greets Santa with a "Howdy-do-doo-do-doo-do" in singsong fashion. He then starts to whistle, and we realize quickly that it is not Crosby's voice at all when he begins singing. The song is picked up by Temple and Cantor (though not their real voices), and the lyrics, sung to what sounds a very modified version of Makin' Whoopee, are:

"Hear what we want this Christmas season!" [Crosby]

"I want a drum, a ____op (??)
A hobby horse, a lollipop
A little tu-hoon
that I can croo-hoon
Will make me happy!" [Temple]

"I want a doll with eyes of blue
and golden curls and dimples too!
One of those dollies
that's in the Follies
Will make me happy!" [Cantor]

As they sing, Oswald is switching the colors on the spotlight from red to blue for Shirley's song, and then, naturally, to black for Cantor, so that only his lips and eyes show up on the stage. Laurel and Hardy have gotten up from the table during the show, and eyeing a giant cake with criminal intent. When Hardy tries to take a cherry from the middle of the cake, he is slapped by a butter knife that is held by Boris Karloff. He screams, "Scram!!" at the pair, and they head for the hills. Running into the Costume Department, they happen upon a large dragon costume, and after doing some small bits of usual Laurel and Hardy schtick, Ollie whispers a plan into Stan's ear.

Santa is elated at the reception. "I thank you for this party from the bottom of my heart," he declares. "So here's a toast to Oswald! Now let the party start!" (This is the last moment that we actually see Oswald in the picture, not even at the ending.) Meanwhile, Laurel and Hardy are seen approaching the party again, this time dressed in the dragon costume. They happen upon a blowtorch and put it inside the dragon's mouth to use as a flame. When they walk up to the table, Weissmuller faints dead away, and O'Sullivan is left to protect her onscreen beau. She picks up her Tarzan around the waist and leaps up to the ceiling, where she swings from chandelier to chandelier while opening her mouth to ridiculous proportions to scream out her take on the Tarzan jungle yell. 

The dragon walks up to the table and everyone else hides. They make an attempt at the delicious cake, but they are blocked yet again by Karloff, who makes them scram by simply saying, "Booooo!" They run away, but end up getting wrapped around one of the floor columns and crashing into each other. A lamp fixture falls and smacks them on the heads, causing starts to swirl about them. Santa crawls out from under the table and sees who has been causing the mischief. He pulls out a bugle and produces a call to arms.

Toy soldiers leap out of boxes to join the fight, while tanks, mounted horsemen, dirigibles, and planes head towards Laurel and Hardy. The planes swoop the pair, still in the dragon costume, relentlessly and they trip all over themselves trying to escape. Jack in the Boxes spring up to use peashooters on them, and when the third Jack's attempt is spoiled, he snaps his fingers as if to say, "Nerts!" Toy soldiers mount a machine gun on a roller skate and fire on Laurel and Hardy. When the pair get trapped, the soldiers hop on tubes of paint and squirt them in the faces.

Santa laughs at this, and he too gets hit with paint, but he laughs it off and says, "This is more fun!" Santa picks up a pie from the dessert table and throws it into Ollie's face. Toy indians use a girdle as a makeshift bow and shoot arrows in Stan and Ollie's rears. They jump over the table and wave a white flag to announce their surrender. Everyone crawls out from the under the table and rejoins the party, while the elves and toys cheer around them. Santa sits down and makes an announcement. "Let's make a wish! Then we will all partake of this delicious chocolate cake!" Santa blows on the candles, but the cake rocks back and forth, and then with his final blow... well. We assume the cake splats Laurel and Hardy with full force, covering them in chocolate, but this is unseen in the only available version, which is an edited reissue print of the film, so we can only guess at the actual reaction of the comedians to the splatting. Regardless, the camera cuts back to Santa, who exclaims "Oh, boy! Some fun!" Then he laughs uproariously one last time. Iris out.

At nearly nine minutes long, Toyland Premiere sometimes doesn't seem to end, which wouldn't be a problem if the cartoon was funnier or sharper. Of course, if it was funnier and sharper, there is all the likelihood that it would have been cut down by a couple of minutes for the sake of timing. However, as a Christmas cartoon, this one has a lot of spunk and is guided solely by the spirit of frivolity. The opening scenes in Toyland with Santa and his elves (or dwarfs, as they are referred to here) are lovely, with some marvelous, detailed background work throughout the picture, but especially here. The entire cartoon is exceedingly colorful, though it's a whole lot of blue and red, since it is only 2-strip Technicolor being 1934 and all. (At some points, like with the spotlight scene, it almost feels like it is meant as a commercial for 2-strip Technicolor.)

The celebrity cameos are hit and miss, with the scene where O'Sullivan rescues Weissmuller as my favorite part of the show, and the Temple and Crosby caricatures being the least successful in my opinion. Laurel and Hardy are generally turned nicely, and one would hope so since they dominate the celebrity portion as far as screen time in concerned. 

As for the parade in the film, it looks exactly like the sort of grand time that I would hope to have at a Christmas parade. It also makes me a little bit more jealous that I have never been to one of the real, big city parades that had giant balloons on display. Floats are OK, depending on the theme and design, so they run hot and cold with me, and apart from marching bands (which are always swell), most music in parades tends to be lip-synced, so that is not an attraction to me at all. But balloons of popular cartoon or fairy tale characters and creatures ten stories high? Always a thing with me. They are definitely my favorite element of the Thanksgiving parades when I watch them on TV, and it would be grand to see them in person. 

Now that I have thought about it for a bit, Jen and I practically live at Disneyland, but we rarely take in one of the parades. When we were there last week with our friends from Canada (who until very recently lived here), the only part of the Christmas parade we watched was one that we were practically forced to see. We were trying to cross from Tomorrowland to Frontierland through the Town Square area, and we suddenly had several Pixar characters, including the plastic army men, blocking our path for several minutes. For whatever reason, the gap between portions where they allow those uninterested in the parade to pass through seemed longer than usual to me. It seemed like the section we were seeing was caught in slow motion. As the not particularly hot sun was shining down only on the spot where we were waiting and my eyes were not handling the brightness very well, my patience was rather tested. For once, my Oswald hoodie that I almost never wear up over my head found itself fulfilling its purpose. So I guess what I said earlier about not being bothered in the least if a parade crossed my path was utter b.s., because I got just a little bit pissy about the wait. 

Of course, the section of Christmas parade we got stuck watching was utterly boring, and the Pixar characters were nowhere near as engaging as they are in the excellent Pixar Play Parade in Disney's California Adventure. (5-4-3-2... Fun!) And we also didn't get to see a section that had Santa Claus in it (still not sure if there is one), and frankly, apart from giant balloons, Santa's the most important part of any holiday parade.

I guess watching Toyland Premiere again and again certainly got my holiday spirit revved up, if only a little. I got Santa Claus. I got giant balloons. I got Frankenstein's Monster, Laurel and Hardy, and Tarzan. And I got a wee bit of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. That is a pretty packed Christmas stocking. Thanks, Santa (and Walter Lantz)!

And in case you haven't seen it: Toyland Premiere (1934) is available on the Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection, Vol. 1, still in print as of 12/5/15. It also can be seen here and there on the internet, though it tends to come and go and the quality varies. Good luck!

My Pal Paul (1930)

My Pal Paul (1930, Universal)
Dir.: Walter Lantz
Cel Bloc Rating: 6

The King of Jazz? Paul Whiteman? Surely not, though the big band leader from the early part of the 20th century certainly called himself that. And he was a big, big deal back in the 1920s and 1930s, recording scores of huge, popular hit songs, and featuring many of the top musicians of the day in his orchestras (some of whom went on to become stars on their own). Perhaps his biggest contribution to the world was that he commissioned George Gershwin to create Rhapsody in Blue in 1924. If anything remains today of his legacy, it is surely that.

Oh, but there is something else, though few outside of animation buffs would consider it to be of note: Whiteman appears in an Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon. And, to make things even, Oswald makes a cameo in a feature film that was produced about Whiteman. See how these things work out?

In 1930, Universal Pictures produced a huge spectacle of a film called King of Jazz. It was produced in early two-strip Technicolor and was pretty much wall to wall with lavishly produced sets, costumes, stilted comedy bits, and boisterous musical production numbers. It was also a notorious flop for the day. But there was much of note about the film. Apart from not only surviving the decades in fairly decent condition, the film features a rather young (only 26) Bing Crosby taking vocals on several songs as a member of his vocal group from that time, the Rhythm Boys. The music bounces along merrily throughout King of Jazz, and displays a good cross-section of popular music in 1930, though hardly any of it could be considered jazz as it is understood today. The film won an Oscar for Art Direction, and watching the film now certainly shows the award was well deserved (or at least a nomination would have been).

And best of all, not far from the beginning of the picture is the very first Technicolor sound cartoon in history. Directed by animation studio head Walter Lantz, the cartoon is introduced by Walter Brennan, who tells us of Whiteman's travels to darkest Africa. Dressed appropriately in his safari garb, Whiteman is set upon by a lion, and after battling him with a rifle (in which the lion drops his skin and reveals his skeleton before the bullet even hits him), Whiteman seeks to soothe the savage beast through jazz-inspired dance music. The lion dances, the flowers dance, the trees dance, the natives dance, and for a few brief seconds, Universal's big (and stolen) cartoon star, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, dances alongside a snake (who is wearing a derby) while a snippet from Streets of Cairo (you know, the song you sang as a kid that you thought went "There's a place in France where the naked ladies dance") plays on the soundtrack. After an elephant sucks up and then releases the water of a pond rhythmically, a monkey wings a coconut at Whiteman's noggin while he conducts, which makes him see stars.

The segment is brief (only around two minutes), but it is goofy and entertaining and gets the moviegoers tapping their feet and prepared for the music to come. The highlight of the piece, of course, is the chance to see Oswald in color (though the only part of him that really changes are his blue pants and red tongue), and long before other cartoon characters received the chance to do so.

But Oswald and Lantz weren't done with Whiteman, and vice versa. Universal had Lantz create a short called My Pal Paul, which not only would feature Whiteman and his music in it, but would also serve as direct promotion for the King of Jazz film. When My Pal Paul opens -- with a jazzy melody playing over the credits -- we actually see a billboard promoting the film, that reads "Paul Whiteman in King of Jazz A Universal Release". Between our view and the billboard is a silhouette that we assume is meant to be the rather portly Whiteman, waving his arms as he is supposedly conducting his famous orchestra.

Then the silhouette turns around, and it is revealed that it was only Oswald the entire time. From a medium shot, we see that Oswald is performing in front of a group of other cartoon animals, who are watching the Lucky Rabbit torment a cat by playing his tail with a violin bow. And then, because the tails of cats are hollow, as you should well know by now, Oswald turns the cat into a saxophone and blows through the tail for a brief solo. A small baby bear (but don't quote me on that; the ears on some of these critters in early cartoons could represent many things) finds out that behind one of the boxes Oswald is using in his show, the rabbit has hidden a record player, and he is only faking the performance. The baby holds the phonograph over his head and yells, "Looky! Ha ha!" The crowd goes crazy. They start yelling, "Throw him out" at Oswald, and the rabbit leaves dejected.

It is always important to remember the year in which something was created when watching older films. A few years later, and the following scenario would never have happened. Oswald, spurned by his barnyard friends, runs behind a tree, crying madly and utterly despondent. From off of the single branch jutting out from the massive tree hangs a noose. Oswald spies the noose and without hesitating, he leaps up to grab the branch and pulls himself up to stand upon it. He pulls off his head, places the loop of the noose onto his neck, and reattaches his head. Holding his nose as he is about to jump into a body of water, he jumps off the branch to kill himself.

That's right. We are barely a minute into a cartoon, and the star wants to commit suicide. However, his attempt is unsuccessful, because as he hits the end of the noose's length, he uproots the entire tree (terrible root system, this thing), which falls straight over on top of Oswald. He holds the tree at bay with his skinny cartoon rabbit arms, and yells "Help!" several times at the top of his lungs, straining with the effort of keeping the tree from crushing him.

Enter Paul Whiteman. He zooms into view with his Oliver Hardy-like face and his body crammed into a speedy little sports car, honking his horn and making the car leap along with the music. Engaged in his drive, he pulls the steering wheel off and plays it like a flute for a brief moment, before replacing it and continuing on his merry way. That way becomes blocked by a very long dachshund, who stretches across the roadway. This upsets Paul, but the dog is helpful and swings its long midsection up into an arch tall enough to let the car pass.

He speeds off but suddenly hears Oswald's cries of "Help! Help! Help!" He runs to the tree where he sees the rabbit struggling mightily with the enormous trunk of the tree. Paul, about four times the size of the rabbit, easily pushes the tree back to standing but just stretching his arms out to place it without moving his feet at all. However, this causes Oswald to go back to being hung by the noose. Paul casually pops the rabbit's head off again, removes the noose, and puts Oswald's head back. All appears well for our hero and his new pal.

Or maybe not. Oswald is still sad from the rejection of his friends, and Paul can see it in his body language. He asks, "What's wrong, sonny?" and Oswald answers, "Who wants to know?" Paul stands up proudly, tugs each whisker of his mustache on each side of his face straight out, and says, "Paul Whiteman!" Oswald is astonished. "P-P-P-Paul Whiteman?" This causes Whiteman to puff up his chest to outlandish proportions, and with a tone for each button corresponding on the soundtrack, pops out all three buttons on his shirt and all four buttons on his pants. The pants fall down, and he is revealed to be wearing polka-dotted underwear. He pulls his pants back up sheepishly and quick.

"Ha!" says the rabbit. "Get a load of this, Paul!" Oswald runs to the bandleader's car and pulls out the muffler. He starts a jaunty tune by playing the muffler like a trumpet, blowing into the end while magically transforming a section of it into what looks like a derby that he uses as a mute. Partway through the solo, he points at the hood ornament, which reaches down to the grill on the front of the car and plays it like a harp. Paul Whiteman has a very strange moment where he is shown in closeup as he pulls his whiskers away from his face in time with the music. Oswald cranks the engine and causes the hood to roll up so we can see the pistons pump along in rhythm.

Oswald has since pulled the crank from the car and starts playing it like a flute. The hood ornament dances on top of the radiator cap to a tribal drum beat, looking for all the world like he is wearing a warbonnet. Oswald moves over to the front tire, where he pulls the valve off and starts and stops the whistle of the air escaping along with the tune. On the last note, the tire pops loudly, sending the rabbit rolling off, and causing the car to collapse.

Not to be outdone, Whiteman tries to get in on the fun. Standing next to a sawed off tree trunk, just like Oswald, he can't wait to blow into something else that people don't normally put their lips around. He grabs the tree branch and fingers the holes on the side of the trunk so that it makes horn sounds. Meanwhile, Oswald has picked up another tire and somehow turned it into a stringed instrument. On a helpful cue from a woodpecker within the tree trunk, the pair team up on a short version of the old standard, It Happened in Monterrey. When Whiteman sings, "Broke somebody's heart..." and pulls a large heart from his pocket, Oswald grabs it and sings back in a falsetto, "...And I'm afraid that it is mine!"

The following solo by Whiteman raises Oswald's ire and the pair spar back and forth, trading licks until Oswald decides he will determine the winner by laughing, "Ha ha ha ha ha! Nyah!" and sticks his tongue out at Whiteman. Back to the radiator cap, the hood ornament does some nice toe dancing, before the tune changes again. This time, a pair of pliers and a hammer jump out of the toolbox on the back of the car, and take to dancing. They are a nicely matched pair, with their limbs stretching out as it suits their moves, but when the hammer tries to kick the pliers in the rear, it misses and the hammer gets flipped. The pliers jump onto the back of the hammer and rides it like a pony for a measure before the pair return to their gentle stepping from the start of the song.

After the hood ornament once again dances to the beat of the tom-tom, we are ready for the finale. Oswald sticks a horn into the tailpipe and four figures much like the hood ornament (they could be musical notes) pop out of the holes on the horn. The quartet link their skinny little arms and start dancing to the popular tune, Happy Feet, marching back and forth and causing music to play as they step across the holes. Whiteman, the tree trunk, Oswald, and the car are then seen dancing together in a line, stomping their feet and jumping up and down to the crazy rhythm. 

The song switches to Song of the Dawn, with Paul singing "Dawn is breaking and a new day is born!" (It's not really his voice.) For an unknown reason (maybe the rabbit doesn't like Paul's singing), Oswald picks up Paul's car over his own head and then smashes to the ground in a jumble of pieces. Paul immediately looks overhead to see the noose still hanging from the tree and grabs Oswald. He puts the noose back over the rabbit's head and pulls down the rope. Instead of hanging Oswald (it only stretches him upward), the rope pulls the tree further and further down into the ground until both Paul and Oswald have been pinned to the ground by the tree branch holding the noose. Crawling out from under the branch, the two sport huge bumps on top of their heads while each see stars swirling. They look at each, say "My pal!" in tandem, go to shake each other's hands and then purposefully miss, sticking out their tongues instead.

"Boop-boop-a-doop
Boop-boop-a-doop
Boop-boop-a-doop
That's Oswald!"

Sure, it's cartoon insanity, but for a tie-in that is meant to promote a major motion picture release, they sure weren't worried about showing its main cartoon star as being manic depressive suicidal. It does point to how these films, at the time, were considered for all audiences and not just children. Such details in cartoons would largely go away, as they did in all mainstream fare, once the production code kicked in a few years later. While I like finding odd events like Oswald's suicide scene in these early films, I must admit that the scene bothered me slightly if only because of my own recent problems with depression (part of why I stopped writing on this blog for a few years, all of which is documented on my other blog if you are interested in such things).

In the end, the cross-promotion between cartoon and film probably didn't help all that much, given that the film failed at the box office. Still, the music in My Pal Paul (all of which is featured in King of Jazz) should appeal to fans of period music, even if this cartoon is nowhere near as interesting as the previous Oswald release, Hells Heels (written about on this site last week). There is a decided downturn in quality from that film to this one. It does show how even with the same staff working on the same films, inspiration is truly of the moment. And if you had to draw the rather dull Paul Whiteman over and over and over again, you might not feel all that inspired either.