FLY FROLIC (1932)

A few years ago, I attended a Fourth of July party where I happened in on the proceedings a couple hours late. In the back yard, where much sunbathing, lounging and volleyball would continue on without my interference for several more hours, there was a generous spread of picnic type foods laid out on various tables, and as I had not eaten yet that day, I was more than happy to check out the comestible situation. Naturally, as it was a barbecue, some sort of meat was required dining, and near the grill area, which was currently unattended, there was a paper plate with about a dozen finished burgers sitting atop it. A closer look revealed something else hanging about on the plate, or actually, on top of the burgers: about three dozen flies, which had decided to crash the party and found a huge stack of seared cowflesh to be rather appetizing. I agreed with the flies, but not with their company, and so I bid adieu to all thought of having a meal at this party, and set my stomach gurgling to "low" until I could procure alternate eats. But, at the last second, a fellow with whom I was not acquainted, and with whom I never could be, walked up to the food table, casually brushed the three dozen flies off of the pile of burgers, grabbed two of the now fly-trampled, spewed and Odin-knows-what-else patties, and slapped them onto a bun for his own ingestion.

I know different people have different levels of cleanliness and germ acceptance, but that was way beyond anything I had encountered. That's basically saying that instead of a "five" or "ten-second" rule for eating food dropped on an unsanitary surface, you actually have a "two-hour" rule. You might as well just grill the burger, lay it atop a freshly laid dog turd for about sixty minutes, and then just pick the burger up, turd and all, and slide the nauseating load down your throat. I know that everything has some form of germ on it, no matter how we pretend that things are clean and sanitary, but come on! There was a squadron of flies having a regurgitation party on the damned things! Suffice to say, I don't remember the sick bastard's name, and I swiftly moved location to another party. (I will also mention that over the years, I received some minor food poisoning about four or five times at that same address, to the point where the only thing I would eat when visiting would be some potato chips out a bag that I opened and brought to whatever shindig was being thrown.)

Though I've never had much use for them, ever since that day, flies are definitely on my "unwelcome intruder" list. In my old apartment, it would not be more than a few minutes before I would hunt down the interloper and use my "Blanket O' Linus" skills to snap the little creep out of the air with the cool of a gunslinger. In Cali, however, it is a different type of showdown: the flies, in marked opposition to the people around me, seem to be faster and sharper, and just a little too eager to charge me at the exact moment of my attack. Plus, my apartment has more open area than the old place, so there is a greater potential of escape for the little bugger. I eventually prove to be a little more dogged in my convictions than the fly, and I tend to prevail in the end. But in all my impatience to rid myself of these pests, I never consider that the creature has ended up inside my home possibly out of some instinctual curiosity and pheremone-driven hunger, but mainly out of pure coincidence.

According to Fly Frolic though, flies have much more important things to do than bother me inside my abode. In fact, sometimes, they are desperate to get out of such a place. A Van Beuren Aesop's Fable from 1932, Fly Frolic introduces us to a cutesy and loving pair of flies, the distaff half of which is trapped inside a window of a neighborhood house. Her mate wants nothing more to get her out, and as she pleads and bangs on the glass from the inside, he corrals about a dozen of his pals to lift the window and release her from the human habitat. Of course, the helpful party of pals decide to stay and check out the place, but the happy pair of young lovers buzz dreamily about the flowers of a garden for a bit, before they zero in on a small insect community made out of old bits of refuse. There is a club called the Coffee Pot Cabaret, and it is designed exactly as implied; when the couple reach the spout entrance, a burly doorman pops it open, and then takes off his jacket to lay it down for the visitors. He is revealed as being supremely scrawny, with all of his bulk supplied by his coat.

They enter the club, and the place is just crawling with other sets of flies out on the town, and also a lone mosquito who sits at a table and holds up two fingers for an order. The flies hit the dance floor as the orchestra plays a swinging version of Baby. It comes as no surprise that the fly couples are able to move their gyrations up the walls and onto the ceiling above the tables. At the song's close, the mosquito is successful in his attempts to place an order, and he receives two pints of what I presume to be blood (the cartoon is in black-and-white) to the tune of How Dry I Am. He sucks both down eagerly, and his body fills up with the precious fluid in the way that it normally cause mosquitos to puff up. He fills up with blood to the tip of his proboscis, and he is angered when he squeezes it and a drop flicks off the end. Such a waste. (I won't tell him that male mosquitos don't actually drink blood.)

In through the door walks a large, scruffy spider, who shuffles to the center of the floor, dragging his hands along beside him, and starts to sing a version of the current Cab Calloway hit, Kickin' the Gong Around, with the flies hiding behind the tables providing vocal support:

"Tell me where is Minnie?
I want Minnie!
Has she been here,
Kicking the gong around?
If you don't know Minnie,
She's cute and pretty,
She gets her pleasure
Kicking the gong around!"

The spider starts to scat, and various flies and then a caterpillar repeat his vocals back to him. One fly bravely steps out and hits the spider in the back with a cane on the third go-around. This causes the spider to yell "Wow!" and breaks him out of his nonsensical reverie. He announces his departure in song, which just so happens to be actual lyrics from the song:

"Just tell her Smoky Joe
Was here and had to go."

He exits, but on his way, he sees the sweet little flygirl and abducts her. Her boyfriend and all the other flies give chase, but the villain runs all the way to a hidden underground lair, filled to the brim with laboratory equipment, and with several potions boiling away as they enter. He stuffs the girl in a cubbyhole, and starts to work on a formula. The girl checks in on his ministrations, as we also see the gang of rescue flies marching to the villain's doorstep. Since the world was just going through its first big wave of mad scientist movies, with the likes of Frankenstein and, most importantly here, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde recently out in theatres, it is not a shock when the spider imbibes the formula and starts to transform in front of a mirror. The scene is actually rather shocking to view, even today, simply for the fact that in this cute little cartoon about lovey-dovey flies, the last thing we were expecting was a rather bold horror movie moment. The spider's head twists and contorts as hypnotic swirls encircle his head and emanate to the edges of the screen. After much huffing and puffing, the villain stands newly revealed as a mustachioed dandy who actually looks something like the real Cab Calloway, only as a spider. His disguise is to no avail, though, when the flies break the door in and the girl gives up his true identity. As more swirling and contorting takes place, the dandy turns back into his normal angry, puffed-up villainous self. The flies gang up on the spider, with the flygirl's boyfriend taking the lead, and though the battle is furious on both sides, the spider gets the worst of it. As the picture irises out, the fly couple kiss sweetly on the chest of the unconscious villain.

It's no Cobweb Hotel, but it's a solid enough picture, with Van Beuren actually sticking to a single plot thread for the entire length for once. It's too bad that they couldn't actually get Calloway for the vocals (it would have expanded the feel of the centerpiece immeasurably), but he was probably working across the street at the Fleischers' studio anyway. The Dr. Jekyll bit was truly an expected pleasure, and it is rather well executed, and it's especially fun to watch the crazed visuals after the spider was so recently invoking the pleasures of opium dens in his cabaret number. Also, there is a quick look at a tiny skeleton hanging on the wall outside of the spider's den. It is the skeleton of a winged fly; impossible, I know, but a nice decorative touch. That's why I watch these films, friends.

The summer is just starting, and it is impossible to open up the sliding door to my balcony without something or other zipping into the apartment. Perhaps I will learn to live with my little buzzing neighbors, perhaps not. One thing I do know, though...

... I'm never inviting that weird burger guy over. Unless I need someone to lick out the toilet...

Fly Frolic (A Van Beuren Aesop's Sound Fable, 1932)
Director: John Foster and Harry Bailey
Cel Bloc Rating: 6

TOY TIME (1932)

I hate to bring anyone down, but... alright, I love to bring people down, so let me continue apace...

It's odd that so much of cartoon history has been built around the order of Rodentia. After all, don't most people react with disgust and fear whenever a rat or a mouse crosses our path? Before you go all wonky with the chauvinistic pride, a lot of guys react the same way as the stereotyped reaction of the scared housewife which is portrayed so frequently in popular culture. I have personally seen both sexes jump up on chairs at the slightest movement of an unwelcome rodent visitor. And yet, much of our cartoon lineage is based on our recognition of talking bipedal mice as our heroes and friends. Mickey, anyone? Tom's nemesis/buddy Jerry and his little cousin Tuffy? Speedy Gonzalez? Sniffles the non-stop cutesy gabber? The unstoppable powerhouse Mighty Mouse? Herman (or Hoiman, as his mouse friends like to refer to him), the Famous Studios version of Jerry. Super-spy Danger Mouse? And even when they might not be so friendly to humankind, we tend to side with them in the cartoon world; the would-be world conquerors Pinky and the Brain, for instance.

Mice get a free ride in the cartoon world, and along with them, in the category of rodents considered "cute" are the squirrels, chipmunks, beavers, prairie dogs, gophers and porcupines, all of whom have had an easy time of it in cartoons. This is despite the fact that most of them are considered pests, nuisances and varmints in the human world, and that we readily trap or kill the bulk of them so one reason or another. Rats, however, are rarely portrayed in a good light in cartoons, much like in the real world. Rats are generally considered to be evil and ugly and the horrid carriers of disease and filth. (Obviously the persons responsible for this opinion have never met my neighbors, but I digress...) With a rare exception, when a rat does show up in cartoon, he is up to no good, and is often the villain of the piece. Except when a cat, which we keep in real life to deal with the rodent problem, isn't already in the role of animated heavy...

I got to thinking about this dichotomy as I was watching a Van Beuren Aesop's Fable cartoon from late in 1931 called Toy Time. The "hero", or I would say, "sneak-thief" of the piece, is a little mouse named Oscar who invades the nighttime peace of a quiet toyshop and does everything but drop napalm on it. At the film's opening, and to the strains of Three O'Clock in the Morning, the mouse turns on a flashlight set upon the floor, and then runs along a wall as if caught in a spotlight, with his exaggerated run cast large behind him. When he runs out of wall, he almost slips into a mousetrap, baited with cheese and set here for the purpose of preventing all of the monkey business about to ensue. Oscar stops himself in time, though, and turns on an old-style light switch set conveniently close to the floor. The lights flicker to life, and the toyshop stands revealed to the viewer for the first time. Near Oscar is a toy steamshovel, and the mouse climbs aboard and drives it over to the mousetrap. Using it to scoop up the hunk of deliciousness set upon the dangerous spring of the trap, the mouse gets an easy snack. He pushes the steamshovel back to its original place, and then sets a detour sign in front of the still dangerously rigged trap.

Moving to a grandfather clock, little heart-shaped bursts of passion emit from the mouse's chest, and he frantically swings the pendulum on the clock to advance the time quicker. The clock's face has tiny toy soldiers in the place of numbers, and they start to march in place faster and faster, until the clock indeed reads three o'clock. Instead of a cuckoo, a door on one side of the clock opens to reveal another toy soldier, and a second door opens to reveal a cannon, which fires and knocks the head off the soldier. Oscar drives a toy tank to the front door of the shop, rides it over the key (which is strangely low-set) to unlock it, and then uses a lasoo around the doorknob to pull open the door with his tank. In walks his girlfriend Susie, who greets him so enthusiastically, the boy mouse has to "shush" her. They tiptoe across the floor in accordance with this secrecy -- and they then blow it all to hell by winding up a music box, and then treating the toy shop like their own private amusement park!

To the strains of a delightful piece called The Siamese Patrol, Oscar and Susie ride on a miniature roller coaster, filled with steep hills and even a loop-the-loop, before they are deposited laughingly on their rumps at the ride's end. A jack-in-the-box lion practically makes Susie jump out of her skin, and so they move on to a row of head-bobbing animals. The elephant, zebra and hippo are fine, bobbing their heads simply in the fashion that they are meant to do, but the donkey at the end of the quartet brays at the last second to frighten the mice again. With the music playing happily about them, the mice take to joining in on the song by leaping from toy instrument to toy instrument. They bounce as if on a trampoline atop a bass drum; they tap along the bones of a xylophone; they make some snappy martial sounds on a set of snare drums; and a clarinet-like recorder gives them a spot to glide back and forth in a frenzied manner. A toy horn gives Oscar a chance to shine in a brief solo, accompanied by Susie on the drums like an old-school Jack and Meg White; they then leap across the pieces of a whole drum kit (including cymbals) on their way to a pyramid of alphabet blocks, where Oscar dances a nifty piece up and down and all about the assemblage. A trio of jack-in-the-box musicians pop up behind Oscar to play the song out to its finish, and Oscar falls through the blocks, sending them into a jumble beneath his embarrassed body. He picks himself up, though, and ends the song by dancing on each block, turning them to spell out "I LOVE YOU" to an ecstatic Susie. Oscar blushes.

But then the cat shows up, as cats often do, just at that peak moment of murine joyfulness. He is scrawnier than a coke-driven Kate Moss on an all-oxygen diet, only once he spies the pair of enraptured mice, he has no intent on trying to devour the air about him. He dives after Oscar and Susie, but they evade him by riding a toy climbing monkey to the top of a cabinet. The cat tries to climb up a sled leaning against the cabinet, but he slides down. Oscar finds a toy mouse and winds it up, sending it down the sled to trick the cat. Indeed, this does "the trick", and the cat swats, chews and slashes at the mouse to little or no damaging effect. As he does, Oscar winds up a series of tin soldiers and releases them down the sled towards the cat. Tanks and cannons follow the soldiers, and soon the war is on. The cat battles valiantly, but he is no match for the parade of army men, charging animals, battleships and construction equipment that assault him from every side. Finally, Oscar blows up a cat-shaped balloon and floats it down to the feline. The cat leaps on the balloon, and when he claws and bites it, the balloon explodes, knocking the cat out of his senses on the floor. Oscar sees the relieved Susie to the front door, and there just so happens to be a toy piano sitting next to it. Susie says she must go home and heads out the door, but Oscar grabs her tail to pull her back in as he begins to sing Goodnight, Sweetheart in a lovely tenor voice. They kiss as the song and the cartoon end.

Sure, it's all cute and light, but it doesn't stop me from wondering how such wanton destruction (not to mention breaking and entering) can go unpunished. Do we just accept cute little mice in cartoons because they seem to represent nicety and innocence even though we are avidly intent on their wholesale slaughter in our personal lives? Disney managed to have even cartoon mice that weren't Mickey done away with not long after this cartoon (and yes, Oscar and Susie do bear a marked resemblance to Mickey and Minnie in several scenes), not so much out of any personal hatred for the animated rodents but rather out of financial consideration. But in the real world, we ourselves have little regard for the creatures, whether they be cute little mice or seemingly ugly and evil rats.

So it would seem in my neck of the woods, where I was greeted with a very strange and hideous sight on the way home from work the other day. About a half mile away, on a sidewalk that I walk up and down each and every weekday, I walked up to what I assumed was just another piece of refuse thrown out of a passing car (you never know what you will find) and what I discovered, after a quick double-and-then-triple take, was the hindquarters, from the bottom of the belly down, of a rat. A tail about eight inches long ran up to the back and hindlegs of the creature, but there was no blood and it seemed to present no amount of tearing or bitemarks on the carcass. It almost appeared as if the rat had been sliced in twain, and perhaps had been in someone's possession before they decided to toss it out on the sidewalk. Either that, or there is a very finicky and precisely chomping cat or dog in the neighborhood.

I was reminded of the George Carlin joke where he is discussing the nauseating food served in the Armed Forces. He mentions an overly enthusiastic soldier who eagerly piles huge heaping amounts of some ghastly concoction on his tray. Asking what he is loving so much, he is told "That's rat's asshole, Don!" His immediate response is "Well, it makes a hell of a fondue!" It takes all types, I suppose, to make a world, and the particular type who did this deed certainly had no great love for rodents, and certainly none for the rat's asshole. I didn't check to see if said rodent's orifice was still there (I gave it only a cursory glance as I passed, just a little bit in shock), so it is slightly possible that the creep involved is just now dipping a chunk of Hawaiian bread into some of it right now, but I doubt it. Whatever the cause of its demise, the rat-third was gone the next morning, which is almost as much of a mystery as its sudden appearance. But what it did point up to me is how much mankind plays at tales of sweetness and light, such as in this cartoon, but the human race itself and its culture as a whole operates on a level of intense hypocriticism. I'm no better: I "ooh" and "ahh" over the snuggliness of cows, but I'm the first in line for a hamburger.

I just won't be dipping it into any fondue anytime soon...

Toy Time (A Van Beuren Aesop's Sound Fable, 1932)
Director: John Foster and Harry Bailey
Cel Bloc Rating: 6

THE FAMILY SHOE (1931)

Boy, if anybody ever was the poster child for birth control, outside of Tom Cruise, it has to be the Old Woman in the Shoe. My question is: who the hell is knocking her up so much? How can one woman have so many friggin' babies? Not to be age-ist, but she's old, so why is she still having brats? How many different fathers are there? How is she paying the rent if she is watching the kids all the time and there are no fathers in the family plan? Is she the world's dumbest/highest paid prostitute, whereby she does something so disgusting that she gets paid tons of money for the act, purposefully gets herself knocked up so she can rest and lives off her huge bundle of whoring money for nine months, and then repeats the cycle when the money has run dry? She has 53 kids (in this cartoon, at least), so even if she is having sets of quintuplets every time, and especially if, she has to have a private area stretched out as big as the Harlem Globetrotters' Magic Circle. Who's banging her then? Paul Bunyan? Did a really fertile dwarf crawl in there and get lost while spelunking? How the hell is she having and then supporting these kids???!!?

At the start of The Family Shoe, Van Beuren's 1931 attempt to tell the Old Woman's story with a twist from another fairytale, a quartet of singers made up of a cat, a dog, a pig and a duck open the story with some background on the main character. With each of the four dressed up rather like William Shakespeare, they sing of the woman's sad state of affairs:

"The Woman in the Shoe had a family
That always kept her life in a jamboree
She couldn't keep them all looking nifty
They were just fif-ty three!"

The sun flies in from the sky, astounded at this news, and asks, "Fifty-three?" The quartet answers, "Mmm-hmmm!", and the sun whistles in disbelief. (You see? Even the sun, who has probably seen everything in the history of the planet -- except the stuff at night, so maybe she never saw the old woman getting down -- can't believe this tragedy.) Before the quartet can pick up the song again, the tree next to them takes the next two lines in a chesty baritone:

"She had to feed them all every single day
And there were many times that she couldn't pay."

The quartet return:

"She'd surely pass through
In that broken down shoe
She really didn't know just what to do...
Mmm-mmmmm..."

Their humming voices trail off, and the scene shifts to the baby factory herself, and part of the problem, at least in this version, is revealed when we see that she is a Ma Cat, and thus her increased rate of kitten production becames a little easier to understand. She sits on the doorstep to her home, a worn-out frazzled old lady, reduced to wearily rocking a perambulator full of obnoxiously though musically mewling kittens, while her shoe home is overrun by scores of rambunctious little brats, half of them banging on or tooting musical instruments. Four kitten climb atop each other, one by one, their tails forming a ladder, and other kittens climb up them and then dive into the washtub sitting by the clothesline. The old woman gets riled at this, and returns to her scrubbing, and every few scrubs, she pulls a clean little diapered and disgruntled kitten out of the water and clips it to the line. On the other end of the line, another kitten undoes his hanging brethren and drops each one into a mudpuddle, which returns the smile to their faces. A goat stands behind her, and when one of her young paddles the goat with a block of wood, the goat takes it out on the old lady, upending her and sending the water from her tub flying.

Sitting on the ground, crying and useless, the old woman pleads her case to her only decent and behaved offspring. "Jack," she begins, "I don't know what to do!" 'Aw, shucks! Leave it to me, mother!", the plucky little fellow declares, and he produces a bag of beans and the most miserable excuse for a rifle that has ever been seen. Throwing the beans over the bayonet on his gun, he swings the whole kit over his shoulder, and he sets off to make things right for his mother. He bounces along merrily until he comes upon a bird sitting on a fence. He stuffs one of the beans in his gun and aims it at the bird, but the bean sputters out to the ground, and the bird flies away. Jack starts to curse his luck, but the bag of beans won't hear anymore, so it sprouts arms and covers its ears, and sprouts legs and walks off. The sputtered bean, too, doesn't want to hear about it, and also sprouts limbs and then buries itself in the ground. Instantly, a giant beanstalk pops out of the ground, growing higher and higher into the air.

From this point on, the story is pretty much a straightforward though truncated telling of Jack and the Beanstalk with a few exceptions: 1) When Jack reaches the clouds, the castle sprouts a beckoning arm, its drawbridge opens wide to reveal a huge tongue, it yells "Over here, Jack!", and when it winks its window like an eye, there is the sound of a cuckoo clock; 2) Jack lulls the giant to sleep by playing the pendulum chains on the grandfather clock like a harp, and singing Sleep, Baby Sleep in a lovely soprano; and 3) once the goose is made to lay a golden egg for Jack's mother, after she receives the egg, her tattered clothing changes magically to a snazzy new outfit, making her appear not so old after all. The weathered and ratty shoe slowly turns into a jewel-encrusted high-heeled pump, with a long awning over the entry and a butler awaiting his chance to serve Madame. The "Old Woman" marches towards her new home, with her 53 now well-behaved kids in tow, and she enters her glorious castle like a queen, with the goose carrying her train. Iris out.

I guess my main question is why Van Beuren just didn't do a straightforward Jack and the Beanstalk adaptation, rather than take a rather common and quite slim nursery rhyme and then sloppily affix the Beanstalk tale to it. Rather than invent a new story around the cat family and the son's attempts to bring happiness to his mother, they instead rely on a well-known tale -- and except for a couple of brief instances, they do nothing to invert it or make it different -- they merely tread water until the obvious conclusion. I don't begrudge the poor old mother cat her wealth and happiness; I just wish they had gone about it in a more original fashion. But that is not really the way of the Aesop's Sound Fables, so it is nothing more than wishful thinking that I would get a little bit more out of this cartoon. Nothing against the Jack and the Beanstalk story, either -- while it has been done to death, there is always room for an update or revisioning of the moldy tale. This one just gathers mildew in its lackluster storytelling.

I suspect, though, that being rich is not going to stop Ol' Ma Kitty from falling over the laundry basket every time some tomcat comes sniffing around her shoe. Now that she is dressed to the nines and all decked out in jeweled finery and fancy footwear, she will most likely attract even more suitors from here on out. And not necessarily quality ones, but still like all the deadbeat dads who had their way with her before. Moving up in the world just means that more of the refuse of the world piles up outside of her door. And then, after they get in her can, her bright shiny new shoe will get filled up even more with miniature versions of that line of refuse.

After all, they must call them "litters" for a reason. Oh well, at least she's filling the world with kittens instead of more people. Because then, something would have to be done. Like lacing up her Magic Circle instead of that giant ass shoe...

The Family Shoe (A Van Beuren Aesop's Sound Fable, 1931)
Directors: Mannie Davis and John Foster
Cel Bloc Rating: 5

MAKIN' 'EM MOVE (1931)

When I saw Penn and Teller on the stage years ago (and also had the chance to meet them post-show, where I had a spirited discussion about Buster Keaton with the stage-silent Teller), Penn Jillette mentioned something about the true nature of magic, or rather, illusion, as they prefer to call it. I don't remember his exact words, but it had something to do with the people who can't just be happy with seeing an illusion performed to perfection before their disbelieving eyes. No, these people had to know how the trick was performed. The most often-asked question about any magic trick is "how did you do that?" That is, if the person observing it isn't pulling the "I know how they do that!" bluff, wherein they really don't know how it is being done, but they have to pretend they know openly so that they seem bigger in their eyes and ego, even if no one around them gives two shits. 

The beauty of the art of illusion is not in knowing how it is done. Don't go crazy trying to ascertain the knowledge of how the illusionist performed his "magic", but rather, be content with the artistry it took to pull that illusion off and make your brain go "What the hell?" That's the fun part. You know it is a trick, but the beauty is in pretending it isn't. The "magic" in the trick is in believing that you have just seen the impossible. Once you go behind the curtain and see the wizard is a fraud, the magic dies... unless you became a magician yourself.

More years back than I care to imagine now, there was an idiot who had a series of specials on Fox (yet again the harbinger of evil) performing as "The Masked Magician." The specials were all about the great secrets of magic being revealed once and for all --- and all hell broke loose around their airing, especially in magician's circles, who swore that Val Valentino, the guy's real name (though unknown at the time) would never work again, and that the art of illusion would be ruined forever. The quartet of specials aired anyway... and I never once tuned in to them. Why not? Because, despite all the controversy, I thought it was a ridiculous non-event. The secrets he was purporting to reveal to a curious public could be easily found in any decent library in the country. We had books on the history of magic since we were kids, my brother Mark and I (Mark, at one point, had an interest in the hobby; I was merely addicted to the occasional magic specials that popped up on TV from time to time), and despite my knowing how some of the tricks (not all) were performed didn't take away from the spectacle itself. Because illusion is mostly that --- spectacle. Away from the audience's view, there is a science and art to the trick itself, but the bulk of what the audience "sees" is misdirection and folderol.

Animation, too, is a form of the art of illusion. 24 fps, people, and you have what it takes to convince the human eye that animated motion is fluid; 1440 of these photographed frames sustains the illusion of that movement over the course of a minute, and just over 10,000 of these frames gets you seven minutes of cartoon enjoyment (or crap, if it is done by a bad studio). But, not everyone is happy with simply this knowledge; no, they're not happy until they have figured out every little detail of the industry. At the beginning of the Aesop's Sound Fable called, cleverly, Makin' 'Em Move, a lovely lady-cat in high heels and a tight dress struts and shakes her way through the back door of an "Animated Cartoon Studio" (so says the sign on the glass of the door) with this simple entreaty to the seemingly dozing security keeper who guards the studio: "Pardon me! I've always wondered how they were made!" As the lady-cat giggles to herself, the annoyed keeper (who is played by a dog) tells her to "Shhhh!" and unlocks the door. As the familiar Halloween strains of Mysterious Mose play about them, the keeper and the lady-cat march through a section of hallway marked with a "SILENCE" sign to another door. This action is repeated down another hallway, and then down a third, until they come to a fourth door.

When this door is opened, the pair are flooded with thousands of sheets of paper, which fill the screen like a full dam bursting, and when the sheets have cleared away, we are given a look into the busy cartoon studio. An orchestra plays jazz full-bore on a bandstand while many artists draw frantically, throwing each completed drawing on the floor over their shoulders and starting the next drawing. Busybody interns bustle to and fro carrying supplies and large piles of completed drawings. A line of animals at adjacent drawing boards each complete their own section of a drawing in an artistic assembly line: one draws the head of a cat, passes it to the next, who draws the body, then the next draws the arms, the legs, the belly button, and so on. Back by the bandstand, the band sputters and starts with frightening bursts of sound, sending all of the artists somersaulting from their tables. After a second turn at this, a hand reaches out from under one of the tables and shoots the band-leading lion, who drops face down on the bandstand, still conducting as his musicians play normally again and artists return to their duties.

A pretty kitty in a short skirt poses for an artist, and as he draws each picture of her, she shifts her position slightly so that he draw the next. Finally, his pencil snaps, and a mouse climbs up onto the desk to using his gnawing teeth to sharpen the pencil, which is accomplished by the artist cranking the mouse's tail like a real pencil sharpener. The artist takes his completed drawings and flips them, showing us the animated sequence of the stick figure version of the kitty, which she herself duplicates while standing on the tabletop, in perfect unison with the flipping drawings, and all while The Streets of Cairo plays along with her seductive belly-dance.

A smiling camera, with his tripod tips ending in three big clunky shoes, prances up behind one of the artists, who flips his drawings so the camera can film them. He does this to another artist's renderings, and then rushes over to the sound equipment. He threads the film inside him over through a synchronization machine, and places a needle along the edge of the film. The band starts playing, and their music gets etched along the side of the animation, as each note gets sucked into a recording horn. A large lady-pig starts to la-la-la her way through some "lyrics" (and quite horribly, I might add) and she is justly sucked into the recorder, along with the piano-playing lion. Then the whole band gets violently sucked up into the device.

The scene abruptly changes to the outside of a wooden fence, where hundreds of animals clamor and fight to get inside, and all because of a sign sitting on the fence that reads "A MOVIE CARTOON TO-DAY". Inside, though still outside, a movie screen has been strung up between two trees, and a large crowd of animals await the animated delights to be presented. The movie starts, and a title card reads "FABLES ANIMALS present LITTLE NELL". The cartoon characters in this film, like the drawings in the studio, are all of the stick-figured variety, and we first see the aforementioned Little Nell, an ingenue archetype, dancing atop a piano while her most-likely eventually heroic boyfriend plays along with her gyrations. (Her skirt even rises up quite a bit as a result of these movements.) Cue a saxophone-blowing mustachioed villain, who toots along with Mysterious Mose (and whose horn blows raspberries at the hissing audience), as he sneaks up to the window of the house where the couple are playing. His solo is short and sweet enough to attract the ingenue, and she falls into his horn, much to the horror of the hero. He makes off with her as she screams, and the audience hisses in kind.

Of course, a sawmill lies in her future (if not that, then it would be railroad tracks), and when she spurns the villain's continued advances and gifts of pearls (dashing them to the ground), he straps her to a large log (nothing Freudian with moves like that) and starts the buzzsaw, which slowly eats its way toward her little blonde head. With the saw's teeth just mere millimeters from her skull, a title card pops up reading "ONE MINUTE PLEASE" and the audience claps and stomps impatiently. The film returns, and the girl is once more nearing the blade. When she reaches it, she not-so-subtly inches her way back down the log to start her voyage anew. The audience readily applauds the shot of the hero running to her rescue, and he crashes through the door of the sawmill, yelling "You dirty skunk" at the dirty skunk of a villain. The evil creep wants to scrap, but the hero is not messing around. He pulls a gun on the villain and fires at his head, which sends the villain's head and torso pivoting wildly through his legs around his pelvis, and then he drops to the floor in the corner.

The hero rescues the girl, and she proclaims him, in the tried-and-true manner, "My hero!" "Aw, shucks!", he replies coyly, "It wasn't nothin'!" They kiss, and the cartoon within the cartoon comes to an end, as a "curtain" drops down on the screen reading "ASBESTOS". The audience applauds grandly, but the "curtain" arises to allow the performers their bows. Applause for the girl and boy, but when the villain bows, a tiger in the front row dislikes him enough to send a flying punch into the screen, knocking everything down in the process. A fight underneath the screen begins, and all of the remaining animals in the crowd dive into the fray, too. Iris out.

Let's get past the fact that this is a tremendously silly cartoon, and that it yet again falls prey to the early Van Beuren insistence on not seeing the premise of a cartoon all the way through. The cartoon turns on a dime: one film at the midway point, and then it jumps, and it seems we in the second half of another film altogether. The opening scene with the lady-cat never pays off, as she disappears after they go through that last door and enter the studio. Why is she offering us a snickering aside at the beginning? Personally, I thought she was actually Waffles the Cat in drag, and that there was a far more sinister purpose behind the visit. Although, if there was, it would undoubtedly be forgotten by the four-minute mark of the film. No, let's get past all that (though it seems, obviously, that I can't...)

This film purports to show us the inside world of an animated studio, and while it does indeed take us inside one, Makin' 'Em Move neither has the intent nor the interest in truly showing that world. Sure, those with a serious interest might want a closer glance, but the casual audience member doesn't really care how they are done, as along as the result entertains. I am still astounded by how many people I have met personally don't know how a cartoon is created -- and I am not talking intricate technological specificity, but merely the simplest facts about the field. The bulk of the audience just seems to take cartoons for granted, and treat many of the characters as if they were real living, breathing celebrities. Every kid knows that Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character, but name a small child that doesn't believe that Mickey walks among us. They know he does, of course, because they saw him at Disneyland, but that belief got its beginnings in a series of simple animated shorts, and now even the most cynical of adults, myself included, gushes when walking smackdab into the giant rat at the park. Behind the magic is real human effort, but all we see is the magic and believe it.

For some reason, people don't feel the need to extend this acceptance to the field of "magic" itself. They must know how the tricks are done. Even with the smoothest stagecraft and a well-crafted story around the illusion, there are still plenty of people in the crowd who just can't simply enjoy a theatrical marvel, and spend the entire show trying to methodically search out the seams and the trapdoors. Oz never existed for these people, or if it did, the Wizard left town in his balloon a long, long time ago.

Who knows, maybe it was one of those sorry people who dressed up as a lady-cat and visited that cartoon studio. It would explain the snickering. But not the fries that came with that shake...

Makin' 'Em Move (A Van Beuren Aesop's Sound Fable, 1930)
Directors: Harry Bailey and John Foster
Cel Bloc Rating: 6

GYPPED IN EGYPT (1930)

Right now, my Anchorage friends (The Bohemians) have just gotten through their first of two weekends at the Three Barons Faire, an annual renaissance festival that we have taken part in since the end of high school. (That's about 23 years, folks.) I haven't done it for four years now, and since I have left Alaska, there is little or no chance that I will ever see the Faire again. I burnt my emotional bridges with the thing a few years back, and while I would find some fun in it were I to perform in it again, I have no desire to do so. Honestly, the law of diminishing returns had been placed in effect for me about ten years ago, and when you get to the point where doing something makes you go, "Well, I've got to do the @#$^$%$%ing Ren Faire again!", then it's high time to skedaddle. If you are not going to put your heart into something, then don't do it.

It just so happens that I said those very words time and again, and thus, I didn't do it anymore. No longer would I dressed in the garb of a "swarthy" Moor (for the Moors were whom we portrayed at the Faire, though we were called the Blue Court -- the court, that is, of Ali Akbar Mohammed el Mut Amin the Magnificent). No more would this pale white boy with the blondie-est blonde of towheads pretend that he was one with the Sands of the Deserts. Funny then, how, as I was queueing up the next cartoon for this column over the weekend, that the damned thing reminded me of my mock Arabian brethren back home, and how the whole thing made me rather wistful for my past days at the Faire, telling extremely bad puns from behind a puppet stage.

The animated short is called Gypped in Egypt, and true to the pattern of recent days, it is an Aesop's Sound Fable released by Van Beuren in 1930. Yet again, this one stars the pre-Tom and Jerry (human version) duo of Waffles the Cat and Don Dog, off again in another adventure that will undoubtedly lead to much nonsense, interrupted here and there by musical interludes. Iris in, and we see the pair swinging back and forth on a hammock, only as they swing, the background painting of a desert seems to be moving behind them. As the camera pulls out, we see that they are swaying beneath the belly of a huge, gangly camel, who struts along lazily as the pair doze comfortably. However, the camel comes to an abrupt stop, and kicks the duo out of their naptimes. They land on the desert sands, with pyramids set off in the near distance, and Don hangs his disbelieving tongue out of his mouth when he spies a watering hole nearby.

"Water!", he cries as he points, and the cat and camel repeat the word, and then all three skip merrily towards the miracle, with Waffles and Don making the requisite "Egyptian" hand signals as they go. A tall, rail-thin bird stands placidly by the side of the watering hole, and as the camel tries to sneak his head into the precious liquid first, Waffles and Don are forced to wrestle his head for possession. The camel escapes their grasps, and tries again, but this time, Waffles punches the camel in the head three times and knocks the camel out cold. However, in the midst of this melee, the rail-thin bird bends down and greedily sucks up every last drop of water from the hole. the now-fat bird flies off into the sky, and Waffles and Don are left alone with their unconscious camel.

From off on the horizon, the Sphinx magically slides up towards the pair, and when it gets halfway to them, it reaches its giant head out towards them menacingly and speaks gruffly, "You killed him!", referring to the camel on the ground. Waffles tries to shift the blame to Don, who is standing alongside, looking as cool as one can possibly be in such a situation. Suddenly, about a dozen diaphanous pyramids start to swirl on the sands all about Waffles and Don, frightening the cat to distraction, but not bothering Don the least bit. This trend continues when a ghostly stampede of camels seem to be heading towards the pair. Finally, they find themselves falling through the sands themselves, and the drop into the tomb of an unnamed pharaoh. After three bats wing their way directly over the heads of the cat and dog and then towards the camera in a fun series of fanged closeups, Waffles starts worrying even more about their fate.

Don languidly eyes the slot on the side of the tomb and drops a coin into it. The lid on the sarcophagus opens, and a skeleton sits up, removes a handful of ribs, and clacks them together like castanets. It then jumps out of the case and dances gaily around the tomb. On the walls, the heiroglyphics come to life, and cattle, people and rowing slaves all move in time with the music. the skeleton finishes his little dance and hops back into the coffin, but he leaves his shinbone and foot behind. Don picks up the remains, and when the skeleton reaches back out and demands "Gimme my leg! Gimme my leg!", Don gives it to him, conking him full atop the skull. Don leans into the coffin, and Waffles, in his panic, pushes Don into the closing sarcophagus. The lid raises once more, and the skeleton pulls Waffles in, too. A terrible fight ensues, all hidden from our eyes, of course, but it is guaranteed that the scrappy little Don probably has things well in hand. The fight is so violent that the golden statue that adorns the tomb gets up and flies out of the room. The coffin raises up on its end and spins about, and then slides towards the camera, taking up the entire screen.

The screen splits into two halves that dissolve into the next scene, where we see Waffles strangling Don. He stops and shakes his head in disbelief, but Don is unconcerned. He is eyeing the beard on the chin of a figure on a mummy case standing before him, and he wastes no time in tugging on it. A horrid siren fills the air, and a chariot drops into place, and off a descending pole slides a skeleton wearing a fire helmet. The siren continues as the chariot, pulled by two helmet-wearing cats with invisible reins held by the skeleton fireman, races to an undetermined destination, and Waffles and Don ride along as hundreds of skeletons flee the palace (or wherever they happen to be) in a panic.

After a short ride, the pair are bumped off, and fall through a trap door into another room. Sitting on the floor is a stone crouching figure with its hands held out, palms down. Don walks up and pushes on the fingers, and they turn out to make music like a rudimentary piano. After a few more strikes, a stone slides open in the wall, and a skeleton grabs the figure and stretches it out into a conventional-looking piano. As Don starts to putter about with it, another trapdoor slides open, and the skeleton pops up (with a stool) to join Don in playing. They start pounding out a fun ragtime version of Chopsticks, and when they are finished the two shake hands in friendship. And then Don, much to the consternation of Waffles, removes the skull from the skeleton, whose body goes limp with the action. Don calmly tosses the skull over his shoulder, and Waffles struggles not to drop it in his fear, but he does anyway. It hits the floor, and a stone panel opens up in the wall behind, revealing a staircase.

They race up the great winding case, their shadows cast tall on the wall beside them as they climb round and round, the camera moving with their efforts. They finally reach open air at the top, and the staircase disappears behind them. A skeleton reaches out as if to grab them, but closes a gate across an elevator car instead, and the car starts moving upward. From the outside, we see a tall obelisk, and then there is a cutaway revealing the elevator with the trio inside as it ascends to the top of the obelisk, and we notice that the skeleton is wearing an operator's cap and holding the lever. At the top, Waffles and Don walk out backwards into the air off a stone plank, never noticing their is nothing beneath their feet. Waffles says, "Nice ride!" to the bowing operator, who stands on the plank and laughs maniacally. Don blows him a raspberry, and the operator bolts back into the obelisk-avator and the stone planks slames shut. For the first time, the pair notice their dire situation, and Waffles runs through the air trying to save himself. "Let us in! Let us in!", he yells, but Don pulls him off the obelisk, and down they plummet. They hit the sand and start to run toward the horizon, filing past a dozen pyramids, but then the swirling, accusing eyes of the Sphinx rise up above the horizon and scare them enough to make them run back the other way. And that's the end!

What the hell??!!!? Did I just see Waffles and Don KILL A CAMEL???!!? There is no Oz-like ending where it was all a hallucination? Of course, they could be trapped forever in the hallucination. Maybe the camel is only passed out, maybe not... truthfully, since the entire thing seems to work like a fever dream, I don't think the plot matters one bit, which, just like with the later Tom and Jerry shorts, is the strength of the series. And how laid back can a cartoon character get? With Don always acting opposite to the way in which both Waffles and the audience expects him to act, he doesn't even think about a situation before using his recalcitrant personality to get them out of it; he just plain doesn't care where he is at any point. Even in a moment of dawning friendship with his skeleton piano partner, he doesn't think twice to pop the head off his new pal -- he just does it... 'cause it seems like the thing to do. If "whatever" were the catch phrase of the Thirties instead of in the Aughts, he would be the character voicing it. A marvelously disjointed and wacky adventure. With a seemingly dead camel...

We always wanted a camel at the Ren Faire. Drew up plans to make an elaborate camel puppet which two people could pretend to ride, with little puppety fake legs hanging off the top for each person, while they walked about in the costumed legs. Had the same idea for a baby elephant costume, too, but never got around to making it either. As we put on a circus each day, "Akbar and Amid's Circus of the Damned (The Worst "Damned" Show at the Faire)" they would have been welcome additions if we had done them. In fact, I have a notebook full of ideas that I had always wanted to bring to fruition for the Circus and the Faire, but budget, time and talent took their toll on this course.

And now, I sit in the air-conditioned comfort of my Anaheim apartment, as the sun beats down at a heavy 90 degrees, girls in bikinis strut around the pool outside my window (some of them probably shouldn't be doing that, either -- eewww! to that one there), and I am thinking, as I sip my big cool glass of iced tea, about my friends sweating their way through fight shows, circuses, processions, prayers, and mock court rituals and espionage, all the while wearing some not necessarily comfortable costumes in some sunny mid-60's weather. Where would I rather be? Pretending to be a Moorish puppetmaster while hanging with my friends, or sitting and relaxing in the cool of my abode, watching silly 1930's cartoons of a cat and dog having surrealistic nightmare adventures inside a pyramid in the desert sands of Egypt?

Well, despite the girl who just undid her bikini top, all in all, I'd rather be in Granada...

Gypped In Egypt (A Van Beuren Aesop's Sound Fable, 1930)
Director: Mannie Davis and John Foster
Cel Bloc Rating: 6

HOT TAMALE (1930)

Honestly, I think Walt Disney had every right to complain about the hordes of animated mice that ran rampant after his boy Mickey hit the big time in the late 1920's. Disney has his detractors, and many of them would argue that he was just as guilty as the others of intellectual theft as any other studio. Animation was (and is) a constantly evolving field, and the game grew by leaps and bounds in those days. All of the creators of animation were looking to make money from a finite pool of money, and what was good for one studio was most assuredly the way to go for the rest.

Sure, an argument can be made about the basic similarity of all mice in color, shape and movement. But, Mickey had some rather distinctive features, too -- the short pants, the shoes, the style and shape of his ears and eyes, the attitude -- all of them put together, along with the fact that he was given a name and definite continuing personality, made him huge and special in the public's eye. If Disney had maintained that all cartoon mice were straining to cash in on Mickey's superstardom, then he would certainly be off the mark -- many of the mice were just too limited in screen time and plot importance to be worried about -- but there were cases where the similarities to Mickey are just a little too close.

Take Milton Mouse, for instance, the mouse that drove Walt Disney to a series of lawsuits and eventual court legal victory. Apparently, he is the mouse from Happy Polo/The Polo Match (1929/1932), redesigned, rounded and outfitted to resemble the suddenly famous Mickey (just as Rita, Milton's significant other, now looks remarkably like Mickey's grand love, Minnie). In Hot Tamale, an Aesop's Fables tale of a south-of-the-border love triangle (which really has only two sides) from Van Beuren in 1930, Milton rides up to Rita's hacienda, guitar in hand, to serenade his lady love. Before he descends from his mechanical horse (also used in Happy Polo), a heart bearing wings flutters out from Milton's lovelorn look at Rita's front door, if only to clue us in immediately as to his intentions (as if we needed the hint). Beginning to play In A Little Spanish Town, he pulls and stretches his guitar strings out wildly and spins his instrument about in circles; inside the hacienda, Rita starts to dance flamenco-style to the beat, her bloomers dropping down to the floor once in a while.

Milton desires to enter her front door, but he literally gets cold feet, as we see his shoes form into iceblocks. He decides to continue to profess his love from outside, but as he plays, his spirit leaves his body, several shades lighter than his true self, and enters Rita's abode. The spirit plays the lovesong as Rita continues to dance, sometimes turning upside down to do so, which leaves her skirt falling over her face, which she pulls up with her tail. When the song is finished, Milton's musical spirit kisses her several times on the cheek (up-a-stairs, not down-a-stairs). Outside, Milton drools with lust, and finally works up the courage to enter the house for real. He walks in and seats himself next to Rita, who looks away demurely. Milton lies his guitar on his lap and starts to play it Hawaiian slide-style, and Rita is overjoyed with the sound.

Milton motions to her as if to say "You ain't seen nothin' yet!" and pops his guitar open. Any guitarist worth his pick has a ukelele hidden inside of their instrument, and Milton is no exception. Sitting down on the edge of his guitar like a parkbench, Milton starts to strum Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue as Rita launches into a frenetic dance. Eventually, we see the fountain in her courtyard, where a naked stone figure bearing an umbrella stands over several sea creatures who have hopped out of the fountain to join in the dance: an eel, a lobster, a fish, a turtle and a frog. after a few seconds, the stone figure, too, starts swaying, as do three cacti in the courtyard behind them. Rita continues to shimmy, and then jumps in and out of her dress a few times. When she is done, she is standing naked and embarrassed before Milton, while her dress and bloomers dance on their own. She dives back into her clothes, and then shyly takes a seat on her bench. Milton slides up to her, salivating profusely, but he gets nervous and slides away. He wrestles with his fears, but eyes her slyly, as she does him, and finally, he slides over and they embrace. They kiss passionately for a while, perhaps a little too passionately for a cartoon, and Rita strokes his neck while they do.

Enter the villain -- a cat; Waffles the cat actually, and he naps soundly on the back of his own wooden horse, while the steed strums the guitar Waffles holds in his sleeping hands with its tail. When they arrive at Rita's door, Waffles blows kisses towards it, but then he sees Milton step out. So livid he can barely stand up or control himself, Waffles can only watch as Milton gets aboard his horse and prepares to depart. Waffles berates Milton with about two wagonfuls of Spanish gibberish, and Milton's only response is to blow a raspberry at the cat, which knocks him down in surprise. As Milton rides off, Waffles blows an even larger raspberry back at the mouse. Waffles enters Rita's house, and though he, too, wishes to sing her a song of love, Rita wants nothing to do with him. Even though he sings to her, or perhaps, because he does, she cries out in alarm. She runs off and hides in the back of a haycart, but the bars only serve as a cage to her as Waffles advances on her. He pulls out two mallets and starts to play the bars like a vibraphone, as music swells on the soundtrack.

From off in the distance rides Milton to the rescue. Just outside the wall where she is trapped in the cart, Milton unscrews the head off Waffles' horse and fills the mechanical steed with rocks, weighing its stomach down until it is reaches the ground. He climbs on top of the horse and pulls Rita over the wall just as Waffles' finishes his torturous song of evil. As the lovelorn couple ride off in safety, Waffles tries to give chase, but the horse can't go anywhere -- at least, not in a rapid fashion. He slaps and punches and even smacks the horse's bottom with a flyswatter, but it can barely move. He finally gets it to drag its stomach slowly, but the horse finally falls apart due to his cajoling. He sees the rocks inside the horse's torso, and goes crazy with anger! The horse, however, has had enough, and its dismembered head reaches around and bites Waffles on the backside. Far from this raucous scene, Milton and Rita ride off in rapture. When Milton finishes playing another song, he pulls his sombrero down over both of their heads, and the two renew their kissing. Iris out.

A sad fact is that most people don't bother with credits, or even seeing a film all the way through from start to finish. People know the biggest characters or stars, and it's screw-all from that point onward. I know people who have insisted that they watched "a Charlie Chan film last night on AMC" when in fact the film was a Mr. Wong programmer; likewise, I know of an instance where someone confused Buster Crabbe's Buck Rogers with Flash Gordon, and asked me why they didn't have Ming the Merciless in the serial. It is undoubtably certain to me, that if you were to show this cartoon sans titles to the uninitiated, who only know of Mickey Mouse's existence, they would leave the viewing believing and insisting that they had just watched "an old Mickey and Minnie cartoon." That this film is lesser in quality from Mickey's current output would not matter to those who had happened upon it.

So, I understand Disney's need to establish his big cheese as the big cheese-eater. Despite the fact that Mickey was equally inspired by a preceding decade's worth of other cartoon mice, some even in the Aesop's Fables, to his good fortune, Mickey had become huge, and the rest of the cartoon world had taken notice. It was his stake to claim, and can we really fault him for taking the opportunity to set he and his company up forever? He had the gold standard of cartoon mice at that moment in time. Remember the golden rule: he who has the gold, makes the rules. Disney did just that, and he never let go of that gold, even at the end.

Hot Tamale (A Van Beuren Aesop's Sound Fable, 1930)
Director: John Foster
Cel Bloc Rating: 5

A ROMEO ROBIN (1930)

Birds... just when I thought that I was out, they pull me back in. Every single time that I think my peace has been made with these winged freaks, something flaps along to spoil this accord. I will meet someone's asshole pet parakeet, which will be loud and obnoxious and try to snap you if get even two inches from the cage, and I swear off bird relationships forever. But then you meet a swell duck at the park and everything is righted again. Then a jerk seagull tries to divebomb your head as you pass it on the street, and he and its compatriots continue this airborne assault all through the summer, and you declare war on the avian kind. Then a trip to the zoo reveals a baby penguin, and you have no choice but to go "Awwww!" at its utter cuteness. A few weeks later, you bear personal witness to an abandoned baby duckling as it is creepily stalked and brutally murdered by a ravenous crow, and your blood boils anew. A half year later, and the scales are rebalanced when you find your porch lined with scores of thrumming doves, and your heart breaks a little when a tiny hummingbird smacks into your window, which you guard and stress over until it comes to and manages to fly off under its own regained power.

And all appeared fine until Jen and I found our nights being interrupted by the monotonous and overly eager strains of a sunrise bird who clearly has his alarm clock set for far, far too early in the morning. With the darkness still staked to its moorings on the ground, this winged nut apparently has it in for the two of us, and especially me, who has a hard enough time staying asleep each night. It would be fine if I just slept straight through its chirping cacaphony, but every night, I wake up around four in the morning to perform my usual ablutions, and it becomes damned impossible to fall back under Morpheus' spell with Droolly the Feathered Moron going off for three straight hours just outside your window.

So, forgive me if I have little patience with today's Aesop's Fable cartoon from 1930, A Romeo Robin. I care little for romances of the bird kind right now, and all that I can think about is catching the little twerp, purchasing a meat grinder, applying his tuchis to the blades, and then feeding the little chirpy creep his own hind end. PETA can show up and picket my apartment for this horribly reactionary scenario if they wish; I am so sleep-deprived right now, in my delirium, I will only subject the unbathed hippie girls to the same treatment. Sorry for meandering, but that's the state that I am in this morning.

The film opens with a quartet of blackbirds of assorted sizes and a lone owl, all dressed in shabby castoffs, and sitting along the top rail of a fence while whistling a merry little tune (which might be The Man in the Flying Trapeze; it is too short and offkey for me to tell). A sixth bird sits off on a post to the side: he is small and wears lederhosen and a Tyrolean hat with a tiny feather in it. He stretches out his stick-thin legs until he is about four times his previous height, and starts to perform The Swiss Yodel, with the other birds performing backup to his loopy warblings. As they proceed with the song, two birds are spotlighted in a demented little stomp n' shuffle: wearing top hats and sporting cigars, the birds have overly large feet on the long legs that sprout from their squat black bodies. As they cavort, one of their legs ties itself in a knot but then continues its course until each is unknotted again. After they each repeat this action, their bodies transform until they bear a striking resemblance (not fully, though) to Clampett's Dodo Bird from Wackyland. Bells looped around their now shoe-clad feet jingle insistently as they leap, flap their arms and turn their heads about in circles. Suddenly, another transformation is made, and we see only their skeletons, their ghostly bones making some of the same motions as they literally dance themselves to death. Finishing a tap dance with Shave and a Haircut, the two avian skeletons grab some grass, pull it over themselves, headstones with wreaths pop up, and they are buried for good.

The musical parade continues as we next meet a pair of crows, one of whom plays a large piece of corn like a piano, flipping a trio of kernels into his hungry mouth in time with the music. (The other bird, inconsequential to the music, blows to little result on a pipe.) Three canaries perform a kickline along the edge of a branch; behind them, stalks another "bird" of odd design, which is due to the fact that it is actually a cat in disguise, who is walking backwards and partially upside down, with his head hidden behind his back, and either his hand or tail (it is inconclusive since he is contorted so strangely) made up like a bird's head. He attacks the canaries with a badly voiced yowl, but they escape his evil grasp. He tries his hand at catching a trio of dancing bird children, but they, too, escape unharmed.

Two well-dressed storks march across the screen, doing a quick little dance; we then meet a rather effeminate larger bird who struts about with limp wrists, who is followed by a much smaller bird who clues us in to the bigger bird's demeanor by going "Whooops!" behind his back. (This was apparently the "gay" term in the 1930's.) Arriving at a tree where another bird rests in a hole in its trunk, the gay bird starts to sing Listen to the Mockingbird in a very insistent tone. As he goes off, the bird in the tree punctuates each line with cooing, but finally spits a raspberry at the gay bird, who yells "Oh, for goodness sake!" and runs off to the horizon. The little bird left behind repeats the line from the song, looks up, and something drops in his eye. As he rubs his face angrily, the bird in the tree mocks him.

Halfway through the film's running time, we finally meet the "main" character of the film, such as he is, a happy-go-lucky little bird who merrily tapdances his way down the stairs leading from his birdhouse, and continues this dance across the meadow, suitcase in hand. He stops eventually, and from his case he pulls a stethoscope and listens to the ground at his feet. Satisfied with what he finds, he forms his beak into a flute, and plays a seductive melody that no worm could possibly resist, including the one who lives directly below the bird's feet: a worm named Willy (he has a trunk in his house which bears his name. He undulates out of bed, dances a little shimmy, and slides up a pole to the surface world. After a brief interval of continued dancing, the bird tries to grab the luckless worm, but the invertebrate makes a break for it, and though the bird grabs him again and even rides him for a short spin, the worm makes it back to his home. The bird is not done trying, though, and he dons a disguise consisting of a large coat, a top hat and a full beard, returns to the hole, and whistles a song that is meandering and indistinct but has a slightly Jewish flavor at the end. The worm cannot resist the whistling, and the bird snags his prey. He slams his catch in a tomato can, and even when the worm leaps out, the bird manages to casually recapture the poor worm and trap him inside.

But for what purpose has he taken this victim? Eating? Fishing? A gift for his sweetheart? Perhaps the latter, but when he confronts the lovely ladybird who primps and preens while she listens to his romantic entreaties, she only gives him the cold shoulder and a hard stare. He beckons her to go with him, but she shrugs him off with harsh chirping and whistles. He tries once more, motioning behind him for some reason, and she smiles and relents. They march a short distance to a two-seater airplane, and we finally discover the intent behind the worm's capture. Opening the side panel on the plane, the boy bird attaches the worm to two hooks inside the compartment, and then winds the worm up like the rubber band on a toy balsawood plane. The propeller starts spinning, and the birds are soon up in the air, taking in the day while the melody of Come Josephine, In My Flying Machine plays on the soundtrack.

Below them, the scrawny cat villain bemoans his fate in broken song:

"Oh my gosh, I'm hungry, me-yow-yow-yow!
Oh, my tummy's empty, me-yow-yow-yow!
All I want is a bird, sparrow or quail, me-yow-yow-yow!
All I have is a very sad tail, me-yow-yow-yow!"

(He's getting no sympathy from me, either, with his whining.) On the plane above, a large bird lands on its tail, pulls the worm from the engine, and flies off. This leaves the plane without any power, and the two little birds inside plummet towards the earth, holding each other for dear life. (Well, that's one way to get a girl.) The cat looks up, sees the oncoming dinner, and opens his mouth to receive the birds, but ends up swallowing the plane instead. The wings cause the cat's body to conform to their shape, and the boy bird winds up the cat's tail like a propeller, and the villain is sent away from the picture. (I would think that they just made him more dangerous. Once he figures out how to control his flight, he will be the devil himself in a way those birds never counted on him being.) As The Swiss Yodel springs forth again on the soundtrack, the birds dance joyously in their rapture at being both alive and in love, and they kiss sweetly as we reach iris out.

The film is disjointed, not particularly sharp in any regard, and little effort is spent to actually make the film make sense at any point, even though there is a grudging attempt to give us the basics of a dramatic situation: a hero, heroine, villain, and conflict are introduced, but only half-heartedly set up or resolved. The entire film looks extremely rushed, and this may be the case, but I can only remark on the evidence at hand, and I spit the same raspberry at the film that the bird in the tree did towards the "Whooops!" bird. Even the musical sequences are subpar and ill-conceived, though I do quite enjoy the "dance themselves to death" bit at the beginning.

If only the little creep bird outside my window would peer into that same window and get a clue from this cartoon. Thanks to your interruptions, it's going to take about two flocks of really swell, cute ducks to get me back over on the side of the birds. If you are soooooooooo friggin' happy, obviously there is nothing left to live for, so grab some grass, pull it over your head and take a nice dirtnap, you little shit. I need some sleep myself, but I would like to wake up in the morning, not in the middle of the friggin' night...

Chirp off!

A Romeo Robin (A Van Beuren Studios Aesop's Fable, 1930)
Director: Mannie Davis and John Foster
Cel Bloc Rating: 4

NOAH KNEW HIS ARK (1930)

It's weird how Farmer Al Falfa used to be a Van Beuren guy until Paul Terry took off with him. Only two years after this Aesop's Fables cartoon, Noah Knew His Ark from 1930, Farmer Falfa would star in a similar cartoon over at Terrytoons called Noah's Outing (which I reviewed here), once the already departed Terry swiped the character away from Van Beurne. It's only notable because, while this film stars a different Noah, both films feature the same song at the conclusion of the nonsense, and both films see fit to make sure that brontosauruses are involved in the ship-loading antics.

A monkey plinks out a modified version of Sailing, Sailing on the knees and toes of an elephant (who uses his giant ears to replicate an occasional crash of cymbals), while Capt. Noah (whom we know is called this from the small shack sitting directly behind him bearing this very name) leans back in a very tall stool, which dances to and fro while he whistles along. Eventually, the bearded and barefoot Captain jumps off the stool, and the both he and the stool dance alongside one another until the song's conclusion. Overhead, dark clouds thunder and lightning starts crashing ominously. The captain sits down as we see two large ears of corn growing off his toes, and then we are treated to the disgusting sight of a closeup of his feet, with each toe adorned with a blister of its own, which are then pounded on with hammers by tiny little pointy-tailed devils. The fiends disappear, and we see the corns hop and down on their own accord. Noah cries out, "Oh! Oh! Oh!" and then sings out, "Well, I guess we're going to have some rain!"

Two raindrops punctuate his statement, and in the sky above, one dark cloud floats up to another, takes the form of a bowler, picks up the other cloud, and rolls it into the stormclouds distant. Rain pours down from the sky, and Noah stands outside of his shack in complete bewilderment. Not knowing what to do, he sticks his head down his pants and looks out his pantsleg, and then pulls it back out again. A lightning strike sends him flying out of his pants, and he runs around the shack and then inside. When he closes the doors, his pants bang on the shack with its suspenders. He pulls the pants inside, but a lightning bolt shatters the structure, and Noah runs off bearing a goldfish bowl and holding the roof up with a stick for a makeshift umbrella. A strange-looking cat runs behind him, and when Noah trips, the cat greedily swallows the flying goldfish in one gulp.

Animals run two by two in fear of the storm, which is strange because the animals I know would be every critter for itself. People are pretty much the same way. A large tree with an anthropomorphic face and a skinny sapling bend in the rain and wind, and the large tree uproots itself, grabs the sapling, and runs for the hills. Down a wide valley, the pairs of animals thunder towards Noah's Ark. They board the ship through means of a huge gangplank, and those that don't employ this method simply hurtle themselves over the sides. Noah yells "Come on!" as he pulls the roof down on the ark, and on the shore, what appears to be a brontosaurus stretches its long neck to reach the ship. The ship moves away, so the dinosaur leaps high into the air, lands on the ship and sinks it briefly, then the ark rights itself and they are on their way.

The skunks are towed behind the rest on their own little ark, and if they didn't know that they had their own vessel, they would when they looked at it, for the word "SKUNKS" is writ large across its roof. Onboard the main ark, Noah announces "Ladies and Gentleman! The ship is safe! And I am your skipper!" Between each line, the monkey blows some very flat fanfare, more like raspberries, on a horn, and Noah starts to lose it. But then the monkey starts in on a jazzy little riff, and Noah starts to dance happily. Long before Fantasia, two ostriches dance beautifully in tandem across the deck, and in mid-dance, they both lay eggs. (Apparently the ostriches are an early example of a lesbian couple.) Their babies pop out of the eggs with the beat, and they jump out and finish the dance. Two elephants with huge belly-buttons and with bells on one ankle each, sway their hips and bump their butts together, and Noah takes over on piano while the monkey plays percussion on the Captain's bald head. A pair of monkeys dance a swell routine, incorporating their trademark flailing arms and bodily scratches into their choreography; meanwhile, two hippos, taking their cue from the ostriches, also predate Fantasia and show some flashy balletic moves of their own. A pair of monkeys turn an elephant into a rather static musical instrument, and then the deck is filled with pairs of dancing, hopping creatures. The ark wants to get in on the fun, and with a smiling face planted on its bow, the ship climbs up on top of the water on two skinny legs, and skips along happily in time with the music.

The rain has stopped by this point, and Noah gathers his charges on the deck. They all shout "Hooray!", and then they start singing:

"It ain't gonna rain no more, no more!
It ain't gonna rain no more!
But how in the world will the ship still sail
If it ain't gonna rain no more?"

As they start the second round of this verse, the two skunks dance their way up the towrope, and when they reach the deck, they hop aboard, sending Noah and all of the animals into a panic. Animals start running around the ark's cabin, given chase by the skunks, and then the whole lot of them start diving into the water, this time decidedly not in twos. It's every critter for himself, just like I told you. Iris out.

I will say this: the animals in this film are much better dancers and musicians than the ones in Farmer Al's version of the silly biblical fable. (Yeah, I said it. You should know where I stand on this poppycock by now.) The film is also a little less on the "surreal" side as the later film. No giraffes with elevators in their necks being ridden to the bottom floor by mice here. Owing to my aversion to men's feet, I find the corn sequence a little tough to take on a personal revulsion level, but it is still humorous to see, and doesn't detract from the fun opening musical scene. I also really like the scene with the pants banging frantically on the door of the shack after the lightning has divided them from Noah's bottom half. Numerous little touches abound in the corners of this cartoon, and even though the source tale is the same, as well as the producer, outside of the couple items that I mentioned at the start of this review, hardly anything gets touched on in the same fashion as in the other.

It's almost like two different units of the same company were given the same story, but were not told what the other one was going to do; so you end up with two slightly similar films with variations on the same popular song standard at its closing, further evidence of the popularity of dinosaurs in the public consciousness, and two equally light but equally fun shorts. It's almost like two different units of the same company did that, but it's not -- one film came two years later and almost feels like an attempt to remake the first film, but with the newer company's only star (at that moment). Was Al robbed of a starring role in this film, so once Paul Terry made off with him, the producer saw fit to cast his big star in the later version? (I have heard and read that this film is also a remake of Ship Ahoy, released as an Aesop's Fable by Van Beuren five months earlier, and that much of the animation is reused, including the skunks. I have not seen the film, so I cannot verify this personally, but this does not surprise me in the least.)

There is a similar feeling when one thinks about the variations that certain myths take on from culture to culture. For instance, there is this venerable myth about an ancient massively destructive flood that gets repeated in a great many cultures, such as by the Babylonians and the Sumerians and the Jews, and while some of them include arks or boats and some of the animal details (no dance numbers, though), there is a similar element that runs through all of them: there is a shitload of water. Why, it's almost like several units of the same company produced different versions of the same story. And now, I think the Babylonians are suing the Jews for the film rights...

Noah Knew His Ark (A Van Beuren Studios Aesop's Fable, 1930)
Directors: Mannie Davis and John Foster
Cel Bloc Rating: 6

THE IRON MAN (1930)

I've mentioned before my lack of dancing ability. I tend to avoid hitting a dance floor at all costs, partially for the safety and the sanity of others, but mostly to save myself a little face. If will not expound on the stereotype of white guys that can't dance; suffice to say that I know plenty of white guys that can, and most of them are not gay, either (that we know of). I was never even near a dance floor in my life until I was sixteen, and when I did hit one, it was an embarassing situation. It was one of those times (and there are many) where it seemed that everyone else in the world was in on some secret that had been kept from me for my entire life, and there I was, gamely trying to copy what everyone else was doing during Rock Lobster, and then the mood switched to some Kansas ballad or something, and I looked around and caught the sneers and smirks which seemed to surround me in a swirl, when it fact it was only this asshole girl that hated me just because she was an asshole girl. Still, in my head, the disapproval carousel spun slowly to a stop long enough for me to get off, and I left the cafeteria where the dance was held and found some buddies to hang out with and mock the rest of the school. Turn the beat around, indeed...

I might have gotten by with even some minor enjoyment of dancing in my life if I had just found a particularly move that I was even halfway good at faking. Now that the left knee goes out when someone just snaps their fingers, I will probably never accomplish this goal. But I have told Jen that I wanted to take dance lessons with her, and I am sincere. I really would like to have some comfort in those social occasions where instead of everyone thinking I'm crazy for leaving the party when the dancing starts, instead I can get out there (without the aid of liquid courage, my usual aid in this course -- I still look like an idiot out there, but I no longer care at all). If only I had figured out a cool move or combination of moves that would get people off my backs long enough for me to fake my way through the rest of the dancecard without feeling like everyone is blasting me with their critical laser-vision. Something that would have people going "Check it out! Haven't seen that for a while! Ha Ha, my man! Very funny!" And then the rest of the night? Pressure's off.

If only I had learned the Robot.

An organ-grinding cat (which sounds far worse than it actually is) marches through a forest, dispelling notes from his instrument as he yowls along with the music in exactly that way that cats are wont to do. A note gets stuck on its way out of the box, and the cat cannot wind it any further. He pulls out an oilcan, and after a couple of drops, he is able to pull the stuck note out of the grinder. He continues on, and through a spotlight closeup, he see him play along with the music on his teeth, his tongue pressing each tooth like a piano key. He makes his way to barn where he meets a pair of roosters, and his happy music seems to inspire the roosters to start a cockfight. (No comment.) Finally, the dust settles, and one of the roosters lands a vicious kick to the back of the other's head, and the championship is settled. The cat continues to play on, and Farmer Al Falfa sticks his head out of his window and yells, "Rotten!" The windowsill slams shut on his neck, which only riles Al even more. He steps out of the house after the cat, barking "Go on! Get out of here! that's right!", and the cat disappears over the horizon.

Farmer Al Falfa then takes off after the roosters, who have an easy time of it keeping out of harm's way. Underneath a tree, each rooster leapfrogs up over the other, as if they were ascending invisible stairs, and they end up safely on the branch of the tree. Then one of the roosters has an idea, and squats to lay an egg in exactly the way that roosters don't. That rooster hikes the egg like a football to the other rooster, who calls out signals like "23-7-46", and then he whips the egg/ball into Al's face. As the roosters laugh at Al's yolk-covered head, the farmer runs off and returns with a saw to try and cut down the branch. He shimmies up the trunk of the tree, and we are given a wonderful forced perspective shot of the surrounding acreage as Al climbs nearer and nearer. Al reaches the branch at last, but as he swings out onto it, he loses his grip and almost falls. He catches himself and pulls his body up onto the branch will all his strength. He's the one laughing now, and as Al turns about to cut off the branch that both he and the roosters are on, the birds leap up and fly into a hole in the tree. Al severs the branch, and the tree trunk, not the branch, starts to fall down. At the base of the tree, a group of animals have gathered to watch the outcome, and they step as the roots of the tree are upended and the trunk splats into the ground.

Al is still sitting in midair, delighted with the results. He then realizes that he must find a way down from his perch, so he drops himself carefully off the branch, stretches his arms out as far as they can go, and lets loose. He tumbles over and over as he falls, but as he nears the ground, his body slows to a near-standstill, and he alights gently on the ground on his tiptoes. Then the branch falls down and slams into his head! The crowd of animals all point and laugh at him, and Al stalks off grumpily.

Farmer Al often gets surprise packages in the mail (see The Prize Package, reviewed here), and today is no exception. A mule-drawn Express wagon rushes towards Al's farm (though the mule is determined to let his hind legs rest on the gear behind him), and in the back, there is a large crate standing awkwardly through the ride. The wagon pulls up to Al's door, and then starts to veer away, and Al yells at the driver. The man stops and unceremoniously dumps the crate crashingly out the back, and then drives away. Al eyes the crate warily, but then undoes the latch with a carefully stretched-out arm. The door swings open, and inside is a mechanical man, but it is backwards and upside-down.

The iron man leaps out of the box onto its feet and facing Al, and it offers his hand in friendship. Al takes the metal hand, and the robot squeezes Al's own hand until it pulses with pain and the arm hangs useless from its socket. The robot taps Al simply on the hand, and all seems fine. The iron man whispers "Shhhh!" three times with a finger to its mouth while it looks dramatically left and right, and then launches into a swell little dance, imploring Al to join it. The pair dance on for awhile, with little weird variations thrown into each count, until at last, the robot stops in midair, and its legs start to tick-tock back and forth together like a pendulum. It swings its arms like clock hands, and then, indeed, it really takes on the appearance of a clock when a cuckoo bird bursts out of its chest! This bit done, the two go back to their dance, but the robot confuses things when he kicks Al in the rear. The farmer is not one to let things go, and so, when it reaches his turn in the routine, he kicks the robot back.

The mechanical man does not know how to react. It stands very confused, and then it starts to swell up twice its size, then four times it size, then off the screen, and then he we see the entire earth crammed into a corner of the screen, and the robot has continued to grow until it is thousands of miles above the earth's atmosphere. It shudders and shakes, and then explodes with a massive "BOOM!" The next thing we see are the parts of the robot falling back to earth, but as Al laughs like crazy on the ground, the metal leg of the machine hits the farmer square on the noggin and knocks him down. The other parts reassemble as they hit reach earth, and the robot chases Al and the crowd of animals off over the horizon. Iris out.

The screen then reads: "2600 years ago, Aesop said:" and we see a small Mickey-like mouse sitting on what could be a black rock in the middle of a pond who is fast asleep as he fishes. A similarly black swan sticks his neck and head out of the water, and says, "An oyster is a fish dressed up like a nut." The swan ducks back under the surface as the mouse awakens and feels a tug on his line. He pulls hard, and then the swan pops up on the other side of its body, tugging on the line. The swan lets go, the mouse falls into the water, and the swan rights its entire body and laughs uproariously.

Good fun, but yet again we have a cartoon, much as in Summertime, where there are three distinct sections which have little or nothing to do with the other sections, except for a character which shows up in some or all of the segments. The organ-grinder cat only leads us to the roosters, which exist only to bring Al into the picture, and eventually Al gets a robot as a present. And the fable has nothing whatsoever to do with anything else in the picture. I love this silliness, of course, but it does make it hard to tell any sort of story when you approach a film in this manner. It's a good thing that the filmmakers are not concerned for even two seconds about anything like "a story". Early science-fiction fun? Is the appearance of a robot enough to qualify something as science-fiction if there is no actual science behind the fiction? Does it matter? It's a Farmer Al Falfa cartoon, and it couldn't care less about whether the robot in the film sports a realistic design or not. This cartoon just wants to dance!

And so do I, but only under my own terms. My question about the "iron man" in this film is about the dance that he starts. A human can do a dance where he approximates the supposedly stiff, mechanical movements of a robot, and it is called "The Robot". Since a robot is built to imitate the motions of a human being, is the robot in the film actually doing a dance called "The Human"? And when Al joins him in his merry capering, since he matches the robot's moves exactly, is the farmer actually doing a dance called "The Human, As Filtered Through the Machinations of a Robot"?

If so, then I've been doing that dance for years. It may not be "The Robot", but they're the stiffest movements you've ever seen a human attempt.

The Iron Man (A Van Beuren Studios Aesop's Fable, 1930)
Directors: Harry Bailey and John Foster
Cel Bloc Rating: 6