Toons In Swing Time: Part Three

From The Sublime To The...Gross (Milt Gross, That Is): JITTERBUG FOLLIES (1939)

T

The original Count Screwloose (above left) and the
animated version (above right). (Images from Don
Markstein's Toonopedia and YouTube, respectively)

(Edited 6/9/08 to correct a mind-numbingly dumb error--R.)

Jitterbug Follies
Release Date: Feb. 25, 1939
Director: none credited (though possibly Milt Gross himself)
In Short: Count Screwloose tries to con the yokels with a phony jitterbug contest--which he's forced to actually put on. Now we know what killed vaudeville...

To paraphrase a saying I've used once before, some cartoonists draw funny things; others draw things funny. Milt Gross did both.

His influence reaches across decades, most notably in the work of Mel Brooks. (The former Melvin Kaminsky no doubt read Milt's strips as a boy in the Bronx). Bob Clampett and John K. were inspired by him.

He could do anything--comic books, strips, animation, humor columns, radio scripts. He even pioneered what would later be known as the "graphic novel": She Done Him Wrong, which he describes as "The Great American Novel, And Not A Word In It--No Music, Too..."



The Yiddish-inflected dialogue of such Milt Gross creations as Nize Baby might confuse some young folks these days, but a person need not understand Gross to appreciate him. Every stroke of his pen radiated humor--you'll find yourself laughing even if you're not sure why. His characters looked funny, eyes perpetually crossed. Gross' loose, scribbly drawing style seemed to reflect the out-of-control nature of the strips themselves.

He created comic strips at an astonishing rate: And Then The Fun Began, Dave's Delicatessen, Looey Dot Dope, Phool Phan Phables, Nize Baby, Otto and Blotto, and one that would earn him a kind of cult status in comic-strip and animation history, Count Screwloose of Tooloose. It would be the good "Count" who'd prove to be his most lasting character, appearing in one form or another until 1948.

Created as a Sunday strip in 1929 for the New York World, its premise was simple: "Count" Screwloose, the ever-resourceful inmate of the Nuttycrest lunatic asylum, would regularly bid goodbye to his Napoleon hat-wearing dog Iggy

These panels from He Done Her Wrong (1922) only give us a glimpse of the craziness and bawdiness the young Milt Gross was capable of. (Images from Amazon.com)

(not J.R. the Wonder Dog, which was created for the animated cartoons) and escape over the wall--only to discover that the world outside the asylum was even crazier. Inevitably, he'd jump back over the wall to the relative safety of the "nut house," telling his dog, "Keep an eye on me, Iggy..."

Count Screwloose escapes again, in a comic-book
story from the late '40s. (From John K.'s blog)

The Count's methods of escape were typical Milt Gross: once, he hopped onto a fellow inmate who believed himself to be a window shade; when the human "window shade" popped up, he propelled the Count over the wall on another adventure.

Animation was the next logical step for the character; indeed, when Gross replaced the "blink and you'll miss him" Harry Hirschfeld as supervisor of MGM's new animation department in early 1938, he'd already had past animation experience. Not with Count Screwloose, but with "Mr. Phool Phan", one of his earliest creations. As a 20-year-old assistant to Thomas A. "Tad" Dorgan (the cartoonist who, according to legend, gave us the term "hot dog") Gross created the strip about an insanely obsessed sports fan for Hearst's New York Journal in 1915. It appeared in animated form two years later, produced by John Randolph Bray. Gross wrote and directed the cartoon; it didn't materialize into a series, however, and today is almost completely forgotten.

With Gross now at the helm of the MGM cartoon department, a series of cartoons featuring Count Screwloose was a foregone conclusion. Much to the consternation of producer Fred Quimby, who despised Gross and his style of humor. Still, Gross represented a new and promising change in direction for MGM's cartoons, and Quimby knew it. Milt's nutty style was 180 degrees removed from the storybook, Disneyesque approach of Harman and Ising.

But the Count wouldn't reach the screen without a few changes. The drawing is slicker, lacking the scribbly spontaneity of the strips, yet still capturing the essence of Gross' style. The lunatic-asylum premise was dropped, as was Screwloose's canine companion Iggy. (Why is uncertain, but it could have been at Quimby's insistence.) The animated Screwloose would be less of a clueless innocent and more of a cynical con artist. In JITTERBUG FOLLIES, his first outing, he's a tramp who hits on the idea of bilking the locals out of their money, in the form of a bogus jitterbug contest. To match his new demeanor, Screwloose received the requisite wiseguy Brookynese voice, courtesy of an uncredited Mel Blanc. (I'd always pictured the strip version as sounding more like Ed Wynn).

His new sidekick, J.R. The Wonder Dog, would carry the burden as the "zany" one of the pair. Cross-eyed and loose-limbed, with seemingly no bones at all, J.R. most closely embodied the style and spirit of Gross' comic strips. J.R.'s high point would come when the panicky Count substitutes him for a contestant in serious danger of winning Screwloose's stolen proceeds--a fan-dancing ostrich. These scenes would prove frustrating for the animators; as related in Maltin's Of Mice And Magic, animator Bill Littlejohn--tired of hearing complaints that J.R. was not animatable--did 100 feet entirely by himself to prove it could be done. He outdid himself, as it's by far the funniest scene in the picture.

Unlike the first two cartoons discussed here, JITTERBUG FOLLIES is less a tribute to swing than a wholesale dismantling of it. With the exception of one rousing showpiece number, there isn't a note of swing to be found--but in this case it hardly matters, since it's merely an excuse for Gross to unleash his insanity. And we don't have to break out of--or into--the loony bin to look.

"The Citizen's Committee On FAIRRRR PLAY...."

"Come on you jitterbugs--get in and swing! Count Screwloose and J.R. The Wonder Dog present the $10,000 swing talent contest! Get in line, you 'gators!' Come on you rug-cutters! Get the $10,000 prize for the winner of this big contest!!" a breathless narrator says, while the camera first zooms in on a close-up of a theater marquee with our heroes' pictures--and names--in lights. We then dissolve to a long tracking shot of a rather motley assemblage of contestants that only the mind of Milt Gross could put together: a goofy-looking man and woman (the man, for reasons known only to him and Gross, has his entry fee in his mouth); a trained seal; three identical-looking, but different-sized fellows with mustaches and sports caps; two circus acrobats; a store dummy with a $9.95 price tag; a tuba player; a "trucking" Indian squaw complete with papoose on her back (her husband, meanwhile, is in a baby carriage in front of her) and one fellow with a bristly mustache and a derby hat. (The man and woman at the back of the line are actually the most normal-looking of this bunch).

The derby-wearing fellow at the front of the line approaches the ticket window, where the good Count is waiting to take his money. Take it he does, but the guy gets no ticket--Screwloose instantly slams down the SOLD OUT sign. But not, of course, before J.R. emerges to relieve the poor goon of his hard-earned buck--and a few dozen more from his pockets.

When the box-office door slams down again, the unfortunate victim of this larceny yells "HEY!" and angrily pounds on the door. His protests are to no avail, though, fading to muffled yells as the camera cuts to the interior, where Screwloose and J.R. are gathering up their ill-gotten loot. (We see J.R. kicking the money into a large carpetbag-type valise). "C'mon, c'mon," Screwloose impatiently says, "we gotta get outta town before the cops gets wise!" Coins are flying everywhere as the Count hurriedly catches them--only to be interrupted by a pounding on the door.



Quickly hiding the huge bag under his vest, Screwloose says, "Whozzat?" Cut to the door, in danger of being knocked off its hinges by whoever's outside. The door bursts open to reveal a hulking thug of a guy with a very official-looking badge. He's apparently been in quite a few battles, as he has a hook for a right hand. He also would have dwarfed Disney's Peg Leg Pete.

"This is the Citizen's Committee on FAIRRRR PLAY!!" he bellows. He takes three huge strides toward the camera until his badge entirely fills the screen: the words "Fair Play" on the badge enlarge and quiver as he says them.


Cut to a medium shot showing Screwloose, J.R. and the official; J.R. cringes, with his paws over his head. The brute lets go of his suspender, on which his badge is pinned, with a SNAP!

"Dis contest is on da level," the official says, taking his hook and lifting the runty Screwloose up by the collar. "Ain't it?" When the big lug lifts Screwloose in the air, the bagful of money hidden underneath Screwloose's vest spills out all over the floor.

"Why sure...sure...this is an honest contest, boss, why would ya think it isn't? It's on the up and up, absolutely, 100%...." Screwloose babbles as J. R. crawls between the official's legs and tries to make a getaway. "It's on the level," Screwloose nervously continues.

"Sure, it's on the level," another brute with a stocking cap says. He's just come through the doorway, holding J.R. by the tail with an enormous pair of tongs. "Nobody's skippin'!" The bag with the money drops on the ground; the big goon, meanwhile, flings J.R. through the doorway with the tongs.

"Well, den..." the "Fair Play" official says. "On with da contest!" The stocking-capped goon grabs Screwloose with the tongs this time and carries him through the doorway and onto the stage, depositing him underneath the spotlight. Resigned to M.C.ing, Screwloose tries to sound upbeat:

"Ladies and gentlemen," he begins. "The foist entry in the ten thousand-dollar swing contest..."

We don't hear the rest of what he has to say, as the camera cuts to the two goons in the balcony, their impossibly huge guns trained on poor Screwloose. We cut to a couple of goony-looking penguins: one with a straw hat, the other with a cigar (Otto and Blotto, two other Milt Gross comic-strip creations) as they walk over the heads of the annoyed audience, step on their faces, and hop onto the edge of the stage to immediately heckle Screwloose. (Muttering "gangway, gangway, outta the way" all the while). In an Avery-quick cut to an alley outside, we see them get tossed out the rear exit. They hit a light pole and land in the trash can underneath. Trash scatters around everywhere.


Cut back to Screwloose onstage: "As I was saying, introducing that lovely little songstress, Madame Lizzie Swish!!" The camera follows the spotlight over to the wings.

"Lovely" and "little" Lizzie Swish definitely isn't. She's a hippo--hideously large even by hippo standards--with a mouth that would put Martha Raye to shame, and a falsetto singing voice that could peel paint. She's wearing a gown with a ridiculously long train--and minces out on stage to mercilessly assault our eardrums. The higher--and louder--her screechy notes get, the worse she sounds--she tries to walk across the stage with a seductive wiggle, and fails miserably. Turns out, she's walking that way because her dress is stuck. Otto--or is it Blotto, I have no idea who's who--comes on stage and helpfully frees her with a pair of garden shears, which sends her recoiling out of frame camera left.


After Lizzie's inevitable off-camera crash into the orchestra pit, Otto/Blotto throws the shears over his shoulder like a rifle, and marches across the stage as military music plays on the sound track. The remains of Lizzie's dress resemble a tent; the other of the insane pair of penguins emerges from the "tent" to join the first one on stage. They decide to do a little performance of their own, a parody of a maudlin old Victorian-era ballad ("Bingen On The Rhine"):

A soldier of the legion,
Lay dyin' in Algiers,
<offstage gunshot--one of the penguins falls to the ground>
Beneath the spreadin' chestnut tree,
He had too many beers....

To illustrate the last line, the penguin still standing removes his hat, which conceals a mug of beer, which he smashes on the prostrate penguin's head. The other penguin rises to assume a fighting pose, hopping up and down.

The breaking waves dashed high upon,
The stern and rockbound sand,
The "muskles" of his brawny arms,
Played "Alexander's Ragtime Band".....

On the next-to-last line, the penguins do a bodybuilder pose--their tiny biceps rise with a "pop."

In mid-song, however, Lizzie decides she's going to give her act one more go, and drowns them out from offstage with her screeching. The two penguins scream at each other over the racket:

"HEEEEY!"
"WHAAAAT!"
"CAN YA HEAR ME?"
"NOOOOO!"

The penguin on the right marches off toward the right of the screen; he enters the "tent"--from it, inexplicably, emerges an anti-aircraft gun. As the other penguin lies on the floor holding his ears, the gun fires off a huge shell, presumably silencing poor Lizzie permanently. They try to resume their song, only to be booted from the stage again, in a repeat of the earlier "alley scene." (Even MGM felt it had to cut corners during this period).

Cut back to Screwloose on stage: "Presenting Mother Goose, the senstion of the show woild, in "Mother Goose Goes To Town"...."


A matronly woman in Mother Goose garb starts singing "Sing A Song Of Sixpence"--we're led to believe we're going to get a standard nursery number. But this is Milt Gross we're talking about, not Walt Disney--so instead, on the line "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie", we see the huge prop pie behind her open up to reveal the "blackbirds". In the only inarguably politically-incorrect scene in the entire picture, they turn out to be black musicians rendered in minstrel-show caricature. "Mother Goose" continues singing:

When the pie was opened,
They all began to sing <musicians: "Mi, mi, mi...">
And then they got the jitterbug,
And all began to swing....

Oh, well--at least this is a legitimate swing number. The musicians start their brassy riff as "Mother Goose" sings:

And the bug flew on 'cause they turned him loose,
Bit yours truly, Mother Goose...

Again, because this is Milt Gross we're talking about, we discover "Mother Goose" is no kindly old lady: she strips off her costume to reveal herself as a buxom chanteuse worthy of Tex Avery's "Red."

On the lines "Ask the sheep and cow and corn/Big Boy Blue come blow your horn," she pulls a pair of legs out from under a haystack, which belong to our "Big Boy Blue." He starts playing a trumpet riff--or appears to. It's quickly revealed his horn has a phonograph record attached. He replaces the needle when the record briefly skips, looking at the audience with a goofy self-satisfied expression.

Our red-hot Mother Goose continues to sing:

Tommy Tucker got bit too,
Singin' for his bowl of stew...

She points off camera--it follows to reveal a little fellow in a Buster Brown getup. But this is no adorable tyke: he growls in a raspy bass voice "Darling, I am growing hungry...!" The audience obliges, throwing all manner of food items at him from offstage, which completely buries him. He takes a pair of chicken legs and drums a Gene Krupa style beat.

Cut to a skinny, Olive Oyl-ish woman "trucking" along as we hear the lines, "Mother Hubbard's doodlin' now/jitterbug just told her how..." But when she goes to her cupboard, instead of finding it empty she stumbles upon our friends Otto and Blotto, who try to resume their number for the umpteenth time. But before they can finish, they're given "the hook" and are pulled off stage right. (At least the animators didn't use the alley scene a third time).

Next we see a house-sized shoe bopping to the rhythm...I don't have to tell you all who that is...

The woman in the shoe got bit,
Now she's razzmatazzin' it....

Cut to a plump woman at a piano, pounding out a jazz rhythm with the aid of her endless brood of kids.

Simple Simon got bit and,
Thinks he's Benny Goodman's band....

Our "with it" Simple Simon is a one-man band, actually, playing like he's hopped up on amphetamines. He's destroying the instruments more than playing them.

For the conclusion of the number, we cut quickly to various shots of the black musicians from different angles, then a long shot of "Mother Goose" strutting her stuff.

The curtain comes down to riotous applause, pleasing just about everyone--except for Screwloose and J.R., of course, who boo her from the wings. They interrupted by a ganglier-than-usual ostrich, who demurely says, "I'm next--aren't I?"

The fit-to-be-tied Screwloose stalks out on stage and disgustedly introduces the next act: "Zaza <at least that's what it sounds like> the fan-dancin' ostrich! Nyahh!"

The ostrich does her ballet-style number to a surprisingly positive reaction--we cut to reaction shots of audience members jumping up and down in the balcony. Hats and confetti fly through the air; the two goons we saw earlier in the cartoon fire off their enormous machine guns, whistling and cheering wildly.

Meanwhile, the Count nervously paces: "An ostrich, an ostrich--a fan-dancin' ostrich is gonna win da contest! AN OSTRICH IS GONNA WIN DA CONTEST!!" But his hopes haven't completely died: he looks over at J.R., who's doing a handstand, and gets an idea he hopes will save his illicit fortune. "Ostrich??" he says, as J.R. is replaced by a fantasy image of J.R. in ostrich get-up. "Hey!" he says. "Maybe an ostrich is gonna win the contest! Yeah, I got it--an ostrich is gonna win dis contest!!" Running over to a trunk full of theatrical props and costumes, he assembles an ostrich costume for J.R. out of a ceramic ostrich head (which covers his rear) and some bits of cotton (which cover his head).

Cut to just offstage: as the real ostrich takes her bows, Screwloose cuts some sandbags loose, which land on her and send her plummeting through the stage floor. Pushing the disguised J.R. toward the stage, he says, "Get out there, Zaza!!"

It's easier said than done, as the phony Zaza has a little trouble maintaining his balance; he stumbles across the stage upside down--or downside up--poking his head out from underneath the cotton fluff to give the audience a few furtive glances. He stumbles in the direction of the curtain: one of the two penguins happens to be there, and trips him with well-placed cane. J.R. crashes stage right, only to re-emerge doing a hoochy-coochy move with his "rear"--or is it his front? He clumsily dances off stage to the right--emerging yet again, he again dances right in the path of one of the penguins, who again trips him.

This time, J.R. stumbles off the stage and into the audience, where he gives a snooty-looking society matron a deranged wink from underneath his cotton fluff. He stumbles over the heads of the musicians in the orchestra pit and finds himself caught between a drum and a set of cymbals. Propelled back on stage by the momentum, he momentarily loses his disguise--it reassembles itself, but not quickly enough to fool Otto and Blotto, who appear with a basket full of hot dogs. J.R. naturally pursues them, leading the two penguins to yell "FAKE! FAKE!" J.R. is too engrossed in eating the hot dogs to care about the boos coming from the audiences--he sucks them out of the basket like spaghetti, dragging a cat along which somehow got tangled in them (don't expect logic in a cartoon like this, folks). J.R. and the cat do what cats and dogs inevitably do--they get into a knock-down, drag-out brawl right there on stage, dissolving into a tiny whirlwind. Into which, naturally, our two goons up in the balcony fire a stream of bullets.

J.R. briefly emerges from the mini-tornado and declares himself the victor, paws hoisted above his head in self-congratulation. He's a bit premature in his celebration, though, as he ends up being sucked back into the vortex by the cat. (A gag very similar to this one appeared in Hugh Harman's ABDUL THE BULBUL AMEER a few years later: Gross did leave a legacy of sorts, despite what the histories say).

Meanwhile, Screwloose struggles his way through the hail of junk being hurled at him by the audience to try to retrieve his dog; he sticks his cane into the vortex hoping to snag J.R. by the collar. Which, naturally, only succeeds in his being sucked in as well.

The cat hurls Screwloose from the whirlwind out into the alley, followed closely by J.R. They're seen hastily struggling to climb the alley fence; the scene dissolves to the two of them trying to hop a freight car out of town. Where, it so happens, they run across our friends Otto and Blotto, who reprise their number one final time before the iris out (forgive me if I misheard any of the lyrics):

His comrade bent to listen,
He softly whispered, "Dean,"
Don't sit on the billiard table 'cause,
You're wearing off the green....

As the two of them dance an Irish jig inspired by that awful pun, we bid goodbye to Milt Gross' twisted universe. Audiences of the time didn't know it, but they'd only have one more opportunity to visit that funhouse-mirror world before Gross himself was shown the door.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

In analyzing Gross' brief but glorious tenure at MGM, the one question that continually comes to mind is "What happened?" He had everything going for him--several newspaper comic strips running simultaneously, a writing stint for radio (an adaptation of one of his "family" strips, That's My Pop) and an opportunity to produce animation for a studio considered by those both in and out of Hollywood to be the Tiffany's of movie-making. Hiring Gross should have been a tremendous creative and public-relations coup for Fred Quimby--the equivalent of bringing in The Far Side's Gary Larson to run an animation studio.

The time was certainly right--in the late thirties, thanks to a fellow named Avery over at the Schlesinger studio, theater audiences began to see a whole new "screwball" style of animation. Daffy Duck had already hopped and "hoo hoo-ed" his way through PORKY'S DUCK HUNT; a primitive and insane version of what would become Bugs Bunny would follow soon after. In other words, the very sort of characters and humor Milt Gross had been known for on the comic pages for some twenty years--they just hadn't been seen in animation before. What could make more sense than to bring in the one who started it all?

Things, however, were not as perfect as they seemed; Gross, far from being at the peak of his talents, was actually in a creative tailspin by 1938. His comic-strip work, while still prolific, was becoming unimaginative, and he began to farm it out to other artists (such as Bob Dunn, who would later take over Jimmy Hatlo's They'll Do It Every Time). As Ron Goulart says in his book The Funnies:

He left the New York World in 1930, having already abandoned the use of dialect
in his comic strip work, to draw a new version of the Count Screwloose Sunday page
for King Features. In addition, he drew a comic strip that alternated three uninspired
single-gag premises: Draw Your Own Conclusions, I Did It And I'm Glad, and The Meanest
Man In Town.

The comic-strip version of Count Screwloose, in truth, was a similar "single-gag" character (the premise never varied in the slightest over almost two decades) and the transfer to animation actually did a great deal to flesh him out and put him in more varied situations. Unlike the confining premise of the comic strip, the animated Count Screwloose could have been adapted to every conceivable situation. In the last of the two Screwloose cartoons, WANTED: NO MASTER the Count is neither a lunatic nor a tramp, but a dim suburban bachelor whom J.R. tries to get out of the way by marrying him off. He'd made the transition from a mere prop for Gross' jokes to an "everyman" character.

Yet, as with Gross' other work of this period, JITTERBUG FOLLIES suffers a bit. There's almost too many things going on at one time--looking at a Gross cartoon is comparable to looking at the Airplane! and Naked Gun movies. (Just imagine the impossible position I'm in, trying to describe it all). One has to see them several times to catch everything (I've seen it at least a dozen times, and had never noticed the store mannequin in the line of prospective "contestants" before--nor, for that matter, the grown Indian in the baby carriage). He gives us a visual feast, but doesn't do quite enough with it--I can't help but feel the action should be going on even faster. But as I've said about other cartoons from this period, that revolution in timing was still a few years away--and the man responsible for it was, at the time, still working for Warner Bros.

Still, it's a perfect debut story for the character, and one can see elements later used by Mel Brooks. Consider the plot--a con man puts on a horrible, token stage performance in the hope of skipping off with the proceeds. Not all that different, really, from Brooks' The Producers.

Looking back, there was no way Milt Gross could realistically be expected to succeed--the job of pulling together a disparate, squabbling group of New York and California animators was too much for just about anyone, roughly akin to herding cats. Gross was just not temperamentally suited for it: while the "official" version of Gross' firing is that the staid Fred Quimby found Gross' work "beneath the dignity of MGM", the truth is a bit more complicated. Gross' story is the standard cautionary tale of what happens when creative people spread themselves too thin--when they try to do everything, they succeed at nothing. (A lesson Tex Avery would eventually learn as well).

According to Joe Barbera in his autobiography My Life In Toons, Gross was a micromanager--when critiquing an animator's drawing, rather than offer suggestions, he'd have the animator stand and watch while he redrew the drawings himself. Several months of this, in addition to loud, frequent battles with Quimby, naturally took its toll--and manifested itself in increasingly bizarre behavior. Barbera wrote:

[He was] becoming increasingly paranoid with each passing day. His office was
located directly above Fred Quimby's, and Milt soon discovered a grillwork heat register
against which he would put his ear in a struggling effort to make out what (if
anything) was going on in Quimby's office.

Milt started spending more and more of each day listening at the register. We all
knew when he'd come out of an especially protracted spell of eavesdropping because
the criss-cross pattern of the register would be engraved on the side of his face from
jaw to temple. From time to time, he would emerge from his office, thus imprinted,
loudly muttering over and over: "Can't hear the cocksucker. Can't hear what he's
saying. Can't hear the cocksucker...." (Barbera, 68-69).

This by itself sounds almost like a scene from one of Gross' cartoons, and could almost be dismissed as a humorous eccentricity, if not for what happened next. As Barbera said:

I returned from a rare vacation one evening to a frantic phone call from Dan Gordon,
who told me that Milt had finally popped his cork and was going through the studio firing
everybody. In context, that really wasn't a crazy thing to do, although he should
have started at the top...

Though Count Screwloose's time on the screen lasted only two cartoons, the character would live on in yet another medium--comic books. Though Gross' output slowed considerably following a 1945 heart attack (he had a lifelong heart condition) he would contribute Count Screwloose stories to several comic book companies in the late forties. A second heart attack would take his life in 1953, at the age of 58.

Of his precarious life, Gross once said, "Yeah, someday a waiter will find my head in the soup. Pick my head up by the hair and say, 'he's had enough.'" That would have been an appropriate, twisted end for someone like Milt Gross, but he did die doing what he loved--drawing. I personally can't think of any better way to go.

Tags:

Milt+Gross, Jitterbug+Follies, MGM, racial+stereotypes, orphan+toon

Toons In Swing Time: Part One

Reet! Lookit Little SALLY SWING (1938)

A Betty Boop Cartoon Featuring Sally Swing
Release Date: Oct. 14, 1938
Animators: Willard Bowsky, Gordon Sheehan
In Short: Betty Boop passes the musical torch to a new generation

Animation blogging can be a thankless job--especially if, like Kevin and me, you don't get paid for it.

Yet once in a while comes that unexpected discovery, that priceless artifact that makes it all worthwhile--often in the place we least expect. The find that makes us gape in astonishment as we wonder aloud, "Why hadn't I noticed this before?" I can think of no better way to describe our newest addition, an "orphan toon" in the truest sense.

In the early '30s, no one did cartoon music quite like the Fleischer studio. Rejecting the public-domain tunes, pseudo-classical pieces and merry little jingles common to Disney and other studios of the day, Fleischer cartoons were jazzy, brassy, contemporary, and brimming with sexual energy.

And no single Fleischer character embodied those traits more completely than their greatest original creation, Betty Boop. Sex and vitality were her reasons for being, and jazz was her language. Until, that is, moral crusaders did the one thing her endless lecherous pursuers couldn't--they took her "boop-boop-a-doop" away.

Betty survived the 1934 Hays Office crackdown, but she was never quite the same. Whereas she once sang such risque little numbers as "You'll Be Surprised", she was now relegated to syrupy little ditties like "Be Human", "Little Pal," and "We'll Have A Bushel Of Fun." Creeping Disney-itis had set in--as if Mae West had suddenly been possessed by the soul of a kindergarten teacher.

By 1938, she was clearly marking time, becoming the almost-incidental star of her own pictures. The Fleischers, once at the forefront of the animated-music scene with sound tracks courtesy of Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong and the Mills Brothers, were in danger of losing their position as musical innovators to up-and-comers like Warner's and MGM. Swing was now the music of the day, and needed its own spokesperson. The Fleischers, eager to move with the times, made a valiant attempt to provide one in the person of "Sally Swing."

Yes, I know--"Sally WHO?" Not many people know of Sally, and small wonder: she was to appear in only one cartoon--but what a cartoon. It may have had Betty Boop's name on it, but this was Sally's show from the moment she stepped onscreen. Read on and you'll quickly discover why.

Go To Concluding Thoughts

"You should be cleaning up!"

We open with a patented Fleischer long tracking shot through the ivy-covered halls of a university. It appears to be a rather staid institution, with signs throughout the science hall proclaiming "SCIENCE IS GOLDEN." But once we enter the double doors of the examination room of this center for higher learning, we find this is no typical college, for our own Betty Boop sits behind a desk with two students, deep in thought. Are they pondering how to split the atom? Not exactly....

"Shall we try an acrobat?" Betty asks. The two students murmur "No, no..."

"
"Maybe a dancer??" The students again respond in the negative.

"A song? That's it--let's try a song!" Betty says. The students enthusiastically agree--"I think you got something there, Betty!"--and one of them rushes immediately to a piano in the corner, pounding out a hot swing melody. As Betty moves to the rhythm, the other student joins in with his own brand of "singing," bellowing out "Good Night, Ladies." The sound, however, is closer to that of a moose with a toothache than anything resembling swing.

Betty growls in frustration and pulls a lever, activating a mechanism that can only exist in a Fleischer cartoon (or maybe a "Jetsons" episode): the floor underneath the tone-deaf frat boy starts moving, propelling him toward the exit.

Cut to a shot of a disheveled--but still pretty--cleaning woman, on her knees scrubbing the hallway outside. She's in a black dress with a patched apron, her stringy blonde hair pulled into a bun. Anyone who knows the "Cinderella" story will suspect this is our heroine...but more about her shortly. (Our cleaning lady, not Cinderella...)

As she scrubs, we can hear the muffled complaints of Betty and our ejected frat boy from inside: "You're fired!" "Yeah? Well, I quit!" Bumping into the girl (which sends her head right into a bucket of soapy water) the student goes "Humph!" Before he can stride contemptuously past her, he steps on her bar of soap, sending him skidding off-screen to a deafening crash. (Those were the best sounds he'd produced so far). We don't see his reaction, but we see the girl's: she cringes with her arms over her face as our unlucky student collides with God knows what. The girl chuckles to herself.



"I guess I'll have to audition some more people," Betty says, heading out the door. She goes out into the waiting area, hands on hips: I wonder if I can find some here to lead a swing band..." Little does she know that "someone" is closer than she thinks.

"How about you, can you swing it?" she asks to someone just off camera left.

The fellow, a fat, balding gentleman seated on a bench, points to himself and says, "Who, me??" He produces a duck from his pocket, which quacks "Ya wanna buy a duck?" (Which, as any fan of '30s pop culture should know, was comedian Joe Penner's catchphrase). When Betty turns them down, the duck quacks its displeasure in the manner of a better-known cartoon duck, who shall remain nameless.

The camera pans left to a gawky-looking ventriloquist with a dummy (or maybe that's one large dummy and one smaller one, in this case). "How about you??" Betty asks from off-camera. "My father's a dummy and I'm a chip off the old block," the dummy says as the ventriloquist's adam's apple moves up and down. Yeesh. I knew there was a reason I hate ventriloquist acts...

"No, that won't do..." Betty says. The simpleton of a ventriloquist can only respond, "Huh?" She means you stink, idiot...

Above and right: With "competition" like this, how can Sally lose?

Cut to Betty, who thinks for a moment. She asks, "Can you boys lead a band?" The camera cuts again to two vaudevillians in identical derby hats and suits. They identify themselves as "Riley" and "Kelly" before launching into a Russian "kicking dance". They conclude their act with a nasally, "Good evening, friends....

Betty dejectedly shakes her head, hands on hips again. "No, no, no!! I'm sorry, I need someone who can lead a swing band for the dance tonight!" Betty turns and starts to head back to her office. We cut to the interior, as we see her pacing while muttering, "Oh, what a predicament...what can I do for the jitterbugs tonight?...this is their big night and they expect great things...oh, can't I concentrate....isn't there someone I can get to swing??"

As soon as she finishes saying this, we hear the solution to her problem from just outside the door--a girl scat singing. The camera pans to her silhouette in the window--from our perspective, she looks as if she's "conducting" an unseen orchestra. Betty peers over the transom of her office door to discover...yes, it's our mystery cleaning lady, scatting as she dusts the doorframe. Cut back to Betty's office--Betty cries out in astonishment, opens the door and pulls the girl inside.

"Come in here! What have you been doing scrubbing? You should be cleaning up!" Betty exclaims, pulling the stunned girl over to the desk so quickly, she can barely keep up. "Oh, hurry, hurry. come here!" Betty says as she picks up the phone. "Let me speak to the president of the class...hello, Prez? This is Betty--I've got just the girl to lead our swing band at the dance tonight...yes, yes..." While Betty's talking, the girl dances along to some internal melody.

The scene dissolves to the two of them in the ballroom, as Betty continues speaking: "I know you're going to love this little swingster and singer of songs--introducing for your enjoyment, the lovely, delightful and talented Sally Swing!"

Sally Swing before....and after

"Delightful" is just the word--Sally's been transformed. In the transition from office to ballroom, we can see the change unfold--she goes from her former dowdy self, swinging a feather duster in the air, to a raving beauty holding a conductor's baton. She now sports coiffed hair and a new outfit: a small, brimless hat perched on her blonde head, tight blouse, and a skirt that reaches to about mid-thigh, along with the requisite bobby sox and saddle shoes. She's far more realistically rendered than Betty, in every way possible (for one thing, she has a neck). One anonymous poster on this cartoon's YouTube page noted a strong resemblance to the Fleischers' version of Lois Lane--she's a little more cartoony than that, but not by much.

Betty gives her a bit of competition, though--her own seemingly conservative floor-length gown turns out to be translucent. The light shines through to reveal her famous legs. It's a detail I must admit I missed when first viewing this cartoon--she hadn't quite lost her sexiness after all. But the moment, sadly, is all too brief.

"Hit it Sally!" Betty says before exiting to camera left. "Hit it" Sally does, launching into her theme number:

"Ooooh, bring along that jam, and lookit little Sally Swing,
<sax, trombone and trumpet riffs as Sally points to band members in succession>
Oh Sally, Oh Sally, oh swing,
You wanna mosey around with Mozart..."

As she sings, the camera cuts to a medium shot as she moves her hips back and forth in time to the music, "trucking" all the while (moving her finger back and forth in the air in time to the music, for those not "hep to the jive"). She gives a wink to the camera on the words, "He wrote a symphony so hot.." She's a red-hot mama, belting out the number with an energy even Betty in her prime never managed--as Sally says in song, "I want my music and my biscuits hot..."

The camera cuts briefly to a rather sour-looking professor in gown and mortarboard, who looks none too pleased with Miss Sally; we them move to a shot from the audience's POV (and slightly to the back of her) as she continues singing and strutting across the stage:

"When I'm in that groove, I wanna lead a band and sing.." <cut to a drummer who's so enthusiastic, he hits himself in the head with his own sticks>
"Oh dilly, oh dally, oh Sally, oh Sally, oh swing it, swing it..."

Crouching down while raising her arms in the air, she and the musical notes ascend higher simultaneously...she concludes her number to thunderous applause. The camera cuts quickly to Betty cheering her on. Everybody loves little Sally--except, that is, for the sourpuss professor. He sits with arms folded, still scowling.

Cut to Sally again, who reprises her number at a faster tempo...this time, we get three quick "bird's eye view" cuts of the various band members as they accompany her. The Fleischers were at their best when it came to unusual camera angles.



Cut again to a trumpet player, who takes the mortarboard off the head of a marble bust and uses it as a "mute." Then again to a clarinet player whose playing is so "hot" his instrument literally spews flames. (Somewhat reminiscent of little Bosko in BOSKO AND THE PIRATES--his "hot" dancing burns the entire ship). He extinguishes the flaming clarinet in a nearby vase.

Sally, meanwhile, scats and trucks on over to the piano player, who dances with her on stage. She repeats the opening line of her song a third time as the camera cuts to a bespectacled fellow who accompanies her in "one-man band" fashion: trumpet in one hand, trombone in another, moving the slide with his feet. The scene shifts to a fellow on fiddle and one on tuba...the tuba player's playing is so energetic he blows the toupee off the fiddle player's head. We cut yet again, this time to a short little fellow who's keeping time with his nose...he gets up and plays a riff on flute. As Sally repeats the line "Oh dilly, oh dally, oh Sally, oh Sally, oh swing!" the fellow runs over and plucks on a bass fiddle twice his size.

Sally continues to dance and scat as the scene cuts to a bit of dialogue between an elderly woman and a waiter. "Waiter, my soup is cold!" she says. "I like it HOT!" she adds as she too gets in the groove.

Meanwhile, Sally's dancing is really getting frenetic. Too much so for the old professor, who has clearly had enough. "STOP! Students, do you hear me? Stop--I can't stand it! Stop!!" He prepares to storm the stage, but Sally is unaware of any of this: dancing left, then right, then going into a "pecking" move (moving the head back and forth, like a rooster). Meanwhile, we see the killjoy professor rushing toward the stage, bellowing "Stop--I'm the principal here--stop! This is entirely against my principles!" (The voice sounds like it belongs to Jack Mercer, and this seems like a typical Mercer ad-libbed pun).

"I'm going to have you in jail!" the professor bellows as he climbs on stage. "Listen, young lady..." But Sally isn't listening--she just keeps dancing. "You're going to get yourself in an awful jam...oh jam and jive, jam and jive.." Before long, the professor too is "in the groove." The music and Sally have won him over. He turns to putty as she tickles his chin.

The scenes changes to a low shot of Sally, in silhouette, from behind facing the audience. It looks as if the camera is nearly between Sally's legs. Remember what I said about the Fleischers and camera angles? Cut to our now "with it" professor, who scats "ya-de-a-de-ah, yeah, man!"

The professor joins Sally in her dance, matching her move-for-move in a scene that must have been rotoscoped--unusual for this era, as this technique was used less often by this time. Betty emerges from the left of the screen and dances with them, as the cartoon reaches its rollicking conclusion. A cap and gown fall on Sally from above as we iris out. She's moved to the head of the class.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

This cartoon seems to have come from out of nowhere--it's an anomaly for the Fleischer studio, circa 1938, and definitely an anomaly for a Betty Boop cartoon of the time. We're treated to one last bit of the old--Betty, if only for a moment, reverts to her former sexy self--while being bombarded with the wild, flashy new. The late thirties were a time of transition for the Fleischers--their animation began to lose the "rough edges" that characterized it earlier in the decade, the very thing that had made it so much fun. Here, however, the studio makes that newfound polish work for them, and this can be seen most clearly in the design and animation of Sally. Her movements are fluid, bouncy, caricatured without being overly "cartoony"--an animated dynamo. The animators had learned a bit in learning how to draw--and animate--a female figure, and use their knowledge to full advantage here, making Sally do things Betty could never have done. Betty at her best was still a product of the "rubber hose" era, and by comparison could appear rather stiff. (It's especially evident when one sees the two characters side-by-side in this cartoon). Sally showed just how far the Fleischers had come--and gave a hint of where they were about to go (namely, the SUPERMAN series).

I have to admit my preconceptions of late-thirties Betty Boop cartoons colored my opinion of this at first. I remarked to Kevin in an e-mail how Betty had become "matronly"--indeed, a newspaper article of the time agreed, likening Miss Boop to the "grandma that sits on the end of the sofa during a date." I think the Fleischers knew this, and strove to give the folks a reminder of just what she--and her cartoons--had been. The music and action here are lively enough to fit in well with any entry from six to eight years before.

Sally proved to be a worthy successor, making one wonder what a series of cartoons featuring her would have been like. Possibly much like BETTY CO-ED--the cartoon from 1931 that gave Betty Boop her name--in which she was the red-hot mama that drove the boys crazy. One could easily see Sally picking up where Betty left off. Sadly, the torch had been passed, only to be extinguished.

She's such a charming little character, one can forgive the cornball Cinderella-like storyline (I'd have made her a mousy bookworm, myself). It takes some time for her to make her entrance, but once she does, look out.

The Fleischers clearly hadn't yet lost their touch, either visually or musically. Unlike some Harman-Ising entries, the mayhem created by the "hot" music seems just barely under control. Harman-Ising cartoons dealing with swing usually ended in total destruction, as with SWING WEDDING or BOSKO AND THE PIRATES. The Fleischers knew better, having befriended and worked closely with jazz figures in the past, and knew that world far better than midwesterners Hugh and Rudy.

This, by rights, should have been Betty's swan song. Had the series ended here, it would have gone out on a high note--in more ways than one. However, the studio seemed to have forgotten everything they had done right, for Betty would limp along for another year in such undistinguished fare as MUSICAL MOUNTAINEERS, and her final cartoon, YIP YIP YIPPEE. A cartoon studio, as with anything else, should know to quit when ahead.

Betty deserved better. And so, for that matter, did Sally.


Labels: Betty Boop, review-synopsis, orphan toon

Tags: Betty+Boop, Max+Fleischer, orphan+toon, swing+music

Tex Avery Gives Us "The Straight Dope" in UNCLE TOM'S CABAÑA (YOWSUH!)--1947

Uncle Tom seems quite...interested in Little Eva's dancing in the original theatrical movie poster...
(Thanks to puzzlesdirect.com)

Uncle Tom's Cabaña
Release Date: July 29, 1947
Director: Tex Avery
Music: Scott Bradley, Imogene Lynn (vocals)
In short: The story of "Uncle Tom's Cabin"--the way it "really" happened...

"One o' them Hollywood cartoon companies..."

With the fate of the "Censored 11" on this blog hanging in the balance for the time being, it's only appropriate to take a slight detour to 1940's Culver City, to take a look at a Tex Avery rarity from MGM.

Parodying a classic of literature as hoary as Uncle Tom's Cabin seems a bit dated even for 1947, and in the hands of anyone but Tex Avery, redundant--but for Tex, that was precisely the point. To him, the more ossified the source material, the better. He'd already mangled the fairy
tale--or Disney's re-invention of it, anyway--in such cartoons as CINDERELLA MEETS FELLA (with Egghead as the unlikeliest of Prince Charmings) and LITTLE RED WALKING HOOD at Warner's. At MGM, he gave audiences a Red Riding Hood the likes of which no one had ever seen, with a Wolf who still wanted to pursue her (to use the politest term possible) but for reasons decidedly not G-rated. The mawkish and melodramatic "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was just too good--or bad--to pass up. And with that story, he was treading on familiar territory.

He'd already taken aim at the story once before, for Leon Schlesinger (UNCLE TOM'S
BUNGALOW, 1937) but the maddeningly even pacing of the '30s Schlesinger cartoons made it something of a misfire. (Although he did give us the immortal line, "My body may belong to you, but my soul belongs to Warner Brothers!")

Ten years later, under the banner of a new studio, his comic timing sharper than it had ever been, the time couldn't have been better to revisit old material. Only this time, he makes a direct hit.

All the Avery trademarks are there: non-stop action punctuated by a jazzy Scott Bradley sound track, cuts so quick they pass by in an eye blink, visual hyperbole stretched to its most ridiculous--and funniest--limits. Not to mention a generous helping of sex, just barely slipped under the Hays Office radar. 1947 was a particularly good year for Avery--he released KING SIZE CANARY that year, generally considered to be his masterpiece. As with KING SIZE CANARY, UNCLE TOM'S CABAÑA starts slowly, but like a pebble rolling down a snow-covered hill, grows and gains momentum until it bowls the viewer over. We hardly have time to breathe by the time the film reaches its high point.

In the decade separating the two versions, the change in style and attitude coudn't be more obvious, especially toward the characters. Little Eva, portrayed as a chatty six-year-old in the Warner's version ("I'm in the first grade, an' I got a dolly, an' a teddy bear, and I can spell
"cat"--c-a-, c-a--well, anyway, I can spell "dog...") is no adorable little innocent here. She--like Avery's cartoons--had grown up, her little shoes filled by none other than Avery's "Red" from RED HOT RIDING HOOD, SWING SHIFT CINDERELLA and WILD AND WOOLFY. Albeit in more clothes than we had seen her in before, or since.

Little Eva (Red) struts her stuff in this Preston Blair animation sketch..

Save for the first fifteen seconds or so, the mythical Old South of the original story is nowhere to be seen--this was 1947, after all, so while Uncle Tom still has his cabin, it's in the middle of a towering urban landscape. Little Eva lives in the requisite antebellum mansion, but perched atop a New York-style skyscraper--her own little Tara-On-The-Hudson.

Simon Legree is still evil, so proud of his treachery he advertises it (signs on his downtown office building read "OLD LADIES TRIPPED, KITTENS DROWNED") but here he's also lecherous, proving an able stand-in for Avery's Wolf as he drools over Little Eva/Red. He and the Wolf could, in fact, make pretty good drinking buddies.

But before I get too far ahead of myself, let's visit UNCLE TOM'S CABIN--er, CABAÑA, as only Tex Avery could tell it:

We can see the opening titles superimposed over the traditional "Old South" background of mansions, cotton fields and steamboats--much like the opening seconds of the Bugs Bunny cartoon MISSISSIPPI HARE, but at night. The camera tracks over this landscape and zooms in on a lone little cabin in the midst of a vast field. Take a good look, should you get a copy of this, because that's just about the last connection to the original source material we're going to see in this cartoon.

Uncle Tom (here voiced by Charlie Correll, one half of AMOS 'N' ANDY) sits on the front porch of his cabin, surrounded by little black children lying on the ground in front of him. This "Uncle Tom" isn't quite the kindly, bowed old gent we're used to--in another, more subconscious connection to AMOS 'N' ANDY, he looks very much like an animated Andrew H. Brown, down to the big cigar, battered derby hat, and cocky attitude. Like more traditonal depictions of the "Uncle Tom" character, however, he has a fringe of white hair on the sides of his head and thick white eyebrows. He sits tilted back against the wall, and blows a bit of smoke from his cigar.

(Cut to medium shot). Picking up one of the children and putting him on his knee, he starts to tell his story, as Scott Bradley plays "Old Black Joe" on the soundtrack:

"Well now, chillun," he begins, "tonight ol' Uncle Tom's gonna tell you the real true story about 'Uncle Tom's Cabin...'" He absently flicks ashes from his cigar, seemingly on the child's head!

Uncle Tom turns his head from left to right as he addresses the off-camera children: "..Now, this is the first one o' them Hollywood cartoon companies ever got the straight dope on this Uncle Tom stuff. This is the way it really happened...once upon a time, in the big city..." (Fade to cityscape, presumably New York) ...live a character name Simon Le-gree." (Camera zooms in on office building, then fades to a shot of the entrance).

(V.O.:"He was sho 'nuff a scoundrel...") A marble sign above the door reads LEGREE BUILDING: LOANS, MORTGAGES AND CROOKED DEALS--on the left of the set of double doors, we see a sign proclaiming WIDOWS EVICTED, DOGS KICKED. On the right, it says OLD LADIES TRIPPED, KITTENS DROWNED. Etched into the walkway is a sign reading WELCOME SUCKER, in huge black letters. Refreshing to see truth in advertising for once...

The camera pans upward, then dissolves to Legree's office. We see Legree for the first time, in a black suit with tails--he has slicked hair, a waxed mustache, and even pointed ears--presumably to make him look more evil. Instead, he more closely resembles a cross between Bob Clampett's "Dishonest John" and an attendee at a Star Trek convention. (One anonymous poster to an online animation bulletin board I visited actually refers to him as "Dishonest John," apparently unable to distinguish between Avery's characters and Clampett's).

(V.O.:"That no-account crook was just rolling in dough...") If you know Avery cartoons at all, you know what's coming. Yep, money's strewn ankle-deep on the floor, and he leaps into the pile and rolls in it, as Bradley plays "Happy Days Are Here Again." Not only does money litter the floor, but one can see bags of it strewn randomly throughout the room, and on every available surface.

(Cut to medium shot of Legree, sifting coins through his fingers. V.O.: "And on top o' that, he was two-faced...") Right again--when we see him in profile, he literally has a face on each side of his head. For you Roman mythology buffs, something like the god Janus.

(Cut to Legree walking camera left, full-figure. V.O: "But he sure was powerful...") Legree walks up on top of a desk, then back down to the floor, his legs lengthening and shortening
accordingly--like the "bridge gag" we saw in THE MAGIC PENCIL.)

(V.O: "Why, he done own that whole town--'cept for one little spot...") Legree continues walking screen left as the camera follows, then stops when he comes to a wall map, which shows one lone tiny square of land. He circles it with a pencil.

(Cut to close-up of circled area on map. V.O: "...And that was your Uncle Tom's cabin!")

(Dissolve to an impressive aerial shot of downtown, as the camera zooms down toward a tiny plot of land between two skyscrapers, with an equally tiny shack on it. Dissolve to Uncle Tom, tending his crops. V.O.: "I was sure happy...") Undoubtedly the most impressive scene in the picture-- nothing better illustrates to me the difference between cartoons of the Golden Age and today. Rarely will one see a camera angle so unusual in any of today's animated product, not even CGI.

(Cut back to Legree in his office, as he draws an "X" through Uncle Tom's property on the map).

(V.O: "But Mister Le-gree was figurin' on foreclosin' the mortgage on my cabin, so he could own the whole town.") Legree takes his incredibly broad-brimmed hat off a hook on the wall to his right, turns and puts the hat on his head--in a bit of exaggerated movement only Avery's unit could acomplish, for a moment it seems almost to stretch over his entire torso, then snaps back.

"He was sho' a low-down snake..." Uncle Tom continues. As if on cue, Legree's body stretches to become serpentine, as he slithers on the floor among his piles of money. The camera follows him to the left as he slithers out the door.

(Legree slithers out into the hall, then stands as he comes to a door on the other side. V.O.: "Of course, the first thing he do is go for them bloodhounds...")

And of course, they literally are "blood" hounds--just after the camera cuts in closer to show Legree opening the door, it cuts again to show the dogs in hospital beds, hooked to IV's, pumping a rubber bulb with their paws. (A sign above them reads RED CROSS BLOOD BANK). This
indicates the cartoon, though released after World War II, had its genesis in the last days of the
war, as blood donations were highly encouraged then. Scott Bradley even accompanies the scene with a little bit of patriotic music ("Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean.") So much for my belief that Avery's last wartime gags were in JERKY TURKEY.

In an abrupt, instantaneous cut, we see the city in long shot, with Uncle Tom's tiny home among the towering buildings. A red helicopter lands in front of it. (V.O.: "So he come after me
personal...")

(Cut quickly to a view of Legree and Uncle Tom in medium shot. Legree gestures wildly, shakes his fist in the air, then literally sticks his nose in Uncle Tom's face, jabbing him in the chest with his finger. He mouths words, but we can hear no dialogue. Then again, we don't need to--he's obviously pretty irate. V.O.: ..."And he say that if I don't have the money by twelve o'clock tonight, he gonna take my little cabin...")

Legree pounds Uncle Tom on the head with his fist, squashing poor Uncle Tom's head down into his body as we hearthe last few words of the naration.

(Cut to the interior of the sparsely furnished cabin, where Uncle Tom sits dejectedly, his right arm slung over the back of the chair, his left elbow on a small table with a checkered tablecloth. He rests his head on his left hand. V.O.: "Oh, me--worry, worry..."). Scott Bradley, ever helpful, plays "Hearts and Flowers" on the sound track. (V.O.: "I didn't have a penny...")

Uncle Tom turns one of the pockets of his overalls inside out--not only is the inside of the pocket full of holes, but a swarm of moths fly out, illustrating his distressed financial state. (He casts a pathetic --yet somewhat funny--glance toward the audience.)

He turns and puts both elbows on the table as we hear the voice over: "And starvation was staring me in the face.." The camera pulls back to reveal a Grim Reaper-like figure across the table from him, reworking (or stealing) a gag used not only in the Woody Woodpecker cartoon PANTRY PANIC, but Norm McCabe's DAFFY'S SOUTHERN EXPOSURE for Warner's. But as with anything else Avery put his hand to, it comes off funnier in this cartoon.

Just above and behind the Grim Reaper figure, by the way, we can see a little shelf with a can on it, covered with cobwebs. More proof that poor Uncle Tom's in dire straits...

(V.O.: "But I got one last hope--my only friend, Little Eva..."). Uncle Tom walks slumped over to the right of the screen--the camera speeds past him in a patented Avery "jerk-pan" (see the
JERKY TURKEY review from December '06). We see two phones--the small one on the left has a sign above it that says "Local", while the absurdly elongated one on the right says "Long
Distance"--another reworking of an earlier gag, this time from Avery's own RED HOT RIDING
HOOD (the short and tall cigarette girls selling "Regular" and "King Size" cigarettes.) Uncle Tom enters the frame and picks up the "Local" phone...

(Cut to an exterior view of a skyscraper as the camera pans up its endless stories. V.O.: "She
got this scrumptuous southern penthouse, you know...")

The camera continues upward until we see a long shot of Little Eva's home on top, looking like a piece of the GONE WITH THE WIND set grafted onto the Empire State Building: complete with magnolias, a fountain, and a columned portico.

(The camera zooms in, then cuts to the interior to show Little Eva, a.k.a. "Red," in her boudoir.)

She's wearing the expected anachronistic "southern belle" flowing dress. She picks up the receiver on her phone, which is sitting atop a little end table with a gauzy pink lace material around it. Her vanity table is just to her left. Uncle Tom, in voice over, adds the aside, "and that
ain't all she got, neither..." (Remember that statement, because I'll be coming back to it in my closing remarks).

(V.O: "She say she come right over...but we can't figure nothin' out.") During the narration, the scene wipe-dissolves to show Eva and Uncle Tom inside his cabin, with Tom seated in front of an upright piano. Little Eva stands next to it toward the left of the screen. Uncle Tom's dejected
expression hasn't changed: he sits with his head cradled on one hand while he idly plunks a few keys with the other. Little Eva echoes Uncle Tom's body language, with the exception that she appears deep in thought.

(V.O.: "Yeah, I was sittin' there, worryin', foolin' around with the pie-ano...") Uncle Tom stops pecking at the keys and launches into a lively boogie tune. Eva, getting into the spirit of the
moment, starts dancing. The camera follows her across the room as she continues her dance
(the cabin appears to be twice as large inside as it did originally, thanks to cartoon magic. She needed room to dance, so there it was). The camera pans back to Uncle Tom at the piano, his expression changed dramatically. He has an idea! ("When all of a sudden it come to me..." the
voice-over says.) His mouth is in a wide-open grin as he slams down hard on the keys. (V.O.:
..."the big idea!!")

The "big idea", as he tells us, is to open his little cabin to paying customers, remaking it into
"Uncle Tom's Cabaña!" ("Yowsuh!"). He says in voice-over, "We done turned that cabin into a
nightclub--the place was packed!" We see an exterior shot of the transformed cabin at night, with a blinking neon sign proclaiming the establishment's name in lights--underneath, in smaller letters, are the words "Dining and Dancing." Cars pop up into newly-constructed parking lot from out of nowhere, multiplying in a pixilated sort of effect. Scott Bradley contributes a lively version of the "Tiger Rag" as the scene wipe-dissolves to show a poster of Little Eva: if you look closely--very closely--you can see a small blinking sign in the background that reads, "No Dogs Allowed...Wolves Welcome." (Good one, Tex. Too bad your Wolf didn't get an invitation. But as I've already mentioned, he had a more than worthy substitute).

Bear in mind, this is all in the space of a couple of hours, supposedly. Money can indeed work miracles, especially in a cartoon.

(V.O., as we cut to a scene of a dinner-jacketed Uncle Tom behind a counter, pulling in huge
piles of money and stuffing it into a cash register: "We was really coinin' [or was it "cornerin'] the dough!")

(The camera pans right. V.O.: "'Course, Uncle Sam was gettin' his share..." We literally see the
figure of an ecstatic Uncle Sam, as he rakes money into a bag marked TAX $$. Bradley, of
course plays "Yankee Doodle").

Cut to a shot of Legree looking at the nightclub through a telescope pointed out of his office window. (V.O:..."But Legree wasn't gettin' his...and he was gonna do somethin' about it!") He throws down his telescope disgustedly, turns and stomps off through the piles of money carpeting the floor. (Cut to Legree outside the window of the cabin, where he grabs himself by the seat of the pants and lifts himself up to sneak inside).

(V.O: "Next thing I know, he got me tied to that powder keg and lightin' the fuse..." We see the interior, with Uncle Tom tied to gigantic barrel of gunpowder about half the size of the room, while Legree holds the fuse. He lights it and zips out of frame to the right.)

Cut again--bear with me, this is an Avery cartoon--to a shot of Legree grabbing the cash register, hiding it under his cloak, and tiptoeing away. (V.O: "And he done take every penny of that money and get out of there...")

(V.O.: "But he done forgot somethin'...it was Little Eva.") Legree turns when he hears off-camera applause--the camera pans right to the stage, where Little Eva makes her entrance, carrying a parasol. (Cut to a shot of Little Eva as the camera zooms in closer).

(Cut back to Legree. The cash register he'd been carrying swells under his cloak as he looks
lustily off-camera. The cash register drawer bursts open, spilling its contents all around Legree.) I hadn't made the connection when I first saw this, but a fellow online reviewer happened to comment this was perhaps Avery's wildest erection gag to date. I have to admit he's right.

To the sound of a horse whinnying and galloping, Legree runs offscreen camera right--we cut to him atop a table where he stiffens into the pose of a hunting dog who's just spotted his prey. His head's flattened, making his pointed nose resemble an arrow, while the tail of his coat resembles a real "tail." Accompanied, of course, by a nice "boing!" on the soundtrack. Tex was anything but subtle.

(Cut to a medium shot of Little Eva, who looks somewhat disdainfully in Legree's direction.)
She starts to sing a slow, sweet rendition of "Carry Me Back To Old Virginny..." As she gets to the line "That's where the cotton and the corn and taters grow..." we cut back to Legree, who levitates up to the ceiling with a stupefied look on his face. We cut back to Eva as she sings the next line, then to Legree, who's attempting to pour salt on a stalk of celery. He's so entranced, though, that he gets a little mixed up--he shakes the celery and takes a big bite out of the salt shaker. He opens his mouth to reveal his teeth crumbling to pieces.

Suddenly, Eva tosses down her parasol and launches into a swing version of the song. Legree attempts to light a cigar, but instead lights his nose. Unfazed, he pulls a "Lucy Ricardo," merely removing his flaming nose and snuffing it out in the ashtray.

We make another couple of quick cuts from Eva back to Legree--this time, he's got a plateful of ham and several slices of bread on the table in front of him. Intending to make a sandwich, he instead butters his own hand, puts a slice of ham on it, places his other hand on top of that, and proceeds to munch on his own fingers all the way up to the elbows.

We make yet another couple of cuts from Eva back to Legree, who this time is trying to slice the pie in front of him. Instead, he takes an enormous pie-shaped slice out of the table and chomps on it.

Little Eva finishes her song with a flourish, kicking and flinging up her skirts, ending her number with by sliding on her knees to the edge of the stage. (A real testament to Preston Blair's animation abilities here--she was never quite this spirited in the other "Red" cartoons.)

(V.O.: "Wow! That done it!") Legree goes crazy with desire, smashing dishes over his head and for some reason known only to him, pours an entire bottle of ketchup on himself. He proceeds to pick up the table--now miraculously whole after Legree cut a chunk out of it--and slam it down on his head several times.

He runs up on stage toward Little Eva as we hear galloping noises on the soundtrack, only to race past her and grab a support beam. He breaks off a piece of it and starts to kiss it passionately, then runs off with it in the other direction. Realizing what he's just done, he stops, throws the beam down and disappears from frame, only to return a half-second later with the right quarry--Little Eva--this time. (V.O.: "Now he gon' get the gal...")

(V.O.: "That's what he thinks...") Cut to Legree running toward the door, only to find Uncle Tom waiting for him when he opens it. Uncle Tom clobbers Legree with a huge mallet (surprisingly few mallet hits here for an Avery cartoon) sending him through the floor. Legree's head pops up as the camera zooms in closer--it closely resembles a large tack.

Meanwhile, we return to the present, where Uncle Tom is still regaling the children with his story.

The child on his knee says, "But Uncle Tom, why wasn't you blown up on that powder keg?" (What happened to Little Eva, for that matter? Legree was still carrying her when he got clobbered.)

"Why, that was nothin'!" he says, waving his hand. "That sweat pourin' off me just naturally put that fuse out!" Before he finishes saying this, we cut back to a shot of him tied to the powder keg--he's sweating so profusely the liquid's halfway up the wall, soaking the fuse.

(Cut to a shot of Uncle Tom, on the left of the screen, with Legree on the right. V.O.: "Then
Legree came at me with that machine gun..." The bullets, surprisingly, bounce harmlessly off him as he stands in the doorway with a hand on one hip).

Midway through the shooting, the listening child interrupts, and we cut abruptly back to the present. "But Uncle Tom," the child says. "Didn't dem bullets kill ya?"

"Why, of couse not boy..." Uncle Tom says. He flicks the ashes off his cigar and we fade to black
for a second. We then dissolve back to Uncle Tom standing in the doorway of his cabin, bullets still flying off him. "I had on my 'Superduperman' suit!" He opens his shirt to reveal red flannel long johns with a large "S" imprinted on them, as the bullets continue to bounce off harmlessly.

We make another quick cut (V.O.:"Then he tie me on them railroad tracks, and the train run over me!") Then another (V.O.: "Then he throw me in that sawmill!"). Here we see Legree pulling the lever to operate the huge buzz saw, which literally saws Uncle Tom in half. The train sequence is especially good here, if only for his grimace as the train literally runs over him.

--"but Uncle Tom," the child interjects as we cut back to his front porch. Uncle Tom scowls at the interruption. "Don't bother me now, boy, I'se really goin'!" (My second-favorite line in the picture, in case you were wondering. My favorite? You'll soon find out).

He resumes his story, which builds to its ridiculous climax with a series of cuts no longer than about three seconds each. He says, "Then he shove me off that cliff...then I jump on that camel...then he chase me with that elephant...then he throw me to that alligator..and here come that steamroller...and that P.T. boat..."


The sequences accompanying the above are textbook pieces of classic animation, worthy of study by contemporary film students. We see:

a) Legree on the cliff, in extreme long shot, at the very top of the screen, as he tosses Uncle Tom over...

b) a long shot of the two of them running through the North African desert on camels that resemble dromedary versions of the horses from WILD AND WOOLFY: spindly, knobby legs with huge feet, narrow, almost pinpoint heads and huge snouts. Legree pounds Uncle Tom with a mallet that frankly, would be too heavy for him to lift in the real world--it's twice as big as he is. There's some classic "squash and stretch" on Tom as he flattens and straightens out with every blow, while Legree seems suspended in midair as he clobbers Tom.

c) Legree standing on a goofy-looking elephant at full gallop--the elephant has a body like a gray
beach ball, and feet that look too small to support it. Legree sends an unbelievable hail of bullets
down on Uncle Tom.

d) Uncle Tom being thrown right into the mouth of an enormous alligator, which seems about three times as big as any actually on Earth...he literally rolls down the creature's throat, and the beast's enormous mouth snaps shut like a living valise--perhaps the only instance in which a person being eaten alive seems funny.

e) A steamroller which takes up most of the frame, as we're looking from Uncle Tom's eye level.
He's literally flattened like a piece of paper on the pavement, cartoon-style.

f) An extreme long shot of a PT boat chasing after the swimming Uncle Tom, its huge guns trained right on him. Yet another indication this project began in the closing days of the war. (Or maybe Legree was just able to get Navy surplus...) The boat is, of course, seemingly twice as large as any actual PT boat.

Cut back to the present with Uncle Tom still going, gesturing with his arms as the child on his lap looks increasingly incredulous: "And then them rocket guns, an' them 'bay-zookas'...an' them machine guns, an' them alligators, then all of a sudden..." (The camera pans down toward the child, who shakes his head in pity and disbelief--then the scene fades out.)

(Note: Kevin has since informed me that our skeptical little friend was voiced by veteran radio performer and voice artist Sara Berner.-R.)

When we resume, we see the exterior of an enormous-beyond-enormous skyscraper, which the tiny figures of Legree and Uncle Tom scale like spiders crawling up a wall at about 700 mph.
(V.O: "Then he chase me up that 'Umpire State Building', and pushes me right off the top...") On the words "pushes me right off the top", the scene cuts to another extreme long shot of Legree and Uncle Tom atop the building. It cuts again to another "bird's eye" view, even more impressive
than the first one earlier in the picture, as Uncle Tom rapidly moves away from the viewer toward the ground. This may have been reused in DROOPY'S GOOD DEED, in the scene in which the bulldog, in baby get-up, plummets from the top of a building.

(V.O: "Then I fall down fo'teen miles and hit on the pavement!!") As he says this, we cut to a shot of Uncle Tom hitting the sidewalk with a bounce, arms and legs splayed out. The sidewalk
appears made of rubber, much as in THE CAT THAT HATED PEOPLE.

Here we get perhaps the best line in the picture, and my favorite: "And right there is where I gets mad!!" After all that wild exaggeration, the ultimate Droopy-like understatement.

(V.O. "And I grab up that Umpire State Building with Le-gree up there on top! Then I throws him clean over the moon!") The camera follows the building's flight through the air as it arcs toward the ocean and lands with a splash.

(Dissolve back to Uncle Tom and child on porch) "And that was the end of Mister Le-gree!" Uncle Tom at this point takes a self-satisfied puff of his cigar.

The child who's been sitting through this snow job the whole time says, "Uncle Tom, are you sure all you been tellin' us is the truth??" Giving the child a momentary scowl, Uncle Tom takes the child off his lap. He says, "Now wait a minute there, boy...(at this point we cut to a shot of him and the rest of the children gathered around him--Uncle Tom points at the child who'd been on his lap) .."if it ain't the truth, I hope that lightnin' come down and strike me dead..."

The cosmos, which apparently has some credibility problems with Uncle Tom's story also,
complies. We cut to a shot of storm clouds as a lightning bolt issues forth. The scene again cuts to the bolt of lightning hitting Uncle Tom square in the back, killing him on the spot. A ghost version of him with angel wings and robe (complete with ghostly cigar, no less) rises from his
lifeless body, playing a harp. The camera zooms in on the small child who'd been on Uncle Tom's lap, who delivers the payoff line: "Y'know, we lose more Uncle Toms that way!" With that, we bid farewell to a great storyteller (if not, perhaps, a truthful one) and iris out.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Tex Avery's portrayal of black characters has always been somewhat problematic, prompting some--admittedly, even me at times--to wonder if he was indeed racist. His jungle natives in THE ISLE OF PINGO PONGO at Warner's, and HALF-PINT PYGMY at MGM, are the most extreme caricatures of black people imaginable: pinheaded, with lips that would surely make them too top-heavy to stand. There's also the thorny little matter of his Texas upbringing--surely, some believe, the prejudices of the people around him had to have rubbed off just a little.

Of course, in making that assumption, we're guilty of a bit of prejudice ourselves, in assuming that just because a man comes from an area in which prejudice predominates, he must himself be prejudiced. So did Elvis Presley, and he loved black culture and music--as did Elvis' mentor, Sam Phillips.

Having seen interviews done with Avery toward the end of his life, however, I'm forced to conclude he was incapable of such behavior--he was far too gentle and soft-spoken a man to practice such extreme hatred. Beloved by everyone who had the privilege to know him, there is absolutely no account, anywhere, of him expressing anything close to animosity toward other races.

Though really, if one wishes definitive proof, one need look no further than his cartoons
themselves, especially this one. In some respects it's surprisingly progressive for the era--though still caricatured, Uncle Tom and other black characters aren't the google-eyed, white lipped monstrosities of earlier such cartoons, and are certainly less extreme than those of Clampett's COAL BLACK. Uncle Tom himself could have fit well into a FAT ALBERT cartoon of the seventies, sharing characteristics with that show's character "Mudfoot"--including his tendency to tell wild stories. A credit, certainly, to Preston Blair's Disney-influenced character design in particular.

Further, and even more shocking for the time, Uncle Tom is friends with a white woman--and even goes so far as to express an interest in her--ahem!--attributes: "And that ain't all she got,
neither..." Behavior that would surely have gotten him killed had he been a flesh-and-blood
individual in the South of the day. Even if it all turns out to be Uncle Tom's fantasy, it still
represents a step forward for the time--yet overlooked by just about everyone, critics and fans
alike.

Uncle Tom is also surprisingly human (that is to say, flawed like the rest of us--something that,
incidentally, has nothing to do with race) coming across as a sort of humanoid version of Foghorn Leghorn--with a little bit of Tex Avery himself thrown in, not to mention every grandfather we've ever known. He shares Avery's love of Texas-sized tall tales, giving us a story second only to the previously-mentioned KING SIZE CANARY in its speed and exaggeration. In the scenes in which Uncle Tom goes through a rapidly-escalating series of perils, it might even have surpassed it.

Charles Correll deserved a lot of credit for giving personality to what might have been a
one-dimensional character--though a white man, here was someone with--at the time--nearly
twenty years of radio experience, who know how to make a character come alive through voice
alone. And one who didn't merely say funny things, but say them in a funny way--much like Avery himself. As for the black dialect, it may surprise some people how restrained it is--Uncle Tom says "these," them," there," and "those", not "dese," dem," dere," and "dose." While his grammar isn't perfect, having him speak the King's English perfectly would have been as out of place as it would be with Popeye.

Finally, critics of this cartoon seem to forget that it's a parody, meaning everything--and I do mean everything--is subject to ridicule. Race stereotypes here are presented only to be shot down and given a contemporary spin, as with anything else in Avery's cartoons. In other words, Avery kids the image of black people presented in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," not black people themselves. The same, perhaps, could even be said of his more grotesque caricatures--the blackface gags common to his cartoons, for instance. To his mind, the more extreme something was, the funnier it was--and that included characters as well as actions. Visual exaggeration was his business, almost a mission--and as we've seen, there weren't many who could do it any better.

Tags: Tex+Avery, Uncle+Tom's+Cabana, racial+stereotypes, Charles+Correll, parody, review-synopsis, orphan+toon, MGM, banned