A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.
MOTHER GOOSE GOES Hollywood when a collection of animated celebrities spoof the characters in wacky interpretations of famous old Nursery Rhymes.
Aided by excellent voice artists, the Disney animators get to display their caricaturing talents in this very enjoyable cartoon. This was not as easy as it looks, melding the personality of the celebrity with the persona of the Nursery character and leaving them both recognizable. And it gets even more complicated than that. In the 3 Men In A Tub sequence, the celebrity is also spoofing a famous movie role they've played (Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh in MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, Spencer Tracy as Manuel in CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS & Freddie Bartholomew as David COPPERFIELD). That Disney was able to pull off these characterizations in the space of only a few seconds speaks volumes for the high level of expertise attained by the Studio.
Movie mavens will love spotting & naming each animated celebrity. Others will have a difficult time, since many of these stars are now rather obscure. Here, for the record, is a listing of the celebrity spoofs: Katharine Hepburn as Little Bo Peep; Hugh Herbert as Old King Cole; Groucho, Chico & Harpo Marx as the Fiddlers Three; Ned Sparks as the King's Jester; Joe Penner as the King's Servant; Donald Duck as himself; Charles Laughton, Spencer Tracy & Freddie Bartholomew as the 3 Men In A Tub; W. C. Fields as Humpty Dumpty; Charlie McCarthy as himself; Stan Laurel as Simple Simon; Oliver Hardy as the Pieman; Edward G. Robinson & Greta Garbo in See Saw Margery Daw; Wallace Beery as Little Boy Blue; Edna May Oliver, Mae West & ZaSu Pitts as the trumpeters; Clark Gable as the flautist; George Arliss as the saxophonist; Joe E. Brown & Martha Raye as the jitterbug dancers. Apparently, unedited versions of the cartoon also feature 'appearances' by Fred Astaire, Cab Calloway, Eddie Cantor, Stepin Fetchit & Fats Waller.
The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most interesting of series in the field of animation. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.
MOTHER GOOSE GOES Hollywood when a collection of animated celebrities spoof the characters in wacky interpretations of famous old Nursery Rhymes.
Aided by excellent voice artists, the Disney animators get to display their caricaturing talents in this very enjoyable cartoon. This was not as easy as it looks, melding the personality of the celebrity with the persona of the Nursery character and leaving them both recognizable. And it gets even more complicated than that. In the 3 Men In A Tub sequence, the celebrity is also spoofing a famous movie role they've played (Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh in MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, Spencer Tracy as Manuel in CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS & Freddie Bartholomew as David COPPERFIELD). That Disney was able to pull off these characterizations in the space of only a few seconds speaks volumes for the high level of expertise attained by the Studio.
Movie mavens will love spotting & naming each animated celebrity. Others will have a difficult time, since many of these stars are now rather obscure. Here, for the record, is a listing of the celebrity spoofs: Katharine Hepburn as Little Bo Peep; Hugh Herbert as Old King Cole; Groucho, Chico & Harpo Marx as the Fiddlers Three; Ned Sparks as the King's Jester; Joe Penner as the King's Servant; Donald Duck as himself; Charles Laughton, Spencer Tracy & Freddie Bartholomew as the 3 Men In A Tub; W. C. Fields as Humpty Dumpty; Charlie McCarthy as himself; Stan Laurel as Simple Simon; Oliver Hardy as the Pieman; Edward G. Robinson & Greta Garbo in See Saw Margery Daw; Wallace Beery as Little Boy Blue; Edna May Oliver, Mae West & ZaSu Pitts as the trumpeters; Clark Gable as the flautist; George Arliss as the saxophonist; Joe E. Brown & Martha Raye as the jitterbug dancers. Apparently, unedited versions of the cartoon also feature 'appearances' by Fred Astaire, Cab Calloway, Eddie Cantor, Stepin Fetchit & Fats Waller.
The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most interesting of series in the field of animation. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.