Hello my friends and welcome back for another round classic cartoons.
Today's cartoon selection begins with the classic Betty Boop cartoon, Betty Boop For President (1932). This film is Betty at her best with plenty of delightfully bizarre humor that can only be done in a cartoon and tons of imagination. Add to this some catchy music and some still true satire and you got yourself one heck of a cartoon. The following are two exhibitor's reviews from Motion Picture Herald. "BETTY BOOP FOR PRESIDENT: Betty Boop— Boop is running Mickey Mouse a close race. Every- one enjoyed this short reel. Running Time, 9 Minutes. - R.W. Hickman, Lyric Theatre, Greenville, Id. General Patronage." "BETTY BOOP FOR PRESIDENT: Talkartoon— This is the best cartoon we have run in a long time. Betty stands Number 1 with our patrons over all others. Paramount has the shorts.—C. W. Bennett, Arcade Theatre, Middleville, Mich."
Next we turn to everyone's favorite wascally wabbit, Bugs Bunny, in a rather early appearance, The Wabbit Who Came to Supper (1942). This is one of those "fat Elmer" cartoons from the early 1940's where Elmer was briefly redesigned to resemble his voice actor, Arthur Q. Bryan. Though Bugs' design was not fully formed by this point (something that is more noticeable in some scenes than in others), the character's personality is fully in tact. His plan is simply to get revenge on Elmer and his way of doing that is much more cunning and clever than anything his adversary did to him. It says a lot about Bugs, that after Elmer learns that he can't harm a rabbit without losing his inheritance, that Bugs isn't simply satisfied with being safe. Instead the rabbit must use the opportunity to drive Elmer crazy. This is similar to how Bugs, almost left Elmer's house in Hare Tonic (1945) before deciding, it would be much more fun to heckle Elmer. The basic storyline of this short is also very similar to the later Tom and Jerry cartoon, The Million Dollar Cat (1944).
Touchdown Mickey (1932) is one of my favorite black and white Mickey Mouse cartoons and the reason for this is very simple. This film is a fast moving affair full of non-stop gags. The gags start off kind of funny, but towards the incredibly fast paced climax they are absolutely hilarious. This film becomes slapstick comedy at its finest. A lot of people for the sake of making cartoon history simpler say the classic Disney cartoons are rather slow paced and cute, while other studio's like Warner Brothers and MGM made faster paced and funnier cartoons. While there are many cartoons that fit this mold, not all of them do. This is one of those clear exceptions as the fast paced gags leave little room for any cuteness or sentimentality.
The cartoon fun continues with the Terry-Toon, The Haunted Cat (1951).
As promised, here is the the next episode of Ruff and Reddy. To see what happens to our heroes come back next week for the next episodes.
-Michael J. Ruhland
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