Humpty Dumpty (1935)

Humpty Dumpty (An Ub Iwerks ComiColor Cartoon, 1935) 
Dir.: Ub Iwerks
Music: Carl Stalling
Cel Bloc Rating: 6/9

I'm not going to get into the supposed and varied sources of the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty. There are enough places that already deal with the whys and wherefores and whats, and I feel as much need to make sense of it all as do the animators who have brought cartoon life to the character over the years. Cannons, kings, blah, blah, blah! 

The disparity between how much information we actually have about Mr. Dumpty, given the brevity of his poem, and the amount of times he has been employed over the many decades in comics and animation is astounding. This is all the information anyone gets from the start:

"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
couldn't put Humpty together again."

The poem tells you so little, not even the seemingly necessary fact that Humpty is, indeed, an egg; though as this poem is meant as a riddle leading to that conclusion clears that mystery up for good. It is taken for granted that Humpty is an Ovoid of Notorious Balance; what has not been mentioned is that his skills clearly qualify him for most junior varsity gymnastics teams. (Were he created today, Humpty would possibly be some sort of a combination of idiot narcissist and daredevil, probably the forerunner in the quite narrow subgenre of X-Treme Dairy Products.)

Lewis Carroll was obviously bemused enough with the situation to clear it up for good in Through the Looking Glass, which is one of the early instances of Humpty being given more life than he possessed previously in this tidy little quatrain. In fact, Carroll skewers the structure of the poem by having Alice comment "That last line is much too long for the poetry" (given by Carroll as "couldn't put Humpty Dumpty in his place again," thus making it more ponderous than before).


In 1935, Ub Iwerks, like many studios in the 1930s, took to spending a good deal of time and money trying to compete with Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies series, and started a series, produced in the red-and-blue, predominant, two-color Cinecolor system, called ComiColor Cartoons. Like all of the Symphonic copycat series (and “copycat” is not a putdown, mind you!), the ComiColor shorts were generally cutesy and childlike. They were also severely lacking in the story department.

This does not mean that there weren't some good cartoons in the bunch, along with some excellent characterizations and quite memorable moments. One such cartoon (fun to watch, but with a story so weak you can hear its knees quaking from the strain) is the Iwerks updating of Humpty Dumpty, brought into the modern world with cheap melodramatic devices and poppy jazz. After all, when even the toddlers of the world have your source poem memorized, the only way to go is to set it finger-snappin’ music...

The film opens on a storybook where the credits are presented, and when the page turns, we are shown a window with wooden doors that open up and introduce us to the three main characters. As this is an update, the first egg is Humpty Dumpty, Jr., the son of the late wall-tumbler; the second is his lady love, the beauteous Easter Egg; and the third is the foul-mouthed villain, The Bad Egg. He is quite literally foul-mouthed: a stench wafts from his maw as he sneers at the audience, who cascade him with "Boo! Hiss! Boo!" which is apropos. The action proper begins with the camera showing us a picture of the late Humpty Dumpty, and a choir sings us a chiming version of the poem. It pulls back to reveal his son, Junior, who sits precariously atop the lip of a vase, and continues singing his story:

"My old man may have sat on a wall;
He slipped and had a very great fall!
But I'm Humpty Junior, 
I'm just like my pop!
I climb where I please!
They can't make me stop!"

His mother, sweeping the counter with a broom and worried beyond reason, intervenes, but almost causes her son's death inadvertently. She yells, "Junior! Come down from there!," and Junior is startled enough to lose his balance and fly down towards the ground. Luckily, his mother catches him in her apron. She tells him, "You be careful! That's how your father got cracked!" Junior slinks off, all the while hanging his head in shame.

Enter the heroine, Easter Egg. She skips along cutely, tapping various kitchen items with a stick, and Junior thinks fast and greets her with an armful of greens that he has plucked from a dinner plate. A light jazz number kicks in, and Junior serenades her:

"The moment you arrived, I had a feeling
I'd never be contented 'til we met!
But otherwise it ain't quite so appealing
So won't you join me in an om-e-lette?"

She then joins him in the chorus, as they rock back and forth as they literally spoon within a tablespoon:

"Oh, spooning in a spoon!
We don't need a moon!
Poached or fried or on the side
Morning, night or noon!
Scrambled in a tune,
Deviled with a croon!
In a cup, you're sunny side up,
Spooning in a spoon!"

As they cavort and sing, a kick-line of leggy she-eggs join them through the course of the tune, while The Bad Egg lurks jealously about in the background, peeking and sneering at their act, resplendent in traditional villain's curled mustache, tails, spats and top hat. The pair of love-eggs (I suppose that would make them pre-lovebirds were they fertilized properly) kiss sweetly and repeat the second half of the chorus, but then the villain stomps on the spoon handle, sending the pair flying into the air and onto their oval keisters. The Bad Egg tells Junior to "Scram!" and pushes him down, kidnapping Easter Egg, and carrying her off for his own twisted take on the process of love. Junior attacks him but only gets punched in the eye and knocked down again.

The Bad Egg carries Easter high up on the kitchen shelves where he puts the moves on her, but she runs and tries to stop him with anything in her path: a box of matches, a tomato can, and pepper, which she blows in his face, causing him to sneeze. Junior reaches the top shelf and charges the pair, but the Bad Egg roughly throws Easter off the shelf and down into a pan full of boiling water. She screams for help as Junior battles the villain, but finally the lovestruck hero breaks away from the melee and rushes to her aid.

Junior fashions a lasso out of some leftover spaghetti, but by the time Junior pulls her out of the water, she has become hard-boiled. To his surprise, she now speaks and looks along the lines of a Mae West. "Aw, scram!", she tells Junior when he tries to embrace her. The villain laughs at this turnabout, and Junior strides towards the heel to exact his revenge, but Easter pushes him out of the way. She hitches up her skirt toughly and starts pummeling the villain with a number of sharp blows to the face.

Junior, excited as usual, shadowboxes off to the side to Easter's every successful punch at the villain's face, but in his fervor, Junior slips and sends himself into the boiling water. At first, he calls for help, but he ends up getting hard-boiled as well. Crawling out of the boiling pan, he delivers a roundhouse punch that sends the Bad Egg flying. Junior then strikes a number of matches and throws them at the creep, surrounding him with flames and burning his rear end. Finally, Junior dumps the entire box of matches down on the Bad Egg. There is a large flash as the matches all catch on fire simultaneously, and when the smoke clears, the villain is revealed to be completely blackened and sick from smoke inhalation. 

The Bad Egg collapses exhausted into the tablespoon, and Junior stomps on the handle to send the Bad Egg sailing to the ground below, where he smashes to bits. As an explanation for his foul breath, a couple dozen skunks run out from the broken shards of his remains! Junior spits into the spoon's cup and it tosses him to the shelf above, where the two now-hardboiled love-eggs meet up. He embraces Easter and they kiss passionately, and then the film cuts back to the opening storybook window, where we see a replay of the chorus to "Spooning in a Spoon" before the book closes. Finis.

When I was a kid, I loved to make finger puppets, and I would do this by measuring a piece of construction paper into rectangular sections and then drawing clothes and faces onto the rectangles, cutting them out, rolling them, and then glueing the opposite ends together to form tiny little puppets. I would often have a hundred of these figures stored in a box by my desk, and each one was different, with distinct faces, clothes, and some even had arms, legs and other props glued onto their outsides. But there was one way in which they were the same: they all had tremendous facial areas that took up about 2/3 of their body lengths, mainly so I could get as much in the area of facial expressions as possible so that they could be seen by an audience (usually my brothers).

It is the same trick here with the eggs in Humpty Dumpty. Their faces easily take up most of their bodies, with only the bottom third left for the torso, arms and legs. Their eyes and mouths are huge and extremely expressive; as a result, with the wildly melodramatics at large in its action, this film would be an excellent example for drawing study.

The problem, though, is the close sticking to melodrama: the only real surprise in the film is the way the formerly innocent, childish eggs "grow up" and get "hard-boiled", though in retrospect, given the "tough guy" stance in most films of the period, maybe it's not really that surprising. But the film remains a visual delight even if there is that much going on storywise. The colors of the piece are remarkably vivid and the line work on the characters is sharp and clean. Overall, the film is politely entertaining, if nothing over which to fall off a wall.

RTJ

*****

And in case you haven't seen it:

[This article was updated with new photos on 12/28/15.]

The Discontented Canary (1934)

The Discontented Canary (An MGM Color Cartoon, 1934) 
Dir: Rudolf Ising
Cel Bloc Rating: 6/9

I have had a coloration problem through most of my life. I've discussed previously my 1980s outrage at colorized films at great length on my other blog, The Cinema 4 Pylon, but that problem is not what I am talking about here. That's colorization. No, I've had a problem with my own color, or rather, my lack of ability to keep any color in my skin. Living in Alaska; being a blonde; having the natural skin tone of the fence in Tom Sawyer; being a night-owl -- all of these items do not lend one to being considered anything less than an albino freak by most people, except for the scattered and hesitant opinions of actual albino freaks.

What a difference a year makes. Now I've moved to California, and I have been exposed to more sun (except for the last two months) than I have ever been before. As a result, I possess considerably more color in my skin than I used to have, though when compared to others who have lived here much longer than I, there doesn't seem to be much change in tone. An arm-to-arm matchup against my nephew Rupert showed that I still have a long way to go in the coloration department. But even a casual glance in the mirror brings into my view a decidedly different shade in my features than I had been used to on the previous Alaskan incarnation of myself. (Not that the non-sun-seeking portions of my physique are any better off -- there I am the same ol' Rik -- and will remain so since skin cancer is simply not an option.) I am not a vain person -- I just like any help that I can get in the looks department, and being mistaken for Marilyn Manson's powderpuff is not the way to go anymore.

The Discontented Canary also has a coloration problem -- it is losing its color. The first MGM film produced by the historic animation team of Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising (also known by the delightfully melodic sounding sobriquet of Harman-Ising), and the first MGM cartoon short period, Canary is only seen in badly deteriorated prints, with the colors washed out in some scenes to where the titular bird is practically invisible in a couple of shots. This problem might be expected with public domain cartoons, where the original negative is not available for reprocessing, and the endless duping of a print results in wear and degradation. But even MGM does not seem to have a decent print of Canary; this situation was displayed most broadly on TCM's Cartoon Alley (whose print is the source of this review), where Ben Mankiewicz offered up an apology for the decrepit state of the film. This technological speed-bump, however, does not prevent one from watching the film from an artistic level.

The story concerns a very sad and lonely canary living his days trapped inside of a cage. While he does have other companions, including a parrot, living in the same room, he feels withdrawn from them and longs to see what the world outside of the living room window has to offer. As the film starts, a song introduces the canary's gloomy disposition (sung by other birds, including the parrot), and since the song is done to the tune of The Man on the Flying Trapeze, it is no surprise that the little canary shares a similar talent on his swinging perch. A chorus of voices sings:

"Once a canary his life did bemoan,
locked in an old cage to live all alone.
While out in the wild world he wanted to roam
and fly with the birds in the trees.

Now the bird that we sing of is lonesome;
he wanted to fly in the breeze.
All he could was to eat and to drink
and to swing on his flying trapeze!"

As the bird hops on his swing inside cage in time with the music, the parrot picks up the chorus of the song:

"He flies through the air
with the greatest of ease.
This daring young bird
on the flying trapeze.

His actions are graceful,
all birds he does please,
and my love,
he has stolen away!"

The old lady who cares for him comes in the room to feed him, but she notices his pallor and possibly corresponding sadness, and decides that some air would do him good. She opens the window, but she forgets to shut his birdcage after his feeding, and I will let the chorus tell the story:

"But this wide the door is left open;
now here is his chance to be free.
So out of his cage he so cautiously steals
and flies away on the breeze!

He flies through the air
so happy and free!
This daring young bird,
now the world he will see!

His actions are graceful,
he sails through the trees,
and he's glad
to be winging away!"

Unfortunately for the bird, the first time that he lands on a fencepost to check out his new surroundings, he attracts the attentions of a scrawny, hungry alley-cat. The cat pounces after the bird as he leaps from fencepost to fencepost, but is left behind when the canary is drawn towards a tree across the open field. There, the canary meets a wide variety of other birds, all of whom are chirping a happy rendition of Listen to the Mockingbird, including a strange cuckoo bird who gets all the best parts of the song. The cuckoo zips around a curious flamingo, which ends up tying itself in a knot trying to follow the cuckoo's maneuvering with his head. Then the cuckoo fashions a hat out of a leaf and poses as Napoleon Bonaparte. With his wing stuffed inside his feathers in the traditional impression of the French dictator, the cuckoo hops across the branch and chest-bumps the canary off, sending him spiraling downward.

The canary lands inside of a flower, but his timing is very bad, for there is a bee inside of it, and he gets lightly stung as a warning. The bee cusses the bird out in his buzzing language and gets back to work inside the flower. It is then that the cat appears to take another shot at catching the canary. But the little hero bird has already moved on to the next intriguing sight: a group of flitting hummingbirds who are hard at work on a group of flowers. The canary decides to try and duplicate their actions, but as he dips into a flower, one of the hummingbirds stabs him with its beak and pushes him through the entire flower, and the canary gets unceremoniously dumped out at the root.

He flies to a branch to collect himself, but a fierce wind kicks up, blowing the canary's feathers up his body like a lady's skirt. A flash of lightning then lights the tree on fire, burning it down around the bird, but when he starts to escape, a torrent of rain crashes down from the clouds. He flies for the shelter of a nearby birdhouse. When he arrives, the house is already full up with other avian refugees. The cat sees the canary's dilemma and decides to disguise himself as another birdhouse. He crawls inside the opening and sits waiting with his face appearing just inside the doorway of the now dangerous sanctuary. Crammed inside the house, the cat hops on his tail to the end of a branch and then whistles to get the bird's attention. But as the bird graciously wings it for the false birdhouse, nearing his certain doom, another gust of wind whips up and changes his direction mid-air, keeping him from being eaten.

But, the cat is impatient, and leaps at the canary, giving swift chase to the little bird through and around the trees of the forest. At one point, he actually gets close enough so that the canary is actually inside his mouth, but the little bird gathers his strength and pushes his way out. The bird flies through a hole in a tree and then comes out on top of the roof of his home, but the cat is fast on his tail. The bird leaps out onto the weathervane, and the cat struggles to reach him, but has to hang onto a lightning rod for support and safety. (Boy, he hasn't been paying a close eye to the weather, has he?)

Lightning fries the cat to a crisp, his insides appearing red and lit up through his fur and skin, and he howls as he scampers away in shame and pain. Then a second bolt hits the weathervane. The canary jumps off in time, but the vane has been transformed by the lightning into the word "SCRAM!" The Discontented Canary has learned his lesson, and he flies back through the window of the house, and hurriedly shuts his cage. He eyes a needlepoint picture on the wall displaying the words "HOME, SWEET HOME". Happy to be safe, the canary whistles the line to that song that famously goes "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home."

All series have to start somewhere, and though this cartoon isn't titled as a Happy Harmonies short (the series would officially start with the next Harman-Ising film, The Old Pioneer), it really is part of that series in spirit. You could also argue that, artistically, the series actually started years before as Disney's immensely successful Silly Symphonies series. For the Happy Harmonies series was essentially a copy of Disney's success, and who can blame MGM or Harman-Ising? If you are going to swipe an idea or a style, you don't do it from things that have failed; you do it from what works or from what sells. The Silly Symphonies did both, and it is no surprise that nearly every cartoon studio took a shot at their own similar series, both in title and concept. As it turns out, the Happy Harmonies were probably the shorts that emulated the Silly Symphonies the closest artistically, possibly due to having higher budgets than the other studios.

This film, and the rest that followed until midway through 1935, were filmed in only two-color Technicolor, so part of the lessened depth of color is to be derived from that slighter process. Because of this, the canary is not actually yellow as one would think he would be. But, for a studio like MGM, where film preservation seems to have always been more important and prevalent than at other studios, what happened to the print for their very first cartoon short? Why has The Discontented Canary become so washed out and pale?

Easy... that little pale blonde bird flew to Alaska...

RTJ

*****

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

[This article was updated with new photos on 1/2/16. The copy from which I screengrabbed these shots may or may not be the same print that was shown on TCM (alluded to in the article). In most of the scenes featuring the cat with the bird, there is definitely a deterioration of image, though some other scenes look rather nice.]