The Little Stranger (1936)

The Little Stranger (A Max Fleischer Color Classic, 1936)
Dir.: Dave Fleischer
Animators: Eli Brucker and Dave Tendlar
Cel Bloc Rating: 6/9

It always seemed to me that the Ugly Duckling, actually a baby swan, didn't have it all that bad. Sure, compared to any baby duckling, he was homely; but he had enough going for him where, even with the mental abuse at the hands of his "siblings", he could at least compete physically with them. He could swim just as well, he could dive just as well; he was simply different in face and feather color, but otherwise, for all intents and purposes, he was basically the same type of bird, designed for life on the water. On most key elements in their young lives, both the ducklings and the (to the eyes of the ducks) hideous cygnet are relative equals.

But, not so with a cockerel. By this, I mean a baby rooster (which I presume this oft-considered "chick" actually is; he performs a rudimentary "cock-a-doodle-doo" near the film's end). He is horribly ill-suited to pose as a duckling, as he does not possess the proper feet for paddling; his quacking attempts fall out of his tiny, pointed beak as meek little "peeps"; and he is far too easily distracted by worms and seeds to pray proper attention to waddling in line! The babies of chickens, while undeniably cute as buttons, are wholly unsuited for lives largely spent diving and foraging in the water. It would be an unlucky (and possibly quickly deceased) chick or cockerel indeed who got stuck mistakenly in a family of ducks.

And that is precisely what happens in this Max Fleischer Color Classic, The Little Stranger, from 1936. We first hear these lyrics sung over the title cards and opening credits:

“Don’t make a sound,
don’t make a sound!
There’s a stranger here in town.
Where’s he from nobody knows!

Lonely little stranger,
he looks so forlorn.
He thought he was in danger
the day he was born.

Don’t make a sound,
don’t make a sound!
There’s a stranger here in town.
Where’s he from nobody knows!”

A sneaking mother hen, who I suppose is living insufferably in depressive means (such was the age), under cover of darkness, leaves her solitary egg in the nest of a mother duck, and her young son then has to fend for himself amongst a group of water-dwellers. Not too smart on the hen's part (were there no other hens that could raise him?) if she wants the kid to survive, but perhaps she didn't expect him, too. Hmmm... is there a far darker vision at work here in this film? (No... the darker vision is well outside this film, and it is clearly me.)

Come the morning, the eggs hatch underneath the mother duck, and she quickly sets to training her brood of three ducklings, and even tries to teach the "Little Stranger,” who gets sung about over the opening credits. As described, his "peeping" makes him fail his quacking lessons, even with repeated effort; and he nearly drowns when the family first takes to the water. After a pair of leaves attached to his feet merely float off when he tries them, he is left onshore by himself, while the ducks paddle about the pond. The poor chick climbs into the broken remnants of his egg, but then hatches the brilliant idea of using half of his shell as a boat. Running back to the water,  he paddles about with increasing ease upon the water. He swiftly catches up to his adopted family, and soon all five of them are enjoying a relaxing afternoon at play, jumping off logs and paddling all around.

But, then the giant roc attacks! OK, it's actually a buzzard of some sort, but its menacing, circling shadow over the water reminds one of the similar bird in Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor, released later the same year by the Fleischers. (I have wondered if this sequence was used as a test for the roc scenes in the Popeye flick, or at least inspired them to try something similar on a larger scale in that far more successful cartoon.) The buzzard tries to make a meal of one of the ducklings, but the chick paddles swiftly and heroically yanks a feather out of the tail of the villainous bird. The buzzard turns about on the chick and mocks him. The cockerel makes like a miniature motorboat, windmilling his formative wings in the water to reach the far shore. Running onto the land, he runs through a knot in a tree and manages to trick the buzzard into getting its head stuck. This allows the baby to make it into the likely safety of a nearby mill.

The buzzard manages to free his feathery head, and then hops through a broken window, chasing the chick throughout the entire mill. A bad step on a loose board gets the buzzard a face full of pine, and allows the little stranger to hide in the middle of a wagon wheel. The buzzard naturally dives for him and gets its head stuck yet again, and the force of his attack causes the buzzard's neck to wind up like a rubber band. Spinning and crashing wildly through a pair of apple barrels and then the door of the mill, the buzzard ends up floating by his neck from the wheel in the middle of the pond. A quartet of frogs hop aboard and turn the contraption into a carousel, making fun of their common enemy in the process. The family of ducks rush to the side of their little yellow hero, and the cockerel unleashes his best “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” The ducks, now accepting the chick as a full member of their little family, do their best quacky version of the same cry. All is well. Dissolve to the Paramount logo.

This film is the most traditional cartoon of the Color Classics released in the series up until this point: the action is generic, heroic action with a hungry villain chasing his prey; the lyrically rich music, a dominant feature in most of the Color Classics, is done by the time the opening credits close; and the three-dimensional is highly underplayed for the first time in the series. There is also very little overt humor; what humor there is happens to be of the most gentle form, and except for the buzzard attack and the brief early scene with the sad mother hen, the film is extremely lighthearted. Due to this stricture to established lines, is also the most forgettable of the series to this point. At times, it's cuteness almost makes it seem like “Baby's First Duck Cartoon”. This is not a slap at it, for the film is very well made, but it is never more than a pleasant, simple diversion.

I wish that I could say that the film, like the misplaced cockerel, only seems out of place in the Color Classics series, and that it has hidden strengths that allow it to show its true worth in the flock, but what it really does is allow a peek at where the series would eventually head: to increasingly middling and cutesy productions with lambs and bunnies galore. Long before this film, Fleischer seemed to already be nearing the moppet cartoon ideal; but even the previous film, Somewhere In Dreamland, though steeped in kewpie-doll optimism, had a severely dark undercurrent and subtext built around the Great Depression which resonates emotionally even while you are scraping the sugar off your tongue. But as the Color Classics moved through the decade, there was less emphasis on technical innovation and more placed on charming a family audience.

A family of sheep, I don't doubt. And I am steadfastly of the lupine persuasion. I'll never be accepted into the fold...

*****

And in case you haven't seen it:

[This article was updated with new photos and edited on 12/12/2015.]

Somewhere in Dreamland (1936)

Somewhere in Dreamland (A Max Fleischer Color Classic, 1936) 
Dir.: Dave Fleischer
Animators: Roland Crandall; Seymour Kneitel
Cel Bloc Rating: 6/9

Just how cute is too cute? Just how schmaltzy is too schmaltzy? These questions were apparently never considered when Fleischer Studios were cobbling together their ode to Depression-era depression, Somewhere In Dreamland in 1936. 

Rife with enough opening sadness to make you slit your wrists about four minutes into it, Dreamland features two cutesy-wootsy, hardscrabble waifs (with piercingly eerie beads for black eyes) who fall into a slumber and encounter a magical land far removed from the harsh realm in which they barely get by with their doting but worried mother. How hardscrabble are they? The boy walks around the snowy streets of their burg completely barefoot (and never seems to notice it), and when they go to bed at night, the blankets that they pull up in a meticulously neat fashion are moth-eaten collections of wayward strings, with all of the inner panels long eaten away.

The boy and girl drag a cart through the streets of the town collecting stray pieces of wood (presumably for their stove), and as they make their pathetic way, they attract the notice of first a toymaker, then a grocer, and finally, a baker. When the kids reach the bakery, the boy and girl stare with drooling mouths into the window at a massive collection of cupcakes, muffins and other baked deliciousness, but reality smacks the kids across their brains when they realize that their dreaming is all for naught.

Meanwhile, the baker has run inside his shop to prepare a gentle surprise for the children: two gorgeous looking cupcakes, but the children have disappeared long before the baker steps back out of his shop, having gone around the corner with their cart to return home. The three men confer on the matter, and one of them claims to know where the children live. If you are thinking an evil cabal that plans to cook the children in a pie, then you are in the wrong cartoon.

Meanwhile, the kids greet their mother at home, and their home is the very definition of the word "ramshackle". (Cinematically, possibly the only place more sorry-looking could be Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard's "home" in Modern Times, but that home has Paulette living in it, so how sorry-looking could it actually be?) Their mother, who looks like a far more sedate and prematurely aged Olive Oyl, does her best to feed her children what little food she can proffer: 2 mugs of hot milk and a small loaf of bread that is as hard as granite. The mother has to use all her strength to snap the bread in twain.

The girl solves this problem by smartly dunking her bread in her milk, and the boy follows suit; he complicates matters when he declares, "But I'm still hungry, mama!" The woman begins to weep openly, and the boy manages to console her by saying, "Ah, that's alright! I was only foolin'!" Mom kisses the kids off to bed, and after they change into their nightgowns and pull up those tattered blankets I mentioned previously, the little boy starts to sing the title song in an almost possessed manner with incredibly broad, descriptive hand motions:

"I'll see you somewhere in dreamland
Somewhere in dreamland tonight!
Over a bridge made of moonbeams
We'll find our clouds are silver-lined!"

The little girl takes over the second verse, and her brother rejoins her on the closing line:

"Each little star is a castle
Shining a welcome so bright!
Dreams will come true
For me and you
Somewhere in dreamland tonight!"

Once the kids fall asleep, their blankets dissipate, and their dream-selves float up and away to the pillowed gates of the land of their impoverishment-influenced dreams. When they arrive, and as the title song is now repeated by first female and then male voices, the kids immediately run to a tree on which they find new clothes to replace their tattered nightgowns. The kids change behind two giant hatboxes, and then skip along the cookie-laden pathways to a field full of lilies, underneath which grow magical ice cream cones. The kids pick the flavors they like best, and one of the lilies tips over to pour chocolate or butterscotch sauce over the frozen treasure.

Licking their dream-cones happily, the kids skip joyously past giant cakes, cookies, and other treats, and then pass a sign proclaiming a "Syrup River" as they come to an arch made of ribbon candy. One of the kids says, "Ain't we got fun?" as they climb aboard the animal cracker horses that surround a chocolate merry-go-round. As the kids twirl about, instead of grabbing the traditional golden ring, they grab a doughnut. While the sister only takes one, the brother grabs a handful of them in a flurry of greediness!

They run off munching and stuffing their faces, but the next sight makes them drop their sugary booty in awe: a popcorn field, where the cornstalks shoot the corn high into the air until it comes down like rain, and buttercups are employed as reservoirs of golden butter into which each popped kernel is dipped. After feasting to their hearts’ content, the kids skip along past a great number of toys, and they each pick out their favorite items with which to play. Their arms loaded with swag, they finally chance upon a tree with pillows hanging from its branches, and a pair of beds so comfortable-looking, the kids can't help themselves but to bounce high upon the mattresses. They eventually fall back to sleep, and then they are awakened by their mother come the morning.

The kids get out of bed, and at first, are disappointed when it turns out their dual dream was just that: a dream. But from their beds, they can see the kitchen table, and after rubbing their eyes, they find that their dismal abode (apart from their bedrooms) has been transformed overnight into a cornucopia of food and toys. A large turkey rests upon the table, streamers hang from the ceiling, and there are dolls, airplanes, hobby horses, and other toys scattered all around the room. "For us?", the kids twice ask the three kind merchants, who were hiding on the other side of the wall. "For you!", they twice concur. The kids dive right into plates of delicious ice cream, but then the boy pokes himself in the butt with his fork to make sure it is all not still a dream. He is delighted to find out that he feels a sharp pain, and the kids squeal with delight as they continue to gorge themselves on cupcakes and ice cream. Dissolve to the Paramount logo to end the cartoon.

The Fleischer Brothers briefly tuck the three-dimensional tricks into their backpocket for the first half of this one, with the opening four minutes pretty much portrayed in straight 2D animation, perhaps to add more grimness and focus to the despair of the children's world, meant to reflect reality (though it is still far from it). But, once the kids are floating into their fantasies, the guys snap the special effects hankie back at the film, sharply delineating their sugary dreamland with idealized versions of all manner of desserts, fairy castles, amusement rides, and toys. Especially memorable is the conjunction of ultra-dimensional animation in the chocolate cake merry-go-round scene, certainly the most remarkable bit of animation in the film. It is telling of the film that there is not enough of this world, such is the saccharine success of the vision, and like the kids in the film, we are left wanting more.

I know that the movies were a major source of psychological relief during the Great Depression, and many of them were apt to show such conditions, and then have the characters reach some sort of turning point by which their lives would become better; this film certainly offers no divergence from this “moxie buildin’” mold. Films featuring grand acts of paternalistic altruism by those better off, such as the empathetic shop owners in this film, may have been produced in that age, but just as likely were films showing far more successful businessmen as cruel and selfish individuals. But none of that in the Color Classics series. As sad as the Fleischers want to make you feel, they also have a need to leave the audience cheerful by film's end. So, no matter the amount of pathos ladled on like so much gravy, the audience is still going to come out with a warm feeling in their stomach... and only the slightest case of heartburn.

Just like the kids in this film, we all gotta dream, and no matter the candy-coated fantasia that we travel to in our sleep, sometimes when we wake up, the world actually is just a little bit better than before.

You'd better poke yourself with that fork, kiddo, because obviously, you are still somewhere in dreamland...

*****

And in case you haven't seen it:

[This article was updated with new photos and edited on 12/12/2015.]