The Ragtime Bear (1949)

The Ragtime Bear (UPA Jolly Frolics, 1949)
Dir.: John Hubley
Cel Bloc Rating: 8/9

I am not especially a fan of Mr. Magoo, but I also have never minded the character much. I know we are in politically correct times, and every once in a while, someone makes some ado about the Magoo cartoons and how they make fun of the blind and a bunch of other outright hooey.

Mr. Magoo is not blind. He has extremely poor vision, perhaps even legal blindness, but he can see to a slim degree. The humor in his cartoons comes from the situations into which his bad vision gets him. (See, even there, calling it "bad" might set someone off; hopefully they skipped over the "poor' part... hate to be called "elitist" when I am nowhere near that.) But he rarely ends up in real trouble from his misadventures.

Usually, such as in his debut film, The Ragtime Bear, his extreme nearsightedness causes massive problems for those around him. Magoo is also as stubborn as they come, and generally refuses to admit when he has made a mistake or a wrong turn. This trait, too, will usually spell trouble for those he encounters, while leaving Magoo most often for the better by the end of the situation (or the cartoon).

After directing the final two films in the Fox and the Crow series for UPA, John Hubley and his team came up with a new character, a near-sighted curmudgeon with a wide stubborn streak named Mr. Magoo. According to Leonard Maltin in his seminal Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons, Hubley was able to convince the studio to allow him to make The Ragtime Bear in 1949 only because it had an animal in it. Columbia weren't interested in a human character, no matter how original he was in the animation landscape. Once Magoo took off over the next two decades and became one of the most popular animated icons in the world, I am sure there are some at Columbia who had to eat some crow (and a bit of fox as well). (Then again, it was Hollywood, and no one ever admitted mistakes; they just moved on to the next project...)

After a series of Jolly Frolics opening cards, we enter the story of The Ragtime Bear. A red jalopy speeds along a high mountain roadway, passing bears hanging out in the trees and the tops of numerous peaks. At the wheel is a short figure clad in green jacket and cap; in the back of the jalopy, strumming a banjo, is a gangly doofus with a yellow hat (with the brim bent upwards) and wearing a raccoon coat. The car seems out of control, and that is exactly what it is. The jalopy speeds into a tree where a bear is fast asleep on a branch. The camera remains on the bear as the sounds of a crash are heard below. The crash shakes the tree and the bear, but the ursine fellow only wakes up fleetingly and then settles back into his reverie.

In the car at the base of the tree, the gangly collegiate tries to tune his banjo (which had been providing the jaunty soundtrack up to the point of the crash), while the older gentleman, who will become very well known as Mr. Magoo, climbs out of the driver's seat. Clad all in green with white spats on his shoes, the bald man with thick eyebrows and a bald head squints almost constantly as he walks. As he walks up to sign reading "Straight ahead to Hodge Podge Lodge," it becomes clear that Magoo is extremely nearsighted.

He turns towards the camera and asks in a very pushy voice (provided by comic actor Jim Backus, who would also go on to play Thurston Howell III, the millionaire on Gilligan's Island), "Which way to Hodge Podge Lodge?" "Can't you read the sign?" says a disembodied voice, possibly meant to be the director or the cameraman. "Well, certainly I can read the sign!" the old man shouts back angrily. He pulls out a pair of spectacles and puts them on, his eyes enlarging to ridiculous proportions. We see a very blurry closeup of the bottom half of the words on the sign. "What does it say?" he asks the voice, which responds calmly, "Straight ahead." After grumbling a little bit, Magoo says, "Well, thank you. Thank you kindly!" and then turns to head back to the car.

The tall youth has gotten out of the car by this point, and is standing right behind him toying around with his banjo. Magoo shouts at him, "Come on, Waldo! Follow me!" but when Waldo tells him he will, Magoo calls him a "scatterbrained boy." As they head off, Waldo starts to strum his banjo, returning to the jaunty tune from before. However, the bear is now awake high in the tree above them, and with his paw cupped to one of his rather mouse-like ears, the bear likes the sound of what he hears. He begins to tap his foot and stick his tongue out to the rhythm of the music.

Waldo is getting a tad carried away with his music, and he doesn't notice that Mr. Magoo has walked straight up a tall precipice covered in snow and is about to step off into nothing but space. Luckily, the music angers Magoo, and he turns to yell at Waldo, saying "Stop that guitar! Can't stand noise!" He grumbles again, and with his eyes squinted, turns to take that possibly fatal step. However, Waldo sees his predicament -- and is likely very used to these situations with his elderly uncle -- and lays his banjo down underneath Magoo's steps so that he crosses over to another cliff unscathed. Magoo is unaware that his life has been saved by his nephew, and continues to berate the lad. "I came up here for peace and quiet, son!" and grumbles some more. Waldo tries to step from one cliff to the next, but the far one has a chunk break off, and he end ups letting go of his banjo and taking the fall himself. 

Waldo's hat also flies into the air, and the bear not only arrives at the cliff just in time to accidentally catch the banjo, but has the hat flop onto his furry head as well. The bear inspects the instrument, hits the strings with his paws, and then with the back of the banjo to his face, pulls a string which allows the banjo to smack him hard in the nose. After hitting the strings in frustration a few times, suddenly he becomes a banjo master, perfectly fingering the neck and head, and playing as well, if not better, than Waldo did.

But Magoo is not done with Waldo. He wanders back furiously to the bear, mistaking him for his nephew because of the fur of his coat and the hat and banjo. "Waldo! I told you to quit it! Now, give me that mandolin!" Magoo leans across the gap between the two cliffs and pulls the instrument from the bear's paws. He also scrapes a chunk of fur from off of the bear's stomach and says, "Get yourself a new coat. You're disgraceful, son. I'd like you to be neat, boy..." Magoo continues to mutter and chuckle under his breath as he marches away.

A short while later, we enter the Hodge Podge Lodge, where apparently the hoi polloi gather to lounge about in the lobby. Magoo, dragging the banjo, walks straight up to the clerk's desk, but he ignores the clerk who is hunched over the register on the desk, clambers up some luggage and stops at the head of a moose mounted on the wall. While Magoo makes his introductions to the moose, the clerk speaks to Magoo, but the old man never notices that the voice is coming from behind him.

He introduces Waldo as "a bright lad and a fine banjo player." However, the Waldo that walks up to the desk is the bear version of Waldo, and the clerk notices this straight away. The clerk holds out his hand to shake, but the bear just grabs the clerk and gives him a bone-crushing bear hug. Magoo yells at his "nephew," shouting from the top of the stairs, "C'mon, Waldo! Get some rest! And take off that coat!" Magoo, though, has stepped unknowingly up onto the railing, and steps off, falling to the ground below. It looks like the bear is going to catch him, but lets Magoo pass and hit the carpet as he collects the banjo instead.

The bear starts to play My Darling Clementine, but Magoo wrests the instrument from his grasp once again. When the bear looks up, Magoo, with fairly impressive speed, has climbed up a snow-covered hill and is making to throw the banjo off into nothingness. At the last second, Magoo realizes something is passing by him -- a ski lift -- and he sets the banjo on one of the chairs, which carries it up to the top of the mountain. Magoo does a little dance but throws his back out, and stops when he hears the banjo music again. Magoo has wandered onto a ski jump, and from the top of the jump comes the bear on a pair of skis, playing the banjo for all he is worth. Magoo is swept up by the skis, and the pair go flying high into the air.

They land further down the slope with Magoo mounted at the front of the skis. He doesn't seem to notice that anything was any different than if they were standing on the carpet at the lodge. He turns around to talk to "Waldo," but we then see the real Waldo desperately trying to climb back up from where he fell earlier. He just about makes it, but gets run over by his uncle and the bear. Magoo grabs the banjo again from the bear, yelling, "For the last time... STOP THAT MUSIC!" He steps off the skis, and begins to tumble fast down the hill, until he ends up with his head stuck upside down in the snow.

Later, at the lodge, Magoo has gone to bed. He not only is still holding the banjo hostage as he lies in his bed, but he is also brandishing a double-barreled shotgun. As he snoozes fitfully, we see the bear, still posing as Waldo, in the other bed. The bear notices a bear-skin rug on the floor, and places it in his bed. He starts to tiptoe across the room to steal the banjo, but when Magoo stirs a little, the bear falls down flat on the floor and pretends to be the bear-skin rug. He tiptoes on all fours to the bed, but almost runs into the shotgun. The bear reaches up to grab the banjo, but grabs a string and awakens Magoo. The old man looks across the room and sees what he thinks is Waldo asleep in the other bed, and a bear-skin rug (though it is actually the real bear) lying between them.

Magoo falls back asleep, and the bear reaches up again for the banjo. This time, he accidentally pulls the trigger on the shotgun, and the blast awakens Magoo once more! He looks across the room, where he mistakenly believes he has shot his nephew full of holes, as we see the silhouette of the bear-skin rug on the bed splattered by buckshot. Magoo rushes to Waldo's aid, with the real bear watching in disbelief on the floor in the middle of the room. Magoo decides that water is needed to help the situation, and he leaves the room, stepping on the bear in the process. The bear makes a last grab for the banjo, but hears a noise at the door, and runs back to his own bed, throwing the rug out of the way and lying down.

A very tired-looking Waldo comes through the door and climbs on top of the bear. He falls asleep just in time for Magoo to return with a pitcher of water, which he pours on both Waldo and the bear. They both sit up, and Magoo is overjoyed that his nephew is alive The bear helps to brush the water off of Waldo without either human noticing him at all, but when Magoo graciously hands the banjo back to his real nephew, the bear pops up to look down happily at the instrument. But Magoo warns Waldo, "And if you play one note, I'll blast you!" and levels the shotgun at his nephew. 

Waldo holds back from playing, but the bear puts a finger in his own ear, and then reaches around to strum the banjo. From outside of the lodge, we hear a shotgun blast. And then another. Magoo chases his nephew up and down the hills and mountains, shooting his gun wildly. In the final shot of The Ragtime Bear, we see the bear perched yet again on his tree branch, strumming his banjo and tapping his foot happily.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I am not necessarily a fan of Mr. Magoo. I find him extremely irritating in the later entries in the original theatrical series, and don't care for him much in the various television series (though some of the specials and movies have been entertaining). Even worse is when he gets that stupid dog that looks and acts just like him. (Foreshadowing of the vile Scrappy-Doo perhaps?) But I greatly enjoy many of the earliest shorts in the theatrical run, and The Ragtime Bear is right up there with UPA's best work, if not in all of animation. The character work is sharp, and I love the details in the lodge scenes and in the opening backgrounds.

And best of all is the creation of the cranky old man, Mr. Magoo. In Maltin's book, it is mentioned that Hubley was upset that the later films concentrated almost completely on his nearsightedness as his major trait, and pushed aside the bullheadness that was the real reason for his existence. I suppose this was to make him increasingly more acceptable to the masses, but it does rather cut down his character by at least a dimension in doing so. Luckily, there a handful of early films where this attribute is fully intact, including this one.

RTJ

*****

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

Tom Turk and Daffy (1944)

Tom Turk and Daffy (Warner Bros. Looney Tunes, 1944)
Dir.: Chuck Jones
Animators: Ken Harris and Robert Cannon
Cel Bloc Rating: 7/9

So, why aren't there any great cartoon turkey characters? I not asking why one (such as Tom Turk in this cartoon) isn't well animated. I am asking why there are no truly memorable, living through the ages, Cartoon Hall of Fame-style turkey characters.

Ducks? We have plenty of them. Donald and Daffy at the start, along with all of Donald's various relatives and his girlfriend (Daisy, Huey, Dewey, Louie, Uncle Scrooge, etc.) On television, Darkwing Duck, Yakky Doodle, and Count Duckula are fairly prominent. We are pretty good with famous ducks. And even beyond fame, ducks are pretty well represented in the animation world.

We've got memorable roosters (Foghorn Leghorn), chickens (Chicken of Cow and Chicken, Clara Cluck, Lady Kluck from Disney's Robin Hood, Foghorn Leghorn's Miss Prissy and her little egghead son, and SuperChicken), geese (Donald's gluttonous cousin Gus), and even a pretty tough little chickenhawk named Henery. And, of course, Tweety Bird is way, way up there (though held barely aloft by tiny little wings) in popularity as a bird character.

But turkeys? What gives? There have certainly been turkey characters that show up here and there. Any adaptation of Chicken Little invariably has a Turkey Lurky within it. Warner Bros.' The Woods are Full of Cuckoos has a caricature of Sophie Tucker named Sophie Turkey amongst other celebrity cameos. There are others, but these efforts are few and far between, and it seems there has been no real attempt given to develop a regular turkey character as a leading star in a cartoon series. (At least, not that I can recall or discover.) And this seems wrong since they play such a huge part in our world. Hell, there is a holiday each year that, despite how we want to convince everyone it is about family and thankfulness and blessings, is really about how many damn turkeys we can knock down in a single day.

Turkeys are certainly strange looking birds to most people, and it would seem the comic possibilities are endless with their odd proportions, those omnipresent and sometimes disgusting-looking wattles, and their general anatomical structure. Since chases are so common to animation, one would think that at least one half of the great chase duos in cartoons would be taken up by a turkey character. After all, their one purpose in the human world is to be devoured (no one raises them because they are cute), so the motivation for the other half of the duo is there. Make it a wolf or a fox or some other predator, and let them have at it. It seems a natural.

And thus we come to Tom Turk and Daffy, a cartoon from 1994 directed by the great Chuck Jones. We don't just get Daffy Duck in this short; we also get his frequent co-star Porky Pig as a porcine pilgrim out to collect his Thanksgiving meal centerpiece. Well, Thanksgiving is never actually mentioned, but the pilgrim costume is pretty much a dead giveaway. (The holiday, along with turkeys, has been given relative short shrift in animation history itself.) Daffy does confuse matters at the beginning of the film when he is seen making a snowman while he sings a Daffy-only version of Jingle Bells. As he sings and packs snow on his creation, the earmuff-wearing Daffy thinks he hears the far off sound of gunfire. He strains to hear, and pulls one muff of his ear (the gag here is that a duck's ears are not external, so why the muffs?) and he hears the definite crack of a gun and a resulting clanging noise, which rattles the duck enough to make me shake from side to side.

Into view runs a large turkey, yelling at a breathless pace, "He's after me! He's gonna kill me! Don't let him kill me! I'm too young to die! I've got my whole life before me: Love! Travel! Good books!" As he finishes speaking and turns to crying loudly, he climbs on top of Daffy's body and wraps himself around the duck. The weight of the large turkey starts to make Daffy slowly sink into the snow, as Tom yells, "Hide me! Hide me! Hide me!"

Daffy pops up out of the snow and grabs the turkey by the neck. "Here, pull yourself together, Tom!" He slaps the turkey across the face once, "Snap out of it!," and then twice. "You're vergin' on the hysterical," the duck adds as he shakes Tom by the neck. He throws the turkey to the ground and jumps on him. "C'mon now, brace up! Brace up!" The turkey lies nearly lifeless on the ground.

"There, that's more like it," Daffy says, and then picks the turkey up by the neck and starts to drag him. "Now, let's see now. Where do I hide this seagull?" He drags the bird to a large, snow-covered rock, picks it up, and slides Tom's head underneath it. He drops the rock onto Tom's head, and the turkey's body jumps up in the air and back down with the impact. "No no, a little too obvious. Little too obvious...," he mutters and drags Tom off again.

Daffy arrives a small hole, and he picks up Tom by the neck, sits the turkey's plump rump on top of the whole, and attempts to push him down into the hole. He rushes off briefly and comes back with a pole, and starts to jab Tom into the hole with several violent thrusts. The attempt is unsuccessful, as Tom's head, tail feathers, and feet are still sticking out of the hole. "No, no," says Daffy. "Even more obviouser!"

He next drags Tom to a thin tree and crams the turkey's head into a hole in its center. He starts to push Tom's prodigious torso into the tree, as we see, far off in the distance, the wandering form of Porky Pig, dressed as a pilgrim and bearing a blunderbuss. Daffy jabs Tom over and over again in the rear to force him inside the tree, but the result is Tom's head popping out the other side. Seeing Porky's advance, Daffy drags Tom all the way through the tree by stretching his neck out to an insane length and popping him out.

Porky strides fully into view, and comes upon Daffy standing next to his snowman, as the duck sings Angel in Disguise. Out of the rear of the snowman are a full set of turkey feathers. As Daffy holds Porky back with a stiffened arm to the pig's forehead, Daffy sees he has left the turkey uncovered and slams shut a rear flap on the snowman, which looks like the back of a pair of pajamas. Porky relents on his advance, and tells the duck (with his usual stuttering), "I'm looking for a darned old turkey!"

Daffy spits out a mock angry retort, mocking Porky in the process. "Do you mean to insinuate that I'd hide your darned ol' t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-turkey?" "I was certain he came this way," the pig replies, but Daffy holds firm. "Well, I ain't talkin', see! My lips are SEALED!" The close-up on Daffy's face transforms to show his entire beak is indeed sealed with a vise, a pair of padlocks, and a series of Christmas seals. "I ain't no stool pigeon, see!" he adds. The camera zooms toward the snowman, where the snow goes briefly transparent to show us a cutaway with the turkey inside. Tom says, "What a pal! What a pal! What a pal! What a pal!" and then Tom adds one more final "What a pal!"

Porky starts to walk off with his head hanging low. "Oh, dangnabbit! And I had everything ready for a nice, big t-t-t-turkey dinner." Daffy continues to defend Tom by saying, "Not a word out of me! I ain't no squealer," but then Porky's words finally reach Daffy's tiny brain. "I'm not... Turkey dinner?" "Uh huh," says Porky as he continues up the hill away from the duck. "And with chestnut dressing too." Daffy makes a yummy noise, but then catches himself. A halo appears above his head as he says, "No, no. I won't talk. They can't make me! I'm no stool pigeon!" 

But the duck is weak. He asks of the departing pig, "Cranberry sauce?" as his halo is replaced by a pair of devilish horns instead, with his salivating tongue hanging out of his mouth like a wolf. "Yeah," says Porky, "and we have mashed potatoes and green peas." "Mashed potatoes and green peas?," asks Daffy, as he starts to sweat guiltily and tug at his white neck ring. The halo reappears along with a pair of white wings on his back. "No! No! They won't sweat it out of me! I won't be a stool pigeon! I won't be..." Daffy weakens, and he turns back to the sweating, craven thing with devil horns. "And... and... candied yams?"

When Porky affirms that candied yams will indeed be part of this amazing meal, Daffy reaches his breaking point. He collapses to the snow-covered ground and starts pounding his fists. "The yams did it! The yams did it!" Suddenly, a large stool pops out of the snow with a sign reading "Stool Pigeon." Daffy's body transforms into that of a pigeon, and he coos loudly from the seat of the stool. He zips off, gets to the snowman with Tom hiding inside, and then pushes it across the field and over the hills just past where Porky remains on the hunt. 

Porky looks up and sees the snowman, with about two dozen signs surrounding and pointing at it, reading variations on "Here is the Turkey" and "He's in Here" and "25 Ft. to Turkey". Porky starts to head towards the snowman, as Daffy is consumed by guilt. "I didn't want to do it! It was those yams! Oh, those nasty yams!" Tom realizes he is suddenly in trouble. As Porky threatens to blast Tom out of the snowman, Tom burrows out through the snow Bugs-style, and comes up behind Daffy, who is still pounding his fists into the snow. Tom removes his own tail feathers and sticks them on Daffy's behind. He yells, "Gobble! Gobble! Gobble! and ducks down into the snow.

"So, there you are, you ol' turkey!" yells Porky, and Daffy is confused. "Turkey? Who's a turkey?" he cries, but turns his head around and realizes his fix. "Now wait a minute, Miles Standish," he says as the pig marches towards him with the gun. "I'm a duck!" He hangs on the edges of the blunderbuss and says, "I can swim! Observe!" Daffy slings himself up and over Porky's head, and dives into the snow. He starts to swim through it with a freestyle stroke, then hops up and starts running. Porky speeds after him, and they race up and down several hills, with Daffy's body turning into a snowball as he rolls downward and then un-snowballing up the next hill. Finally, he turns into a snowball that gets smaller and smaller until he disappears completely.

Porky comes to the point where the snowball disappeared, and looks around in great confusion. Then he is smacked on the left side of his face by a thrown snowball. He looks in that direction, but then another snowball hits him on the back of his bald head from the opposite direction. He looks in each direction over and over, but then a third snowball drops onto the top of his head, driving him into the snow pile. Porky lifts his head, only to be hit with twin snowballs, one of each side of his face. A third, much larger snowball shows up instantly and hovers in the air in front of Porky's bewildered face. He lowers his head and the snowball ducks down with him. He raises his head high and the snowball follows suit. As soon as he brings his head back to its normal resting place, Daffy pops out of the snowball bearing a large mallet and conks the pig square on the noggin!

Daffy splits and speeds over to a small pond and scoops up a pail full of cold water. He throws the water out of the pail in Porky's direction, and as the pig comes to from the mallet hit, the water ices up into a solid block in the shape of the pail and smashes into Porky's face, knocking him flat on his back. "Tsk, tsk," Daffy says as he wanders into view. "Cold as a cucumber." But Porky is not done for yet. He sweeps onto his feet with anger on his face and his blunderbuss ready to blast.

The duck doesn't wait around and zips off over the hills. Porky follows rapidly and charges up to Daffy as the duck stands nonchalantly against a tree. As Porky raises his gun, ready to smash the stock down on the duck's head, Daffy pours a small glass of water over himself It freezes instantly into an icy casing covering the duck, and Porky's savage blow only serves to split the front half off the ice, and cause Porky to quiver wildly in pain. Daffy zips off and grabs another pailful of water from a creek. He throws it across the creek, and it crystallizes into a very nice truss style bridge. He crosses the bridge, but when Porky follows, he is stopped by Daffy, wearing a cap and a change maker, underneath a sign reading "Toll Bridge 10¢".

Porky pays Daffy the necessary dime, and he is allowed through the gate and off the bridge. Porky runs off to hunt his quarry, but comes to speeding stop suddenly and peers at the viewer. We are then taken through a series of quick takes, as Porky is first seen wearing a dunce cap with an dull stare on his face, then he transforms into a bottle with the word "Dope" on it, and then finally as a candy with a "Sucker" wrapper on it.

He then reappears with the most amazing grimace on his face (the kind that just screams "Chuck Jones was here") and throws down his gun in anger. He builds up speed by kicking a huge pile of snow behind him and bolts off with his hands grasping towards Daffy, who is still on the bridge. He sees Porky, who has somehow gotten his gun back, coming fast, and so Daffy takes off. Porky runs straight through a pile of snow, and when he comes out, the snow is in the form of a tank with the blunderbuss performing as a cannon. When Daffy runs over the last snow hill, Porky cuts a swath right through it.

Meanwhile, Tom Turk is quietly playing with the snowman, humming to himself, as Daffy comes running while screaming, "He's after me! He's after me! Don't let him kill me! I'm too young to die! Save me! Save me!" It seems the tables have turned, and Tom decides to "help" Daffy in the same manner in which the duck originally "helped" him. He throws Daffy's head under the same snow-covered rock. He tries to stuff the duck inside the same tree but uses a pole to do it. Tom punts Daffy to the highest branch on another tree, but then chops down the tree, which smashes to the ground on top of Daffy's prone body. He finally throws Daffy off a high cliff so that his beak gets stuck in the ice, with his body and legs whipping back and forth. As the film irises out, Tom's voice speeds up as he runs to and fro, trying to hide Daffy's body "Here!," "No, here!," "Here!," "No, here!," etc.

While I generally get riled up about non-predatory birds (bugs and worms don't count) like Donald and Daffy (or even Woody Woodpecker) when they have displayed cannibalistic tendencies here and there throughout their careers (especially with Donald, where it is a curious blind spot in the supposedly safer, more family-oriented Disney output), I am quite fine with Daffy's reaction when the yams "do him in" in Tom Turk and Daffy. After all, there is all that delicious food, and it is only a turkey after all.

Maybe that is the problem with a turkey becoming a regular cartoon star. All anyone is going to think about is eating him. So, why go through the torture of getting to know one intimately in a prolonged series of outrageous cartoons when ultimately, his fate has already been decided? He is just too, too delicious, no matter how preposterous turkeys may look on the outside. You will watch Mr. Turkey cavorting about all cute as he runs circles around whoever his nemesis is in his cartoon, and then all it will take is one single slip. You will forget the cartoon and just stare at Mr. Turkey, licking your lips as you start to ponder how he would look on your dinner plate. You will think long and hard about those mashed potatoes. And gravy. And stuffing. And cranberry sauce... and those yams. Those candied yams!

It's enough to drive even a vegan duck daffy with hunger...

The Song of the Birds (1935)

The Song of the Birds (A Max Fleischer Color Classic, 1935) 
Dir.: Dave Fleischer
Animators: Roland Crandall; Seymour Kneitel
Cel Bloc Rating: 6/9

My friends know well my opinion on guns. I am normally fine with them as long as they are not around me. If one is in the room, I leave the room. It is that simple. I am not anti-gun; I am anti-people around or with guns. Give them to a bunch of creatures that have no opposable thumbs and a solid lack of evil intentions, and they end up being, ohhhhhhhh... still only about 84% safe.

I have many dear friends that regularly go to target practice at gun ranges, and my own mother owns a gun (she and my stepfather are shop owners, and rest assured, she does know how to use it). My father has owned guns throughout his life, though he hasn't hunted since I was relatively young, and I'm not even sure if he even owns his rifle anymore, since my stepmother hates them. I have also seen my dear old Granny shoot at gophers in her yard from the side door of her house in Wisconsin. My father even took me to a rifle range once, and it was the first time that I have shot a gun (it was a pistol). It was enough to keep me away from using them for most of my life. Of course, there was the time my buddy Matt shot a hole in the roof of the trailer that Wayne, Tony and I were renting, because he didn't realize Wayne's pistol was loaded. Luckily, I only heard the shot -- I was on the other end of the trailer -- but, case in point. Just keep them far from me. Oh... and there was that time at my first bachelor party... but I digress.

The Song of the Birds is a no-holds-barred, heartrending, tearjerking, manipulative weep-fest, and the first such film in the Max Fleischer Cartoon Classics series. More would come, as soon as two films later, but this is the Fleischers' first stab in this series at ripping your heart out so it can hold it while you stare back it as it pumps and pumps while you slip into unconsciousness and ultimately death. While the film is well done, its intentions don't really succeed, because there is still a certain disconnect emotionally due to the unbelievability of the story. Besides, this is an area that Disney would perfect, and the Fleischers were merely playing catch-up. The only way that the film can work as a heartbreaker is if you go into the film expecting Popeye/Boop-style Fleischer wackiness and are totally taken by surprise by the seriousness of the film. And such a surprise can't really happen because the film strikes that too self-serious tone from the opening notes of the title music onward.

A flock of birds are merrily zipping about in formation at the film's start, but the action concentrates on a mother and father bird who are celebrating the arrival of the newest baby in their family. They are teaching him the bird basics, up to and including learning to fly for the first time. He takes to it like a bird, which is good, because that is what he happens to be. Eventually confident with his newfound skills, he flies off on his own, soon coming to rest on the windowsill of the house nearby.

Inside the house is a rambunctious little thug with a pellet gun. Apparently left on his own, he has turned the entire household into his personal shooting gallery, taking out pendulums, pots, pans, plates, and lamps alike. He is a crack shot with the damnable thing, but he is bored with his surroundings, and decides to take the weapon outside. He sees a bird's nest, with two unopened eggs remaining in it, sitting up in a tree. He takes careful aim and then knocks it out of the tree. Luckily for the eggs, the birds who own the nest not only catch it in mid-air, but they also catch their pair of would-be hatchlings. Like a young Jeffrey Dahmer or that creepy kid living next to you that just stares weirdly as you get in your car each morning, the boy does not recognize he has done anything wrong; in fact, he has turned his attention to the little bird on his windowsill.

The bird takes off, oblivious to the boy, who again takes careful aim. As the baby bird alights upon a nearby branch, the little thug fires off a shot at the poor thing. The shot hits the branch, severing it from the tree, and the baby bird takes to the air, flying about in panicked circles. Their is a slow dissolve to a POV shot of the boy aiming his gun in alignment with the circles the bird is making, and then the camera cuts back to the bird, just before he is hit by the resulting shot from the gun. The bird falls at the boy's feet, and though he is delighted with his kill at first, he suddenly takes on an air of deep regret. He looks about shamefully for witnesses to his crime, and then starts to tiptoe back to the house, eventually breaking into a run. The parent birds fly down and see their baby laying prostrate on the ground. They try to revive him with a worm, which crawls off, and then almost drown him with mouthfuls of water. But it is to no avail. They fear he is dead.

And so does the boy. He goes to bed that night with unbelievable guilt hanging over his head, and he is restless beyond words. The parent birds have finally given up trying to revive their child, and they start to sing a mournful dirge, in the course of which all of the birds in the skies fly down and join the chorus. The boy crawls out of bed and watches the dire concert, crying and fretting. One bird flies to a patch of grass nearby and digs a small grave to place the baby inside, and the parents lay their young on a leaf to transport him. They pick the leaf up and fly it over to the grave, with all of the birds still singing mournfully throughout the procession. The boy can't stand it any longer and kneels at his bedside and prays harder than he has done in his young life.

Suddenly, rain starts pouring from the skies, and a few random drops seem to do what pouring half a fountain of water down its throat couldn't: it revives the baby bird. (It makes no sense at all except for that of pure coincidence.) The birds are overjoyed, and begin singing and dancing in circles around the baby and its parents. They flit through the air in triumph, and the boy runs out to celebrate with them. He carries his rifle out, too, and snaps in twain over his knee to prove that he has learned his lesson. He also brought a box of birdseed, and he draws the birds to him by throwing it all about the ground. The baby bird forgives him by sitting on his arm and sharing a piece of birdseed which the boy holds in his mouth. The bird, in turn, feeds the boy, and the boy pretends to enjoy the meal, winking at the audience to close the film.

The film would work pretty well on the easily impressionable, I guess; I see it as the second weakest Color Classic at this point (after An Elephant Never Forgets) in the still (at that time) nascent series. This is mainly due to a reduction in the use of the three-dimensional backgrounds for which this series, until this point, seemed perfectly fit. Their use in this film is not as showy as the previous films, and The Song of the Birds almost seems like simply normal animation most of the time -- to its detriment. Still, it is reasonably moving, though I personally like the Little Audrey version better. That's right: Famous Studios, which is what the Fleischer house eventually became, would remake this film in 1949 as Song of the Birds, wisely dropping the “The,” which is an article that can be a real drag on artistic success. Seymour Kneitel, who animated this film and possibly served as one of its actual directors, ran the show on that version, as well. It is actually a slightly darker vision, and post-Bambi, it works a sliver better than this one.

Snapping all guns in half isn't the answer, of course. Or is it? This film is not going to sway anyone from their use, unless they are six years old or thereabouts. Here's the thing about guns: If you use them for good, they can be useful tools; if you use them for evil, they can be murderous weapons. Guns are only as good as the people who brandish them. But they sure make the evil part a hell of a lot easier to achieve...

RTJ

*****

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