Yankee Dood It

A completely bizarre short apparently meant to tap into the struggling small businessman market that was watching cartoons at the time and convince them mass production was the solution to all their financial difficulties. It's basically a warped take on the Shoemaker & the Elves story, with Elmer as the king of the elves who sends one of his underlings to find out why the shoemaker is still using elf labor in the 20th Century. He needs to be using human slave labor, not elves! There's also an equally strange subplot about the shoemaker's cat, Sylvester, tricking the elves into saying "Jehoshaphat" because that turns them into mice. The animation is nice and colorful. The music is cheery and upbeat. Good voice work from Mel Blanc, Arthur Q. Bryan, and Daws Butler. It's never funny (intentionally, at least) but there's something weirdly fascinating about it. An interesting curio for sure.

Less a comedy cartoon short and more a hymn of praise to the merits of our capitalist society, there is exactly one laugh in the whole film. The rest is merely an extended textbook-style illustration of how "industwy" and "pwofit" motives work (in a style more typical of Disney, which did several of these types of shorts)--all of which sounds a little weird as explained in Elmer's voice. Sylvester's barely used at all.

Friz Freleng had previously portrayed the elves-and-shoemaker story with the very impressive "Holiday for Shoestrings" in 1946. This time, he turns the story into something resembling one of those educational films that "Mystery Science Theater 3000" occasionally showed. Specifically, elf king Elmer Fudd tells the outdated cobbler how mass production will improve things (expwaining the pwocess with his funny pwonunciation)...and all the while, Sylvester is looking to turn the elves into mice.

OK, so the rise of these kinds of factories in the post-war years justifies this mindset. Unfortunately, the factories later closed down and moved to the Third World, as we saw in "Roger & Me". I see that "Yankee Dood It" was bankrolled by the Alfred P. Sloan (Sloan or Sloane?) Foundation, so they no doubt wanted to extol what they considered American values. Like Chuck Jones's "Old Glory" (in which Uncle Sam teaches Porky Pig the history of the USA), it comes out almost totally devoid of humor.

All in all, this cartoon isn't terrible, but it basically comes across as - yes, I'll say it - propaganda. A far better cartoon dealing with this sort of topic is Chuck Jones's MGM cartoon "The Bear That Wasn't". As for Freleng, he rebounded in 1957 with "Birds Anonymous", "Three Little Bops" and "Show Biz Bugs".

"Elmer Elf" comes to an outdated shoe shop and explains the role of capitalism and mass production to the shoemaker, who then agrees to use this knowledge to stay in business. Elmer advises the shoemaker to invest his profits back into the business instead of pocketing them for himself. (At the time, marginal income taxes in the United States were over 90% for those in the highest income tax bracket, strongly discouraging business owners from pocketing their profits.) This is not only a useful history lesson, but an accurate reminder that the best way to get ahead in life is to rely on yourself, not government handouts borne of redistributed wealth. People like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk did so and created millions of jobs. The makers of this 'toon would be amused and/or saddened to see these foolish, misguided reactions.

The other two being By Word of Mouse and Heir-Conditioned, with the former being the best of the three, because it did have some entertaining moments and had something to say. Heir-Conditioned was watchable enough, but while it does make some decent points about economics and investments it did feel heavy-handed, mostly failed to entertain and wasted most of its characters. Yankee Dood It for me is the weakest of the three, mainly because it does feel pointless and fares the worst of the three in entertaining and educating the viewer.

Yankee Dood It does have its good points, sure, with all the strengths being exactly the same as the strengths for Heir Conditioned. The animation, in distinctive Fritz Freleng style, is very bright and colourful with some nice background detail and nicely drawn characters. Even better is the vibrant and character music score from Milt Franklyn, it fits wonderfully and does add a lot to the action, it's rousing in energy, orchestration is rich and beautiful and rhythmically it's very lively yet dynamic. Mel Blanc, Arthur Q. Bryan and Daws Butler do reliably strong jobs with the voices, all three have had stronger material but they were still able to deliver some good energy, then again they were nearly always able to bring class and some sort of energy to even the weakest material. Despite having little to do, Sylvester is very nice to see, has some wildly amusing if very predictable moments and his personality is truer to the personality we associate him with than in Heir Conditioned, even with not much to do he didn't feel downplayed but he has been far more interesting a character.

However, Yankee Dood It's main problem is that it's not very funny, nor is it very informative. Whereas By Word of Mouse did entertain in its second half and Heir Conditioned had a few decent laughs with the alley cats, Yankee Doodle It's humour is spare, not sharp enough and is not unlike anything else we've seen with Sylvester, it is at best only mildly amusing. Unfortunately, Yankee Dood It also doesn't do a particularly great job on the educating and informing side, despite being the short to have the (slightly) most accessible subject matter of the three it is written in a way that is likely to confuse younger audiences and adults are likely to find it over-simplified and one-dimensionally explored. Some may criticise By Word of Mouse for 'glorifying the wonders of capitalism', but Yankee Dood It does this much more glaringly, with the low prices, higher wages it only shows the good sides of capitalism and not much else. The points the cartoon tries to make is delivered with heavy-handedly as well, so at the end of the day the cartoon, having failed at both its main objectives, just feels pointless.

The story is slow-going and what there is of it feels rather sugary sweet, complete with a very forced ending. Despite the good voice acting, the characters' material is not strong enough to carry the cartoon properly. Like in Heir Conditioned, it is nice to see Elmer less of an idiot than usual but with his personality as underplayed as it is what makes Elmer as memorable a character as he is doesn't come through here. The Elf and the Shoemaker are bland characters too, and the Elf's rapport with Sylvester fails to amuse or rouse because the material is so tired and predictable.

Overall, not unwatchable but doesn't have an awful lot of point to it. 4/10 Bethany Cox