Shake Your Powder Puff

Just watched this Leon Schlesinger-Merrie Melodie cartoon short on The Gay Divorcée DVD. Directed by Friz Freleng with animation by Robert Clampett and Robert McKimson, it's basically a musical revue set at a barn with all the participants being animals. The showcase number is the title song as would be the case with many of these cartoons produced by Warner Bros. when the shorts' titles were those of tunes published by the studio's song sheet division. The movements are fine though there's not much that one would consider funny here but it's worth a look to see how much the crew tried to fill the standard 6 minutes of these things under the budget-minded Schlesinger's watch. So on that note, Shake Your Powder Puff is worth a look if you're an animation buff, like me.

One of Warner Bros.' early cartoon shorts depicts a bunch of farm animals putting on performances. "Shake Your Powder Puff" is nothing special. The Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies were in their infancy at this point, so they hadn't quite figured out their path. Friz Freleng often depicted people trying to break into show biz. In fact, the very next year he released "I Haven't Got a Hat", which debuted a certain stuttering pig. Most people don't realize that the Warner Bros. cartoons didn't feature the studio's famous characters for the first couple of years. Once Porky debuted, it was a quick step to Daffy's lunacy, Bugs's irreverence, and Elmer's incompetence, plus the rest of the characters. In the meantime, this cartoon is mainly a look at the animation department's early days.

This Merrie Melodies short proves nothing except that animators in the 1930s were on drugs.

It's inconceivable to me that children who watched these cartoons wouldn't be absolutely terrified. In this one, we're witness to a sort of vaudeville show with an all-animal cast, including a myopic turtle and a pig very proud of his ability to play the flute. There's a troupe of dancing "girls" who sing about "shaking your powder puff," and a dog (or wolf, or fox or something) keeps getting thrown out by the management.

This is an interesting curio, but it's totally whacked out. If you want to see it for yourself, you can find it as a special feature on the DVD release of the 1934 Astaire/Rogers film, "The Gay Divorcée."