Cleaning House

It's spring cleaning, and Mama has everyone hard at work. Even the Inspector is helping out.... well, his beard is. When Mama finds the Captain slacking, he decides the best way out is to pretend to be sick. Hans and Fritz realize this offers a fine opportunity to torment him.

It's a decent cartoon that owes a lot to the comic strip, but the standout character is a stork who battles Mama to a draw. The question on my mind is whatever happened to the shorts director, Robert Allen. The IMDb has him apparently showing up as an animator in 1934 for Harman-Ising, Fred Quimby hiring him away from them in 1937. Then a few credits, ending in 1945. Other sources call him active through 1955, but nothing else is known.

If you've never seen a 'Captain & The Kids' animated short, this is probably one of the best in the series to start with (it was,in fact,the very first one that M-G-M produced). It was loosely based on the Katzenjammer Kids comic series that ran for years in the newspapers. They were very well detailed (drawn)& very well animated. The pacing was as frantic as any Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies animated short from that period. Alas,they were (mostly)filmed in black & white, resulting in them being largely ignored by time (most animated shorts at the time were filmed in various colour processes). The plot here concerns the household in their annual Spring cleaning frenzy,except for the Captain who decides to fake being sick to get out of it. This is spotted by the kids (Hans & Fritz)who take the place of the doctor,contacted by Mama, to put poor 'ol Captain thru the wringer (just to teach him a lesson). What follows is sheer chaos in this sadly overlooked laugh riot.

In October of 1937, with the completion of a new two-story building on the M-G-M lot, the company announced a new production division called Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Cartoon Studios to be housed in the new building at 10202 W. Washington Blvd, Culver City and, those who wished to talk to anybody at Metro's Cartoon Studio could dial (or have the operator do it)REpublic 0211, which meant R-E-0-2-0-1. On Octobert 14, the company announced the hiring of 31 key men, to go along with the other 200 employees that might be needed.

Head(s) of Production: Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising

General Manager: Fred Quimby

Directors: Robert Allen, William Hanna and Isadore Freleg (all three had formerly been with the Harman-Ising unit, while Freling had had experience with Charles Mintz, Walt Disney and Leon Schlesinger, according to the M-G-M publicity department.)

Production Supervisor: C. G. Maxwell (formerly with Disney and Harman-Ising)

Writers: Harry Hirschfield, "Pinto" Colvig, Ray Kelly (formerly with Van Beuren), Kin Platt (formerly with Disney), Henry Allen (from Harman-Ising), Joseph Barbera (from Terrytoons), Allen Freleng (from Schlesinger's shop.) In-Between-Department Head: Edmund Schultz (from Mintz and Universal) Painting and Inking Head: L. S. Gobel Music Department Head: Bert Lewis (six years with Disney) Camera Department Head: E. J. Moore Cameraman: Jack J. Stevens Character and Settings Design Head: Charles Thorsen Contract Animators: Ben Clopton, Sam Stimson, Gary Meyer, Bill Nolan, A. J. Zander, Richard Bickenbach, and Cecil Surry.

Sound Technician: F. McAlpin Finish Layouts: Willie Hopkins and Karl Karpe Other Layout: Ernest Nordli, Dan Gordon and George Gordon The first cartoon series under the new expansion program would be based on the syndicated newspaper feature, "The Captain and The Kids.

Not a bad line-up, even if some didn't stay very long, albeit some stayed for a lifetime.

For about a year, MGM's cartoon division made some Katzenjammer Kids shorts, though oddly they were renamed 'The Captain and the Kids' cartoons. They were fully licensed...though I have no idea why there was a name change.

I've seen a few of the only 15 Captain and the Kids shorts MGM made and some of them bear little semblance to the original cartoon series. This one, however, does capture some of this as the Captain is bedeviled by his bratty kids...though once again, it's mostly his fault. In this case, the Captain pretends to be sick to get out of doing chores...and the kids decide to teach him a lesson. So, they kidnap the doc...then they proceed to pretend that they are doctors! Then, they insist they need to operate!! What's next?

I liked this one very much and think if all the MGM shorts in the series had been like this one, they could have succeeded. Clever, similar to the source material and it sure holds up well today. Well worth seeing.

"The Katzenjammer Kids" is the longest running comic strip of them all. Rudolf Dirks created it in 1897 and would later continue it under the title "The Captain and the Kids" (a long story). The longevity is understandable. The characters are naturally funny. The very sight of them suggests dysfunction. "Cleaning House" is the first of 15 cartoons MGM would produce with them. A bit frenzied, it still manages to capture some of the charm of the strip. Der Inspector even makes an appearance. The kids are bent on raising hell, and Der Captain, not surprisingly, is a bit of an overgrown kid himself.