Shrunken Cinema/Termite Terrace/Have You Got Any Castles
From Eccentric Flower
Have You Got Any Castles?
1938
Summary: Various literary characters come alive to perform tableaux and musical numbers.
Director: Frank Tashlin
Writer: Jack Miller
Featuring: No regulars.
Onreel
0:38 The Town Crier is based in both appearance and manner on critic and wit Alexander Woolcott. See Offreel. Sound cue (also in the crier's second speech at the end): Overture from "Poet and Peasant."
1:28 The incongrous sound cue for the monster dance is François-Joseph Gossec's "Gavotte," a piece which is probably only known today for the cartoons in which it was used!
1:55 The Good Earth, by Pearl Buck. The "earth" is saying a prayer for "Papa Leon" (Schlesinger) and "Uncle Ray" (Katz), Merrie Melodies producers/bosses.
2:00 The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells and Topper by Thorne Smith lead on to The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan. (Yes, it was a book before it was a Hitchcock film.) The gent dancing on the steps is Bill "Mr. Bojangles" Robinson.
2:15 So Big, by Edna Ferber. The woman is Greta Garbo and the joke is about her allegedly-large feet. See also Hollywood Steps Out. The same book will be used in Book Revue to make a different joke.
2:20 "The Green Pastures," a play by Marc Connelly. For why this connects with the character(s) shown performing on this book, see Offreel.
2:24 The bandleader is Cab Calloway. The three vocal "angels" ("Rhythm's what this country needs/For years and years I've said it") are probably based on the Mills Brothers. The song is "Swing For Sale" by Saul Chaplin and Sammy Cahn. The characters and vocals in this sequence are borrowed from a 1937 cartoon. See Offreel.
3:07 Heidi by Johanna Spyri. Heidi is doing a riff probably most often associated with Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher."
3:17 The book is The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett, but the "thin man" emerging from the book is very clearly William Powell, who played Nick Charles, not the thin man of the title. If you look closely as he crosses over to The White House Cookbook, you can see the desk calendar bears the note "Ask the boss for a raise," which may have been a jab at the notoriously cheap Leon Schlesinger. Sound cue: "Boulevardier from the Bronx," with a break of a traditional bit (that I can't name) in the middle of each crossing.
3:42 Pedants like to note that the correct title of James McNeill Whistler's famous painting is "Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist's Mother."
3:47 Little Women and Little Men by Louisa May Alcott. The "Old King Cole" lyrics, according to one source, were written by Johnny Mercer. If so they are not among his greater works.
4:10 Need I explain that The House of the Seven Gables (Nathaniel Hawthorne) has seven Clark Gables in it? I thought not.
4:12 Joke on Bulldog Drummond. See Offreel.
4:22 While this character does bear some resemblance to Louis Pasteur (who, it need not be said, had nothing to do with the invention of TNT), it is much more likely to be Paul Muni, who had received acclaim for playing Pasteur in The Story of Louis Pasteur two years before this cartoon. I can find no record of a book called The Life of Louis Pasteur. There is also no contemporaneous book called Seventh Heaven; the reference is either to the 1937 film of that title starring Jimmy Stewart, the 1927 silent it was a remake of, or the Austin Strong play they were both adaptations of.
4:33 That's Charles Laughton doing his schtick as Captain Bligh from the 1935 film of Mutiny on the Bounty. The original book was by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. Notice that all the books stacked alongside are nautically themed. The two with visible authors - Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana and The Privateer by James Fenimore Cooper - are real.
4:36 Rip van Winkle by Washington Irving. The part of Rip here is played by Ned Sparks (see Hollywood Steps Out). We pass briefly into "The Valiant Little Tailor" (which is a folktale that has been told by many) and Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
5:00 The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. For "Have You Got Any Castles, Baby?" see Offreel.
5:04 Drums Along the Mohawk by Walter Edmonds. The other books along the row are all "Indian" themed.
5:06 "Emily Host" is a thin disguise for famous etiquette writer Emily Post. It is unclear whether Henry VIII really needed etiquette advice.
5:13 Mother India by Katherine Mayo. This book is apparently best forgotten. Wikipedia: "It has been characterized as 'essentially a racist tract serving to confirm long-held prejudices of white people against Indians.'"
5:22 Diamond Jim Brady. No book, but the film Diamond Jim about him (written by Preston Sturges) had appeared in 1935, and like Muni-as-Pasteur, this Diamond Jim is clearly represented by Edward Arnold, who played him in that. (The line about mortgages is actually in the original lyrics to the song and is not an alteration for the cartoon.)
5:28 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.
5:31 "So Red the Nose" is a joke on the proboscis of W. C. Fields and the title of So Red the Rose, which here is just as likely to be King Vidor's 1935 movie as Stark Young's 1934 book.
5:35 "The Pied Piper," like all folktales, has had many tellers.
5:48 "Three Men on a Horse" is a play by George Abbott and John Cecil Holm, but again this is just as likely to be a reference to the 1936 film of the play. The joke was so obvious that it's almost impossible to see the full title in the cartoon! The viewers of the time knew.
5:51 Seven Keys to Baldpate by Earl Derr Biggers, creator of Charlie Chan. This novel was adapted for film numerous times (unsurprisingly, a very good one had been made in 1935), yet it is today totally obscure. (It doesn't even have its own Wikipedia page!) The upright titles to the left of the book all have "lock" or "key" themes.
5:55 The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope, adapted many times for film including (you might detect a theme here) a 1937 production, well-acclaimed, with an all-star cast. Strangely, the author's name shown in the cartoon is "G. B. McCutcheon." McCutcheon didn't write Zenda but he did write a series of books (the "Graustark" books) which were very clearly inspired by Hope's book. It's possible someone had McCutcheon near to mind because of the 1935 film, one of many, of Brewster's Millions.
6:01 It's possible that modern viewers won't understand that "Alladin's [sic] Wonderful Lamp" is a joke on his black eye. Alongside Aladdin we have Sinbad the sailor and "Alla [sic] Baba" and the forty thieves.
6:04 The Informer by Liam O'Flaherty - but, again, just as likely the 1935 John Ford film of the same. Under it is Rudyard Kipling's Kim, and to its right are two titles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. "Little Boy Blew," you will note, turned blue when he blew.
6:12 Of course "The Charge of the Light Brigade" is a poem, not a book (Tennyson) but - get ready for it - it was also a 1936 film directed by Michael Curtiz. From Warner, no less.
6:14 Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe) shoots his blunderbuss at the fugitives; below him are such similar chestnuts as Treasure Island, Black Arrow, and The Call of the Wild.
6:17 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. The film adaptation was in 1930. The Road Back, seen beside it, was Remarque's more recent book, a continuation of the same themes, which had been made into a James Whale film in 1937.
6:20 The French Foreign Legion dash out of Under Two Flags by "Ouida" (Maria Louise Ramé), which had been made into a film in 1936. Sound cue, almost unrecognizable, as the legionnaires come out: "The Campbells Are Coming" (see The Big Snooze). Campbells, camels, get it?
6:31 Rip lets loose The Hurricane by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. If those names sound familiar, scroll up to the Mutiny on the Bounty part.
6:37 And everything is Gone With the Wind. (Margaret Mitchell) (The book came out in 1936. Even if principal photography on the film hadn't begun when this cartoon came out, it was known to everyone in Hollywood that it soon would. The film was released in 1939.)
Offreel
As you will have realized if you read the section above, the haphazard choices of many of the books for gags in this cartoon become far less nonsensical when viewed in light of successful films of the preceding four years or so! You didn't really expect film folk to think in terms of actual books, did you?
Alexander Woolcott had a radio book review program from 1933 to 1938 called "The Town Crier," which opened with the ringing of a bell and the cry "Hear ye! Hear ye!" The joke would have been instantly obvious to any contemporary viewer of this cartoon. Woolcott asked that the town crier parts of the cartoon be cut from future showings after his death, and they were. The Golden Collection version restores them; the splicing marks cross the screen visibly before and after each of the town crier's appearances.
Bulldog Drummond was the first of many books featuring the hero of the title, an ex-WWI officer turned private detective, written by "Sapper" (pseudonym of Herman Cyril McNeile, and later of Gerard Fairlie). They were published between 1920 and 1954, and were variously adapted for radio, film, and stage. They would have been quite well-known to a 1938 audience, but have been nearly forgotten now. Despite inspiring the likes of Ian Fleming, the books have apparently not dated well, and are packed with racist/jingoist stereotypes, as was common at the time.
"Have You Got Any Castles, Baby?" is a Johnny Mercer song (it is also played as a sound cue during some of the pans across the library). Unlike the "Old King Cole" lyrics, this song had an existence I can find outside the cartoon. It was apparently written for the Dick Powell film Varsity Show in 1937 (the year before this cartoon) and has been performed by such culprits as Tommy Dorsey's orchestra and Bobby Darin. Its full lyrics are available on the web, but you're not missing much.
Many of the books which are not meant to have focus (titles in passing, books stacked under the one featured in that sequence's gag, et cetera) contain references to various studio personnel and other in-jokes. I have noted some Onreel but not nearly all. Sharp-eyed Greg Brian points out many more of them here.
Tedd Pierce (whose name is more often seen on these pages in the "Writer" slot) did the voice of W. C. Fields; Delos Jewkes did Old King Cole; all other males except the singing group were Mel Blanc. The singing group was The Four Blackbirds (about which see below).
The Golden Collection version of this cartoon retains the generic "Blue Ribbon" title cards, which means there are no credits shown, and most likely means the original credits have been lost.
I have always wondered if Rip's opening The Hurricane inspired a similar scene near the end of the film The Addams Family.
Once you watch this cartoon, you should then watch Book Revue to see Bob Clampett tear it to pieces. See comments there.
Clean Pastures
"The Green Pastures" was a both a play (it won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1930) and then a movie (1936) based on a collection of stories by Roark Bradford. Wikipedia: "The play portrays episodes from the Old Testament as seen through the eyes of a young African-American child in the Depression-era South, who interprets The Bible in terms familiar to her. Following Bradford's lead, Connelly (a white man) set the biblical stories in New Orleans and in an all-black context. He diverged from Bradford's work, however, in enlarging the role of the character "De Lawd" (God) played on stage by Richard B. Harrison (1864-1935), who was born in London, Ontario, Canada. The Green Pastures also featured numerous African American spirituals arranged by Hall Johnson and performed by The Hall Johnson Choir. [...] While the play and the film adaptation were generally well received and hailed by white drama and film critics, African American intellectuals, cultural critics, and audiences were more critical of Connelly's claim to be presenting an authentic view of black religious thought."
But while black audiences may well have been skeptical of the film of "Green Pastures," the 1937 Freleng cartoon "Clean Pastures" - a sort-of parody of the film - mostly seems to have passed under radar - at least with audiences. Joe Breen's Production Code (censorship) office, on the other hand, was not happy about the cartoon at all. It wasn't racist depictions - not in 1937. What they objected to was that it seemed to be making fun of religion. (The cartoon features a heaven - Pair-o-Dice - which is forced to modernize with dancing and jazz to attract "customers.") Since then, concern about the religion aspects of the film has vanished, but its depictions of black characters are now sufficient to have earned the cartoon a slot in the Censored Eleven.
This is a shame because while the cartoon is undeniably racist in parts (notably a depiction of a slow-moving, slow-talking, extremely lazy angel), it has an excellent soundtrack, a hilarious plot, and features depictions of Cab Calloway, Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, Bill Robinson, and Al Jolson. There is a certain amount of throwing out the baby with the bathwater going on here.
(For the record - I might as well state it here once and emphatically - I do not approve of racist depictions in cartoons any more than I approve of racism itself. However, I approve of censorship even less. If Warner has the bravery to show equally spurious depictions of Japanese in their war cartoons, as well as other content which now ranges anywhere from politically incorrect to outright offensive, using their excellent notice about "this is the way it was, and if we suppress these cartoons we deny that these conditions ever existed," then why can't they let the Censored Eleven out of the vaults on the same principle?)
Anyway, the reason this is all germane here is that most of the "Swing for Sale" section of this cartoon was lifted directly from "Clean Pastures" - the depictions are the same, and the soundtrack is the same (unless they asked the Four Blackbirds to come back and record "Swing for Sale" again a year later, which seems unlikely). I don't know if they did this because they knew "Clean Pastures" was doomed and they wanted to salvage some of its less controversial footage, or whether it was just the usual set of factors (time/convenience/cheapness). As far as I know, none of the other material about "Clean Pastures" (including the section on it in Daniel Goldmark's excellent book Tunes for 'Toons) has pointed out this reuse. Since the "Swing for Sale" section happens to be my favorite section of the cartoon, I may have a personal interest in this matter!
"Clean Pastures" on YouTube in a reasonably high quality clip
