Shrunken Cinema/Termite Terrace/I Love To Singa
From Eccentric Flower
I Love To Singa
1936
Summary: A young owl is cast out by his father because he loves to sing jazz.
Director: Tex Avery
Writer: unknown
Featuring: No regulars.
Onreel
0:10 This short precedes the use of "Merrily We Roll Along" for the Merrie Melodies credits.
1:47 Sound cue: The first owlet comes out singing the beginning of the sextet from "Lucia di Lammermoor" ("Chi mi frena in tal momento"). Papa Owl calls him a "Caruso," referring to opera singer Enrico Caruso.
2:07 Sound cue: The second comes out playing Schumann's "Träumerei." Papa Owl compares him to violinist Fritz Kreisler.
3:07 Sound cue: The third owlet plays "Frühlingslied," a very familiar cue, and gets compared to its author Mendelssohn.
2:40 About "I Love To Singa" see Offreel below.
3:06 Sound cue: "Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes" is an old chestnut (how old? The lyrics were written by Ben Jonson in 1616) that is exactly as boring as it sounds.
4:26 Sound cue: The first contest reject was playing "Listen to the Mockingbird."
4:40 "Jack Bunny" is a joke on Jack Benny. "Amateur" is misspelled.
4:48 Sound cue: The saxophonist (after the bird playing birdcalls) is playing "Nola," normally heard as a piano piece.
4:53 Sound cue: The accordionist plays "Turkey in the Straw."
5:03 Sound cue: The bird after the accordionist sings "Laugh, Clown, Laugh." This piece was composed to accompany a silent film of the same name, in 1928.
5:13 Sound cue: The fat hen sings "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles."
5:35 The stuttering bird makes it almost through two verses of the nursery rhyme "Simple Simon" before rejecting himself.
6:22 In case we didn't already get it. See Offreel.
Offreel
As noted in the chronology, the Warner cartoons were initially intended to showcase Warner-controlled music. One of the initial restrictions in the Warner arrangement with Schlesinger was that in each cartoon, a character had to perform a certain amount of some Warner-controlled song. The animators hated this requirement and it was eventually relaxed, but in 1936 was still very much in force. Another common request was that Schlesinger make a cartoon to "tie in" with a particular Warner feature film release. This is probably one of the best of those early tie-ins, but what does it tie to?
The plot is a very direct tribute/parody of the famous film The Jazz Singer, which was a Warner production, right down to the main character identifying himself as "Owl Jolson" and one of his papa's lines as he throws him out. Warner certainly didn't want anyone to forget The Jazz Singer, the first real "talkie" and a high spot in their history.
But in fact this film was made to tie to the 1936 Jolson pic The Singing Kid, which is what the Harold Arlen composition "I Love To Singa" was originally written for. In that film, it is sung not only by Al Jolson (several times) but by Cab Calloway.
This was one of the first Warner cartoons to use 3-strip Technicolor.
Tommy Bond, who did the voice of Owl Jolson, was also first "Tommy" and then "Butch" in the "Our Gang"("Little Rascals") shorts. He did the voice work for this cartoon during his hiatus between being "Tommy" and coming back as "Butch." Other voices were Billy Bletcher as Papa Owl, Martha Wentworth as Mama Owl, Joe Dougherty as the stuttering "Simple Simon" bird, and Bernice Hansen as the fat hen. (This cartoon precedes Mel Blanc's arrival.)
The cartoon has no writer credit, and no source I have been able to check has any information. Since the cartoon doesn't have much spoken dialogue, it could very well all be Tex Avery.
Most sites assume that Bob Clampett was an uncredited animator here, since he was one of the three animators under Avery at the time, but these cartoons were generally pretty honest about their animator credits, and I prefer to assume, until someone gives me a reason to the contrary, that Clampett simply didn't work on this one.
