26. Freddy the Freshman (1932)

Release date: February 20th, 1932

Series: Merrie Melodies

Director: Rudolf Ising

Starring: Johnny Murray (Freddy), Rudy Ising (Horse), The King's Men (Chorus)

I love that title card! Obviously the title cards will improve as the years go on instead of being black backgrounds with white text. Here we have Freddy the Freshman, a very popular tune used by Carl Stalling in the underscore of some cartoons. The titular freshman Freddy becomes a big hit at the party he crashes, and eventually goes on to play in the big football game.

This is our eponymous freshman, Freddy. Isn’t he cool with his beanie and oversized glasses? I love that they designed him the way they did. I was expecting a jock letterman type, much like the Dover Boys, not this dinky little dog. I’m not sure if that was intentional, but good on them if it was.

Freddy seems to be the talk of the town (and thinks rather highly of himself). He putters through the streets, surrounding by an audience who cheers him on. He sings “Rah, rah, rah cha cha! That’s our college yell! Baggy pants, crazy dance, it’s Freddy, can’t you tell?” As always, the music is syncopated and catchy. We get some gags of Freddy slapping his car (with the engine springing out of place at one point).

Dance sequence time! This time, we’re at a party, where everyone is joyously dancing to an underscore version of “Freddy the Freshman”. Once again, gifs do little justice, but I love the visuals above. Very smooth and amusing! The underscore is lush and catchy as ever.

Our hero arrives and crashes the party, literally. His car explodes into bits and pieces just outside the shack. He greets “Hi-ho, everybody! Hi-ho!” and instantly receives a shower of cheers.

We launch into our musical number of “Freddy the Freshman”. He saunters through the shack (much like Foxy in Lady, Play Your Mandolin!) and at one point, his fur coat divides into a bunch of kittens, who sing the chorus of “Freddy the freshman, the freshest kid around!” Very clever, but also morbid! 

No college party is complete without your letterman jock (ah, there’s what I was looking for in the beginning!) bully. Freddy meets with his girl, who thinks he’s swell. The horse, not so much. Freddy asks the crowd to give a college yell, prompting the horse to snarl “RASPBERRIES!”. Enter this great gif above. Freddy tackles him, and is greeted by applause! I love the tactility of rubber hose cartoons, how they melt and bend and squish. The animation may be in its baby steps, but it’s much more fun to watch than what we’ll be dealing with in the '60s cartoons (shudder).

Finally, it’s time for the game. Oh, by the way, there’s a football game! It was probably mentioned, and maybe I missed it (and the dialogue is a bit hard to distinguish), but it certainly seems random like hey, by the way! The football game is here! 

Nevertheless. An old cat fires the starting pistol, prompting a mouse to pop out and blow a whistle. The jock horse initiates the game by kicking the football directly towards the audience, something I imagine looked really good in theaters! 

A pig player has his mouth open, and swallows the football whole (much like the hippo swallowing the cannonball in Bosko the Doughboy). Freddy kicks him in the ass to regurgitate the football back out, resuming the game. As crude and overused as it is, the gag amuses me because of how unsettling it is to think about! 

Because it’s a cartoon, this isn’t your average football game. A wiener dog shields Freddy from any offensive attacks as he runs to score the touchdown. However, because all football fields have them, the dog crashes into a tree in the middle of a field, wrapping itself and thusly unwrapping itself from the bark. Another gag includes a giant dogpile—once the dogpile is over, a lone turtle stranded on its back slips out of its shell and puts it on haughtily.

I love how absurd this is. We now cut to a lake in the middle of the football field, where Freddy chases a duck who caught the football via raft. Absurdity and surrealism, the best way to go for comedy! They both reach land, and Freddy tackles the duck’s legs (which are extremely tall). The duck makes it over the end zone line anyhow and quacks in his face.

Now we cut to the cheerleading section, which is plagued by stereotypes. Three Jewish crows hold Hebrew pennants and dance, cheering on the team. But that’s not all! An effeminate rooster saunters over and joins the cheering section with a stereotypical feminine voice and mannerisms. Obviously, this didn’t age well. It’s obviously offensive and cringeworthy, and even if you could somehow get past that, it’s still not very funny to begin with.

Nevertheless, the game ravages on. A lion has possession of the ball while the crowd chants “Hold that lion! Hold that lion!” Freddy LITERALLY holds the lion, pulling on his tail in an attempt to slow him down. Instead, he tumbles backwards as he pulls off his “pants”.

Cut to an announcer, who’s excitedly narrating the game. In the midst of his fervor he stops and whispers “Are ya listening’? Hmmm?” Our first (or one of them) celebrity reference! This is a reference to radio personality Anthony “Tony” Wons, who would often give that exact catchphrase. I love the celebrity references in all of the 30s-40s Looney Tunes shorts! Some people don’t because of how dated they are, which is true. I had no idea who tony Wons was until just now. But I always find them so fascinating, because if I don’t get the joke, it’s still FUNNY and carries on (which isn’t the case today. I feel like if you miss the joke, you miss it completely nowadays). Finding out what the references mean and digging around for some background information is always very exciting to me (and explains why I listen to Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra on a regular basis, thanks Carl Stalling for your beautiful underscores!).

Enough blabbering on. Freddy manages to catch the ball, and it’s up to him to score the touchdown. To keep his skull getting bashed in (just look at those protective leather helmets!), he fashions a fence into a protective hamster wheel and barrels down the field, his foes bouncing off like flies. There just so happens to be a clothesline present in the middle of the field, and with some bizarrely fun visuals, Freddy hops into a pair of underwear (a gag pitched by Bob Clampett, maybe? Every time there’s something “crude”, I think of him) and uses a stick to row himself down the field. One of the players squeezes him, and he pops out and slides into a pair of pajamas hanging on the field, sagging down and running on the grass. He opens the butt flap and throws the football down, scoring the points. Iris out.

This is certainly an... interesting cartoon. It doesn’t have much plot to it (though it is a Merrie Melody where the focus is on song), so to me it comes off as “Here’s a party! And here’s the football game!” the song “Freddy the Freshman” makes for a VERY catchy underscore (as Carl Stalling would assert by using it in a number of cartoons), and there were some fun visuals like the horse untangling his legs while dancing, and the entire end scene with Freddy scoring the touchdown. The biggest complaint I have is the scene with the Jewish crows and the gay rooster—it’s very stereotypical and breaks up the flow of the plot completely. Thankfully, the whole cartoon isn’t ruined by it. It’s only a 10 second thing, but it still needs to be addressed.

Overall, this cartoon was pretty barebones, there have certainly been better Merrie Melodies. But the visuals are fun and the gags are absurd (I love that there’s an entire lake in the middle of the field), so I’d give it a leisurely watch.