186. September in the Rain (1937)

Disclaimer: This review contains racist content and imagery. I do not condone any of this content whatsoever—it’s being displayed purely for educational and historical reasons. With that said, I have much to learn myself. PLEASE let me know if I say something wrong or offensive. It’s never my intention to do so, yet I want to learn from my mistakes and own up to them provided that should happen. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Release date: December 18th, 1937

Series: Merrie Melodies

Director: Friz Freleng

Starring: Mel Blanc (Rubber Glove, Gold Rust Twins), Cliff Nazarro (Al Jolson), Basin Street Boys (Chorus), Harland Evans (Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong)

Original title card courtesy of Jerry Beck.

The final cartoon of 1937 is an interesting one: it’s the shortest cartoon in the WB library, with a runtime of about 5 minutes and 50 seconds. When the cartoon aired on TV in the ‘90s, the blackface caricatures were cut, further shortening the runtime to about 3-4 minutes. Not only that, but a bulk of the animation is recycled from previous cartoons, such as How Do I Know it’s Sunday? and Clean Pastures—both Freleng entries.

Like we’ve seen from many a cartoon before, this short chronicles the adventures of store products coming to life and putting on various acts.

Open to the interior of a store on a rainy night (hence the title), the eponymous song underscoring the scene. The camera pans right, closing into a bottle of blueing singing “Am I Blue?”.

The gags, at least in the first half, are relatively disjointed: immediately after the blueing sequence, a snake charmer prompts a bottle of toothpaste to squirt out a strand of toothpaste and wave in the air like a snake. Little time is wasted cutting to a can of searchlight (salmon), a searchlight on the can’s label sparking to life for a full 3 seconds before moving onto the next gag: maids from “Old Maid Cleanser” doing a dance, a gag repurposed from How Do I Know it’s Sunday?

A loose precursor to the camel’s breakdown in Porky in Egypt (which is much more thrilling than what is presented here), a rubber glove comes to life, inflating itself and serving as a makeshift pair of bagpipes, accompanying a line of camels strutting along on the camel cigarettes logo. Reused from Freleng’s 1935 entry Flowers for Madame, two dandelions perform the highland fling along to the music. 

Wipe to a bunch of apples, where a worm pokes its head out from a hole and tentatively crawls along. Stalling’s bumpkin score of “In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree” is fitting and fun to listen to, as are Treg Brown’s sound effects of the worm inching its way along. 

However, bad news for the worm: a line of hungry chicks plastered on the Bon Ami powder cans (here labeled “My Am I”) pursue the worm, who flees like he’s never fleed before. Stalling’s score is masterful, the score morphing into a flurry of excitement as the chicks all gang up on the worm. One of the chicks manages to swallow the worm, who thus is thrown about and inches along like the worm as it struggles to be freed. Finally, the worm manages to separate itself from the chick, and hurries back into an apple for safety. While nothing new, stalling’s music score manages to breathe some life into a tired scene.

The next scene is directly reused from How Do I Know it’s Sunday?, just with different vocals: the Morton salt girl and the U-Needa Biscuit boy sing a duet together beneath the “rain” from the shredded wheat box’s waterfall. If anything, it’s interesting to see old footage now colorized.

Cue the barrage of blackface caricatures: the Al Jolson caricature from Clean Pastures sings the title song–the Jolson way, of course. The premise of Jolson singing this song would be reused in future cartoons, such as the grand finale to 1941′s Porky’s Preview. 

He and Aunt Emma (a parody of Aunt Jemima) engage in the whole “sonny boy” shtick–I suppose if anything, subtle movements on Jolson such as the head tilts bring a nice feeling of depth and construction to him (I wonder if this is the work of Bob McKimson?), but the entire sequence is merely too gross and uncomfortable for it to have any merit. 

Jolson finishes the performance by singing “Good evening, frieeeeends!”, an opening/closing line that he sung on his radio show Shell Chateau. Daffy would borrow this as late as 1950, closing out his own rendition of “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down” in Bob McKimson’s Boobs in the Woods.

Caricatures of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance together to a perky waltz rendition of “September in the Rain” as an interlude. The animation is rotoscoped, and therefore quite elegant, though I do wish they had attempted to push the caricatures just a bit more, especially when the two of them begin their tap dance routine--the graceful, realistic human designs fit well with the waltz, but seem a bit out of place with the mood shift brought on by the ending tap dance. Nevertheless, props to Carl Stalling for finding a way to turn the title song into a waltz. His music is the highlight of the cartoon.

Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong (whose caricatures are reused from Clean Pastures) don a box labeled “Gold Rust Twins”, a parody of Fairbank’s Gold Dust washing powder--they were also grotesquely caricatured in Rudy Ising's Shuffle Off to Buffalo in 1933. Mel Blanc voice’s Louis’ cry of “SWING IT, BROTHER!” 

September in the Rain, left, and Tin Pan Alley cats, right.

Cue an admittedly rousing rendition of “Nagasaki”, with Fats Waller on the piano and Louis on the vocals. The animation of Waller playing the piano would be directly reused in Bob Clampett’s Tin Pan Alley Cats in 1943, proving to be a rather anachronistic caricature in comparison to the more streamlined--yet equally offensive--caricatures brought on in that cartoon.

Though the entire sequence is gross and uncomfortable, the energy it possesses is much needed in comparison to the rest of the cartoon. It feels much more on par with the energy in Clean Pastures. Ken Harris does some great smear animation of two chickens angrily bobbing their heads to the music, and the animation of Aunt Emma dancing to the music is snappy and jaunty. All of this is being analyzed from a technical standpoint--good animation does NOT make the caricatures or content being animated any more okay, but the techniques put into conveying the animation do constitute some recognition. At the very least, here, it feels as though Freleng actually has his heart in the cartoon. The rest of it, not so much.

The sequence draws to a close, as does the cartoon: we do one last pan across the shop, trucking in to the shop’s window, revealing the rain pouring in the night sky. Iris out.

This cartoon is not one of Freleng’s stellar entries, even without all of the disgusting caricatures. If anything, this is more of an obligation than a cartoon, something to please the boss with song and dance numbers and tired gags that have been antiquated since the mid ‘30s. 

Reprehensible as the caricatures are, the “Nagasaki” number at the end was admittedly the short’s highlight. The animation is snappy, fun, energetic, and Stalling’s score is infectiously energetic. However, that doesn’t redeem any of the content being animated, or the short in total for that matter. You are not missing anything by skipping this entry.

But, despite such a sour end to a great year, 1937 has been a GREAT year for WB, undeniably the best year of cartoons thus far. The acquisition of Mel Blanc was the turning point. Porky is finally growing some personality and is able to display it, more and more notable characters (such as Daffy and even Elmer, despite being a prototype) are popping up, the directors are all feeding off of each other and competing to put out funnier cartoons, etc. This is the year where the tunes become truly loony. 

And 1938 is even better! Porky and Daffy become an established duo, Tex Avery hits the sweet spot with his cartoons, Chuck Jones becomes a director of his own… there’s much to look forward to. We’re only just getting started! 

As per tradition, here’s a link to the cartoon–obviously view this with discretion.