Release date: April 14th, 1934
Series: Merrie Melodies
Director: Friz Freleng
Starring: The Singing Guardsmen (Chorus), The Varsity Three (Chorus), Cy Kendall (Humpty Dumpty), Dudley Kuzelle (Sandman, Frog), Bernard Brown (Soldier)
Everyone’s favorite childhood classic, a tale everyone remembers. A thrilling story about butt jokes, airplanes shaving hairy monsters’ backs, gorging on bananas and grapes... that’s the Looney Tunes version, anyway. A little girl has a surreal dream that she and a toy soldier must tackle on a horrible beast.
Like any little girl, this girl is wide awake as the clock strikes 10pm. She sneaks furtively down the hall and into the kitchen, grinning as she sets her eyes on the fruit bowl prize. After gorging on a few bananas and even a vine of grapes (all falling into her mouth with that sharp Freleng timing as per usual), she decides her mission is done. That is, after she snags a nearby box of chocolates and munches on them as she returns to her room.
The scene was a nice way to establish personality, transparent as it may be. It doesn’t quite serve as any relevance to the plot, but it conveys to the audience that this girl likes to break the rules, she’s mischievous, cute, and conniving, yet careful in her ways, making a point to sneak about quietly so as not to disturb anyone.
There’s a shot of her wall, an elaborately painted mural. Included in the mural is the sandman himself, who jumps out of the wall and creeps over to her. He, like myself, finds it rather unreasonable that a toddler is awake at 10pm and sprinkles his Magic Sand over her head, lulling her to sleep.
Always gotta go with the butt gags, right? Freleng’s roots at working under Harman and Ising are present with the butt flap gag. The girl’s surroundings dissolve around her into a night sky as she gains consciousness, plummeting through the sky, her buttflap opening like a parachute for safety. Her relief seldom lasts long: the buttons snap on her flap and she’s sent rocketing to the ground.
She lands in what appears to be a garden: look at that background! It looks on par with the surreal, UPA styled backgrounds used in the '50s and '60s cartoons, especially in Chuck Jones’ work. Even though I love the lush vivacity of the '30s and '40s backgrounds, I love seeing something so ahead of its time. It feels so anachronistic!
Next to the garden is a castle. The girl wastes no time in approaching it, greeted by a triumphant fanfare. The drawbridge grants her access into the castle, and a sea of toys greet her, cheering her on as she explores her newfound territory.
As custom in a cartoon, three squires sing a welcoming song to the girl, welcoming her to Toyland. A standard gag now but fun to see at this point in time—a frog chimes in with a rolling bass voice. One of the squires zips up his mouth and the song continues. The song also includes a warning, stay away from the beast!
More wonderful Friz Freleng timing as an army of toy soldiers march along. The little girl approaches them, and she instantly falls in love with the leader, who reciprocates her admiration. Freleng continues the Harman-Ising tradition with the standard “ain’t he cute?” catchphrase.
Elsewhere, Humpty Dumpty finds the budding romance ridiculous. He breaks into hysterics, toppling over his fated wall and cracking. Instead of yolky innards, there is a group of toy ducks who do an entertaining dance routine. I especially love the detail of a gnome shredding crackers in a fan, creating artificial snow as the ducks skate on their wheel-like legs. Their dancing spree comes to a halt as they knock into toy blocks, each block spelling out “NERTZ” on the ducks.
The girl and her soldier applaud the performance, and the soldier decides to show her around. They go through a gate and stumble into a world of books. Kind of books come to life! The girl takes interest in the beauty and the beast book, and together she and the soldier read it while a chorus sing the lyrics to “Beauty and the Beast”—including the cast of Robinson Crusoe (Friday once again a blackface caricature like in Three’s a Crowd).
They reach the part detailing the beast, and sure enough he pops out of the page and comes to life. You guessed it—he’s after the girl. He snatches her up, the toy soldier free and left up to his own devices to save her.
Luckily, he knows just the thing. He uses a toy plane as a weapon, some nice animation as the lance circled around him. The plane shaves the hair off of the beast’s back, reducing him to almost nothing.
Almost. The beast still has enough left of him to run after the soldier and the girl. The soldier uses a cannon to fire at the monster, striking a match against the ground and lighting the fuse. Unfortunately, for the soldier AND the cannon, the fuse burns the cannon’s rear and it drags its butt along the ground like a wounded puppy. The beast snags the girl, who thrashes about desperately. She continues to writhe about...
And she wakes up from her horrifying dream. Terrified, she dives under the covers and buries her head... and her butt pops out of the other side (which is actually where her head is supposed to go), literally. Her buttflap is undone once more as we iris out.
As far as cartoons at this particular “dark” transitional age go, this wasn’t bad! The cartoon had some energy and vivacity to it. The girl was very cute and likable, even though her personality was thin. Not as thin as it could be, though! The opening sequence where she’s eating all the food is a nice touch. The cartoon isn’t hilarious, but I don’t consider it unfunny either. There could always be some more imagination and creativity, as well as coherence. Yet, Humpty Dumpty and the ducks was fun to watch, and the animation was enjoyable. Relatively decent, worth a watch! Friz has a lot better coming.
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