81. How Do I Know It's Sunday (1934)

Release date: June 9th, 1934

Series: Merrie Melodies

Director: Friz Freleng

Starring: Bernard Brown (Boy), The Varsity Three, The Rhythmettes, The Singing Guardsmen (Chorus)

The inside of a closed grocery store is as alive as ever, including a swarm of pesky flies.

How do you know it’s Sunday? Well, people are strolling along to church and there’s an exterior shot of a grocery store that reads CLOSED SUNDAY ALL DAY. A lovely interior shot of the store as we pan to a can of sardines, who sing the titular “How Do I Know It's Sunday?”, asserting itself to be rather catchy. Obviously, there’s a whole genre of things coming to life. This theme will continue even into the '40s. It gets trite after awhile, but I suppose if you go to the theater and see these shorts only a few years after each other it’d be different.

Like always, all of the groceries make their contributions to the song. A decapitated pig’s head grunts in a bass voice, a married couple of pickled herring sing, women from the blue ribbon malt extract boxes sing (parodied as pink ribbon malt), an onion makes a potato cry from her multiple eyes (which is actually quite amusing), some blackface caricatures including a parody of Aunt Jemima named Aunt Eliza (which, Eliza being my own name, proves to be rather disconcerting namesake).

Tamales also contribute—they would make a reappearance in Billboard Frolics. Oysters, which are not at all oysters but in fact clams, click their shells like castanets, as does a flamenco dancing lobster. Said lobster would pop up again in a number of shorts, including Mr. and Mrs. is the Name and Speaking of the Weather. 

Multiple women from the Old Dutch Cleanser cans (parodied as Old Maid Cleanser) do some clogging, while a man runs a fan like a merry go round and speeds it up to the highest setting! Damn! 

Below a shredded wheat box (Threaded Wheat) sings the girl from the Morton salt box. Elsewhere, a little Inuit boy who looks startlingly similar to Buddy is fishing. He’ll come into play soon. There are two Morton salt cans, perfect for the two boys in the Uneeda Biscuit (Uwanta Cracker) packaging to flirt with. The song is very catchy, but so far this cartoon has been rather uninteresting. Maybe because I’ve become desensitized to the magic of the singing and dancing cartoons. It’s still cute though! I like the designs of the girl and the boy. I love my vintage advertisements and products, so this comes in handy.

Our Inuit boy from before runs over to a cookie box and knocks on the door, and his cookie sweetheart (Buddy and Cookie literally?) joins him happily as they skip away. Elsewhere, the villain(s) enter: a swarm of flies. They target a piece of roll cake and tear it to shreds. Elsewhere, they devour some Russian rye bread, engaging in the Prisyadka dance. This would be a favorite of Friz’s, he’d use it in cartoons typically revolving around ants and other insects, like in The Gay Anties.

“Buddy” and “Cookie” are seesawing via soup can and knife, very safe. The flies spot the girl and kidnap her as always! The boy does Buddy’s obnoxious call from Buddy of the Apes, swinging from a rope and kicking the flies off of his girl as she’s taken hostage. With the flies gone she lands, enough time for the boy to grab her hand as they run away from an angry swarm of flies.

Popcorn is used as a machine gun to shoot down the flies, but the flies fashion safety pins and toothpicks into tiny bows and fire in retaliation. The flies circle the frightened advertisements below them, the Arm and Hammer (Harm and Ammer) box smacking one of the flies in the head.

The flies grab some matches and light them, setting the surroundings of the advertisements ablaze below them. One of the Uneeda Biscuit boys relies on the carbonation of seltzer water to put the flames at bay, another character who looks vaguely like Mr. Peanut using champagne to put out the flames.

Nice, stringy animation as a toy soldier uses syrup to stick all of the flies together in one giant ball. Their fate is further sealed when the popcorn from the popcorn gun sticks to the syrup. A homemade popcorn ball falls straight into a box of popcorn balls. A rude awakening for whoever chooses that one.

The boy from before distracts the remaining flies by jumping into a grinder, safely getting out from the bottom as the flies pile up inside. He grinds them and shoots them into a bottle, which he corks and poses on triumphantly as his colleagues cheer. Iris out.

Not the most entertaining cartoon ever, but not the WORST. It stretched on for a very long time, the climax didn’t feel like it had much urgency to it. It seemed to match the leisurely pace of the beginning half, the only difference being the musical underscore which helped to enhance the mood. Not much to really say, because there wasn’t much there. The song was catchy! And the backgrounds were enjoyable to look at, as was counting up all the references, but you’ve seen one, you’ve seen 'em all. And the “all” will have better entries than this one. But, Friz is still new to the directing gig, and he’ll continue to get better and better. I’d skip this one, there’s better groceries come to life adventures in store. Nevertheless, link!