Disclaimer: This cartoon contains racist imagery and stereotypes of which I do not endorse and are presented in an informational and historical manner. With that said, please do not hesitate to speak up if I say something insensitive or harmful. It is never my intention to do and would like to take accountability should that occur. Thank you.
Release date: June 25th, 1938
Series: Merrie Melodies
Director: Frank Tashlin
Story: Jack Miller
Animation: Ken Harris
Musical Direction: Carl Stalling
Starring: Mel Blanc (Alexander Woollcott, Rip Van Winkle, Aladdin, The Good Earth, Emily Host, Diamond Jim, The Informer), Harry Stanton (Old King Cole), Tedd Pierce (W.C. Fields), Georgia Stark (Whistler's Mother), The Basin Street Boys (Vocalists).
Have You Got Any Castles? serves as the middle entry in Frank Tashlin's "books come to life" trilogy. A very popular genre during the Harman and Ising days of the early '30s, book and magazine covers come to life and perform a boisterous variety show filled with celebrity caricatures and swinging song numbers.
 |
| Jack Miller, circa 1940 |
Time marches on and trends switch. Audiences found themselves enamored more with the charismatic personalities of characters such as Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and later Bugs Bunny. As such, the demand for these "variety show" cartoons dwindled significantly. Bob Clampett directed two more book shorts, A Coy Decoy and Book Revue in 1941 and 1946 respectively, both of which feature Daffy (alongside Porky in the former) rather than a barrage of one-off caricatures. A footnote made all the more interesting when remembering that Clampett claims to have kicked off the genre, contributing a sequence in Smile, Darn Ya, Smile! where advertisements on a trolley come to life.
Back to the cartoon at hand, this cartoon is Jack Miller's first writing credit. He got his start in the cartooning business in Kansas City, later working in advertising in Minneapolis, and finally settling into California, working at Harman and Ising, Universal, and then finally Schlesinger's. Though Miller's tenure didn't last very long, his final credit in 1940, he does have the distinction of writing Friz Freleng's epochal You Ought to Be in Pictures.
Speaking of Bob Clampett's Book Revue, the opening to that cartoon and this one are relatively similar, but executed in wildly different manners. Iris in to a cuckoo clock--the clock strikes twelve. Out comes a cuckoo bird, who sings its signature cry to mark the passage of time. The camera lingers on the quaint little bird before panning left through a library, snow hugging the window panes outside with a comforting yet bold rendition of "Poet and Peasant Overture". Already, Tashlin prepares the atmosphere.
Now compare that to Clampett's own tranquil cuckoo bird opening (establishing painting recycled from A Coy Decoy).
Admittedly, it's a moot point of comparison. Book Revue was 8 years after Castles, and the energy, atmosphere, and attitudes maintained by both the cartoons and the directors was wildly different than what they were in 1938. Frank Tashlin could be plenty wild in his own right, and even his '30s cartoons rival Tex Avery's in terms of speed and energy. Both of these cartoons also carry different atmospheres. Nevertheless, it's fascinating how an incredibly similar set-up can be approached in staggeringly different ways.
In any case, the opening to Castles raises more interest historically, seeing as it was lost until 2004 with the release of the second Golden Collection DVD.
More specifically, the scenes with Alexander Woollcott, who opens and closes the cartoons, were lost. It's been rumored that Woollcott himself wished for the scenes to be removed. The cartoon was given a Blue Ribbon reissue in 1947, the scenes indeed cut, despite Woollcott having passed away in 1943.
Interestingly, Woollcott was also parodied in Tashlin's The Woods are Full of Cuckoos just a year prior, and those scenes were completely intact. Then again, the cartoon wasn't reissued in theaters.
There is a possibility that Woollcott requested his scenes be cut, but it could have also been due to his lack of relevancy in 1947. In Hollywood Steps Out, there's a scene of a young Shirley Temple dancing with Gary Cooper that was cut out in the 1949 reissue on account of Temple being a full grown adult at the time. It seems more plausible that they believed Woollcott wasn't of much relevancy, especially on account of his passing.
Either way, the Woollcott scenes are thankfully viewable to the public eye today. Bob McKimson animates his opening, full of rich, dimensional movements. From the floaty movements to intricate hand gestures to foreshortening on the arms, the animation has all of the earmarks of McKimson's handiwork.
The introduction is a take on Woollcott's radio program The Town Crier (as indicated by the book backdrop), which came to a close in January 1938, only 4 months before the time of this short's release. His opening parallels the beginning of The Woods are Full of Cuckoos, albeit carrying an air of sophistication that the tongue-in-cheek atmosphere of the latter lacked.
Woollcott introduces us to our impending "delightful phantasmagoria", a night full of song and dance from figures of fiction and history. With that, the camera pans down a line of books, some touting the names of WB employees such as Ray Katz, Tedd Pierce, Art Loomer, and Henry Binder. Such a intellectual, stuffy, and sardonic introduction by Woollcott prepares the audience for a night of sophisticated music stylings and activity for the high brow people.
Our first guests aren't exactly the most sophisticated--frightening, yes. Out step one Mr. Hyde, Fu Manchu, The Phantom, and Frankenstein's monster, book spines cleverly raising and lowering like curtains to introduce our stars. Tense music and ferocious roars from the monsters purposefully strike intimidation in the audience...
...only for our crew of monsters to perform a dainty, synchronized, childish dance to "Gavotte". Despite the abhorrently racist design boasted by Fu Manchu, the sequence remains amusing to this day, with these blood thirsty monsters playing patty cake and holding hands, respectfully bowing towards the audience, and so on. The entire dance sequence is succinctly timed to the music, Gavotte being the perfect music choice.
The denizens of the library agree, book figures clapping and cheering from the safety of their covers. Tashlin pulls off an interesting pan from across the library, the scene mirrored as it continues to truck left and zooming in, coming to a halt at one book cover in particular.
Our only context clue is the childish mutterings of Mel Blanc, imitating a child saying its prayers before bed. Pan out to reveal it being the cover to The Good Earth, a 1931 novel chronicling the life of a farmer and his family in China. Here, the title is taken to a literal sense, a globe (once more a victim of racial stereotypes) being a good kid and giving his prayers before bed. If anything, the scene is made amusing by the child's prayers, blessing "Papa Leon" (Schlesinger) and "Uncle Ray" (Katz).
Next is The Invisible Man, living up to his namesake as he skillfully tap dances to a score of "Vienni, Vienni". The eponymous Topper, also invisible, repeats the same skillfully animated dance, before handing off duties to a blackface caricature of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson dancing on a pair of steps, loyal to the book cover he boasts of "The Thirty Nine Steps". Robinson was an incredibly skilled dancer, famous for his tap-dancing stair routine (which you can watch here.)
The animation of the Robinson caricature on the steps could possibly be attributed to Phil Monroe, who recalled in an interview that he remembers animating a scene of a "big mammy type of gal, walking around up and down stairs, and across the stage" under Tashlin. While some of the account is of course erroneous, this seems to be the closest match to his statement.
After Robinson is Greta Garbo, scuffing her feet along to the music on the cover of So Big. Watching the scene in motion, the camera angles flow surprisingly well and swiftly together, with the camera briefly zooming in on the title of the book before zooming back out and revealing the motion at hand. It creates a great sense of movement and jauntiness with comparatively less jitteriness than other cartoons. Racism aside from the blackface caricature(s), it's worth watching in motion.
Green Pastures is next, with an entire song number--animation and all--lifted from Friz Freleng's Clean Pastures, a Cab Calloway caricature performing "Swing for Sale" along with his band of angels inside the book. Despite the familiarity of the scene and egregiousness of the caricatures, it does make an interesting watch; typically, the characters on these books are limited to their front covers. Here, the page turns back and forth between Calloway and his band to simulate the "call and response" nature of the band. It works in Tashlin's favor.
Once more do the denizens of the books take a moment to pause and cheer the song on, segueing into the next part of the book as we pan across the library once more. The start and stop nature of everyone cheering on the act is incredibly reminiscent to the early days of the Harman and Ising Merrie Melodies. A '30s staple that was becoming slightly antiquated, even by 1938 standards.
Johanna Spyri's Heidi scats to a bluesy rhythm, bellowing out a chorus of "Heidy-hi!"s. The title of the book (and consequently, the girl's name) is saved as a reveal via the truck out of a camera. Mildly amusing, the scene doesn't overstay its welcome, feeling as though it aims to segue into a bigger song number but doesn't.
Next, a familiar face to the book cartoons; William Powell, also known as "the thin man", emerges from a book of the same name, his profile (as you can assume) incredibly slender. The very same Powell caricature was used in Tashlin's first book entry, Speaking of the Weather.
Here, Powell lumbers across the table to a meandering score of "Boulevardier from the Bronx", always a "slow walker" favorite music choice in Tashlin cartoons.
He disappears behind the White House Cook Book...
...and then re-emerges. He looks more as though he just swallowed an ant rather than gorged himself on food, but I digress. Note the memo on the table that facetiously reads "Ask the boss for a raise" in the back--Schlesinger couldn't complain about a lack of inside jokes in this short.
Our next song number is a high energy, swinging rendition of "Old King Cole", started off by The Whistler herself doing just that to the music. Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (three of them, anyway) initiate the chorus, dancing together and singing in beautiful harmonies. Their shiny cheeks and big eyes are particularly reminiscent of Tashlin's geometric drawing style.
Alcott's Little Men (also identical triplets) pick up the chorus, and the two bands of tots sing back and forth before handing the reigns over to the big ol' king himself. The animation in the entire sequence is particularly impressive, chock full of life and movement. The king is introduced not by means of a simple cutaway, but rather by the trucking out of the camera, who zooms out of his dancing, giant stomach.
He sings his eponymous song number and introduces himself, with 7 Clark Gable caricatures accompanying the cover of The House of Seven Gables interjecting into the song, all adding broken lines to the song, one by one. An amusing gag by even today's standards, with the Gable caricature being reused from Freleng's The CooCoo Nut Grove ('36).
Bulldog Drummond is riffed instead as Bulldog Drummin', a pooch churning out the drum solo on his snare drum. Elsewhere, scientist Louis Pasteur, famous for his cure against rabies, "mixes TNT" per the instructions of the chorus. An explosion...
...prompting him to don the cover of Seventh Heaven, the chorus transitioning from jovial and energetic to angelic and saccharine. Carl Stalling's musical accompaniment really tops of the gag.
Mutiny on the Bounty is no stranger to WB cartoons--Jack King did an entire parody of it with his Shanghaied Shipmates. Here, Captain Bligh interjects his own little solo before cutting to Rip Van Winkle, who complains about Old King Cole being a "noisy old soul".
He snags scissors from the eponymous valiant little tailor, using them to snip a piece of Uncle Tom's hair and use it as cotton ear plugs. He promptly goes back to sleep.
The song number concludes with a few more shorts of the little men and women, Old King Cole himself leaning uncomfortably close to the camera in a signature Tashlin perspective shot, and finally an ending chorus from the 7 Clark Gables.
More reused clapping animation from the denizens of the book, and then we're on to the title song number, marked by a triumphant fanfare. Tashlin gets creative with his transitions; the trumpets blow right into the screen, the insides swallowing the camera. Total blackness for a second, until we iris in to the three musketeers singing a title chorus of "Have You Got Any Castles?" The transition is swift and effective in terms of both music and animation.
After a brief drum solo from an Indigenous man on the cover of Drums Along the Mohawk, etiquette extraordinaire Emily Post Host chides Henry VIII for his slovenly eating habits. A snake charmer on the cover of Mother India plays along to the music beat (animation recycled from Speaking of the Weather), whereas Rip Van Winkle goes to cut more of Uncle Tom's hair and use it as earplugs.
The scene that follows is one of the highlights of the short for me, despite being bogged down by Uncle Tom's appearance as a whole. "I'll get out my scissors that cut!" R.V.W. grumbles along to the music, before getting socked right in the face by Uncle Tom, punching him to the beat of the music and then cutting R.V.W.'s own beard. The pose Tom strikes as he daintily and matter-of-factly receives his comeuppance looks like something out of a '40s Tashlin cartoon, a satisfying preview of what's to come.
Diamond Jim Brady provides his own lyrics, flaunting his money and jewels around. With that, we get a number of wordless solos--the cover of Drums Along the Mohawk repeats, making way for Emily and Henry VIII to shove their gullets and slurp down their food to the beat of the music. Oliver Twist, as you can assume, twists his legs and bobs around in time to the music.
No cartoon rich in celebrity caricatures is complete without a W.C. Fields reference, surprisingly depicted as a human rather than a pig for once, donning the cover of So Red the Nose, a book full of cocktail recipes. As per tradition, Tedd Pierce provides Fields' vocals.
I have to say, Carl Stalling's string section on Fields' portion makes for easy listening. His soundtrack is easily the highlight of the short; it's mind boggling how many different music stylings he can pack together in such a rapid, short amount of time. The Pied Piper's jaunty clarinet solo furthers that notion.
With that, the Three Musketeers close out the song portion, spurring on the rather brief climax of the short. Furtively, the musketeers creep along the library, sneaking behind the cover of a book. Tashlin performs an easy cheat with the drawings--we only see one Musketeer sneak behind the book, the other two ahead of him, but all three of them emerge from the same book on a horse, as per the novel's title.
As it turns out, the musketeers are on their way to break the titular Prisoner of Zenda, borrowing a ring of keys from Seven Keys to Baldpate. Interestingly, a number of these book cartoons, such as Speaking of the Weather, You're an Education, and Book Revue entail prison breaks or cop chases of some kind.
Ken Harris provides the animation for the next sequence, a man yelling "HELP! HELP! JAILBREAK! HELP!" His title is kept a secret, and as a result the staging is rather tight--we only catch a glimpse of his face, bending low, before he stands up to shout.
In comes one of the musketeers, socking the tattletale to the beat of the music a la Uncle Tom. Thus sparks the grand reveal: Aladdin (erroneously spelled Alladin) boasts his "lamp", slang for a bruise and synonymous with the term "shiner". Though short, the sequence is one of the more entertaining highlights, especially with the surprisingly spot on music.
Next is The Informer, prompting a hulking caricature of Victor McLagen who starred in the 1935 film of the same name. McLagen caught wind of the act, and whispers to "Little Boy Blew" (as opposed to Little Boy Blue) about what he saw.
The boy lives up to his homonymous name, his face turning a violent blue as he blows into his trumpet to spur on a brigade. Again, more Ken Harris animation, characterized particularly by the smears present in the trumpet.
The Charge of the Light Brigade comes to life, and the next thing you know, bullets are flying and guns firing, even Robinson Crusoe taking aim. Though the climax is rather curt and prompt, it does get to the action quite swiftly and remains very high energy. Compare this to the pursuit that unfolds in Speaking of the Weather; the speed and energy in Castles is an undeniable improvement. The former does, however, beat out the latter in substance.
Surprisingly, Tashlin weans himself free from a signature montage. If there were ever a moment that could use translucent animation overlays to illustrate the action, this would be it. Instead, various denizens from the books charge after the musketeers, gunshots cracking through the air and yelling loud and clear.
Rip Van Winkle, still desperate for a nap, opts to put an end to it once and for all, grousing "Why don't they let me sleep!?"
He then jumps down from his perch and onto the bookshelf below. A keen eye and quick frame-by-frame playthrough reveals parts of his unpainted cel, accommodating the book below that he's just shy of reaching.
Bob Clampett would appropriate this gag for his own A Coy Decoy 3 years later; R.V.W. opens the book Hurricane, prompting a gigantic gust of wind to blow the entire fight away. And, just as promptly as the fight began, it ends. A Gone With the Wind book falls into place to mark a sardonic sense of finality.
The cutting (and pasting) of the scenes containing Alexander Woollcott is made noticeable by a pair of white lines that appear on the screen and close together; as you can tell by my all too thorough description, I'm relatively ignorant to the process of film restoration and the vocabulary that comes with it. Either way, a splice was noticeably made.
Paralleling the end of The Woods are Full of Cuckoos, Woollcott bids us goodnight, ringing his bell and calmly announcing "All is well, all is well."
Carl Stalling's sweet music score of the title song is genuinely moving as we get one final pan of the library. The snow has halted instead, a morning glow emanating through the window panes.
The clock now reads 6. Just like the beginning, the cute little cuckoo bird sings goodbye... but with its beak tied shut.
Focus is on the bird, until we zoom out and find the perpetrator. All is well.
While not my favorite of the book cartoons, the energy present in this short is undeniable and is downright exhilarating. I can't say I was glued to the climax of the three musketeers making their great escape, but the speed at which it unfolds and ties together--and so clearly, too--is no easy feat.
The song numbers take precedence more than anything, and they're very good at that. Carl Stalling's music score is infectious from start to finish, and the musical timing, especially in scenes that put focus on the percussion (such as the tap dancing sequences or Uncle Tom punching R.V.W.) is succinct.
Like many cartoons, the greatest damper in my book are the racist caricatures that pepper the cartoon. Other than that, this is a pretty fine cartoon. I don't go out of my way to watch it, but if you have an interest in '30s pop culture references or like to see Rip Van Winkle complain about how miserable his existence is, a watch wouldn't hurt. If you're a fan of cartoons such as Book Revue, then definitely make a point to watch these earlier "book" cartoons to familiarize yourself with the genre and appreciate just how far it would come in the coming years.
As always, heed caution with the racial stereotypes. I'd also like to give Devon Baxter a big thank you for his help in animation identification and giving some good inside scoop--you save my hide once again, Devon! Thank you!
No comments:
Post a Comment