206. Love and Curses (1938)

Release Date: July 9th, 1938

Series: Merrie Melodies

Director: Ben Hardaway, Cal Dalton

Story: Tubby Millar

Animation: Herman Cohen

Musical Direction: Carl Stalling

Starring: Mel Blanc (Roger St. Clair, Sailor, Man), Mildred Carroll (Emily), The Sportsmen Quartet (Chorus)

Though Ben Hardaway and Cal Dalton have both been directing for some time, this cartoon marks the debut of their joint directorial stint. The two would remain co-directors throughout the rest of their time as directors at WB, their unit disbanded upon the return of Friz Freleng in 1939.

Nostalgia for the gay 1890s was ripe in the 1930s. Movies, radio programs, even cafes all clung to the good ol' days of the '90s. As such, cartoons were also subject to genre, with more notable entries being Disney's The Nifty Nineties or Warner's own The Dover Boys at Pimento University.

Surprisingly, Love and Curses isn't the first of its kind at Warner Bros. Many of the designs in the cartoon seem to be lifted straight from Bernard Brown's 1934 cartoon Those Were Wonderful Days--the former cartoon appears to date itself not just intentionally.

Nonetheless, the cartoon chronicles two elderly lovebirds recounting their youth in the gay '90s, reminiscing over mustache twirling villains, kidnappings, penny arcades, and "vegetable stand" hats.

Almost immediately, the cartoon falls into the Hardaway-ian trap of lingering on jokes that are mediocre at best. We begin with a 17 second long disclaimer...

...only for the punchline to be tacked on for a final 2 seconds.

I will concede that I'm a little more sympathetic to the humor in the Hardaway-Dalton cartoons than I probably should be. I'm a shameless lover of puns, and teeth flossing-ly corny puns are abound in the H-D efforts, some of which I find amusing despite being painfully unfunny. 

If anything, my main issue stems from the delivery of said puns and jokes. Ben Hardaway especially had a bad habit of making sure the audience got the joke, lingering so long that the jokes go stale rather quickly. I mentioned the same issue in my analysis of Daffy Duck & Egghead, which he wrote. We at least had the luxury of Tex Avery's own speed making an attempt to counteract the corniness; no such filter exists in these cartoons.

The delivery of the gag here leaves a bit to be desired. Compare this to the same joke in Bob Clampett's The Lone Stranger and Porky, released 6 months after this short. There, Billy Bletcher as the narrator introduces the cartoon's antagonist by reminding the audience "Folks, please don't hiss the villain." A chorus of boos and hisses promptly follow suit. After they die down, Bletcher politely thanks the crowd.  The nonchalant delivery of the gag works in its favor and happens naturally. Even a shorter run-time on the disclaimer would have benefitted the gag here, but I digress.

Character design is not a strength in the H-D cartoons, as this short asserts. Harold has his arms wrapped around his sweetheart, Emily, as the two peruse a photo album. Harold gives a cackle, wheezing "Yessir, Emily! Those were the good ol' days. The gay '90s! Heh heh heh heh heh!"

Mel does a great old man voice as we all know, but even his exquisite vocals can't hide the poor voice direction. His delivery feels a tad mechanical and forced, but also generic--a good match for the old man's design, at least.

Cut to a shot of the photo album, where a woman is walking down the street, practically lugging an entire fruit bowl on her head. "Look at these hats," Harold croaks, pointing to the photo, "this one looks like a ve-ge-table stand!"

Fade into the gay '90s, Carl Stalling's musical underscore of "Put On Your Old Gray Bonnet" melting from nostalgic and cutesy to brazen and brassy, accompanying the busty woman as she struts down the road. 

As I mentioned previously, this cartoon seems to take a lot of inspiration from Those Were Wonderful Days, character design included. Love and Curses seems slightly shackled by the bounds of the Hays Code; compare the ridiculous bustiness of the woman from the former cartoon to here. Days flaunts its bust quite prominently all through the picture, and while I'm not saying every cartoon woman should have pencil thin waistlines and backbreaking bust, the above image is objectively more ridiculous and therefore funnier. The promiscuity of the gag in Curses doesn't read as strongly as it was intended to.

A bird, whose design is more on par with the H-D drawing style, catches wind of the fruit bowl. He motions to his buddies, and an entire flock of birds eat and peck at the lady's hat, reducing it to half-eaten rinds and seeds. Bonus points for varying eating cycles on the birds and Carl Stalling's "laughing" score--busy animation doesn't always equal "better", but it does work in H-D's favor here.

Back to a sepia still of the photograph, this time a photo of a penny arcade. "Say," Harold chuckles as we melt to technicolor once more, honing in on the interior of the arcade, "that was considered darin' entertainment in those days!"

The following gag makes up in the promiscuity department where the previous gag lacked. A man peeps into one of the viewers, unsubtly named "Naughty Nanette." Our wolf in question turns the crank, and we get a glimpse of the PG-13 goodness inside as Nanette lifts up her skirt, showing off one single leg donning a knee-high boot. She winks at her own little strip tease.

And, of course, the patron is delighted, bellowing a signature Mel Blanc "WOW!" Corny, but one of the more entertaining gags in the cartoon. The animation of the pictures flipping one by one is very well done.

Every story chronicling the 1890s must have a conniving, mustachioed villain. Here, our villain Roger St. Clair, sneers from the security of his car. An attempt at some Tex Avery style humor is made as Harold narrates "And there's Roger St. Clair, the snake!" Roger's image melts into that of a viper.

Again, despite being politely amusing, the gag stabs itself in the knee by lingering too long. The humor of Tex Avery's villains, such as Mr. Viper, Simon Legree, etc. come from the nonchalant deliveries in which they're presented. Mr. Viper is succinctly captioned "The Snake!" in Milk and Money, and would slither away like a snake despite being human. Hardaway takes the gag too literally, which isn't as much of a sin as not making the most of it is. If you're going to be obvious, revel in it. There's no sense of parody as there is with Mr. Viper or the ever memorable Dan Backslide from The Dover Boys. 

At last, the heart of the story is approached as Harold recounts his run in with the treacherous Roger. Cue him and Emily, cooing and swooning as they love on the swing, the animation awkward, unconfident and floaty as Harold pushes his love. Once more, their designs are heartbreakingly generic. Tom Dover has what Harold wants.

Roger St. Clair, snake extraordinaire, observes from the not so subtle safety of a rock. "Ahhh, what a dainty morsel!"

It really is a shame to see Mel Blanc's vocal talents be so poorly directed. I'm sure this problem has bubbled up in other H-D efforts, but this scene proves itself as a repeated phenomenon. Roger twirls his mustache after exclaiming "...what a dainty morsel!", a second of silence following before he adds "...indeed!"

I don't believe this is intentional. If it is, it doesn't come across as humorous. Porky suffers from the same thing in Porky the Gob (another H-D effort). There's a scene where he rants "I don't like this eh-nuh-neh-eh-nuh-Navy stuff... anyhow!" It's difficult to get the point across through mere transcriptions, and the pause isn't nearly as long in the latter example as it is the former, but there's indeed a little pattern. 

Speaking of Milk and Money, Roger borrows a routine from Mr. Viper; he, too, slithers down and across the rock like a snake. Milk and Money has the benefit of Chuck Jones' rubbery animation in charge of the scene. Here, it's amusing, but not as much. Perhaps that's my bias for the aforementioned cartoon speaking, as I'm sure audiences in 1938 wouldn't be exclaiming "Hey! You stole that from Milk and Money, released October 3rd, 1936, directed by Tex Avery!"

Roger has evidently slithered his way up onto the tree where Emily is swinging, as he attempts to woo her each time she swings his way. Pick-up lines don't work, as marked by an exasperated snap and wink at the camera. Advertising gowns from the safety of his cape is a no-go, too. 

The scene redeems itself with a small bit of animation as Roger swings around the branch like a bat, muttering "Curses!" Aside from that, it drags itself out for far too long. 

Pearls are unsatisfactory as well. At last, Emily speaks up, voiced by who I suspect to be Sara Berner. She, too, is poorly directed vocally, her deliveries supposed to sound pretentious but coming across as painfully belabored. "How dare you, you cad! I love only Harold!" 

Her swing halts in midair as she chastises the antagonist, before making up for lost time and zipping back to where it should be. A funny gag that could use some punching up to make it more obvious--perhaps this is on account of my own observation (or lack thereof), but it took me 3 watches to even notice.

Like any good villain, Roger breaks the fourth wall and confides in us his plan to use "more forceful methods." With that, he grabs the swing (and a dumbfounded Emily), declaring "What Roger St. Clair wants, Roger St. Clair takes!"

The voice acting of the entire altercation reads more painful rather than tongue-in-cheek, Emily giving a slow "Unhand me, you beast!" She cries for help, which reaches Harold, who jumps onto the tree branch. Roger is quick to stomp on his hands and send him flying back to the ground. 

Not many H-D efforts deal with human characters, and watching this, I can understand why. The animation and designs are very unappealing--Roger is probably the best looking one out of the bunch, and even then, he's as generic as generic gets. There's very little sense of caricature, that even Those Were Wonderful Days managed to cling to. Generic and bland seems to be a very common theme throughout the cartoon.

With a devious cackle, Roger takes a bound/gagged Emily and throws her in his car, using the swing as a stepping stone. Much of the action appears to happen offscreen. We never saw Roger climb the tree, and we never saw him muffle Emily. The point gets across regardless, and the former case isn't nearly as big of a deal, but the lack of hook-up poses can be a bit jolting. 

As if the world's longest kidnapping scene couldn't take any longer, Roger repeats the same evil cackle before even starting up his car. He pulls the crank, the jalopy jumps and sputters to life, and off they go.

I know it seems that I've been endlessly ragging on this cartoon so far. There are indeed some good aspects to it, and it's far from the worst we've seen, but it proves difficult not to compare to other efforts in the same vein. Purely for the sake of comparison (and, let's face it, to hear myself talk), watch the above kidnapping scene.

Now compare that to a similar kidnapping scene from Chuck Jones' behemoth short, The Dover Boys at Pimento University.

It's an unfair comparison, I realize that. Jones' short is one of the most stylized and exaggerated shorts he's ever done, much less one of the most exaggerated in the WB library. Released in 1942, the attitudes of the cartoons and directors were much different than they were in 1938. It's like comparing the world's best steakhouse to a McDonalds and wondering why the latter isn't as good in comparison. 

Truly, it's fascinating how differently a scene can be approached. People in 1938 (nor 1942) didn't have future vision--nobody could look 4 years into the future and see what cartoons would be like then. There's certainly a bias on my part, which I normally try to subdue, but regardless, it's difficult not to think of better efforts of the same vein. The material being animated isn't really an excuse--it's difficult to blame the content of the cartoon being "uninspired" when the same content/theme is incredibly inspired in another cartoon. Approach is imperative. Alas, this is purely food for thought, nothing objective.

Harold, meanwhile, is still recovering from his fall. The way the swing flies up behind him almost lures the audience into thinking that it may hit him on the head and knock him down again, which would have been much funnier. It does not.

Instead, Harold flaunts his oratorical personality, which comes across more as infuriating and obnoxious rather than funny. With a puff of his chest and plenty of finger pointing, our poorly drawn hero boasts "He that is down need fear no more!"

There's that swing hit.

Ridiculously, the search ends up taking him six months, as marked by the captions in the next sequence. Again, the concept of Harold searching that long for his love could be much funnier than the way it was actually executed. Have him sport a long, mangy beard, looking old and decrepit, only for him to rip it off of his face and keep searching, young and healthy. The cartoon runs long in many ways--the 8.5 minute runtime is already much more than average, and the pacing makes it last an eternity. The irony of the search taking 6+ months is duly noted.

His "vain search" consists of Harold pacing downtown with a flyer in hand, appearing as though he's going grocery shopping rather than reuniting with his kidnapped sweetheart. 

Our hero approached a dog-nosed human, whose design is truer to other H-D endeavors than Harold, Emily, and Roger's designs. "Have you seen my Emily?"

The sailor takes a look at the photo before grunting "Who, dat gal? Ah, g'wan, I push betta dames dan dat off da boat." He takes a chuff of his cigar...

...and a good ol' tattoo gag occurs. Harold is not phased, instead declaring "The soul that suffers is stronger than the soul that rejoices!" The sailor's presence is welcome, particularly due to Blanc's voice acting, but the animation, particularly that of Harold, leaves a lot to be desired.

Seeing as this was 1938, the Merrie Melodies still weren't entirely free from the grip of musical interludes. Here, Emily sings a sorrowful rendition of "All That Glitters is Not Gold". The song is a welcome change in pace, but, like everything else, drags on. While I'm a fan of Sara Berner, this cartoon isn't exactly her best work, and the song admittedly comes across as a tad grating with Emily's signing. The barbershop quartet does just fine, also reduced to a snivelling, crying mess as they sing the chorus.

Emily has been reduced to a stage act in Roger St. Clair's bar, who observes hungrily from the stage wings. Bar patrons and bartenders alike are reduced to tears, with the highlight being a tearful patron cracking his beer bottle like an egg, splitting the two halves and downing the liquor. The animation throughout the entire sequence is wildly inconsistent, sometimes even in the same scene--the lines on the egg-cracker's jacket keep appearing and reappearing.

In the midst of his search, Harold stumbles upon the rear exit of the bar, ignoring the door's warning of "KEEP OUT -- AND WE DO MEAN YOU". He recognizes Emily's tearful voice, and the two are quick to reunite. The wrinkles on the clothing of both Harold and Emily, as well as their elongated, tall pupils could possibly cue this in as Rod Scribner's work--purely educated guessing on my part, though. Regardless, the animation is probably the most appealing in the entire cartoon.

Of course, their reunion is bound to be ruined, as Roger observes from backstage with a grimace. He unties the curtain, which promptly interrupts Harold's soliloquy. The physical violence sustained by Harold is almost therapeutic. With that, Roger practices cartoon logic as he opens the prop door on the curtain, snagging Emily and sneering in Harold's face once more.

No cartoon with a caped, mustachioed villain is complete without tying up the kidnapped love interest to the train tracks. Emily resists with a powerful, thrilling argument of "No! No! No!", only for Roger to gleefully describe the gruesome fate that awaits her. 

Alas, Harold runs to the rescue, hair poorly inked and all. Roger merely observes with another twirl of the mustache. Of course, the threat of an oncoming train isn't enough for Harold to pause his declamations as he cries "He only is exempt from failure who makes no effort!"

And, just like that, Harold lifts the train tracks off of the ground, allowing the train to hurtle overhead the both of them. Nevermind untying Emily or anything else productive. Still, slightly amusing in any case.

Now, Roger snags the tied up Emily, carrying the wooden plank she's attached to (which is missing in the adjacent scene--I normally don't mind the suspension of disbelief these scenarios carry, but it still begs mentioning) and dashing towards, you guessed it, a saw mill.

I've gotten it into my head that this cartoon is supposed to be a parody of such cliched stories, but it doesn't convict itself to the parody. Not that the fourth wall should be broken every 5 seconds, but the cartoon is laid out so squarely and literally that it completely misses the bite it's trying to dig. It's clear that Tex Avery's cartoons were an inspiration and used as a basis, but everything that makes Avery's cartoons so successful is completely missing here.

Harold pursues Roger and Emily into the saw mill, where he's greeted by a log swung by Roger. Concussed, Harold is sent flying back onto the saw. I'm certain you can guess where this is going.

The next scene is, admittedly, hilarious, but for all of the wrong reasons. With the saw blades spinning, Harold, unconscious on the conveyer belt, approaches his impending doom...

Only for the saw to explode upon impact of Harold's head. Harold wakes up and merely scratches his head in confusion. While trying to be funny, the gag is funnier more in its straightforward delivery than anything. It lacks the irony and bite it tries to convey, and instead reads as totally ridiculous. Slightly more amusing is the handsaws that rain down from the explosion.

Now, Roger resorts to gunfire, pulling out a pistol from his cloak and firing rapidly. Of course, Harold is quite the superman, merely deflecting the gunshots with his giant palms. Roger runs out of ammunition, meaning it's time for a scuffle, one on one.

Both on either end of a board, Harold uses the opportunity to throw the board out an open window, Roger still clinging to it. He does so, and his plan works...

Except it doesn't. One extra long pause later and the board boomerangs through the door, catapulting right into Harold. Having exhausted all options of violence, the two engage in good ol' fisticuffs.

Just when you think the flashback will finally melt back to present day, we instead receive one final peroration from Harold, receiving blows to the stomach as he proclaims "Keep cool and you command everything!"

One Popeye-esque wallop later, Roger is sent flying out the window and lands in a nearby waterfall. A lone top hat accompanied by a funeral dirge serves as appropriate context to his fate.

At long last, we fade back to present day, Harold and Emily safely cuddled together on their couch. "40 years now since we got rid of that unscrupulous cur," Harold tells her as he closes the photo album. "I wonder what ever became of the scoundrel..."

While the cartoon's ending is pretty obvious, it's at least somewhat entertaining, which is better than some other parts of the cartoon. Enter an elderly Roger St. Clair, whose voice is somewhat more inspired than Harold's elderly drawl. 

"Pardon the intrusion," cackles the villain, who's still clad in his uniform, "but a St. Clair never gives up!"

With that, he yanks Emily away, who sounds the exact same as she did 40 years ago, crying "Harold! Help!"

If the events of the cartoon weren't enough proof of H-D attempting to follow in Tex Avery's footsteps, the final gag solidifies the notion. Harold declares "I...'m comin', I'm comin'...!", singing "Old Black Joe", the routine directly borrowed from Tex's I Wanna Be a Sailor. The iris out is quite welcome.

This cartoon tries to be a lot of things, and it fails at a lot of things. Ben Hardaway and Cal Dalton are not the studio's strongest directors, and I feel much of that can be attributed to Ben Hardaway. Though the Cal Dalton and Cal Howard efforts are no masterpieces, they fare better than the H-D cartoons. Hardaway seems to shoot himself in the foot in this cartoon in a number of ways.

One, the gags range from slightly amusing to painfully unfunny, reaching an average of mediocre. Two, these mediocre gags are treated as though they're the funniest jokes in the world, given too much attention and run-time than what they deserve. 

As I mentioned before, signs of this are evident as early as the cartoon's disclaimer, which lasts an entire 20 seconds, the grand reveal of the gag taking up only 2 of those 20 seconds. For comparison, the disclaimer in Porky's Building, the first cartoon debut such a thing, lasted 14 seconds. The disclaimer in Daffy Duck & Egghead, written by Hardaway, lasted 12. While time should of course be allowed for the audience to read, it comes off as overkill in this case.

The voice direction is incredibly poor and misguided, which is a shame, considering Mel Blanc and Sara Berner are both very talented figures. Character designs and animation also suffer considerably. While I welcome variation in animation styles and embrace it, here, the constant variations read more as unintentional and a lack of communication rather than as a stylistic choice. Sometimes Emily has a defined chin and we see her in make-up, with her nose and features crisp and clean. Other times, she looks like a balloon, made of generic, spherical shapes. The personalities and designs and jokes, everything about this cartoon is incredibly generic and bland.

In an attempt to parody greats like Tex Avery, this cartoon instead turns into the subject of Avery's parodies. The gags are taken too literally, and not in a good way. Deliveries are too straightforward and soft, and details that should be funny, such as Harold's obnoxious proclamations in the face of danger, instead come off as grating and annoying. There's very little nuance.

As such, I'm not a fan. I almost prefer Bernard Brown's Those Were Wonderful Days, which was made at the height of WB's dark ages in the early days. This cartoon tries too hard to be something it's not. While I'm more forgiving to some H-D cartoons more than other people may be (Porky the Giant Killer, for example, is another incredibly mediocre cartoon, but I found myself laughing at things I probably shouldn't have, such as Porky threatening to "bust [a baby] right in the nose"), I can't trick myself into justifying this one. Painfully long, unfunny, boring, and just bad. Watch The Dover Boys instead.

And, since I spent so much time bashing the short, here's a link to said short!