Cartoon Curiosities of the 1930s

YODELING YOKELS (1931): Producers Hugh Harman & Rudolph Ising started at Disney, but ended up creating the character of Bosko at Warner Brothers. Since they had access to a wide range of popular songs instead of just Disney's public domain stock music, the cartoons were called "Looney Tunes."

JOINT WIPERS (1932): Van Bueuren's most popular characters were Tom and Jerry (no, not the cat and mouse) - a Mutt and Jeff-like duo who endured a variety of comical misadventures.

DOWN IN DIXIE (1932): A remake of Van Beuren's earlier cartoon Uncle Tom and Little Eva (1930) redone to remove some, but nowhere near all, of the racially insensitive elements.

NURSERY SCANDAL (1932): Mother Goose causes a scandal in Fairy Tale Land when she courts a scarecrow. Take note of the very human (and very naked) Tinkerbell look-alike during the dance number.

BARNYARD BUNK (1932): After Official Films purchased the Van Beuren library for television distribution, Tom and Jerry were ignominiously renamed "Dick and Larry" to avoid confusion with William Hanna and Joseph Barbera's famous cat and mouse.

A GREAT BIG BUNCH OF YOU (1932): With Hugh Harman focusing on Bosko, his partner Rudolph Ising produced one-shot characters and stories for Warners called "Merrie Melodies", including this wonderful effort.

HOKUM HOTEL (1932): A Jazz Age love story between two cats in a swank hotel with a combo that really cooks. Unfortunately the frisky feline is there to rob the Countess, not romance her!

FRISKY FROLICS (1932): A Noah's Ark array of animals enjoy frolics on ice, including a singing monkey who must like them big, because he's in love with a hippo.

PICCANINNY BLUES (1932): Despite the disgraceful title, there's little politically incorrect content in this tale of a cat who travels back to ancient Egypt and falls in love with a queen (voiced by Margie Hines, one of the early voices of Betty Boop.)

THE MAGIC MUMMY (1933): Tom and Jerry are cops looking for a stolen mummy, who perplexingly turns out to be a beautiful woman underneath the wrappings (played once again by Hines doing her Helen Kane impression.)

CROON CRAZY (1933): Cubby Bear (who bears a remarkable resemblance to Mickey Mouse) was an attempt by Van Beuren to create a recurring character to follow in the footsteps of Tom and Jerry. He lasted only a little over a year.

A ROYAL GOOD TIME (1934): Van Beuren made a brief series of shorts based on Otto Soglow's long-running comic strip "The Little King" in hopes they would capture the same magic that the Fleischer brothers worked with E.C. Segar's Popeye.

THE HUNTING SEASON (1935): Another pass at creating a cartoon star by Van Beuren, Molly Moo-Cow at least got to appear in beautifully animated color shorts as part of the studio's "Rainbow Parade" series.

THE BLACK DUCK (????): A silent 'Aesop's Fables' from the 1920s that must have gotten a truly bizarre, incongruous voiceover at some point in the late '30s, though no one wants to take credit.