186. It's Tough to Be a Bird

RELEASED: 1969
DIRECTOR: Ward Kimball
STORY: Ted Berman, Ward Kimball

A friendly cartoon bird constantly under fire from hunters narrates an educational discussion on the importance of birds in human society. After a brief history lesson, we are informed about modern birdwatching from the National Audobon Society, and are treated to documentary footage of the Buzzard Festival in Hinckley, Ohio. Finally, the short culminates in a bizarre surrealistic explosion of cartoon images.

"It's Tough to Be a Bird" was the last animated short Disney put out in the 1960s, and really the last one made for awhile apart from educational material for schools. And it's not even fully animated; a large portion of this short subject is live action documentary footage that is hosted by the cartoon. For this reason, I questioned whether it even belonged on the list, but as at least half of it is animated and because there are elements that make it unique, I included it. If you've never seen it, it's worth having a look if only for a few brief moments of inspired lunacy.

This short has Ward Kimball's name all over it, and it definitely feels like him. The bird narrator character has a look of Kimball's design, and the sometimes silly moments of humor seem to reflect some of his sensibilities, or at least what I've gleaned from seeing interviews and footage of him. Kimball was one of the famed Nine Old Men of the Walt Disney studio, those top animators that helped shape the things we know and love. Notice also the very rough black lines from the xerography process. I believe I've read Kimball liked it rough like that because it preserved every scribble of the artist.

So what's it about? Well, it's about birds and how great they are. As is often the case in these Disney educational presentations, we begin with a kind of history lesson. One place where I criticize this short is in the evolution segment. I suppose it's fine to discuss the evolution of birds, but did it really need to go all the way back to fish? I don't think so. It's really unnecessary, because what matters is that the birds develop from reptiles. Going all the way back to sea life is irrelevant to the discussion, I think. Also, "archaeopteryx" is pronounced wrong, and I'm not sure if this was intentional or not. The narrator does have this particular accent that sometimes intentionally says things wrong for comic effect (like the way he says "Leonardo Da Vinci"), but I don't think doing so in a scientific context here was smart because kids for whom this is new information will then be saying it wrong.

The importance of birds to humans throughout history is an interesting subject, and though it's glossed over very quickly, I think it's a nice sequence and reasonably informative. However, there's the bit about how early armies based their battles on whether or not the sacred chicken said it was okay. While I'm entertained by it, I seriously questioned the veracity of this claim. We are told this is the origin of the phrase "to chicken out." It may be true, but it does seem to me like one of those bizarre etymologies you find in a book that may not be accurate (like all the rumors about where the F-word came from, most of which are nonsense). In doing some quick research, I found that some Roman histories do cite the feeding of sacred chickens as omens from the gods. Whether this is truly the origin of our English phrase, I do not know. But if it is, then I really did learn something from this short.

There's a great little visual gag during the Noah's ark sequence when the animals come out two by two, and when he gets to "mustangs", two cars drive out. This short is filled with little absurd touches like that which make me laugh.

I enjoy the theme song of the cartoon, perhaps because it has rhymes in triplicate which I always enjoy. It's a catchy little tune, with some very clever lyrics ("you pluck our feathers out and call us dressed"). And it illustrates what I think is the primary focus of the short: stop hunting and eating birds to extinction. By highlighting the historical and cultural significance of birds, it hopes to change America's views of them. Perhaps to curb hunting altogether. It's funny how much the studio's output shifts from the early 1930s to a very anti-hunting message by the 1950s. If anything, this short seems like a commercial for the National Audobon Society, who get their own little sequence in the middle. We see documentary footage of birdwatchers. Remember when they were called "birdwatchers"? Back before they turned "bird" into a verb and started calling themselves "birders"? I miss those days. And speaking of the birdwatching sequence, did you notice the one man with the tape recorder? I'm not positive, but it looks to me like that's Ward Kimball himself. If so, perhaps this short was a subject of personal interest and that is why he made it.

It is at this point that the short goes into full documentary mode for awhile and becomes a human interest documentary about an annual celebration in Ohio of when buzzards return to a small town.  It's a nice curiosity, because who would have ever known about Buzzard Day? The highlight of this sequence, though, is the song "When the Buzzards Return to Hinckley Ridge" as performed by Ruth Buzzi. Buzzi was a known comedic actress of her day, appearing at that time on the popular series Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. She would later go on to other cartoon voice work in the 1980s, and many of my readers might remember her for her run on Sesame Street in the 1990s. Her hilarious vocal performance in this short subject is distinctly Ruth Buzzi. On the YouTube upload of this short, she even stopped by to comment on how much fun she had recording the song. She would later go on to do other roles and voice work for Disney.

There's a part of me that wonders whether the Hinckley sequence might have been better served as its own live-action documentary short subject. The style of this short, switching between the cartoon and the documentary footage, feels very much like the Disney television show. And apparently, that's no accident. An one-hour version of this program did air on the Wonderful World of Color the following year. I wonder if the short came first and was expanded, or if it was made for television and then cut down for theatrical distribution (which Disney did from time to time with other live action shorts of the period). If you perhaps remember it being longer, you are probably remembering the television version.

I like the little George M. Cohan joke at the end where our narrator does the "my mother thanks you, my father thanks you" bit that you might remember from Yankee Doodle Dandy.

What makes the cartoon entirely worth it for me, and warrants its inclusion on this list, is the climactic last two minutes. They don't make any sense, they are just an explosion of surreal images and ideas featuring birds. These moments are very much in the style of animation Terry Gilliam was using on Monty Python's Flying Circus. The earlier sequence with the flying statues getting shot down feels very  very Gilliamesque. And you know what's fascinating? This cartoon was released in 1969, and Monty Python was only just starting in the UK. We wouldn't get it in the U.S. for another two years! Gilliam had done a few similar animations for a series called Do Not Adjust Your Set. All this leads me to wondering just how Ward Kimball or the Disney people came to the decision to do this sort of stuff in this cartoon. Were they influenced by Gilliam? Had they seen any of his stuff? It's amazing because it is so unique in the Disney canon; they never do anything quite like this ever again. That makes these final couple of minutes some of the most interesting Disney animation you can see. It's weird, and funny, and sometimes political. It begins by simply reminding us of the birds that end up on our table, but quickly flashes through all manner of images that get more and more insane. The progression from stills to movement is done well. We see a chicken holding a protest sign that says "eat more fish!" We even get a reference to the political environment of the country with the Vietnam War. Peace protesters were popularly known as "doves" and those for the war were "hawks" (you still hear those terms every now and then, but not as frequently). But here we have this subversive little moment where a dove drops a bomb and a hawk drops a flower. It seems to be making a statement, but what exactly who can say? There's even a bit of more adult humor, like where rooster man hops over to hen lady, but scoots away when she lays an egg. Disney cartoons rarely get this subversive, political, inventive, or bizarre. The explosive nonsense reminds me of the ending of The Three Caballeros, where there seems no logical way to end proceedings so why not a crescendo of surrealism? As the music builds up to its climax, we segue into a montage of clips with dancing birds from previous Silly Symphonies. And after an explosion, just for good measure, a little cutout Mary Poppins flies by. This entire sequence is so unexpected, it is a real treat to watch. The fact that I don't remember Disney ever doing anything quite like this again is a real shame. The first time I saw it I remember saying to myself, "this is a Disney short?"

"It's Tough to Be a Bird" may not have completely iterated why it is indeed tough to be a bird, but it certainly touched on reasons why birds may be more significant to our culture than just being eaten and shot at. It won the Academy Award for Best Cartoon Short Subject, the last Disney would win in this category for a number of years. As far as the educational shorts go, it isn't bad, and is informative. But the real joy of this cartoon is when its unique brand of humor and animation really shine through. This is a cartoon that just can't be easily categorized. I do wish there were more animation and less live action. Even the animation we have is mostly a bird on a blank background doing a slideshow. But there are sparks of insanity that make up for the blandness in other places. This short demands to be seen at least once, and I don't think it's ever been commercially released on DVD, which is a shame. Definitely look it up on YouTube; you'll enjoy it.

187. Scrooge McDuck and Money

RELEASED: 1967
DIRECTOR: Hamilton Luske
STORY: Bill Berg
FIRST APPEARANCE OF: Uncle Scrooge McDuck

Huey, Dewey, and Louie come to Uncle Scrooge seeking advice about their piggy bank savings. After Scrooge gives them a lesson in economics and the history of money, they invest in his company.

The 1960s were the waning years of the Disney short subjects, and even of theatrical animation itself to a degree. After the war, the studio had rebounded in the 1950s with celebrated classics like Cinderella and Peter Pan, culminating in the expensive masterpiece Sleeping Beauty. But the 1950s also saw Walt Disney further diversify his company into television with The Mickey Mouse Club and his anthology series to promote his new theme park, Disneyland. Focus shifted into live-action features beginning with Treasure Island. So while the 1960s brought the more modern look and feel to the animation beginning with One Hundred and One Dalmatians, only three animated features were made by the studio that decade, as focus shifted to other endeavors and animated content was sometimes relegated to their television programs. The popular Mickey Mouse and Pluto series of shorts had ended, while Goofy and Donald Duck would soon end theirs. What shorts were made in the 1960s were sometimes experiments or curious one-off specialties, or they were educational pieces often designed to focus on a particular social woe. This was nothing new exactly, as Disney had had success during World War II making such films as "The Spirit of '43", reminding viewers of the importance of filing their income tax returns, or "Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Firing Line" asking homes to donate their used cooking fats to the war effort.

It is into this environment that "Scrooge McDuck and Money" was released in 1967, one of the last animated shorts released in that decade. It's not as entertaining as some of the others of this period, being much more clearly an educational piece. It has that in common with the two Goofy "Freewayphobia" cartoons (which did not make this list and I'm sure some will be mad at me for it). What content is there is sometimes glossed over too quickly or a bit inaccurately (the discussion of salarium for example is a little loose with fact), but that's true of the company's output at the time. Remember, this is the same educational Disney company that concocted the myth of lemmings jumping off cliffs do their death. But most of the content is fine, if oversimplified. It's a bit drier than other theatrical shorts even of the 1960s (this came out between the released of the first two Winnie the Pooh shorts), feeling much more like something put out specifically for the educational division or for the television series. Heck, I don't know why it even got a theatrical release. But there's a reason it made this list, and not just because it's a mildly amusing economics lesson. It's because of it's place in the larger history of the company regarding a certain character.

This the first animated onscreen appearance of Scrooge McDuck. Uncle Scrooge as a character had actually appeared years earlier in the popular Donald Duck comic books written and drawn by the great Carl Barks. After a number of guest appearances in those comics, Uncle Scrooge got his own comic series. All of these adventures and the cast of characters that came to populate Duckburg would lay the foundation for the popular television series DuckTales (and it's theatrical feature film). But the first step from page to screen was "Scrooge McDuck and Money". You'll notice Scrooge is clothed in red in this cartoon rather than the now-standard blue, but that's how he appeared in the comics at the time. And who do you get to voice this now iconic character? None other than the great voice actor Bill Thompson, whose Scottish brogue you may recognize from his role as Jock the Scottish terrier in Lady and the Tramp. But Thompson has played many other recognizable cartoon characters from the White Rabbit and Mr. Smee for Disney, to Droopy Dog for MGM. His performance of Scrooge McDuck very much lays the foundation for Alan Young's take on the character in "Mickey's Christmas Carol" and DuckTales.

This is also the first time Huey, Dewey, and Louie are given normal voices. In earlier cartoon appearances, they were all variations on Clarence Nash's Donald voice, and usually only to have unison lines like "Yes, Uncle Donald." This too lays the foundation for DuckTales, where they would have more normal voices, but with a little bit of duckiness to them as well. It can be a little jarring hearing their voices in this cartoon because it's quite different from what we are used to up to that point as well as on DuckTales. But it was a stepping stone, and I think important that their speech be intelligible for this short to work.

While "Scrooge McDuck and Money" lays the onscreen foundations for what we would know as DuckTales, there are a couple more steps before we got there. Scrooge has a large vault full of money, but it's not the comically enormous bin with a diving board that we saw on the series. We can see Scrooge's Number One Dime on display in a glass case on a pillow, but it's not the same display it would have on television.

As an historical aside, there was another short cartoon important to the evolution of DuckTales. It was a television special called Sport Goofy in Soccormania. As it was a television production, it didn't make the list and so I will not spend too much time on it. Surprisingly, this cartoon that was ostensibly about Goofy turns out to be a kind of pilot for a DuckTales series, featuring the boys, Scrooge, the Beagle Boys and many of the common DuckTales elements. Of note however, Alan Young does not voice Uncle Scrooge in it, despite having already played Scrooge in "Mickey's Christmas Carol". It's very weird watching it and hearing another voice come out. I don't think it was even Scottish. It feels a lot like an alternate universe version of DuckTales, like the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie that came out before the series.

As you can tell, the historical place "Scrooge McDuck and Money" has in the evolution from comic books to a popular television series is a bit more interesting to me than the short itself. But I would be lying if I said there was nothing here I enjoyed, or I wouldn't have put it on this list. I remember watching it on the Disney Channel as a kid, and learning about budgeting. So in that way it was at least a little bit successful.

The animation is not particularly polished, and certainly doesn't have the care and technique that shorts had in the heyday of the company. Rather, in the style and the execution it is very much in keeping with what the studio was doing for their television programs. We're into the xerography era, with the harsh black lines, but even this is softened for the song sequence describing the history of money from bartering to credit cards. There's also a fair amount of limited animation and live-action shots using techniques from the wartime propaganda days, and fairly typical of some of the shorts of this period. You can see they appear to have used actual money, or at least pictures of actual money for some of it.

This cartoon was directed by Hamilton Luske, who shares animation director credits on many of the features of the 1950s, and directed many pieces for the Wonderful World of Color television program. He began doing more sort of documentary short work, and so the shorts he directed during this period reflect that more edutainment type of approach. These include the award-winning "Donald in Mathmagic Land", "Donald and the Wheel", and a third Donald short, "The Litterbug". So we could take "Scrooge McDuck and Money" as the last installment of Luske's "education by duck" series, if we wish to view it that way. This cartoon doesn't come out of nowhere; it came after a string of similar shorts featuring Donald. For this particular story, it makes more sense to use Uncle Scrooge and the nephews, anyway.

As I mentioned above, the content is informative, if a bit too briskly paced. We quickly cover bartering to the trade of precious metals, but don't get into other nuances of the history, like money based on weight. And it's funny looking back on it now, when Scrooge talks about the troubles of inflation and money not being worth the paper it's printed on, knowing that today money really isn't worth the paper it's printed on! Scrooge predicted the future. And then there's the discussion of how the government has a budget too, but we gloss over the fact that the government hasn't had a balanced budget ever.

The style of this short is reminiscent of others in the later years, when everything rhymes. Though one could also consider this a throwback to the Silly Symphonies which often featured rhymed dialogue because it was meant to evoke music or storybook. The rhyming dialogue here seems perhaps overly cutesy, like a children's storybook about finance.

There remain some nice visuals here and there to try to keep it interesting, like the hat full of money flying around the world. Visualizing a budget as a literal pie is very helpful to the metaphor. And this short is also not without charming moments of humor. My favorite little moment is after Scrooge unwittingly tears up a dollar bill, he makes a point of sewing it back together. That's a delightful character moment and this cartoon doesn't have enough of them. I also like the final moments in which stacks of coins become factories and trains. I think it's a nice little visual device.

The music isn't groundbreaking or anything, but when I was a kid for some reason the "balancing the budget" refrain was very memorable. And it's one of the few aspects of this cartoon that have stuck with me all these years. The music is utilitarian; meant to service the short by quickly doling out information in a catchy way. They're not all particularly catchy, but they are inoffensive. I don't think the little song about buying stock ever really makes clear what Scrooge is talking about. The short seems to gloss over the notion of investment a little too quickly for me. I don't think I understood it as a kid.

Considering the way the cartoon ends, one could perhaps deduce that Scrooge went through this whole spiel just to get the boys' money. He even charged them a 3 cent fee! One could watch this cartoon and get the sense that Scrooge is not just a greedy son of a drake, but a shrewd businessman who made good investments. It would be easy to see him as just a stingy Scottish stereotype, but this cartoon presents him more as just a sensible self-made businessman. Still, the little bit at the end where he ends up with his nephews' money adds a touch of the old expected Scrooge.

"Scrooge McDuck and Money" is nothing earth-shattering and in many ways is probably forgettable. But it holds a unique place in the history of the company regarding Uncle Scrooge. And if nothing else, it is an interesting time capsule for the studio's output in the late 1960s. The style of the short is very representative of what they were doing on television at the time, using familiar characters but broaching educational topics, the choral song work, etc. It's a snapshot of the company at a particular point when priorities were shifting and they were soon to plow ahead without Walt. This was the first cartoon short released after Walt Disney's death a few months earlier. If it has a forgettable quality, it's because the studio was unsure of its identity at the time. But this short also gave a glimmer of what many kids would come to love twenty years later when DuckTales came along and did it right.

188. Mother Goose Melodies

SERIES: Silly Symphony
RELEASED: 1931
FIRST APPEARANCE OF: Old King Cole

A procession brings Old King Cole to his throne, where he calls for his pipe, his book, and his fiddlers three. The book arrives, being a collection of Mother Goose rhymes, and we are treated to humorous musical vignettes with some famous characters.

These are still the early days for the Silly Symphony series, but already we can see a bit of growth. Mother Goose Melodies continues the tradition of animated characters cavorting to recognizable musical motifs, but using nursery rhymes was a clever choice because so many are associated with singable tunes. For each section, the music score accompanying is usually identifiable, even when the rhyme isn't being recited. When the blackbirds fly out of Jack's pie, for example, we can hear "Sing a Song of Sixpence" underneath. You can literally sing every rhyme throughout the short. I like the use of "Baa Baa Black Sheep", in which the sheep actually bleets on the "baa baa" parts.

The short features a lot of the standard tropes of the early Silly Symphony era, such as three figures dancing in unison, a goofy sun, and toothy grins. But there's actually a lot of new ground being broken in this short that will carry into future projects for the company. The most important first in this cartoon is the appearance of Old King Cole. His design, along with his booming jovial voice, would feature throughout the 1930s, both recurring as Old King Cole and serving as a prototype for both King Neptune and Santa Claus. They are all essentially the same figure, and they make their first appearance here.

This is also the first appearance of Mother Goose, both as a character and as a concept. This is the first time the studio has gone to the nursery rhyme well for inspiration but it certainly wouldn't be the last. There would be multiple future Silly Symphony projects, including at least two very similar shorts involving Mother Goose characters. There would even be a short in the 1960s exploring the truth behind certain popular rhymes. The idea of the storybook, and the characters that live in it and pop out of it, would become a standard feature of these cartoons. But more than that, the storybook trope would ultimately become a defining cliche of Disney animated features, beginning with the book that opens Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The interactions inside the pages would also be put to great use in the Winnie the Pooh features. It all begins with Mother Goose Melodies.

The opening parade animation processional that brings Old King Cole in would be re-used in several other projects over the years. For the Academy Awards ceremony several years later, the studio redid the sequence in color, presenting the acting nominees for that year. Instead of Old King Cole, the procession brings in caricatures of the Hollywood stars. During the 1940s, they used the animation again for a Standard Oil commercial.

The design work is interesting in this cartoon because there's a pretty clear distinction made between the "real" people of the kingdom and the ones who live in the book. Characters like Jack and Jill or Little Bo Peep are drawn with a much more juvenile art style. It is very simplistic, almost like stick figures, evoking something more childlike. Meanwhile, character animation and design for Old King Cole, the Three Blind Mice and others is showing a definite progression up from some of the earlier cartoons. There are still holdovers, like the look of the spider, which remains of the sort that we've seen in earlier shorts, but there's definitely progress being made.

I would be remiss if I didn't speak about some of the amusing moments in the cartoon itself. It's all well and good to discuss it's place in Disney history, but it's also on this list for its own merit. While not as major a figure as Old King Cole, this is also the first appearance of the Simple Simon design that remains fairly unchanged throughout the Mother Goose shorts. They'd never get away with something like that today, with this ridiculous fool who's "simple" (read: retarded), and therefore easily mocked. He's always depicted as fishing for some reason, even though that has nothing to do with his rhyme. I have no idea why he has an N on his hat either (if anyone knows, please let me know in the comments!). But I love the bit where he pulls an octopus out of the bucket. It seems so incredibly random and it makes me laugh. The moment when Little Jack Horner pulls out the plum and says, "What a big boy am I" is great because he now has this deeper, booming voice. It makes sense for the character, but it's also part of the humor of the unexpected. And that's where this short works well, in taking these very well known stories and finding ways to surprise us.

Something else it does well is when it connects several rhymes together. It's a surprise to have Jack and Jill turn up at the top of the hill only to find Simple Simon there. But they also smartly blend "Little Bo Peep" and "Little Boy Blue", both of whom are tasked with looking after sheep and doing a lousy job of it. This pairing will usually feature in other Disney cartoons. That whole sequence with them and "Black Sheep" is well thought out. For a cartoon that's fairly simple, the story department did a good job. It's also rather unique in that this one doesn't have a big chase sequence and isn't too reliant on dancing. While it's fairly light on actual story, they found ways to find little stories and make it all work nicely.

One thing I've always wondered though is why so often these characters are depicted in clogs, as if they are little Dutch children. This kind of motif carries over into later cartoons too, and I don't know why. The rhymes aren't Dutch in origin. I wonder if there was some popular illustrated collection at the time and they were referencing those pictures.

Mother Goose Melodies on the surface is a fairly trite, mildly amusing five minute cartoon. And yet it has a legacy in the characters, ideas, and actual animation, that continued in the decades to follow. The Silly Symphonies of the 1930s would not have been the same without it, and that's worth celebrating.

189. Tomorrow We Diet!

SERIES: Goofy
RELEASED: 1951
DIRECTOR: Jack Kinney
STORY: Milt Schaffer, Dick Kinney

George Geef (Goofy) finds he has gotten fat when his reflection calls him out on it. He spends the rest of the day trying to put himself on a diet and avoid temptation to eat.

In the 1950s, Disney's short output was diminished as the studio focused on television and reviving its feature division. Mickey Mouse and Pluto saw their last shorts for awhile in the early years of the decade, leaving only Donald Duck and Goofy with regular output. The Goofy series in the 1950s moved almost entirely away from the "how to" or sports series and evolved into a satirical look at the problems of contemporary American domestic life. These cartoons almost exclusively featured Goofy in the role of George Geef, family man ("Geef" being like "Goof" with different vowels).

There are many differences in the Geef years compared to the earlier shorts, and some of the elements from these cartoons eventually made their way into the Goof Troop television series. George sometimes doesn't have the traditional Goofy voice of Pinto Colvig. His design also often makes him look more like a white american, with his body sometimes not being painted black the way it used to be. Sometimes he loses his dog ears for a more humanoid "haircut" look. These design changes are not consistent from short to short, but sometimes I like to think that Geef looks more "human" in the cartoons that focus on very everyday human problems. Then again, it's probably just due to different directors and animators.

"Tomorrow We Diet!" is one such short where Geef looks very human, though cartoonishly fat. There's something a little weird about seeing Goofy fat, since he's always been tall and gangly. This is also one in which George Geef has a different voice than the typical Goofy sound.

The story here seems just as relevant today as it did in 1951. All over the news we hear people bemoaning how obese Americans have become and what we can do about it. This short takes a fun look at the perils of being fat and not wanting to be. I've been fat since I was a kid, so I've always liked this one.

The story opens when Geef's reflection talks back at him. This is a pretty standard cartoon device, but I think it is used nicely here. I always laugh at his opening line, "Hello, Fat!" As the short goes on, they play more with the rules of the reflection and I love that he's just another guy who lives on the other side of the mirror. He stays there even when George isn't home, almost like a roommate. We see him cleaning the mirror as if it were his own window before George walks in.

There is an assortment of broad gags revolving around how fat George is. Making a suit from the awning outside the tailor shop is amusing, and the chairs buckle under him. All these things are typical "make fun of fat people" jokes. But the key to the sequence is the button: George denies he's fat during all of this and only believes it when one of those fortune-teller scales calls him fat. He won't believe people, the world around him, or his own reflection, but as soon as this machine for superstitious amusement says so, he thinks "I must be getting fat!" I think the cartoon gets away with the easier cheap jokes because of that. Besides, there are also other clever visual ideas in the rest of the cartoon, like how he's not "fit as a fiddle", but rather resembles a double bass.

Then we get to the meat of the cartoon (so to speak) with the focus on his fat being due to his overeating. There's a moment when faced with a carrot, he turns into a rabbit. Indeed, I have similar feelings about "rabbit food". The "get the behind me, salami!" is great too. Then we get a look at all the food elements of his home decor. Why do people decorate their homes like this? There are normal elements (a grape motif on a wall sconce, the fish on the wall), then the slightly weird like how his chair has a fruit pattern. Even that is a bit believable, but then we start to get to a point where I'm not sure his house really looks like this or he's just cracking up. That point comes when I see his drapes are a pattern of cold cuts! I like the build-up of these sequence. Also note the magazine he looks through is photo-real. It's not something they do a lot in Disney cartoons (but they do toy with it in the '50s here and there). In this case, it helps to heighten the appeal of food.

One of the most memorable elements of the short, and the one I always remembered as a kid, was the "Eat!" chanting. It begins with this mysterious voice telling George to "eeeeeat!" The vocal is really nice, with just the right amount of reverb. But as it goes on, it becomes this fun almost robotic "beep boop" kind of voice repeating the word in various tones, almost like car horns. Somehow, I always find it hilarious. It's also the perfect audio to match the visual of all the late night signs advertising eateries.

The structure of the second half is reminiscent of Donald Duck cartoons built around the notion of trying to achieve a task and being thwarted. Here, the task is to avoid eating. The resolution is a nice button on the clever notion of the reflection living in his own world: he actually eats all the food himself! It's one of those beautiful illogical ideas that only works in cartoons. And the episode closes with the familiar Goofy laugh, even though up to this point neither Geef nor his reflection has sounded anything like Goofy.

Viewed through modern eyes, the cartoon could be said to have two problems. One could argue it promotes anorexia, by arguing you should just stop eating. But people should understand this is a cartoon and is being broad to make a point in a short amount of time. I think if this one were made today, it would also be accused of fat-shaming or downright bullying. The reflection constantly refers to George as "fat" or by some other mean nickname. He almost seems to get perverse pleasure out of making George touch his toes and acknowledge his problem. Again, it's a cartoon and I think it gets away with it. I think at its core, it's not picking on all fat people, but addressing this specific person who used to be fit but has problems now through gross overeating. This is not to say everyone is fat because they eat too much. But it was an attempt to shine a light on Americans overdoing it in their diet, because food is awesome. There really isn't even exactly a resolution to the issue; just that the reflection guy is going to prevent George from eating. This cartoon was part of a series of these that focused on the addictions of middle class Americans (other cartoons were made about smoking and gambling). So in this case, focusing on an addiction to food, the intent wasn't to shame fat people into eating disorders, but to shine a light on habit-breaking. It's still relevant today, even if its tactics.

Disney to release animated shorts collection on blu-ray and DVD

I just read that Disney is releasing a new collection of shorts to DVD in a few weeks. Apart from the recent successes like Paperman and Feast, which have been available on other discs, we'll also get the new Frozen Fever, Tangled Ever After and How to Hook Up Your Home Theater which to date had only been available on a Have a Laugh! collection.

But the most interesting news to me is two others that this collection will include: Tick Tock Tale and Lorenzo. I know literally nothing about Tick Tock Tale other than that it exists. No footage exists on YouTube, and I don't think it ever got a wide release. Lorenzo was theatrically released years ago with the movie Stepmom, but it has never been released to home media and so I've only seen brief trailer footage online. These two were among the 4 or 5 shorts that I've been unable to view for this project, and now that's going to change!

I'm so happy to finally see an official release for some of these, and to see others collected in one place for easier reference. I now have to think about whether to amend my ranking to include them, or whether to just do specialty essays on them later. But if there are any readers out there, I'm glad to share this news with you!

190. Figaro and Cleo

SERIES: Figaro (sort of)
RELEASED: 1943

After the release of Pinocchio in 1940, Disney had several breakout stars in the supporting cast. The most prominent is Jiminy Cricket, who would not only go on to serve as narrator and guide in the feature Fun and Fancy Free, but also became a regular feature of The Mickey Mouse Club. He got two regular educational segments of his own, "I'm No Fool" and "The Human Animal". But the other Pinocchio character whose success with audiences prompted his own series was Figaro the cat.

There's no denying Figaro represented a culmination of cat animation for the studio. Figaro is a fully-realized character with his own behaviors and spunky personality, yet he also has distinctly recognizable feline characteristics. It's easy to see Figaro as a further development of the cats from Three Little Kittens and its sequel. So I suppose it was inevitable that Figaro would get his own series.

This first official Figaro cartoon pairs him with another Pinocchio costar, Cleo the fish. Cleo serves as a nice foil for Figaro because while they are sort of friendly, Figaro also can't always deny the temptation to eat her. We call this short "Figaro and Cleo" even though technically that's not the onscreen title. Only the characters' names appear onscreen. I do not know the reason why this is. I think this one was also perhaps meant to be a one-off, even though we count it as the first in the Figaro series. Later Figaro cartoons would have him in the "starburst" opening as the star.

As I mentioned, it's natural to look at this cartoon as a further development from Three Little Kittens. There are more moments of feline mischief, such as Figaro getting tangled up chasing a ball of yarn. There is also a black "mammy" antagonist, as in those shorts. Sadly, this is the thing which most dates this cartoon and the racial undertones can be uncomfortable. Not just the dialect, but the fact that she seems to be bad at her job by sweeping dirt under the rug, something Snow White reminded us not to do in 1937. It would not surprise me in the least if Figaro and Cleo was made in response to Hanna-Barbera's Tom and Jerry series. Tom and Jerry also used to feature a mammy archetype named Mammy Two-Shoes. Later Figaro shorts do away with the mammy character altogether, usually putting Figaro in the care of Minnie Mouse which seems to work better.

There are wonderful moments of feline behavior here, in which Figaro oscillates between panic and playfulness. There's some great animation when Figaro jumps on the broom and finds himself enjoying the ride as it sweeps back and forth, only to fall off. Or when the mammy points her finger at him to scold him, Figaro takes it as a game and swats at it playfully. These moments of observational animation are what defined the work of the Disney studio at its height. Figaro also has characteristics of a child, which makes him relatable. He goes quickly from playing to pouting.

I like the music a lot in this short as well. Figaro gets a bouncy little theme song that's a lot of fun to sing. Though the lyric would lose relevance in other shorts, the melody would remain as his theme music. I also like the little gospel tune the maid sings. Maybe its a racist caricature, but I still like the song, and I like to sing it when I sweep.

Tying a cat's tail to a chair is not cool. Don't do that at home, kids! Real cats are not like cartoons!

My favorite line is when she says, "You is a cat, not a catfish!" I don't know why, but it's funny to me every time.

Some of the business with the cat and mouse (cat and fish?) games also seems to ultimately lead to Lucifer in Cinderella. Figaro is a kitten and more fun than Lucifer, but some of the gags here where happenstance brings Figaro to his quarry reminded me of Lucifer chasing Gus in the tea cups and some of the other moments from that film. The studio came to be very good at doing cats.

In the end, Figaro and Cleo make up and he decides not to eat her. He gets himself almost drowned in the attempt, and when he chooses to leave her alone he is rewarded with milk. Mammy then tells him, "that's the trouble with the world today, folk won't live and let live. In this house, we'll have peace." I wonder, is this the moral of the whole cartoon? Given the time this was made, it makes me wonder if Figaro and Cleo was meant to be a wartime propaganda cartoon in the same way Chicken Little was. Is it a plea for the nations of the world to put down their arms and respect each other? In 1943, the studio was making many war-related cartoons with its stars, and the specialty ones usually had some kind of war-related theme or moral. This leaves me to wonder if Figaro and Cleo was actually designed as a parable pleading for world peace; a kind of spiritual successor to Ferdinand the Bull. If so, are we meant to take it as allegorical? Does Figaro represent Germany? He gets a good scolding and told he only gets fed when he stops misbehaving and leaves others alone. Sounds a lot like what happened at the end of World War I to me. Then again, perhaps it's not so black and white as that. Maybe it's not all-out propaganda. But there does seem to be an underlying message to the contemporary world: don't hurt others out of your selfish desires; we should all get along peacefully.

Both Figaro and Cleo would appear again in later cartoons. Figaro would go on to two more starring roles, as well as several supporting appearances with Pluto. As Figaro is generally paired with Minnie Mouse in later appearances, this first short is a bit of an outlier. But it demonstrated the character had a life outside of Pinocchio, and it reminded us all to try to live peaceably with each other.

191. How to Be a Sailor

SERIES: Goofy
RELEASED: 1944

How to Be a Sailor is unique in the Goofy "how to" canon. Very often, the "how to" shorts revolve around sporting activities. This one is more occupational. It also is one of the only Goofy cartoons to address wartime conditions, and unexpectedly becomes a propaganda piece at the end. Usually, the war cartoon stuff was left to Donald Duck or Pluto, who were in the army during the war years. There is one Goofy short, Victory Vehicles which speaks to homefront issues like the rubber shortage, though it's mostly an excuse to show silly inventions and promote the pogo stick. How to Be a Sailor is the only Disney World War II cartoon to focus on the navy rather than the army. It's also one of the few that shifts attention to the war in the Pacific. This makes sense given the time of its release. Really the only other Pacific War cartoon is Commando Duck, and that one is far more racist and makes for uncomfortable viewing today.

This cartoon opens with a trend begun in several other Goofy cartoons, that of the "subject through the ages" motif. Indeed, for much of this short it feels less like how to be a sailor and more like the history of sailing. Some might note the similarity to the "History of Aviation" sequence from 1943's Victory Through Air Power. It's very different from the other "how to" shorts as the narration really is more of a history lesson and less of an instructional as in, say, How to Ride a Horse.

You may also note the use of more limited animation in this cartoon, particularly in the more detailed ships toward the end. Note that only the flags wave and the rocking in the ocean is minimal. During the war, Disney was forced to pioneer limited animation techniques to save money and time. Many of these techniques were employed mainly in the educational, propaganda, and military training shorts.

One thing that really stands out about this cartoon for me, though, is the animation of Goofy's walk cycles in some of these moments. The entire pirate sequence is a lot of fun, and Goofy's pirate captain walk where his head remains steady and only his body shifts is delightful. I think they sometimes used similar animation for birds in other shorts like pirate parrots. Maybe the lawyers walked that way in Who Killed Cock Robin? The image is certainly familiar. But in a similar vane, I enjoy the bit with Goofy's upper body maintaining steadiness while the whole ship rocks around him. This is a fun visual.

The intent of the short would seem to be that all the advances in naval history had prepared America to defeat the Japanese. The ending is really quite unexpected, as Goofy accidentally shoots himself out of a canon, only to take down an entire Japanese fleet. Of course, we know they are Japanese not only because of the Rising Sun behind them but because the vessels are anthropomorphized Japanese caricatures. In a clever ending, Goofy speeds toward the sun on the horizon, stylized as the Rising Sun of Japan and shatters it while the score plays "Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue". It's a stirring bit of war propaganda and while the short on the whole is a middling entry in the Goofy canon, I consider that moment one of the best Disney propaganda moments of the war.