The Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives (A Recycled Mess)

 

Director: Rudolf Ising

Summary: On a cold and snowy Christmas Eve during the Great Depression, an orphan boy is visited by Santa Claus and joins him on his sleigh ride back to the North Pole, where the boy gets to play with all the toys Santa has in his workshop.

The Channel: Cartoon Network (on Late Night Black and White)

Part(s) Edited: If you think a wholesome cartoon like this couldn’t possibly have problematic content in it, then this must be your first time here. The second half of the cartoon does have some outdated depictions of African-Americans (like most cartoons of the time) and Cartoon Network cut the following that they felt was offensive:

• The orphan boy winding up the Sambo Jazz Band toy (“sambo” being an offensive term for a black person, though it’s more for someone from South India, not an African-American, as there’s a children’s book called Little Black Sambo and it’s supposed to be about a South Indian, not an African-American. It was probably used as a slur for both either way). The Sambo Jazz Band toy was also seen (and edited on Cartoon Network) on the MGM cartoon, “Toyland Broadcast” (which I had on a video featuring Christmas-themed MGM cartoons and loved as a kid, despite the outdated racial and ethnic stereotypes).
• A white baby doll falling into a coal bucket and coming out in blackface, doing the Al Jolson “Mammy!” schtick, with an actual mammy doll responding, “Sonny boy!”
• The title character and her black back-up singers from “Red-Headed Baby” appearing again to sing “The Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives.”

How It Plays Edited: The Looney Tunes wiki and the old Censored Cartoons Page have described the edited version as “severe.” While the edits do make some of the scenes feel disjointed, it pales in comparison to the actual severe edits seen on “September in the Rain,” “Bacall to Arms”, and most of the post-1948 Warner Bros shorts aired on free TV (particularly on ABC and CBS, though NBC’s take on “The Turn-Tale Wolf” and The WB’s hatchet job editing to “A Star is Bored” qualify).

Video Comparison: 

Uncut version:

Edited Version:

Availability Uncut: This is a public domain cartoon (has been since 1962), so it’s not too hard to find on YouTube or whatever YouTube substitute you prefer. If you’re a physical media fan, then you can find it on either the Golden Age of Looney Tunes laserdisc (volume 3, side one, dedicated to Harman-Ising cartoons), as a special feature on the DVD version of the 1933 film Lady Killer starring James Cagney, or as a special feature volume three of The Warner Gangsters Collection. 

It should also be of note that this is the last Harman-Ising short that’s in the public domain in the United States (for now, at least) and the only public domain short in 1933, which means that the rest of the censored cartoons I go through are still under copyright (unless otherwise noted, as there are some 1930s and 1940s cartoons that have fallen into the public domain and a few were made as educational/propaganda material for the U.S. government, so they never had copyrights to begin with) and I’ll have to change how I do the video comparisons to reflect that.