September in the Rain (No Plot? Plenty of Problems!)

 

Director: Friz Freleng (credited as “I. Freleng”)

Summary: Your typical “midnight in the store” cartoon. This one is in a grocery store on a rainy night where the products and their label mascots come to life and do bits and musical numbers (some of which are recycled from other shorts, since Freleng did do that). It’s short, it’s sweet, it’s played straight, and while not that many people like it, I think it’s fine for what it is.

Fun Fact: This was submitted and screened for an Academy Award nomination, but was never picked. That...might be for the best, given how painfully average it is, but the rotoscoping on the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers dance is at least worth something.

The Channel(s): TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, and on DVD.

Part(s) Edited: All the black caricatures are cut from this short, though the 1995 Turner dubbed version at least left in the Al Jolson “Dream of Wheat” (Cream of Wheat) mascot serenading the Aunt Emma (Aunt Jemima, now known as “Pearl Milling,” which yeah, does sound like the name of a U.S. Southern black woman and “Aunt Jemima” could have been her nickname when she became known for her pancakes or what her white slave owners called her) mascot with the title song. I’ve never seen that version; I’ve seen the version where every black caricature is cut and the cartoon, which already has a 5-minute, 47-second runtime, now runs at 3 minutes and 32 seconds (or 4 minutes and 36 seconds, if it’s the version where the Al Jolson/Aunt Emma part was left in, but not the performance of “Nagasaki” at the end).

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit: On the one hand, the cartoon was just a collection of musical numbers and light comedy bits, so complaining about how the edits ruined the cartoon is kinda stupid on my end (not as stupid as making an already short cartoon shorter, but that’s neither here nor there). On the other hand, it’s obvious that parts are cut because of the jump in music.

Video Comparison: Instead of doing one video showing the uncut vs. cut scenes, I’m showing the actual cartoon vs. the common edited version (Cartoon Network, Boomerang, TBS, TNT, and on DVD) and the 1995 Turner dubbed version (which probably aired on Cartoon Network, TBS, and TNT back in the 1990s, though it could have been made for unnamed syndication and some home media releases):

Uncut Version:

Edited Version #1 (version where all black caricatures are cut)

Edited Version #2 (version where the Al Jolson/Aunt Emma part is uncut, but the ending isn't):

Availability Uncut: Yeah, about the only place this is available uncut is The Golden Age of Looney Tunes laser disc (volume 4, side 10). The DVD version of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie, Carefree, has an edited version, though I don’t know which one (the one where all the black caricatures are cut or the one where at least the Al Jolson/Aunt Emma scene was uncut). It hasn’t been on television since…I wanna say, the early 2000s (last seen on Cartoon Network) because, even with the parts cut, it’s just filler. Be glad that the uncut laser disc version can be found on sites like archive.org.

‘Til next time…

Into Your Dance (Not Into Your Stereotypes)

 

Director: Friz Freleng

Summary: Captain Benny's Showboat is in town, featuring a Porky Pig-looking conductor who gets booed off the stage (until he dons a flimsy disguise) and an amateur hour featuring the cow teacher Miss Cud from "I Haven't Got a Hat," a tough-guy boxer reciting sweetheart poetry, and a stuttering anthropomorphic dog reciting the titular song and driving away the audience.

The Channel: Cartoon Network (don't know the exact show this would have been on. Judging by the fact that it's a mid-1930s musical short with none of the well-known characters, I'm going to assume it ran on The Acme Hour, since a lot of obscure WB cartoons aired there, particularly on the weekday 6:00 in the morning version that actually ran for an hour with commercials, not the two-hour, Saturday version where the cartoons were a bit more on the mainstream, "I remember seeing that as a kid on [insert channel/home media release here]" side).

Part(s) Edited: A little light in the edit department today. All that was edited when this aired on Cartoon Network (which didn't last very long) was the scene of the four-man minstrel show singing the title song as people pour in to Captain Benny's Showboat.

How It Plays Edited/Video Comparison: I think the video comparison says it all. While the black-out here isn't as quick as what Cartoon Network usually does with its scene transition edits, I feel like I did capture the spirit of the edit:

Availability Uncut: On physical media, it's available on the Golden Age of Looney Tunes laserdisc set (volume 5, side 4) and as a special feature on the DVD version of the movie, Annie Oakley, starring Barbara Stanwyck, Preston Foster, and Melvyn Douglas. Over on streaming and digital media, it's surprisingly available uncut, uncensored, and restored/remastered on HBO Max (now known as "Max"), despite "Those Beautiful Dames" also being available on the same platform, but with cuts to outdated black caricatures. And believe me: minstrel show men (whether they're actual black men or white men in blackface, since that's what a minstrel show is/was) are just as stereotypical to show in the modern day as a black girl in pickaninny braids. What makes one more acceptable to show than the other?

Red-Headed Baby (The Black Dolly-a)

 

Director: Rudolf Ising

Summary: In this prototypical version of Toy Story, a baby doll (the titular “Red Headed Baby,” though, since it’s in black and white, how could anyone tell, besides using their imagination?) falls for a toy soldier, but a villainous spider has his many eyes on her first.

The Channel(s): TBS (in the days before Cartoon Network was created to air all the cartoons in the Turner Network library, so, before 1992)

Part(s) Edited: The ending celebration musical number (of which most of these musical cartoons have) was cut to remove all scenes with the Red Headed Baby doll singing the title song with two stereotypically black girl dolls (called “golliwogs” or “pickaninnies” in their day, though due to who’s directing this, they can easily be doll versions of Bosko’s love interest, Honey). This only applies to the redrawn, colorized version. I’m so sure the black and white version has never aired on television. If it has, then probably only once, either with or without the same cuts described here.

There's also a strange edit in the scene of Napoleon the toy soldier sword fighting the spider and getting conked on the head with a wooden building block. The scene goes from Napoleon getting hit with the block to him passed out on the ground with a pile of what I assume is wood next to him as the Red Headed Baby sobs for him to wake up. Was there supposed to be more to that scene? Was it cut because of the Hays Code (which was in force back then, but we're in pre-Code territory, so a lot of films, both popular and obscure, treated the Code as a light suggestion and got away with a lot before mid-1934, when things really started to crack down and would stay that way until the late 1960s, though the mid-to-late 1950s was when the Code's power started to weaken)? Was it cut because of time or pacing or a need to rush the short out as quickly as possible without consideration for quality? We may never know.

How It Plays With the Edit: Since I can’t find an actual edited copy of the short, nor can I find a colorized version to recreate, I’m just going to go by how I think it would go. It would be very choppy, getting rid of all shots of the Red Headed Baby and the black doll back-up singers. I can’t imagine any of the audio being saved and alternate footage being used to bandage up the cuts done, so you’re left with jump cuts and missing music snippets. As for the possible edit, I think I just described how it plays.

Availability Uncut: It’s another public domain short (been there since 1959), so the original uncut and black and white version shouldn’t be hard to find. There is also a redrawn version available, but it’s not the colorized edited version. That version is available on the 2006 DVD release of the movie Cimarron. The 2023 Blu-ray release is remastered, uncut, and in its original black and white format. If you’re looking for a copy of it on a Warner Bros compilation home media set, the most recent release of that is on the 1992 Golden Age of Looney Tunes laserdisc (volume three, side one, dedicated to Harman and Ising shorts).

Here's the full (probably?) version for all to see: