Goin' on a Brief Break

Next week is going to be a bit busy for me in the lead-up to Labor Day weekend (plus, I have to create the videos for my next five entries), so no entries from August 26th to the 30th.

I've Got to Sing a Torch Song (The Trouble is Not Your Radio Set...)

 

Director: Tom Palmer (planned and credited); Isadore “Friz” Freleng (finished and uncredited)

Summary: The antics of a radio station run by Ed Wynn, featuring many racial and ethnic caricatures enjoying the broadcast worldwide and the title song sung by caricatures of Greta Garbo, ZaSu Pitts, and Mae West. As far as Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies fans are concerned, this one is under-the-radar for good reason. It was made when Harman and Ising finally left Warner Bros. Studios and Leon Schlesinger was desperately scrambling for replacement talent. Tom Palmer (the original director) was supposed to be that talent, but his original versions of this and “Buddy’s Day Out” were so bad that Friz Freleng (back when he was credited as either “Isadore Freleng” or “I. Freleng”) was called to salvage the trainwrecks.

The Channel: Nickelodeon (Nick@Nite version of Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon)

Part(s) Edited:

The old Censored Cartoons Page listed this short’s edits as, “Scenes of the Chinese police and African cannibals were edited out of this cartoon's black-and-white print.” 

And, they are right: there was a scene featuring Chinese police officers sleeping in a rickshaw and tying up the police radio transmitter so they won't be bothered by their boss when he calls for all cars to report to an unknown crime that was cut when Nickelodeon aired this as part of their Nick@Nite version of Looney Tunes on Nick (original airdate: August 4, 1991. The Nick@Nite Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon came on between 1988 and 1992 while the installment show itself lasted until 1999, though I never saw Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon after 1996, mostly because the cable wasn’t on much at my house and mostly because this was when Nickelodeon was airing more of its original programming rather than what they had imported from other countries and syndicated domestically), but there was only one scene featuring an African cannibal (just one, not a group of them), and that was the scene of the African cannibal tuning in to a cooking show on his skull radio and adding mustard and salt to his stew of white explorers (shown as caricatures of 1930s vaudeville and film comedians Bert Wheeler and Robert Woosley) before stirring them.

And th-th-th-that’s not all, folks! The good people who used to run the Censored Cartoons Page forgot to mention two more edits that Nickelodeon did:

• The scene of the Bing Crosby caricature Cros Bingsby crooning, "Why Can't This Night Go On Forever?" cut the brief shot of college coeds (some of which are shown in skimpy lingerie) listening to the broadcast, though the old spinster hugging and kissing her radio while listening to the broadcast as well wasn’t censored.
• The sequence of the radio show reaching international audiences had a scene of an Arab sheik shooing away his belly-dancing concubine and switching over to a broadcast of Amos 'n Andy in the uncut version. Nickelodeon’s version redubbed the Amos ‘n Andy broadcast with music from the beginning of the short.

How It Plays Edited:

1) The Cros Bingsby/coed part: Other than a mildly obvious audio skip (and the hypocrisy of leaving in the old spinster making out with a radio when the college coed part wasn’t as sexually provocative as Nickelodeon’s cut makes it out to be), this isn’t too bad.

2) The Chinese police/cannibal part: Okay, the hypocrisy of this cut is starting to annoy me. They left in the Inuit/Eskimo man listening to the radio and nearly getting swallowed by a whale. I can only handle one instance of selective censorship at a time.

3) The Amos ‘n Andy redub: Eh, the music makes the scene feel a bit off. Why would the sheik shoo away his concubine just to listen to some music when he was already listening to music? I guess it can be written off as, “He was sick of the music from his country and wanted to listen to something different, since this is a sequence showing Ed Wynn’s radio show hitting international audiences,” but even that’s pushing it.

And what’s odd about all of this is that I was given the edited Nickelodeon copy from a tape trade and a few years later, the cartoon itself was released on DVD (see “Availability Uncut” below), so I did what every amateur animation critic should do: I watched them side by side to see what was cut and what wasn’t. The old Censored Cartoons Page, sadly, didn’t correct the mistake, so I had to make do with the Looney Tunes Fandom wiki and, of course, this blog here.

Video Comparison: The video was too big to load on the blog, so click here to see for yourself. (EDIT: 11/7/25: I'm going to redo the compare/contrast video on this, as I did a bad job on it the first time. Since this is one of my most popular posts, stay tuned for a new version).

Availability Uncut: This under-the-radar short surprisingly has been released on physical media. It’s on the DVD and Blu-ray version of the film Gold Diggers of 1933 (since the title song is also heard in the movie) and it’s on the fifth volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set. Archive.org has it online (for now), but it’s not on YouTube, unless you want to see clips of how it was censored on Nickelodeon or one of the audio commentary reviews from Anthony’s Animation Talk.

Bosko's Picture Show (Hit-ler and Miss, or Meet the Fawkers)

 

Director: Hugh Harmon and Isadore "Friz" Freleng

Summary: In this, the last Bosko short made for Warner Bros/Leon Schelsinger studios, Bosko shows viewers what a night at the movies was like back in the early 1930s. There were sing-alongs with actual in-house organ players, a newsreel showing world events, a short film featuring comedy duo Laurel and Hardy (though some theaters showed other shorts from comedy duos -- and trios, in the case of The Three Stooges), and a melodrama where Honey is in danger of being kidnapped by Dirty Dalton (the cur!).

The Channel: Nickelodeon (Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon -- Nick @ Nite version; as of the second airing)

Part(s) Edited:

• The “Out of Tone” newsreel sequence is missing the story of a Hollywood screen lover (Jimmy Durante) spending his vacation in Germany getting chased by Adolf Hitler (in what is commonly believed to be his first caricatured appearance in an American cartoon. “Cubby’s World Flight”, an obscure short made around the same time as this, is considered the first, but when was the last time you’ve heard someone talk about Cubby?) with an axe.
• During the melodrama He Done Her Dirt (And How!), Bosko shouts “The dirty fuck!” when he sees Dirty Dalton (the cur!) sneak onscreen on a wheel-less bicycle. The first time Nickelodeon aired this short, that part wasn’t cut (or so it’s believed). Starting with the second time, “The dirty fuck!” was changed to “The dirty cur!” (with “cur” being recycled from the part near the end where Bosko yells, “Stop, you cur!” before jumping through the movie screen).

How It Plays Edited: The first cut doesn’t really affect the overall short. The abrupt cut in audio might hint at something missing, but it can logically be written off as a scene that was cut before theatrical release, not a scene that was edited when aired on television. As for the second cut, it’s obvious that something’s been changed, as this video will show you:

Availability Uncut: The only official release it has (as of 2024) is on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection volume six (on the third disc dedicated to Bosko, Buddy, and one-shot black and white musicals). As it’s still under copyright, you’re not going to find the whole thing on YouTube. You might find clips of the infamous “dirty fuck” line and a review/commentary or two, but no full cartoon. Archive.org does have it uncut, but even that website has had copyrighted videos taken down, so catch it while you can or just shell out money for an official release.

EDIT: “Bosko’s Picture Show” can also be found as a special feature on the Blu-ray release of the movie Lilly Turner, starring Ruth Chatterton and George Brent. The movie was released on Blu-ray this year; that’s why it was never mentioned until now.

Final Thoughts and Miscellany: If you’re wondering whether or not Bosko actually did call Dirty Dalton a “dirty fuck,” then you’re not alone. A lot of classic animation fans and historians have argued this. Some believe that Harman and Ising wouldn’t go that far, since this was the time that the Hays Code was in effect, but no one really took it seriously until mid-1934 (this cartoon was released in 1933, so dicey content in American movies still popped up here and there. You can visit pre-code.com or just look up “pre-Code movies” on YouTube or whatever search engine you prefer if you want to learn some American film history before its Golden Age) and think that Bosko called Dirty Dalton a “dirty fox” (which is the line in the closed captions/subtitles on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection volume six version) or a “dirty mug”. While Mark Kausler (animator and director of the 1991 animated version of Beauty and the Beast, the 1994 animated version of The Lion King, and 2001’s Osmosis Jones) thinks Bosko’s line was “the dirty mug,” according to lip sync and a perceived soundtrack flaw that turned an innocent word obscene, animation historian Jerry Beck had several people see the film, with all of them concluding that Bosko indeed called Dirty Dalton a “dirty fuck.” As for me, I believe Bosko did say “dirty fuck,” but it sounded more like “dirty fock” (rhymes with “hawk”). Guess if the short “u” sound was replaced with an "aw" digraph sound, no one would know the difference back then.

Then there’s the question of why Harman and Ising would let this slip. Was it because films back then were trying to be as subversive and obscene as possible, which caused the Hays Office to censor films more harshly after mid-1934, since the Code wasn’t as enforced as it should have been when it first came out in 1930? Were Harman and Ising so mad at Leon Schlesinger over budget issues that this was their “screw you”/“up yours”/“take this job and shove it” (all of which would be too rude to say or imply under the Hays Code, just so you know) moment that led them to go work for MGM? Or is it actually just an innocent word turned rude?

I Like Mountain Music (Lip Service, or Three Sides to Every Story)

 

Director: Rudolf Ising

Summary: In a follow-up to “Three’s a Crowd,” characters from books and magazines of the early 1930s come to life in a drugstore at midnight. It’s not the first to have this (since “Three’s a Crowd” also had book characters coming to life and other shorts, like “Red-Headed Baby” and “It’s Got Me Again” were also cartoons where animals, inanimate objects, and fictional characters also partied once the clock struck midnight), but it is the first to establish this formula, which would last until the directors decided to make cartoons with actual plots and characters, culminating to Bob Clampett creating the ultimate “book characters partying after midnight” short, “Book Revue.” (I know an episode of the 1990s Animaniacs did something like this in a video store, but, like “Book Revue,” that was a spoof of a bygone subgenre).

The Channel: Cartoon Network (on an episode of Late Night Black and White and on the “Midnight at the Bookstore” episode of ToonHeads); Radio & Television Managers redrawn version.

Part(s) Edited:

• A short scene of African natives (standing in front of a magazine called Asia magazine, which makes me wonder if they’re actually African natives or are supposed to be South Asian [as in “from India”]) flapping their oversized lips to the music as Sonja Henie (a well-known figure skater back in the 1930s) skates on a mirror with baby powder to simulate snow was cut when Cartoon Network aired the short on Late Night Black and White. It was also cut when it was shown as a redrawn-colorized version on the ToonHeads episode, “Midnight in the Bookstore,” which, coincidentally, wasn’t part of the original episode. The original “Midnight in the Bookstore” episode (first aired on December 18, 1998) had the cartoons “Speaking of the Weather,” “You’re An Education,” and “Book Revue.” Apparently, “You’re An Education” was so filled with outdated racial and ethnic stereotypes that it was pulled and replaced with “I Like Mountain Music” (which also had outdated racial and ethnic stereotypes, but was easier to have those scenes removed) in reruns.
• The Radio & Television Managers redrawn version (retitled “Magazine Rack”) left in the African/South Indian natives and their oversized lips, but altered the magazine publishing dates to 1970 rather than some time in the early 1930s and cut the performance of “Sweet Adeline” because it had racially insensitive caricatures of Pacific Islanders (which are really just the hula girl and the native guitar players from “Pagan Moon”)

How It Plays Edited/Video Comparison: Since I recently stumbled upon a video that shows a three-way comparison between the original uncut black and white version versus the Radio & Television Managers redrawn version versus the Turner Entertainment version, I’m just going to show that instead of tell you (the reader) for the billionth time that the edits didn’t affect the story because this is one of those musical cartoons that doesn’t have much in the way of plot. Yeah, there’s a sequence where the other book characters try to stop criminals from a crime thriller pulp magazine, but those are a dime a dozen in shorts like this. If, for any reason, this gets pulled from YouTube for copyright reasons, I’ll edit the post to reflect the change:

Availability Uncut: Despite both the uncut and edited redrawn versions being available on YouTube, it is under copyright (though something tells me it’ll be in the public domain in a few short years). It has been officially released on the fifth volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Age laserdisc set (it’s on side one, which is dedicated to black and white cartoons), the final volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set (on the third disc dedicated to the early black and white cartoons. It’s on the bonus cartoon list, alongside “I Love a Parade,” “Sittin’ on a Backyard Fence,” and “How Do I Know It’s Sunday?” It’s not remastered, if you care about that sort of thing, but it is uncut and uncensored), and is a bonus feature on the Public Enemies: The Golden Age of Gangster Films DVD (released in 2010), on the Blu-ray version of the film Ladies They Talk About starring Barbara Stanwyck, and on the Blu-ray version of the 1933 adaptation of Little Women starring Katharine Hepburn. Both Blu-ray movies have the cartoon uncut, uncensored, restored, and remastered for high-definition. It was available on HBO Max (now called “Max”) when the streaming service was first released in 2020, but it was removed as quickly as it premiered due to (say it with me now): scenes of outdated racial and ethnic stereotypes.

Bosko's Knight-Mare (Falling Stars)

Director: Hugh Harman

Summary: Bosko dreams that he’s a Knight of the Round Table after falling asleep while reading a book on Arthurian legends.

The Channel: Nickelodeon (on the Nick @ Nite version of Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon)

Part(s) Edited: When Bosko first meets the Knights of the Round Table in his dream, the scenes showing the knights as popular celebrities of the day (Ed Wynn, Jimmy Durante, Mahatma Ghandi, and Oliver Hardy, with Bosko turning into Stan Laurel, Hardy hitting Laurel/Bosko and Laurel/Bosko whining over getting hit) was cut.

Opinion on the Edit: Yeah, there’s no real explanation behind his cut. Arguments can be made that the Ghandi caricature could be potentially offensive, as Mahatma Ghandi is a revered figure in Indian history, but I have a feeling that Nickelodeon left in caricatures of Ghandi in other early black and white Warner Bros shorts. Maybe there was some kind of licensing issue over the celebrity likenesses being depicted, but then all the celebrities caricatured here and in other shorts would have been cut. Since the only celebrities the Nickelodeon version allowed were the original Marx Brothers (back when Zeppo was included alongside Groucho, Harpo, and Chico), I’m going to assume that the cut was done because the scene simply ran too long and Nickelodeon needed to shorten the cartoon to make room for more shorts and, most importantly, more commercials.

How It Plays Edited: There’s an obvious skip in the audio track, but nothing too serious. That’s all I got.

Video Comparison: 

Availability Uncut: Yeah, there’s no real legal way to see this. It was on television back when Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon aired this in the late 1980s into the early 1990s. I’m not 100% sure if Cartoon Network ever aired this, since they did air black and white Warner Bros cartoons, but most of them were the one-shot musicals. As of 2024, it hasn’t been released on DVD, Blu-ray, or streaming (either as part of a WB short collection or as a special feature to a film). Since it’s under copyright, most video websites will take it down -- operative word being “most”. While YouTube may only have it available as part of a review (they used to have a video clip showing how it was edited on Nickelodeon, but that has since been taken down), DailyMotion has it uncut, as does Archive.org.

The Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives (A Recycled Mess, or I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas)

 

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's also been mocked on Rifftrax, the modern, YouTube generation version of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

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.

Three's a Crowd (Booked on Friday)

Director: Rudolf Ising

Summary: When an old man finishes reading Alice and Wonderland for the night and goes to bed, the title character comes out of the book and holds a literary dance party set to the title song…until Mr. Hyde kidnaps her.

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

Part(s) Edited: Every scene with Robinson Crusoe and his black native guide, Friday, was cut, as well as the entire scene of Uncle Tom from Uncle Tom’s Cabin singing “I Got the South in My Soul.”

How It Plays Edited: Even though this is one of those musical shorts that has a thin plot and is mostly a chain of scenes, this does suffer a bit from being edited. Mr. Hyde coming out of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde had to be edited because you can hear Uncle Tom singing, which will make viewers wonder where Mr. Hyde came from. There’s also Mr. Hyde getting sprayed with ink by Robinson Crusoe and Friday, which had to be cut and leads to Hyde getting sprayed by unseen forces. The video comparison below tells it all.

Video Comparison:

Uncut version: Link here

Edited version: Link here

Availability Uncut: As of 2024, the only physical media release it has is on the Golden Age of Looney Tunes laserdisc set (second volume, side one, “Musical Madness”). It hasn’t (yet) been released on DVD, Blu-ray, streaming, or digital download (and, despite the black stereotypes, it does feel safe to show. It’s not heavy with it, like “Goin’ to Heaven on a Mule” or any of the Censored Eleven shorts), but it is readily available on online video sites, as it’s been in the public domain since 1961.