Those Complicated Funny Little Bunnies

With Easter fast approaching, Disney’s Funny Little Bunnies was clearly an obvious choice for the subject of a post here at 2719 Hyperion.

When I watched the 1934 cartoon short recently, I saw a quaint, entertaining, but largely unspectacular endeavor from Disney’s prolific and groundbreaking Hyperion era. The film was the only Easter-themed short produced by Disney and stands as a shining example of the studio’s early marriage with three-color Technicolor. Like numerous other Silly Symphonies, it is a generally plot-less affair, a series of gags and vignettes that served to explain the more secular traditions associated with the Easter holiday. Similar in theme, style and structure to the earlier Santa’s Workshop, the short features a happy contingent of well-dressed rabbits and their assembly line antics, producing holiday treats such as decorated eggs and chocolate bunnies.

So, how could I take a fresh look at this 70+ year old cartoon?

There was the possibility of merchandise tie-ins. But alas, I’m not much of a vintage Disneyana collector and references to products relating to the more obscure Silly Symphonies are a bit difficult to track down. But there was one interesting item that bore mentioning--a 1951 Little Golden Book entitled Grandpa Bunny, that nearly two decades after the cartoon’s release, explained the origins of Bunnyville and its founder Great Grandpa Bunny Bunny.

Then there was the angle of Wolfgang Reitherman, one of Disney’s famous “Nine Old Men.” It had been noted that Funny Little Bunnies was likely Reitherman’s first assignment at the Disney Studio. I immediately went scrambling for Didier Ghez’s Walt’s People books and dug back into the series’ one Reitherman interview. But there was only a brief mention of the short where the studio veteran noted some difficulty in animating the decorated eggs in a couple of scenes.

My Disney history muse was clearly letting me down.

But sometimes an academic approach is not always the correct one. And it was my own mother who indirectly reminded me of this fact.

She was with me when I popped the DVD in the player a second time and navigated through the menu screens to Funny Little Bunnies, desperately seeking some measure of inspiration.

Within a few moments after the short started, my mom observed, “This is old, like one of the cartoons I would have watched when I was a little girl.” I confirmed that she would have been a child of five years when Funny Little Bunnies was released. She continued to watch for a few moments, then added, “Cartoons were good back then. Not like now. I don’t understand the cartoons that come out now.” As a grandmother of toddlers and tweens, she was likely referring to antics of Sponge Bob, Kim Possible and the countless other animated denizens that travel the current cable and satellite signals.

Talk about a humbling moment. Mom’s very basic observation was the perspective I needed. I was over complicating a bunch of cute rabbits.

Because Funny Little Bunnies, like so many of its Silly Symphony contemporaries, is engaging in its very simplicity. In a funny, colorful and happy manner, it explained to a generation of Depression-era children, just where Easter baskets came from.

Disney enthusiasts such as myself frequently expound on the child-like wonder that Disney entertainment often restores to our jaded and cynical adult frames of reference. Yet very often we can’t see the enchanted forest for the trees. Sometimes a work of animation needs to be perceived as it had been by its original audience, without any baggage of historical perspective. To its audience of some seven decades ago, Funny Little Bunnies was a simple and entertaining eight minutes of cartoon fun.

The Old Mill - November 5, 1937

It is well near impossible to underestimate the importance and impact of The Old Mill, Disney's classic Silly Symphony that was released seventy years ago on this date. Cited most often as the first film to employ the multiplane camera, its merits extend well beyond that particular technical innovation. In their now classic book Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston succinctly describe why The Old Mill is so notable and important, even beyond the achievement of the camera itself:

By 1936, a new type of picture was becoming possible. Technical skills were advancing and a new camera was being built that promised wonderful illusions; animation of rain and clouds and lightning had improved to the point where they were quite convincing; cartoon colors were beginning to glow; and new styling coordinated all of a film's parts into one unified concept. When these achievements were combined with the ability to portray mood on the screen, a true milestone in the development of the animated cartoon resulted: The Old Mill, Academy Award winner for 1937. With no story other than the reaction of various animals to one stormy night in a broken down mill, the film showed that an audience could be swept up by sheer artistry and become deeply involved in an animated film.

Echoing similar themes, authors Russell Merritt and J.B. Kaufman remarked in their recent excellent and extensive tome Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies:

This is the first Disney film meant to be taken seriously, the first with quasi-religious overtones in which art, nature, and machinery are given a sacred aura.

Much could certainly be written about The Old Mill, from the specific technical intricacies of the multiplane camera to the film's numerous awards and accolades. But its very simple, yet stunning interpretation of life, death and renewal is what truly resonates and continues to distinguish the film some seven decades later.

The Old Mill, under the inspired direction of Wilfred Jackson and Graham Heid, is brilliant in both composition and visual direction. The viewer is literally drawn into this microcosm of nature, almost as if taking the form of an incorporeal spirit and witnessing the events that subsequently transpire. This is in fact a deliberate dynamic created by the film's makers, in that frequently, the various creatures seem to acknowledge the viewer, most notably an especially observant owl.

The film opens some distance from the mill, as seen from the perspective of an orb weaver spider meticulously crafting its web. A slow and methodical zoom brings us in closer to the mill as we witness ducks and cows in their deliberate motions and travails. The focus settles on a small songbird whom we follow into the mill's interior to its mate and a nest of eggs. In a truly amazing vertical tracking shot attributed to animators Bob Wickersham and Stan Quackenbush, we travel from the building base to its peak, along the way encountering mice, doves, the aforementioned owl and finally a colony of bats who, with the approaching dusk, take leave and return us to mill's surrounding community of residents.

A cacophony of frog croaks and cricket sounds becomes an entertaining musical interlude. In perhaps one of the film's most stunning scenes, fireflies dance before the backdrop of the mill. This all leads to the climatic and visually mesmerizing thunderstorm. Drama unfolds as the mill residents attempt to survive an assault that culminates in a dramatic lightning strike.

Dawn arrives, peaceful and serene. The bats return from their nightly sojourn and we journey through and away from the mill much in the reverse manner of how we initially approached it. Starting at peak, we descend through the mill's now slightly more disheveled interior and revisit again the owl, doves, mice and a nest of newly hatched songbird young along with their attentive and proud parents. Retreating back from the mill, we see ducks and cows reversing their prior travels and we ultimately return to the spiderweb of the film's beginning, destroyed, yet still beautiful in its rain soaked glistening. While the mill's residents have ultimately weathered the storm, in a subtle testament to the nature of life and death, it is the fate of the distant spider that is questionable.

As noted, The Old Mill was a dramatic departure for Walt Disney, and especially remarkable in that it was less than a decade removed from the more primitive presentations of Steamboat Willie and The Skeleton Dance. In theme and execution, it paved the way for much of what would emerge a few years later in Fantasia. It's opening scene would be reinterpreted close to fifty years later for the equally stunning opening sequence of The Rescuers Down Under.

The Old Mill is an amazing and notable achievement, a film whose depth extends well beyond the visual dynamic afforded to it by one of the Disney Studio's most famous innovations.

Who's Who in Mother Goose Goes Hollywood

As a companion post to Going Hollywood With Mother Goose, we hereby present a guide to the celebrities and popular culture represented in the Silly Symphony cartoon, Mother Goose Goes Hollywood.

The short opens with a direct parody of the MGM roaring lion logo. While it comically features a roaring Mother Goose, what it notable is the take-off on MGM's slogan,"Ars Gratia Artis," or translated, "Art for Arts Sake." The Mother Goose logo features the pig latin phrase "ERTZNAY TO OUYAY," roughly translated, "Nertz to You!" or "Nuts to You!" This is quite likely a not-so-subtle dig at the Hays Office, the industry-created watchdog organization headed by Will H. Hays that constantly dogged Hollywood studios to adhere its code of morals and standards when producing their films. The Hays Office considered the phrase "Nuts to You!" to be offensive and frequently demanded (although often unsuccessfully) for it to be removed from scripts and films.

Katherine Hepburn is the first star to been seen in the cartoon. She is cast in the role of Little Bo Peep and spends the entire cartoon in search of her sheep.

The Old King Cole sequence features Hugh Herbert as the king and Ned Sparks as his jester. Comic actor Joe Penner arrives and presents Herbert with a not quite cooked duck--Donald Duck that is. Penner's signature line throughout much of his career was "Wanna buy a duck?"

Groucho, Harpo and Chico Marx are the Fiddlers Three.

Charles Laughton, Spencer Tracy and Freddie Bartholomew are represented in Rub-a-Dub-Dub, Three Men in a Tub. Laughton is seen in his role of Captain Bligh from Mutiny on the Bounty while Spencer Tracy portrays his character of Manuel from Captains Courageous. Although Bartholomew appeared with Tracy in Captains Courageous, he is seen here as his character from the movie Little Lord Fauntleroy.

W.C. Fields portrays Humpty Dumpty and is antagonized by famous dummy Charlie McCarthy. Fields and McCarthy shared the screen in the movie You Can't Cheat an Honest Man and their longstanding feud was a popular feature on Edgar Bergan's radio program. Fields had previously played the role of Humpty Dumpty in the 1933 motion picture version of Alice in Wonderland.

Simple Simon and the Pieman are represented by Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

See Saw Margery Daw is performed by Edward G. Robinson and Greta Garbo. Garbo utters her famous line, "I want so much to be alone."

Eddie Cantor is Little Jack Horner; Wallace Beery is Little Boy Blue.

From the cartoon's musical finale, Edna May Oliver, Mae West and ZaSu Pitts form a singing trio. Some sources claim that the center character is Joan Blondell, but based on her exaggerated figure, hairstyle and facial features, she appears much closer to Mae West.

Clark Gable and George Arliss.

Cab Calloway and Fats Waller.

Fred Astaire and the long controversial Stepin Fetchit.

And finally, big mouths Joe E. Brown and Martha Raye complete the musical number.

But one possible mystery remains. Who is portrayed on the figurehead of the rattle held by Ned Sparks in his jester incarnation? The design seems too distinct to be generic. Would anyone care to hazard a guess?

Going Hollywood with Mother Goose

Similar to efforts made for the 1933 cartoon Mickey's Gala Premier and the 1939 Donald Duck short The Autograph Hound, the Disney Studios transformed Hollywood celebrities onto celluloid in what became the most expensive of all Silly Symphonies, Mother Goose Goes Hollywood. Immensely popular and critically lauded when released in late 1938, it would, in unedited form, go on to languish for decades in the Disney vaults due to perceived offensive content related to its caricatures of African American personalities Cab Calloway, Fats Waller and Stepin Fetchit, and a brief blackface gag involving the animated incarnation of actress Katherine Hepburn. The Walt Disney Company finally made it available in uncut form in 2006 on the Walt Disney Treasures More Silly SymphoniesDVD.

The celebrity caricatures in Mother Goose Goes Hollywood are credited to Disney Legend Tee Hee, and they proved to be his baptism of fire into the Walt Disney Studios. Hee began working in Hollywood in the mid-1930s, drawing caricatures of contract stars for MGM's publicity department. He moved to Warner Brothers in 1936 where he would provide similar designs for the cartoon The Coo Coo Nut Grove. Despite a earlier failed interview with Disney Studio boss George Drake and art instructor Don Graham, Hee later allowed a neighbor's brother, who was an animator at the studio, to hand deliver to Walt a collection of his caricature drawings.

In an interview with Richard Hubler, Hee described how he manged to get in the door of the studio: "This was through these caricatures again. Thank goodness they were the entree because my drawings were not good enough and Walt liked the caricatures. He thought they were great and he said, 'I think we can use him on Mother Goose Goes to Hollywood,' the film that they had not been progressing very far with."

He was paired with Ed Penner to create a storyboard for the short. He described to Hubler the story meeting where he and Penner presented their ideas to Walt Disney:

"When we started going through it, I had enough ham in me that when it came to the parts of the characters, I would enact them, standing up in front of the people--there were about twelve or thirteen people there, including Walt. I did Katherine Hepburn saying, 'I've lost my sheep, really I have," . . . I was flitting around you know, like they would do. And I think Walt was entranced. He laughed, and all the other guys laughed too . . . Ed Penner and I, we had the conviction that Walt would like it, and while I'd never met him, I just felt this was what he would like. So when it was all over with he said,'Well, I think it's great. What do you guys think?' And they all said it was great. So I knew I had a friend."

The other creative powerhouse behind Mother Goose Goes Hollywood was Ward Kimball. Kimball animated more characters than anyone else on the crew, most notably the characters representing Hugh Herbert, the Marx Brothers and Cab Calloway.

As Hee observed, the project had been long in development when he was brought on board. According to authors Russell Merit and J.B.Kaufman, Hee combined the ideas from two previously unrealized Silly Symphonies--The Hollywoods and Mother Goose Land. Bill Cottrell, along with Joe Grant, (Grant had previously designed the star caricatures for Mickey's Gala Premier), conceived for The Hollywoods a forest setting filled with birds and animals based on Hollywood personalities. It was shelved primarily due to Warner Brother's release of The Coo Coo Nut Grove, which Hee, as mentioned, was instrumental in helping to create. Hee ultimately married this idea to the concept of Mother Goose Land, a short that was developed in the mid-1930s, but also later abandoned. A Walt Disney memo from 1935 summarized the idea for the short: "Jazz has taken the place of the old jingles, so Mother Goose takes them and puts them to a modern tempo with modern thoughts." This concept clearly evolved into the lively jazz-based finale led by the Cab Calloway and Fats Waller characters in Mother Goose Goes Hollywood.

Merit and Kaufman also noted " . . . so much story material was suggested for Mother Goose Goes to Hollywood that at one point, in the spring of 1937, Disney considered releasing it in two reels. Ultimately it was released as a standard one-reeler, but remained the most expensive of all the Silly Symphonies."

Mother Goose Goes Hollywood was certainly appreciated by the very show business community it both satirized and celebrated; it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cartoon Short Subject. It competed that year with three other Disney shorts, The Brave Little Tailor, The Good Scouts and Ferdinand the Bull. The popular and similarly acclaimed Ferdinand ultimately took the top prize.

Don't miss the companion piece to this post:

Who's Who in Mother Goose Goes Hollywood