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Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Well, Bless My Soul....It's BOTTLES (1936)

Sorry for the nearly year long absence...I was sidetracked with many other on and off line projects.


Anyway.

Like any animation studio, The early, Harman-Ising (post-Warner Bros.) MGM cartoons experimented with Disney type happy/scary musical thingies come to life.

One such was in their second full release season (1935-1936), "Bottles" (named just that). It's the famous story of a pharmarcist who gets shrunked down by a skeleton (veteran radio/cartoon voice
Martha Wentworth)
right like the following year's "Snow White" (Disney)'s Wicked Witch (post-Queen) and the skeleton in her dungeon combined and then meeting happy bottles, then scary ones.

Apparnetly both produced and directed by Hugh Harman & Rudy Ising, this runs 10-1/2 minutes long and relies generally on a version of the old song "Little Brown Jug"
and an original piece called "Diapies" sung by three baby bottles (Bereneice Hansell in ALL roles). Graham Webb's only semi-reliable 2000 "Animated Film Encyclopedia"
(McFaarlne Press, Jefferson, N.C.) (in terms of some credits) identifies Frank Nelson (who would've been WAY pre-his famous "Yesss!"), Elmore Vincent (presumably as our hero) and some others.

Aforementioned Miss Wentworth (1889-1974) also recognizably plays Witch.....Hazel. (even then, that name used and it was originally a medicine!)

At the end it's all a dream with the shortest post-wake up come around ending.."Well..BLESS MY SOUL!"(our hero the druggist.)

These 3-color (full color) 30s Technicolor MGM cartoons soon competed with WB (who was going form B&W to CInecolor to 2coilor Tech to 3CTech, which Warners was doing with "I wanna play house" and slowly others following
Disney with "Band Concert" fully were doing..Columbia, and with Looney Tunes, Warner Brothers, ever the penny pincher - with all due respects :D -  continued in B&W, and Paramount./Fleischer was doing this for a while more.)

Scott Bradley put all those songs and music themes together...msuci for druggists to run from...