Studio: Fleischer Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Max Fleischer
Short Synopsis
Betty runs an animal hospital, and the wards are full of patients with appropriate complaints: a giraffe with a pain in the neck, a herring that is pickled, an elephant with a trunk cold, a kangaroo with a sore pouch, a lion with a hoarse roar. Betty nurses them with songs and remedies, but the animals are miserable and morale is low. Professor Grampy arrives, puts on his lighted thinking cap, and prescribes music: he turns the hospital equipment, the beds, bedpans, crutches and medicine bottles, into a band, and leads the patients in a song and dance that cures the blues, with every animal out of bed and dancing by the finish.
Why It Matters
- Grampy's gift for turning any room into an orchestra was the running gag of his series, and the hospital ward, with its invalid animals and its medical props, is one of the richest settings he was given; the animal patients are drawn with the Fleischers' old fondness for animal puns.
- The film is in the public domain in the United States and is one of the more handsome of the Grampy cartoons, with a large crew of eight animators credited and uncredited; it belongs to the brief run of 1936 films in which Betty, Grampy and the animal cast worked together before the series shrank to Pudgy.
Notes and Trivia
- Joseph Oriolo, one of the animators, later created Casper the Friendly Ghost and revived Felix the Cat for television.
- Isadore Sparber, co-writer, became co-head of Famous Studios after the Fleischers' departure.
- See also: Betty Boop and Grampy (1935), More Pep (1936), Grampy's Indoor Outing (1936).
