Studio: Fleischer Studios (Color Classics)
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Max Fleischer
Short Synopsis
In a jungle schoolhouse the animal children file in for lessons under a stern hippopotamus teacher: monkeys, a giraffe who has to fold his neck to fit the room, a kangaroo whose joey sits in the pouch, and a small, earnest elephant who is bullied by the class clown, a monkey. The lesson is a song, with the pupils reciting their alphabet and arithmetic in rhythm and the monkey mocking the elephant's answers and playing tricks on him, pulling his trunk, stealing his lunch and getting him blamed. The elephant bears it in silence. At recess the monkey's pranks escalate until the little elephant, remembering every one of them, turns on his tormentor and gives him a thorough thrashing, to the cheers of the class, proving the proverb of the title.
Why It Matters
- The jungle schoolroom, with the giraffe folded into his desk and the joey in the pouch, is a good excuse for the Fleischers' animal gags, and Roland Crandall's drawing gives the little elephant real pathos; the film is a schoolyard-bully story told with a proverb as its punchline, a form the Color Classics used more than once.
- It is in the public domain in the United States, its copyright having lapsed with most of the series, and it was one of the first Fleischer cartoons released in 1935; Seymour Kneitel, co-animator, later ran Famous Studios.
Notes and Trivia
- Fleischer historians note the film as an early example of the studio's shift toward Disney-style animal sentiment.
- The schoolroom setting was reused by the Fleischers in Educated Fish, underwater.
- See also: Little Dutch Mill (1934), Educated Fish (1937), The Song of the Birds (1935).