Studio: Leon Schlesinger Productions
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures
Produced by: Leon Schlesinger
Short Synopsis
An animator's arm draws a farm scene, which colours itself in, and a narrator begins a tour of life on the farm in the solemn manner of an educational film. The animals refuse to cooperate with the tone. A realistic prize-winning horse obligingly trots and gallops when asked, but when told to "canter" he turns into a caricature of the comedian Eddie Cantor, bug-eyed and singing "I'm Happy About the Whole Thing", until the narrator scolds him back into shape. The farmer's faithful old watchdog, "no longer very active", bursts into a sprint to fetch the newspaper the moment it arrives, then settles down to read the funnies: he can hardly wait to see what happened to Dick Tracy. A weasel creeps into the henhouse to steal a hen's eggs, but the eggs hatch all at once and the chicks shout "Boo!", scaring him off. The tour continues through a string of other farmyard gags, each one undercutting the narrator's description.
Why It Matters
- It is a typical Warner "spot-gag" cartoon, with no plot, just a narrator and a series of animals who won't behave, but Clampett gives each gag his own wild energy, especially the realistic horse's sudden switch into cartoon caricature and back.
- It shows Bob Clampett, newly promoted to director, working in the travelogue-parody format Tex Avery had popularised, and developing the rubbery, anarchic style that would make him one of Warner's great directors. The Dick Tracy gag is one he reused in The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946).
Notes and Trivia
- For years only the 1949 Blue Ribbon reissue, with new titles and a scene removed from the negative, was in circulation. An original print later found in the Library of Congress restored the original credits and the deleted grasshopper scene.
- The Film Daily said there was no story, but called the animals' comments "highly amusing".
- See also: Cross Country Detours (1940), The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946).