Studio: Fleischer Studios (Color Classics)
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Max Fleischer
Short Synopsis
On a Hawaiian island two birds are courting under the palms, to a steel-guitar score, and the island's birds dance a hula in the sunshine. A sleek stranger, a rival male, arrives and makes a play for the female; charmed by his dancing, she leaves her mate for him, and the first bird is left heartbroken. A hurricane blows up. The palms bend flat, the sea rises, the nests are torn away, and the female and her new mate are caught in the open; he abandons her and saves himself. Her old mate goes into the storm after her, finds her clinging to a branch, and brings her through the wind and rain to shelter. When the sun returns she has learned her lesson, and the two are together again as the island's birds resume their hula.
Why It Matters
- The plot is the same triangle as Time for Love with birds for swans and a hurricane for the fight, and the Fleischers were plainly fond of it; the storm is the point, a long sequence of bending palms and flying debris over the stereoptical sets that is the most elaborate weather the series attempted. The Hawaiian setting, in 1936, was the height of fashion.
- The film is in the public domain in the United States, its copyright having lapsed with most of the Color Classics, and it circulates widely; its steel-guitar score, by Sammy Timberg, is a period piece in itself.
Notes and Trivia
- Hawaiian music was a national craze in 1936, with Bing Crosby's "Sweet Leilani" the following year's biggest hit.
- Sam Stimson, co-animator, had worked on the Betty Boop series.
- See also: Time for Love (1935), The Little Stranger (1936), Betty Boop's Bamboo Isle (1932).
