Studio: International Film Service
Short Synopsis
Krazy Kat sets out from a cottage marked "Krazy Kat's House" in a little car stencilled "Kazook", which bounces along the comic-strip horizon. Night falls; a crescent moon hangs over a tall blank wall with a single window, and Krazy pulls up beneath it. In a speech balloon Krazy announces the plan to sing "undeh neet dy window", then takes out a banjo and serenades the mouse inside, Ignatz. Ignatz's reply is the only one he ever gives: a barrage of bricks thrown down from the window. A signpost points "One mile to Kelly's brick yard", which tells the viewer where the ammunition comes from. In the strip, Krazy always takes a brick to the head as a sign of love, and the film plays the serenade on exactly that understanding.
Why It Matters
- The film puts the core of Herriman's strip on screen in two minutes: Krazy's devotion, Ignatz's bricks, and Krazy's happy misreading of the bricks as affection. The car, the moon over the wall and the dialect lettering ("Well well im waitink") come straight from the comic page, and they still look strange and lovely.
- It is an early example of a newspaper comic being turned into a serial animated character within weeks of the studio opening. William Randolph Hearst's International Film Service made Krazy Kat one of the first strips adapted into a cartoon series, and the brick gag became the most repeated joke in the character's long screen life, which continued with Bray, Charles Mintz and later television versions.
Notes and Trivia
- One upload carries the catalogue description that Krazy's serenade outside Ignatz's window "meets with a barrage of bricks", confirming the gag as the film's centrepiece.
- Kelly's brick yard, Ignatz's supplier, belongs to the strip's world of Coconino County.
- See also: Krazy Kat & Ignatz Mouse Discuss the Letter 'G' (1916), Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse: A Duet, He Made Me Love Him (1916).