Studio: Ub Iwerks Studio (ComiColor Cartoons)
Distributor: Celebrity Productions
Produced by: Ub Iwerks
Short Synopsis
Simple Simon, a gangling simpleton with a white duck for a companion, tries to fish a pie up to his window with a rod and the duck as bait. The pieman catches him eating it, throws him and the duck out and hangs a Room for Rent sign on the door. The Mother Goose characters stream past on their way to the fair, and Simon follows. At the fair a chef offers free samples and Simon eats them all, and the chef chases him and the duck to the judges' stand, where the duck wins a prize and the judges chase him too. Simon climbs a ladder and jumps into the water tank, climbs a giraffe, leaps past the acrobats and lands in a barrel, which a performer kicks away; the barrel breaks and Simon, dizzy, has visions of the whole fair spinning round him before the chase closes in and the film ends with Simon and the duck on the run.
Why It Matters
- It is one of the liveliest ComiColors, a chase cartoon rather than a fairy tale, and Pinto Colvig, Disney's Goofy, gives Simon a voice that suits his amiable idiocy; the fairground, with its acrobats, giraffe and water tank, is a set the Iwerks animators plainly enjoyed.
- The film is in the public domain in the United States, its copyright never renewed, and it is one of the better-preserved ComiColors in circulation; it also marks the point where the series began to lean on comic chase rather than story, a shift that continued through its last year.
Notes and Trivia
- Colvig had worked for Iwerks before Disney and returned to him between Disney engagements.
- The rhyme's pieman is here a fully fledged villain with a rolling pin.
- See also: Old Mother Hubbard (1935), The Three Bears (1935), Humpty Dumpty (1935).
