Studio: Winkler Pictures (Charles Mintz / George Winkler), for Krazy Kat
Distributor: R-C Pictures (North America), First National (international)
Produced by: George Winkler
Short Synopsis
Krazy Kat wakes up hungry, finds the refrigerator empty and goes out to look for breakfast. Everything he tries is snatched away: a pie on a windowsill is removed before he reaches it, a string of sausages in a dog's basket proves too slippery to steal, and a mime with a steamer of sandwiches takes his cookware and runs. Then Krazy sees a chef carrying a roast turkey into the prison and watches through the window as it is served to a prisoner. The conclusion is obvious: a prisoner eats well, so he must get himself arrested. The rest of the cartoon is Krazy's campaign to be jailed, and its result, which is that a cat trying to be a criminal cannot even manage that. The film survives and circulates in good copies.
Why It Matters
- The joke of a character who tries to get into prison for the food is a Depression gag made before the Depression, and Bill Nolan's version of Krazy, round, rubbery and all appetite, is a long way from Herriman's lovelorn strip cat; the sausage and sandwich gags show Nolan's gift for elastic movement, which he had helped to invent with "rubber hose" animation at the Hearst studio.
- Stomach Trouble belongs to the Winkler Krazy Kat series of 1925-29, made by the same company that was distributing Disney's Alice Comedies and about to take Oswald from him; Nolan went on to be Walter Lantz's chief animator on Oswald in 1929. The Winkler cartoons are the missing link between the Hearst Krazy Kat of the 1910s and the Mintz-Columbia sound series.
Notes and Trivia
- The series dropped Herriman's Ignatz Mouse and Offissa Pupp almost entirely; this Krazy is a generic cartoon cat.
- Bill Nolan is credited with inventing the panning background in 1913.
- See also: Bowery Bimbos (1930), Alice Solves the Puzzle (1925).