Mother Goose in Swingtime (1939) Poster

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6/10
Katherine Hepburn jitterbugs with Leopold Stokowski
boblipton23 September 2012
This very late Charles Mintz-produced cartoon for Columbia -- he would go out of the business the next year -- is a standard sort for the 1930s in which movies stars are presented in a cartoon form. This is notable for the good voice work, starting with someone doing a pretty good imitation of Fanny Brice's Baby Snooks.

The caricatures range from big stars whom a viewer might easily recognize more than seventy years later, from Fred Astaire in a sailor suit (that year he and Ginger Rogers starred in FOLLOW THE FLEET) to the obscure, like Herman Bing. The sight gags are the same that were used in the beginning of the decade, like Greta Garbo's big feet and Clark Gable's jug-handle ears that flap like wings. There is almost no facial movement.

While this is never a particularly great movie, the technical side -- besides the voice work and Technicolor, it's a musical cartoon with a well-executed song running through it -- makes it pretty good.
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7/10
Just Try To Name The Cameos
richard.fuller119 January 2014
Warning: Spoilers
Some of these lesser known celebrity appearances in cartoons, which it seems the WB cartoons best captured them, are truly difficult to pinpoint.

This cartoon, with far too many appearances (I was half expecting a closeup of the children in the shoe and we are supposed to recognize them), is chock-full.

First we get Baby Snooks as the little girl hearing the story (no idea who Dad might be, if he is taking off anyone, which I don't think he was).

Then Edna Mae Oliver as Mother Goose, two years before she died.

Rather difficult to pinpoint the actors playing a tisket, a tasket, as it runs from Hugh Herbert (I had to look him up) to Greta Garbo.

No idea who that singing lady is. Martha Raye? Cary Grant is Little Boy Blue.

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb are Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Okay, kidding, but Stan and Ollie had already played these parts five years earlier in Babes In Toyland.

Old King Cole is WC Fields, the fiddlers are the Marx bros.

That William Powell there with the second clarinet player. Don't know who the first was.

Was the slide trombone player supposed to be Joe E. Brown? Don't know who the fair-haired fellow in the middle is supposed to be. Bing? The only one really to recognize in the band is Gable, but Herbert is back there as well.

And then we have Leopold Stokowski, followed by Rogers and Astaire, Have not a clue who the old woman and the big guy with the red nose is supposed to be, the one who goes "ah, gee, tanks." Is that supposed to be Jerry Colonna and Ned Sparks next? Greta Garbo with Stokowlski.

Then Mickey Rooney with the little girl hearing the story.

Katherine Hepburn dancing with what may be Ned Sparks, so I don't know who the other fella was.

And we also have Nelson Eddy and Jeannette MacDonald.

Okay, the guy trio and girl trio? One of the guys is Edward G. Robinson.

The girls may as well be the Andrew sisters for all I can tell.
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8/10
Better than average animated short from Columbia
llltdesq28 April 2014
Warning: Spoilers
This is a musical short from the Columbia Studio animation department. There will be spoilers ahead:

This is an animated short loaded with caricatures of celebrities from the 1930s. It's musical in nature and has Mother Goose as the theme. The radio character Baby Snooks is the centerpiece and caricatures of Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, Astaire and Rogers, Clark Gable, Mickey Rooney, Katharine Hepburn, Hugh Herbert, Ned Sparks and quite a few others run all through this.

It's all set to a swing tune and there's much singing and dancing from the "cast". Mother Goose is a peripheral aspect, this is just a vehicle for the caricatures.

Sadly, like the bulk of the Columbia shorts, this short isn't in print, but can be found online and is well worth viewing. Recommended.
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