Title: The Bird Man
Studio: Columbia
Date: 02/01/35
Credits:
Story
Ben Harrison
Music
Joe De Nat
Animation
Manny Gould
Allen Rose
Harry Love
Series: Krazy Kat
Running time (of viewed version): 6:52
Commercial DVD Availability: -
Synopsis: Cat learns to fly, is slowly accepted by birds, and strikes head.
Comments: Parrots were more important in '35 than '39. Santa had been trapped in the chimney, like in Gremlins (the '80s feature, not some cartoon)... Krazy is a generic '30s character, trapped in his (the animated one is male, right, not just a butch female with a girlfriend?) '30s barnyard milieu. Interesting subtext; a flying cat is likely to be very good at eating birds. Pleasing sectored shot of the mother bird on the phone. Krazy should be claiming to be a bird cat, not a bird man. Some young bird has a peg leg... Belly dancing worm and a fan dancing bird. The story moves hither and thither with abandon.
Yay! Glad you're back. I think of all your cartoon blogs this one's my favorite. Krazy Kat is the bomb yo!
ReplyDeleteAt this point the animated Krazy Kat was male. In 1936 there was the one-off effort, LI'L AINJIL, to do a Herriman type of story again—at which point Krazy is suddenly female for that one cartoon.
ReplyDeleteI have approximately no recollection of watching this cartoon. I wrote it up and screen capped it in late 2010, but I must have posted it in the last couple of months. It's kinda like watching someone else blog...
ReplyDeleteThe oddest thing about THE BIRD MAN, I've just realized, is its visual design for Krazy. He's drawn in the Oswald-influenced style that Friz Freleng introduced in late 1929—which is a surprise, insofar as otherwise Columbia stopped using that design in 1934: a kind of Felix/Mickey crossbreed had replaced it in TRAPEZE ARTIST.
ReplyDeleteWait, two kinds of cartoon cats in the same cartoon? Mind blown!
ReplyDelete