Monday, February 6, 2012

017 Rhythm In the Bow



Title: Rhythm In The Bow
Studio: Warner Bros.
Date: 02/01/35 (in LTMM and OMAM, but not in Dave Mackey's)
Credits:
Supervision
Ben Hardaway
Musical Score
Norman Spencer
Animation
Rollin Hamilton Ben Clopton
Series: (Merrie Melodies on tacked on viewed opening, and on tacked on end credits)
Running time (of viewed version): 6:57
Commercial DVD Availability: -

Synopsis: A slice of hobo life, involving coming to terms with a dog.
















Comments: Quite the toothful opening. Hobo riding the 515; see the '39 cartoon. Wolvertonian folks. This human design is more pleasant than WB would get to in '39. Blackface gag, but there's nothing ther than the blackened face to mark the gag. Was the hobo picture a bit like the western? I know there were a few hobo movies, and I'm sure it never rose to the level of the western as a massive unstoppable force, but I wonder if it was a lesser version of the same kind of thing. In cartoons, it might even be stronger than the western. Hmmm, if you include Chaplin, then hobo movies might have been stronger. Chaplin wasn't exactly about riding the rails tho. This cartoon feels more like a WB cartoon than the Buddy entries do; maybe it's the blackout gag-ness of it (altho to be fair that should feel like many other studios as well). Irising out from one shot of a chase to a different shot of the same chase; interesting choice. Lots of friendly knife play in this.

I had to reinsert this into the year; this is one of the examples of cartoons that are not universally agreed upon as in 1935, and this is in the relatively well researched WB filmography. Just imagine how wrong my release date attributions are for Columbia, or Iwerks... Sadly, most dates are simply presented as dates without direct attribution for sources (which I am sad to admit includes this blog, usually). The ultimate cure is for someone (could be me, could be you) to go and find early sources, and create a set of proposed dates with an explanation of where each proposed date (or set of dates) for a given cartoon come from. I should probably get around to doing it for the years I'm blogging on. BoxOffice is dodgy on 1935 tho.

2 comments:

  1. The Vancouver Sun of Nov. 24, 1934 says it was playing at the Capitol (on Granville) and had one-line review. So it's not a 1935 cartoon.

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  2. I wonder if it was released earlier in Canada than the US...

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