Crazy Classic Cartoons Festival #5: HOLLYWOOD HAVOC! Cartoons take on Tinseltown!
As a kid I would watch old cartoons and once in a while they would show Hollywood stars in them. I didn't always know who they were, but as I watched old movies I spotted them. A joy then & now.
Peter Lorre in the brilliant HOLLYWOOD STEPS OUT
"Hollywood Steps Out" is a 1941 Merrie Melodies animated short directed by Tex Avery.
In this cartoon, Hollywood's brightest stars (at the time of the short's premiere) are at a swanky nightclub for a night of dancing and dating. Many gags and situations involving those stars ensue.
Celebrity Cameo: Loads and loads of them (some of which are well-known even today, while others will need a quick Google, Wikipedia, or IMDb search to figure out who they are, what their movies are, and whether or not they had an impact on American cinema). In alphabetical order: Don Ameche, Mischa Auer, Wallace Beery, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Claudette Colbert, Ronald Colman, Jerry Colonna, Bing Crosby, Errol Flynn, Henry Fonda, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Judy Garland, Paulette Goddard, Cary Grant, Oliver Hardy, Rita Hayworth, Sonja Henie, J. Edgar Hoover, Boris Karloff, Buster Keaton, Kay Kyser, Dorothy Lamour, Peter Lorre, Groucho and Harpo Marx, Adolphe Menjou, William Powell, Tyrone Power, George Raft, Sally Rand, Edward G. Robinson, Cesar Romero, Mickey Rooney, Norma Shearer, Ann Sheridan, C. Aubrey Smith, Ned Sparks, James Stewart, Lewis Stone, Leopold Stokowski, Spencer Tracy, Arthur Treacher, The Three Stooges and Johnny Weissmuller.
The cartoon was cut for TV and then again for DVD release. Smoking and an outrageous ending were discarded. This version is uncut, click this link:
Click this link for the uncut HOLLYWOOD STEPS OUT
"Slick Hare" is a 1947 Looney Tunes cartoon short, directed by Friz Freleng.
The cartoon starts out at the "Mocrumbo" nightclub in Los Angeles—(a parody of the Real Life Mocambo nightclub, since demolished) where a meal will cost $600 a pop and you'll find many Hollywood stars. One, Humphrey Bogart, demands fried rabbit. The waiter, Elmer Fudd, panics as the restaurant is out of rabbit. Fortunately for him Elmer finds Bugs Bunny in the vegetables in the kitchen, munching on carrots. The usual madcap antics ensue as Elmer chases Bugs, trying to make him into Humphrey Bogart's lunch.
Among the celebrities impersonated in this cartoon are Ray Milland, Barbara Stanwyck, Frank Sinatra, The Marx Brothers, Sydney Greenstreet, Gregory Peck, Carmen Miranda, Lauren Bacall, and Humphrey Bogart. The Ray Milland character lampoons his famous role in The Lost Weekend, paying for a drink with a typewriter and getting tiny typewriters back as change. We also see conductor Leopold Stokowski, who was memorably parodied in another Bugs Bunny short, "Long-Haired Hare". Many Merrie Melodies fans consider this the best of the bunch, watch it by clicking this link:
Corrected link SLICK HARE click here
Mickey’s Gala Premiere 1933
Mickey and the gang attend a premiere of his latest cartoon at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, and lots of Hollywood celebrities of the time are all there to see it.
Mickey Mouse (voiced by Walt Disney)
Minnie Mouse (voiced by Marcellite Garner)
Celebrities, and there’s a lot of them, include Ben Turpin, the Barrymore’s, The Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, Maurice Chevalier, Jimmy Durante, Joan Crawford, Garbo, Charlie Chaplin, Mae West, Gloria Swanson, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Frederick March as Mr. Hyde, Douglas Fairbanks, Walt Disney, I mean this is just a partial list! Watch it by clicking this link:
Watch MICKEY'S GALA PREMIERE by clicking here
HOLLYWOOD PICNIC
In this 1937 entry from Columbia Pictures' "Color Rhapsodies" series, Hollywood stars go on a picnic. Among the stars caricatured are W.C. Fields, The Marx Brothers, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, the Three Stooges, Clark Gable, Shirley Temple, Mae West, Katherine Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Martha Raye, Step'n Fetchit, and many more. Shown with the original Columbia main titles intact, this cartoon, released by Columbia Pictures, was produced by Charles Mintz and supervised by Sid Marcus (story) and Art Davis (animation) with music by Joe DeNat.
A HOLLYWOOD DETOUR
OK, here's who appears: W. C. Fields (red nose), Bing Crosby (well-known for betting on horse races), restaurant table for Dagwood Bumstead and his baby daughter, Baby Dumpling (comic strip characters who also appeared in movies), Katherine Hepburn, John Barrymore (first of three appearances here), Rita Hayworth and Fred Astaire (as they looked in the Columbia Pictures film released about this same time, "You'll Never Get Rich"), in the cement of Grauman's Chinese Theater: Sonja Heinie (ice skater, so her autograph is in ice), Greta Garbo (always caricatured as having big feet), Paul Muni, and Joan Crawford, William Powell (famous for "The Thin Man", which created a series of murder mysteries that used this name), Jell-O mold home of Jack Benny (since Jell-O was the sponsor of his popular radio program), "the home of Baby Candy" (no idea who that is), the home of Gypsy Rose Lee (famous stripper), baseball game: Joe E. Brown, Marx Brothers, and the Three Stooges, horse belonging to Kate Smith (famous singer who was very fat), on the beach at Malibu: Laurel & Hardy (lying down), Clark Gable, Edna Mae Oliver, and George Raft. John Barrymore machine-guns all the autograph hounds at the end.
Behind the paywall: Disneyland - Man and the Moon (1955)
"Man and the Moon" is an episode of Disneyland which originally aired on December 28, 1955. It was directed by Disney animator Ward Kimball, and is about the Moon. It begins with a humorous look with Man's fascination with the Moon through animation. This segment features the Moon's usage in everything from William Shakespeare and children's nursery rhymes to lunar superstitions and scientific research. Then Kimball comes on with some information on the Moon, supplemented by graphics. Kimball then introduces Dr. Wernher Von Braun, who discusses plans for a trip around the Moon. Dr. Wernher Von Braun was employed as a technical consultant on this film by Walt Disney.
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