Fleischer Studios did a regular series of shorts with a mix of live-action and animation with featured "sing-alongs", where the audience would sing along with a musical performance. The lyrics would appear on the screen and a guide would pace the audience in time to the music. When Paramount switched their animated shorts to an in-house production studio (called "Famous Studios"), one of the things they kept, at lest for a time, was these types of shorts, which followed the same type of format, but were entirely animated and used a "Bouncing Ball" as the cue. This short is one of the better ones they did. As I will discuss a little of the detail in this one, this is a spoiler warning:
The cartoon opens up with a farmer going out to his barn and setting up a music stand to conduct an animal symphony orchestra. There follow brief snatches of familiar tunes with animated gags more or less tied to the music. For example, a mouse playing a trombone is playing "Three Blind Mice", while a cat tries to catch the mouse by using a violin bow. In another bit, three lambs sing "Mary Had a Little Lamb" while a pig tries to play a stovepipe as if it were a tuba. These bits are very clever and the timing on the bits is very good.
Then, the farmer talks to the audience, inviting them to sing along to "Old Macdonald Had a Farm". The sing-along takes almost half of the short's running time, but there's some nice animation as background in spots.
The short finishes up with a short animated sequence, as was typical for the Famous Studios series and this is almost the highlight of the cartoon, as the farmer is in a tuxedo and the various animals form a Conga line and sing until the end of the short.
This is available on at least one low priced DVD that I know of and shouldn't be that hard to locate. Well worth watching.
The cartoon opens up with a farmer going out to his barn and setting up a music stand to conduct an animal symphony orchestra. There follow brief snatches of familiar tunes with animated gags more or less tied to the music. For example, a mouse playing a trombone is playing "Three Blind Mice", while a cat tries to catch the mouse by using a violin bow. In another bit, three lambs sing "Mary Had a Little Lamb" while a pig tries to play a stovepipe as if it were a tuba. These bits are very clever and the timing on the bits is very good.
Then, the farmer talks to the audience, inviting them to sing along to "Old Macdonald Had a Farm". The sing-along takes almost half of the short's running time, but there's some nice animation as background in spots.
The short finishes up with a short animated sequence, as was typical for the Famous Studios series and this is almost the highlight of the cartoon, as the farmer is in a tuxedo and the various animals form a Conga line and sing until the end of the short.
This is available on at least one low priced DVD that I know of and shouldn't be that hard to locate. Well worth watching.