Land of the Midnight Fun
Land of the Midnight Fun | |
---|---|
Merrie Melodies series | |
Directed by | Tex Avery |
Produced by | Leon Schlesinger, Henry Binder |
Story by | Melvin Millar |
Voices by |
Mel Blanc Robert C. Bruce Sara Berner Tex Avery |
Music by | Carl Stalling, Milt Franklyn |
Animation by |
Charles McKimson Virgil Ross |
Distributed by |
Warner Bros. The Vitaphone Corporation |
Release date(s) | 1939 |
Color process | Technicolor |
Language | English |
Land of the Midnight Fun is a Merrie Melodies cartoon directed in 1939 by Tex Avery. Robert C. Bruce narrates this cartoon and Melvin Millar wrote the story. This is one of a series of cartoons which poke fun at the travelogue shorts used during this era to highlight nature and travels the ordinary citizen might not be able to enjoy.
This was one of very few a.a.p.-owned WB cartoons to carry that company's logo on Cartoon Network broadcasts after 1995, when many of these cartoons were shown as "dubbed versions". This was the first cartoon to have the Merrie Melodies rings red, white and blue with a cloud background (similar to the cloud background from the 1948 and 1984 Warner Bros. Pictures logos).
Plot
A cruise to Nome, Alaska, starts with various cruise ship jokes: the ship pulls out of the harbor like a car, raising anchor also raises the front of the boat, the ship follows the coast by curving around it. On arrival, we see some local scenes: A penguin eats two fish, then is eaten by the third; the dogs of a dog sled stop (behind an iceberg) at a telephone pole; a timber wolf goes around shouting "Timber!" (even the wolf admits, "Gee, this is silly!"); two Eskimos rub noses: in preparation, the woman applies lipstick to her nose. Finally, an Eskimo nightclub (after all, the nights are six months long) features a rotoscoped ice skater. The ship leaves, and gets caught in the fog near New York; when the fog clears, we see the ship is perched atop the World's Fair Trylon.