Buddy's Show Boat

Buddy's Show Boat is an American animated short film produced by Warner Bros. and released by RKO on December 9, 1933.^[1] It is a Looney Tunes featuring Buddy, the second star of the series. It was directed (or "supervised") by Earl Duvall, here credited as "Duval," and was one of only five Warner Bros. cartoons (three of which feature Buddy) that he directed. Musical direction was by Bernard Brown, and the short features several popular songs of the day.

Summary

Buddy's show boat merrily rolls along a river as "Bam Bam Bammy Shore" plays & Capt. Buddy whistles in tune; to his brief dismay, one of the ship's whistles blows out of tune, which Our Hero corrects by holding an handkerchief up to the steamwhistle, such that it appears to "blow its nose." A new musical number, "Swanee Smiles," begins, & we see a series of scenes of those aboard the vessel: four blackface minstrels shovel coal into the engine, &, as a gag, descend markedly in height, from the tallest, standing near the engine, to the smallest, to whom the shovel is passed, near the coal pile; two sleepy gentlemen hold on to fishing rods holding aloft sausages, which are slowly pursued by two dogs, which, in the process of locomotion, move the ship's rudder; Cookie peels potatoes; and the same brute from Buddy's Beer Garden spits into the water, only to be spat back at by an annoyed fish. A ferry boat passes, and Buddy's vessel drops anchor at a dock near which a parade heralds the boat's coming. Buddy collects tickets as a band of minstrels sings "Sweet Georgia Brown."

On board the ship, "Mlle. Cookie, Show Boat Star" readies herself for a performance & blows a kiss to a picture of Capt. Buddy; in the next room, the bruiser-villain perfumes himself & similarly blows a kiss, but to a picture of Cookie. Buddy picks up the receiver of a ship telephone and rings Cookie's room; she picks up, and they exchange kisses. Having spied the event, the bruiser picks up the phone, blows Cookie a kiss, but receives, instead, a punch in the face. Buddy and Cookie perform a rendition of "Under my Umbrella," after which Buddy introduces, to his pleased crowd, an Aboriginal performer called "Chief Saucer-lip", who, upon the captain's departure, immediately becomes a caricature of Maurice Chevalier, who recites "So I Married the Girl," with a kangaroo at the piano.

Cookie watches from behind the curtain, & the villain easily abducts her with a stage hook; dragging Cookie to the main deck, the bruiser is caught by Buddy and his injunction: "Unhand that woman!" The villain obliges, and punches Buddy that he flies backward into a device that spins him around and sends him flying into the bruiser, who then doubles back into an electrical device with catches his rear end & painfully shocks him. Back in pursuit, the villain is halted by Buddy, who cleverly knocks his adversary backwards, with a wooden life boat, into the cage of "Wally the Trained Walrus," who, now free, bites the rapscallion's behind & chases him into a lower deck. Buddy pulls the villain back up with the ship's wench, & positions him such that the ship's rudder continually bumps his posterior. Buddy & Cookie celebrate together, but part to allow some proper revelry to the true champion, Wally.

Edited versions

• When this cartoon aired in the early days of Nickelodeon's "Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon" (which aired as a Nick at Nite show and had black and white cartoon shorts from the early 1930s), editing was done to remove black stereotyping:
  • A blackface minstrel gag was replaced with a performing dog act scene (though another minstrel scene was left uncut).
  • Buddy introducing the Zulu native who can impersonate Maurice Chevalier was only edited to remove Buddy referring to the native as "Chief Saucer Lip."

References

External links

• Buddy's Show Boat (the cut version; unrestored) on YouTube
• Buddy's Show Boat (the original, uncut version; Low Quality) on YouTube