User Reviews

Scrappy and Oopie are the introductory speakers at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair in this typically outrageous Dick Huemer cartoon. Huemer's animation was outsized and the gags are extreme, ranging from Rube-Goldbergesque inventions to the typical parades of celebrities -- although the first one who shows up is animator Art Davis, having his hair operated on by a machine.

Even the celebrities are not the merely the usual assortment of Hollywood types. Images of FDR, Mussolini, Hindenberg and Gandhi -- who does a two-act with Jimmy Durante -- keep the energy high in this cartoon.

WE WELL RECALL those halcyon days of 1950's television, when any old thing could find its way on to the tiny screen in your living room. Among these, we were treated to the SCRAPPY Cartoon series from Columbia Pictures' SCREEN GEMS Animation.

INASMUCH AS WE were just grade-schoolers then, we probably weren't expected to understand all of those topical, "adult" gags; nor the be able to recognize and identify the then current political leaders as they were caricatured in THE WORLD'S AFFAIR. Save for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, we didn't. Thanks to our Mother (Bertha Fuerst Ryan) we were educated about the rest.

THE SHORT SUBJECT did manage to move along at a rather brisk clip. Although there was very little plot, the shot's rapid fire vignettes into subject matters such as Art, Architecture, Agriculture and Science rendered us unaware of it. We would have to classify it as a "Clothesline" cartoon; by which it is meant that as soon as they had 8 or 10 gags, an opening and closing-they were done.

THESE B & W 1930's cartoons were a staple on the old GARFIELD GOOSE & FRIENDS afternoon kids' show on Channel 9, WGN TV in Chicago. It was created and hosted by Frazier Thomas; who often did his own voice overs in edition to that on the film's soundtrack.

AS A SORT of personal anecdote, we vividly recall our older Sister, Joanne, coming in from high school and viewing the too tightly cropped opening title of one of these 7 minute shorts. "Who's 'Crappy', she asked?

WELL NOW, THERE'S a straight line if you never heard one!