In this Christmas season release, Max assembles a toy train track while Ko-Ko the Clown visits a cartoon toyland, playing cops and robbers and rescuing a doll in distress.
This film was part of the Song Cartune series, produced by the New York based Max Fleischer Studio. The Fleischers partnered with sound pioneer Dr. Lee Deforest, utilizing his 'Phonofilm' optical sound system to produce these films, made well before Disney's first sound cartoon, "Steamboat Willie" (1928).
Bell Telephone instructional film shows how - and how not - to treat your upright desk telephone set. Don't wiggle the hook excessively, don't tangle the cord, keep away from water, etc.
A live-action amateur hypnotist mesmerizes Koko the clown and Fitz the dog; but a witch teaches them how to take their revenge.
A boy dog walks down the train tracks singing "I Ain't Got Nobody," with a train coming. He looks at a photo of his girlfriend, and she razzes him. He lies down on the tracks, but the train bypasses the section of tracks that he's lying on! He jumps off a cliff, but a tree saves him. The ball bounces... we see him on the sidewalk, crying, and singing to passersby.
Oswald is a student in a school with a bovine teacher.
Bimbo is walking down the street when he suddenly disappears down an open manhole, and is subsequently locked down there by a mouse who closely resembles Mickey Mouse.[1] He lands in the underground clubhouse of a secret society. The leader asks Bimbo if he would like to be a member, but Bimbo refuses and is sent through a series of dangerous events. He is repeatedly asked by the leader to join their society, but keeps refusing. Bimbo is brought through a series of mysterious doors that lead him into yet another sub-basement. Bimbo flees through various death traps before landing in front of the mysterious order's leader again. Bimbo still refuses to become a member, but finally accepts the invitation when the leader reveals to be the real Betty Boop and the rest of the society members remove their costumes, showing that they are all Betty clones. Bimbo dances with all the Betties to celebrate. The song Wanna Be a Member? is parody lyrics written to the 1919 song the Vamp (or Vamp a Little Lady).
Betty and Bimbo end up in a cave with a walrus, which has Cab Calloway's voice, who sings "Minnie the Moocher" and dances to the melancholy song. Calloway is joined in the performance by various ghosts, goblins, skeletons, and other frightening things. Betty and Bimbo are subjected to skeletons drinking at a bar; ghost prisoners sitting in electric chairs; a cat with empty eye-sockets feeding her equally empty-eyed kittens; and so on. Betty and Bimbo both change their minds about running away and rush back home with every ghost right behind them. Betty makes it safely back to her home and hides under the blankets of her bed. As she shakes in terror, the note she earlier wrote to her parents tears, leaving "Home Sweet Home" on it. The film ends with Calloway performing the instrumental "Vine Street Blues".
Popeye formally introduces himself with a personal song.
A re-telling of the classic fairy tale - in true Fleischer Studios style! The first of the A Color Classic series, this is the first color cartoon that Fleischer Studios made. It is also the only Betty Boop cartoon that Fleischer Studios made in color. Because the color process was so new at the time, Betty's hair came out red!
A flock of robins is teaching their young ones to fly. Meanwhile, a boy with an air rifle is shooting at everything in the house. He goes out into the garden and shoots at a nest, then at one of the little birds. The bird falls to the ground, and it appears that the boy has killed it. The robins stage a bird funeral. The boy's conscience gets to him, and he falls to his kneels, crying and praying for the bird. The sky also weeps with large tears of rain, which cause the little bird to awaken. The rainbow appears, and the boy breaks his air rifle and feeds the birds, never to menace them again.
King Humpty Dumpty has a huge amount of gold, but wants more. He sees the sun, and thinks it is full of gold, so he orders his subjects (the various Mother Goose characters) to build his golden wall higher. They comply, and he reaches the sun, but when he does, the sun sends lightning bolts after him, which topple the wall.
A spider runs a hotel for flies where he keeps his guests captive. A pair of fly newlyweds arrive and check in. Fortunately, the husband is "flyweight champion". After a pitched battle featuring arrows (fountain pen nibs) and a machine-gun (aspirins shot from a perfume atomizer), the spider winds up in a bottle of library paste.
In an underwater school for fish, bad boy Tommy Cod would rather play pinball in his desk than recite the daily lesson about hooks, fishing poles, and lines so strong. Tommy is locked out of class by the teacher to study harder. He learns his lesson the hard way when caught by a fisherman's bait.
Pudgy sees a starving kitten, looking for food in trash cans. He takes pity on the kitten, and brings it home with him.
Pop and Mom in Wild Oysters.
Several rare cartoons are found in this short documentary about the Fleischer cartoons.