Farm Frolics

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Farm Frolics
Farm Frolics (1941) original title card.png
Original title card
Directed by Robert Clampett
Story by Warren Foster
Produced by Leon Schlesinger
Music by Carl W. Stalling
Animation byJohn Carey
I. Ellis
Color process Technicolor
Production
company
Leon Schlesinger Studios
Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date
  • May 10, 1941 (1941-05-10)
Running time
8:02 (original print)
7:21 (Blue Ribbon reissue)
LanguageEnglish

Farm Frolics is a 1941 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon supervised by Bob Clampett. [1] It was released on May 10, 1941. [2]

Contents

Plot

The cartoon with the original titles and the grasshopper scene

The cartoon starts with the arm of an animator drawing a farm scene which then colors itself, and the camera zooms in as a narrator begins:

Voice cast

Public Domain Status & Preservation

The cartoon fell into the public domain in 1970 in the United States when United Artists, the copyright owners to the Associated Artists Productions package, failed to renew the copyright in time. As such, unrestored copies can be seen on various public domain VHS and DVD sets. The public domain short was remastered on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 5 , Disc 3.

2022 Original Title Preservation

On October 3, 2022, a YouTube user named Jerico Dvorak uploaded the original titles and opening and closing bullet-style sequences, as well as the scene with the grasshopper excised from the Blue Ribbon re-release. The video was made private on YouTube a few hours later. It was reuploaded one day later with approval from the Library of Congress. [4] A YouTube user named Clem uploaded the original nitrate print a few days later. [5]

Differences from the Golden Collection Remaster

  • In the original opening sequence, a hand wipes away the title card before drawing the farm landscape. The opening song is also sung to completion where it was truncated for the Blue Ribbon re-release.
  • The sequence in which the grasshopper chews a tobacco-like substance and leans back to spit it out, only to say that the Hay's Office won't allow him to do so, was cut for the Blue Ribbon re-release.
  • When the narrator is about to introduce the piglets for the first time, his quote "Here is a group of cute little piggies here in the mud" is abruptly cut at "mud". In addition, when the camera pan towards them, the scene abruptly cuts as well. This persists in the Golden Collection print, and likely was an editing error when the cartoon was originally released, as the Library of Congress print with the original titles has this error as well.

Reception

Lobby card for the short Merrie Melodies - Farm Frolics (1941) - Lobby Card.jpg
Lobby card for the short

The Film Daily called the cartoon "good", saying, "There is no story to this Merrie Melodies but the comments of the animals as the audience is taken around the farm are highly amusing." [6]

Notes

See also

References

  1. Beck, Jerry; Friedwald, Will (1989). Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons. Henry Holt and Co. p. 116. ISBN   0-8050-0894-2.
  2. Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books. pp. 104–106. ISBN   0-8160-3831-7 . Retrieved June 6, 2020.
  3. Lawson, Tim; Persons, Alisa (2004). The Magic Behind the Voices - A Who's Who of Cartoon Voice Actors. University Press of Mississippi. p. 59. ISBN   978-1578066964.
  4. Farm Frolics - Merrie Melodies 1941 Original Title and Uncensored (New 35mm Nitrate Scan) , retrieved May 3, 2023
  5. "Farm Frolics (HD 1080p) (ORIGINAL TITLES) (NITRATE PRINT)". YouTube .
  6. "Reviews of Short Subjects". The Film Daily . 79 (99): 6. May 21, 1941. Retrieved June 13, 2020.