Lady, Play Your Mandolin!

Lady, Play Your Mandolin!
Lady, Play Your Mandolin!
	Foxy makes his entrance
Produced by	Hugh Harman; Rudolf Ising
Music by	Frank Marsales
Animation by	Rollin "Ham" Hamilton, Norm Blackburn
Color process	Black and white
Production; company	Harman-Ising Productions
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures; The Vitaphone Corporation
Release date	August 1931;
Running time	7 minutes
Language	English

Lady, Play Your Mandolin! is the first Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon, directed by Rudolf Ising of Harman and Ising.^[1] The short was released in August 1931, and stars Foxy, a character who appeared in three 1931 shorts.^[2]

Overview

Lady, Play Your Mandolin

The cartoon features Foxy as a gaucho. He visits a local saloon which is disguised as a café, reflecting that when this cartoon was made, Prohibition was law of the land in the United States. Also, as a reflection of Prohibition, liquor bottles have skull and crossbones labels. His horse soon finds himself drunk and begins to hallucinate wildly. Similarly to Foxy, the cartoon features a female fox character that is very reminiscent of Minnie Mouse.

As was typically the case with the early entries in the Merrie Melodies series, one purpose of the cartoon was to promote a Warner-owned popular song. The title theme, written by Oscar Levant with lyrics by Irving Caesar, was a 1930 #5 pop hit sung by Nick Lucas and released by Brunswick Records, which had been purchased by Warner Bros. the previous year (Another recording, by the Havana Novelty Orchestra was released the same year on RCA's Victor Records). In the short, it is sung by a female fox character who would later become Foxy's girlfriend, Roxy.

The credited animators were Rollin "Ham" Hamilton and Norm Blackburn (plus uncredited animation by Isadore Freleng, Robert Clampett (his first cartoon at WB according to some sources) and Carman Maxwell) with a musical score and direction of the Abe Lyman (Brunswick Recording) Orchestra by Frank Marsales. Rudolf Ising provides the voice of Foxy, while Harman-Ising regular Rochelle Hudson as well as Abe Lyman (and probably members of his band) provide the other voices.

Home media

The cartoon is available as an extra on the Little Caesar DVD and Blu-ray. It is also available on the DVD 'Attack of the '30's Characters', albeit in an unrestored form. In 2003, it was included within bonus features on Disc 3 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 1.

References

^ Beck, Jerry; Friedwald, Will (1989). Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons. Henry Holt and Company.
^ Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books. p. 83. ISBN 0-8160-3831-7. Retrieved June 6, 2020.

External links

Lady, Play Your Mandolin! at IMDb
Lady, Play Your Mandolin! at the Big Cartoon Database
Lady, Play Your Mandolin! Sheet Music at the Mississippi State University Digital Library
Lady, Play Your Mandolin! on YouTube

This Merrie Melodies–related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

[1] Beck, Jerry; Friedwald, Will (1989). Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons. Henry Holt and Company.

[2] Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books. p. 83. ISBN 0-8160-3831-7. Retrieved June 6, 2020.

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