Into Your Dance

You don't see too many cartoons from this time (mid 1930s) that were done in color but this one is in two-strip Technicolor.

The William Tell Overture plays in here; we see a big steamship with "Show Boat" written on the side of it, and we get an "amateur night" vaudeville show complete a "gong" and the "hook" to take the horrible performers off the stage.

We also get Porky Pig (I think) directing the orchestra. Some sadistic guy sticks Porky's tail into an electrical outlet and he - and the orchestra - play at high speed. Some of these old cartoons are almost sadistic. It does do a good job though of portraying what cartoons were like in the mid '30s - the good and the bad. And, like all good cartoons, you are never sure what crazy sight you'll see next!

Anyway, there are a few funny sight gags I enjoyed but overall I rate it as just "fair," not a cartoon I'd watch multiple times. I saw it as a bonus feature on the "Annie Oakley" DVD film, which starred Barbara Stanwyck and Preston Foster.

While the early Warner Bros. cartoon "Into Your Dance" (directed by Friz Freleng) does feature a scene of black-face characters, the rest is pretty entertaining. It portrays a sort of talent show aboard a stern-wheeler, but every performer screws up somehow. Is that doomed to happen every time?! One thing that I noticed is that the conductor is a pig looking very much like Porky, but I didn't detect that he says anything. Towards the end, a dog has Porky's stutter. What gives? Then again, maybe I too easily get hung up on the wrong sorts of things. This cartoon is a worthy look into the beginning of the group that would soon create Bugs, Daffy, etc.

When you "Into Your Dance" you are bound to notice that it is in color but not full color. This is because in 1935, Disney had an exclusive agreement with Technicolor to use its new Three-Color process...which would give a true color appearance to the films. Instead, if other studios wanted color, they needed to use a cheaper Two-Color process...such as Cinecolor. While cheaper to use, the Cinecolor films clearly have a limited spectrum--and they mostly look blue-greenish and ornagy-red. Now I must say the copy on HBO Max is an awfully good one, as with some of these films the colors all degrade to a pinkish or orangy hue.

When this cartoon began, I noticed that the more politically correct folks out there might easily be offended by the minstrels you see on the showboat. They are NOT the usual derogatory and stereotypical minstrels...so try to look past this and at the cartoon itself. Of course, there also is the very effeminate tough looking cartoon character...another one you'll need to look past to enjoy the film.

Because the cartoon is set aboard a showboat, you know that it's one of those musical song and dance style cartoons Looney Tunes made so often (too often) back in the 1930s. Fortunately, even with the musical interludes, they do manage to make them funnier than usual and without the usual sacchariney charm....so the cartoon holds up better than most Harmon-Ising cartoons for the studio...though less singing certainly would have helped this one!

Overall, the two-color process used looks good, as if it's been recently restored. And, the singing, while annoying, was handled pretty well due to the humor. Watchable if not exactly great...and very good for 1935.