Malibu Beach Party

Jack Bunny hosts a beach party at his beach home and spares no expense.

In the tradition of Hollywood parodies, this short spoofs the then popular radio sitcom The Jack Benny Show, with several Hollywood caricatures in attendance, designed by Ben Shenkman.

Jack Lescoulie, another contemporary radio personality, voices Jack Benny (as he often did for cartoons). He kind of sounded like him in real life and nailed the vocal nuances. Other regulars on the show are parodied and given clever similar sounding names, such as Rochester going by Winchester.

The only thing that's missing is a reference to Benny's mock feud with Fred Allen that had been going on on the radio for four years at that point. I find it surprising that it wasn't milked very much, if at all, by the Looney Tunes crew.

An excellent caricature cartoon and a forerunner to Tex Avery's HOLLYWOOD STEPS OUT, which came out a few months later and also used Shenkman's designs.

While Friz Freleng's "Malibu Beach Party" does contain racial stereotypes, it's pretty funny otherwise. It depicts a party held at the Malibu home of Jack Bunny (an obvious parody of radio star Jack Benny), attended by the top stars of the era. An example of a gag is that Greta Garbo (or her caricature) uses her over-sized feet as a surfboard.

This was not the first time that a Jack Benny caricature had appeared in a Warner Bros. cartoon. "I Love to Singa" portrayed a rabbit - no relation to Bugs Bunny - named Jack Bunny, hosting a talent show. But probably the most famous animated version of Benny is "The Mouse that Jack Built". That one casts the characters from "The Jack Benny Show" as mice, and they all provided their own voices.

So anyway, this one isn't great, but it's still worth seeing.

Lots of fun i had fun watching this funny fun fun movie well it was sort of funny but not really, you know what i mean. It was funny but it was not funny but it was also funny so that evens out all the funnyness in this funny movie, did i mention that it was funny.