MWPetty

Just a couple of small corrections of urban legends:

The cocaine sneeze was not an accident. It is the punch line to the scene. There would be little use for the scene without the punch line.

Despite claims made by some, "The Dick Cavett Show" contained in this film is not taken from an actual broadcast. Looks like it, though. It was shot for this film.

These claims were made in books about Woody Allen.

I first got this on videotape because of the Marx Brothers caricatures in a scene with Hugh Herbert. (Just three brothers, Zeppo had left by this point.) I was pleased to see that Fred Astaire was also portrayed. He dances in a manner that suggests the animators studied his films carefully. There aren't many "appearances" of this type by Astaire. In fact this may be the only one. Katharine Hepburn gave an interview where she recalled a cartoon that contained a remarkable imitation of her. This is the cartoon she was talking about. She shows up as a running gag. The only censorship that I could detect in this cartoon was a scene where Eddie Cantor introduces "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie." You see the pie bulge as if something is about to emerge and then there is an edit in the film. Today's corporate Disney is not about to allow "darkie" jokes in their cartoons. But the depiction of Fats Waller is mildly racist (if racism can be mild). I counted a total of thirty celebrities. When you've watched this videotape as many times as I have, you start counting celebrities.