The Novelty Shop

An obscure mid 1930's technicolor cartoon that is loaded with classic comedians. The Marx Brothers, Laurel & Hardy The Three Stooges and Eddie Cantor can be seen as cartoon characters. The story is about an old toymaker who closes shop for the night. As he departs the Toy Store his inventory all come to life. Laurel and Hardy have several scenes. There are three necklaces that turn into The Three Stooges. Later there are three buxom ladies dancing only to turn around and reveal The Marx Brothers. When the toy maker returns to work all of the toys scramble to be back in place just as he left them. There were several cartoons that had a similar theme such as The Brave Tin Soldier, Mother Goose Goes Hollywood and The Soda Squirt.

When the elderly proprietor of a novelty shop closes up, all the knick-knacks for sale come alive and party in this Columbia cartoon directed by Arthur Davis.

It's an early example of the genre, in which, typically, brand names or characters from currently popular books would be animated. Because the style had not been fully set at the time, there are a few examples of celebrity caricatures, with Laurel & Hardy, the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers making appearances, but mostly it's random examples of cheap gimcracks, like Mexican jumping beans and pipe-cleaner dogs and cactus plants. It's done in the rapidly-disappearing "synchronized" style of animation, in which the motion is matched to the music, rather than the sound style that began with the ability to match talking to mouth movements.

In my sizeable (thus far) collection of 16mm films I found this short cartoon from 1936 entitled "Novelty Shop", running about six minutes with the print being black and white (I am aware other viewers have seen the official color version as well). This film had been unknowingly given to me in a lot of around forty films of various types for a Christmas present, and despite having been labeled as consisting of mostly educational films, the lot had just about everything in it - from random peoples' home movie footage to Castle and Official Film releases. I was pleasantly surprised with the discovery of this one, as it is not every day I get one of these added to my collection.

"The Novelty Shop" is an entertaining and humorous old cartoon, despite the fact it lacks any real originality. The premise is one that had plenty of variations done on it, a story in which the owner of a toy shop leaves for the night and the toys inside come to life and start dancing, singing and playing until the owner returns. That's about all the plot to this one, although there is certainly enough humor and creativity (not to mention skill) in the animation to make it enjoyable. The most notable thing would be its cartoon portrayal of popular comedy acts such as the Three Stooges; others noted the Marx Brothers and Laurel & Hardy were included, although I am not familiar with these. Overall, a fun watch which I am glad to own a print of, if clearly just another run-of-the-mill use of the 'living toys' concept.

For the young public, it reminds The Night at museum. For the older, it is nice meet with Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy or Eddie Cantor. For many, the memories about old shops is the basic virtue of this not great but nice short animation. The flavors of childhood, that is the lead virtue, for me, of this lovely short film.

An elderly owner of a novelty shop leaves for the night. The place is filled with every manner of junk, from piggy banks to cactuses. A little pipe cleaner figure blows a trumpet and the whole place comes to life with all the figures going bonkers. It is pretty clever for the most part, but there is little plot. The animation is fine. Once again we get to see some of the movie stars of the time figuring in this film.