The Lady in Red

When you see "The Lady in Red" 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.

The cartoon is a mostly craptastic short. I say this because it's chock full of singing and dancing....the sort of thing they loved in the 1930s but which is hard to take today. After LOTS of singing, a parrot comes along and tries to eat the cockroaches. Now considering they are cockroaches, you'd think the parrot is the hero...though he apparently isn't.

Like many of Looney Tunes' cartoons of the early to mid-1930s, this one is greatly hampered by all that insipid singing and dancing. As for the villain and confrontation at the end, it comes too late to interest the audiences...who mostly must have left to get popcorn during this singing cutesy short.

Love animation, it was a big part of my life as a child, particularly Disney, Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry, and still love it whether it's film, television or cartoons. Actually appreciate it even more through young adults eyes, due to having more knowledge of it, various animation styles, studios, directors and how it all works.

'The Lady in Red' is not one of Friz Freleng's, a director who did many great cartoons and a director held in high admiration by me, best, not being one of his funniest, wittiest or freshest. For relatively early Freleng, 'The Lady in Red' is worth watching though he would do much better later. It is never what one would call properly hilarious (but is never unfunny), Freleng's later efforts show more evenness and confidence in directing and the story.

It is quite thin in terms of story, with nothing new done with a very familiar melodrama-filled premise, and the structure is basically an excuse to string the events along. It is not terribly imaginative and occasionally momentum is not always there.

The hero and the female cockroach are likeable enough if slightly bland.

However, the parrot especially is great fun and the characters generally appeal.

The cartoon has enough very amusing moments, some variety and there is a good deal of liveliness in the second half. The conflict is nicely done and there is a good deal of cuteness and charm. The sentimentality is kept at bay and the nightclub setting is authentically colourful.

Animation is very good, it's fluid in movement, crisp in shading, vibrant and very meticulous in detail. The music is lovely on the ears, lushly orchestrated, full of lively energy and characterful in rhythm, not only adding to the action but also enhancing it.

Overall, worth watching. 7/10 Bethany Cox

True, Friz Freleng's early cartoon "The Lady in Red" stereotypes Mexico a little bit, but it's got some cool scenes, as a bevy of cockroaches party in a café after hours. The title woman performs a sultry dance. But then a parrot sees the action and gets hungry. That's instinct, I guess.

As this came out in the early days of Warner Bros. animation, there's none of the full scale wackiness that became their cornerstone throughout the '40s and '50s. As it was, I notice that a lot of their cartoons in 1935 and 1936 took their titles from songs: "I Haven't Got a Hat" (mostly famous as Porky Pig's debut), "I Love to Singa" and "Let It Be Me".

Anyway, an OK cartoon. Available on YouTube.