The Old Mill Pond

This has the look of a wartime concert party show to it, only set in the Mississippi delta and obviously largely consisting of energetic frogs rather than Bob Hope. Including a combination of rhythmic jazz music and some lively dancing of differing styles, there are plenty of characterful antics going on amongst the reeds and the weeds. It's a steady style of animation rather than a particularly innovative one, but there is still some fun to be had especially as they don grass skirts and attempt a belly dance! Not great, but still an enjoyable splish-splash of colour and culture amiably mixed together.

Sure, I like short cartoons, but I didn't like this one. Naturally, kids would love it. But then again, I'm not a kid anymore (although I still consider myself young).

I will not tell you anything about the story, for the simple reason there is no story. How is it possible this dragon of a cartoon was nominated for an Oscar?! Well... I guess it's because people in the 30's were more happy with not much than now. In the present where we live, everything must happen fast. Look at the movies nowadays, and you will come to the same conclusion: we live in a society that doesn't allow men to be slow. That's really a shame. I wish I lived in the 30's, because it seems so peaceful. But every time has got its ups and downs, I guess...

To conclude: if you like music (and frogs), you'll have to see this cartoon. Otherwise, don't spill your time on it.

Hugh Harman directs this cartoon in which pond life, mostly frogs, puts on a radio broadcast that looks like a show at the Cotton Club.

It features froggy caricatures of various well-known Black entertainers of the period, including Cab Calloway, Fats Waller, 'Bill "Bojangles' Robinson', Louis Armstrong, Stepin Fetchit, Ethel Waters and The Mills Brothers. While the vocal talents do imitations that are not spot on, there's little doubt that this is as good as Harman and Ising got in this period, with their color work, character design, and background work rivaling Disney's Silly Symphonies, aided by interesting Dutch Angles.

I just saw this cartoon for the first time and recognized the caricatures of famous black entertainers... Cab Calloway, Bessie Smith, (not Josephine Baker or Sophie Tucker, who was white), Thomas "Fats" Waller, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Stepin Fetchit (notwithstanding) Louis Armstrong and the chorus girls are out of the famed "Cotton Club" in Harlem. True... stereotypes are there, but this was the way it was... and these cartoons were meant as adult entertainment at your local cinema before the main feature.

Harmann & Ising cartoons tended to be more "cutesy" and more upscale, (after all... we are talking about M-G-M) than the standard animated short done over at Warners, Paramount, Universal, Fox, RKO or lowly Columbia. Even Disney's very early Mickey Mouse had loads of barnyard humor before Uncle Walt cleaned him up just before he went "Technicolor".

Disney had some cartoons with caricatures of black entertainers as well... for example, 1937's Silly Symphony "Woodland Cafe". But we have to remember that these films are part of a certain time and place. 50 years from now... clips of the Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park will be also scrutinized, analyzed... and even vilified by future viewers.

This is te cartoon that should have won instead of Country Cousin. Visually well-done and much more entertaining and memorable. Worth watching just for the music alone! Although there are elements that undoubtably will bruise the sensibilities of some these days, the cartoon has to be given a bit of perspective. It's over sixty years old and it is, after all, just a cartoon. I'm disabled and if I were as hyper-sensitive as the folks who look at things like this cartoon and take umbrage, I would have long since curled up in a fetal position and faded away. Sometimes you need to lighten up, put your head back and float! Caricatures of celebrities in cartoons were common in the 1930s and 1940s and were almost never terribly flattering. Bing Crosby reportedly hated it when he was used on more than one occasion. *SIGH*