Lady, Play Your Mandolin!

I love this Foxy cartoon! It is short and it is VERY old (almost 88 years old to be exact.) But I still find it entertaining. Foxy is may favorite character. Foxy is the one that shows up about a little 2 minutes in wearing the sombrero and bull fighter cape. I wish Foxy had more cartoons than he does (Foxy stars in Lady Play Your Mandolin, Smile Darn Ya Smile, and One More Time in case you want to check out his other starring roles.) I did a little bit of digging and this cartoon is available on the Little Caesar DVD and on a DVD called Attack of the 30's Characters but unlike One More Time and Smile Darn Ya, Smile (which are both available on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection volume 6 DVD set) this cartoon was not restored, so the way you see it online in YouTube videos is pretty much the way it is on the DVD. But anyway, this cartoon is very fun to watch.

Foxy only made three cartoons---two of them--SMILE<DARN YA,SMILE and ONE MORE TIME are classics---everybody remembers the title songs. This is the Foxy nobody knows about. Frank Marsales specialized in bizarre closeups of animals,and have inanimate objects suddenly not only spring to life but join in the group singing. Opening scenes of a jolly gorilla waiter---and Marsales specialized in hippos with a Joe E. Brown yell.

Hey,they look like foxes to ME!!

Being a fan of Merrie Melodies but knowing very little of Foxy, let alone not seeing any of his three cartoons, it was high time to put that right if only for curiosity. As the first Merrie Melodies cartoon, it's decent enough though they certainly went on to much better things later on.

'Lady, Play Your Mandolin!' is practically plot-less and doesn't make an ounce of sense. The animation is uneven, it's crisply shaded and has some nice detail, some of the movements flexible, but the designs of the supporting characters are strange and in a rather ugly way and parts are on the stiff and repetitive side.

One can understand too why Foxy didn't last longer as a character, he's amusing enough if rather derivative of Mickey Mouse but not as strong or as expressive a personality.

However, the music is suitably peppy and does a great job in rousing the spirits. The atmosphere is bizarre but not in a way too unappealing. Actually the whole cartoon bursts with such joy that it is difficult to not fall for its charm warts and all.

Depiction of alcohol is humorously done and one is amazed at what is gotten away with, this being pre-Production Code. There are some good gags here, especially the castanet teeth, the horse exploding and particularly the horse playing its own head as a trombone.

Overall, watchable but less than great. 6/10 Bethany Cox

If it wasn't for the fact that the male and female leads had triangle ears and long bushy tails, they would've been mistaken for Mickey and Minnie Mouse (maybe Walt Disney did and threatened to sue so Leon Schlesinger told his cartoon directors Hugh Harmon and Rudolf Ising-former Disney animators-to stop making Foxy cartoons). Anyway, Foxy rides on his horse to a bar in a desert town to see his girlfriend play the title song. This being pre-Code (and no stigma of cartoons being only a children's medium then), there's lots of drinking of alcohol treated in a humorous manner especially of the horse at the climax. Historically important since this was the first Merrie Melodies short after a year of Looney Tunes with Bosko as the star. Highly amusing though a long way from the classics that starred Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, etc. Still, worth seeing for any animation buff especially of Warner Bros. cartoons.

Not your typical Looney Tune or Merrie Melodie, this cartoon is plain weird. Trying to find a new character to replace Bosko, Foxy was created (Mickey Mouse with bigger ears and a bushy tail) to try and build a new brand ... but after three or four appearances, he disappeared into history, and was promptly forgotten.

Now, two DVDs include this cartoon and give you a chance to see for yourself. 'Lady ..' is an extra on 'Little Caesar', and also appears on Disc 3 of the 'Looney Tunes Golden Collection, volume 1' (within a documentary about lost cartoons). Watching it now it really does give me the creeps, the animation, the characters, the voices, are all extremely strange, and proof positive that the series was not always, if ever, aimed at children.

'Lady ...' uses its limited time to present a look at the sins of drink in a time of prohibition, and uses primitive and obvious gags, as well as horrible singing creatures of indeterminate species, to sing the songs.