Jitterbug Follies

I'd never heard of the two figures here, Count Screwloose and his Wonder Dog. This is a high energy film with countless twists and turns. It is almost too frantic as keeping up with the bad guys becomes a chore. There are at least three entities. Then we have the musical numbers and the contest. It is 1939 and, of course, we have the burr-headed stereotype of black people representing an orchestra. Of course, they look like monkeys. Anyway, it could have been done just as well without all this. The story itself is adequate without the aforementioned destructive portrayals. Note the voicings of Mel Blanc in the early part of his career.

Milt Gross is one of the unjustly forgotten comic strip artists. He created Count Screwloose of Tooloose in 1929, and in the late thirties brought the character to MGM studios to build an animated series around him. Due to disagreements with producer Fred Quimby, the series only lasted for two films, but the two that were made are a stitch! In "Jitterbug Follies", the Count and his "Wonder Dog" rig a crooked dance contest under the threatening gaze of the Citizens Fair Play Committee, which comes across more like a gang of mobsters. Even process of elimination doesn't make it much easier to find a sympathetic figure in the bunch, but the film manages to hold your interest by being so doggoned funny. Add to that two of the strangest looking penguins even to be captured on celluloid.

It's a black and white MGM cartoon. Count Screwloose and J.R. the Wonder Dog are caught trying to steal the take from the theater. It's a $10k swing contest. They are forced to host the contest for real by a couple of gun wielding thugs. Count Screwloose seems to be a short-lived attempt at adding to the MGM animated portfolio. It doesn't really set up the Count and his dog that well. It starts well but then it follows the other dance acts. I can do without the Mother Goose performance. Screwloose should be trying to steal the money all the way through the short. They could be thwarted time and again until the last two minutes. The ending is fine. This is an interesting side trip in the animation history.

Jitterbug Follies is one of only two MGM cartoons to star comic strip characters Count Screwloose and J.R. the Wonder Dog as directed by their creator, Milt Gross. The other one was Wanted: No Master. In this one Screwloose and J.R. try to bilk some money out of a bogus talent contest but are forced by a couple of thugs for "Citizens for Fair Play" to put one on. So we see a hippo singing opera, Mother Goose singing big band as she strips to reveal a young woman with a short-skirted dress, an ostrich "fan dancing", and a couple of penguins who keep going on stage attempting to sing despite constantly getting thrown out. Those gags make this one of the most creative cartoons for MGM before Tex Avery and Tom and Jerry put the studio on the animation map. Too bad Gross didn't make any more films after this one. You can see both this and Wanted: No Master on YouTube.

When Count Screwloose and J.R. the Wonder Dog are suspected of setting up a talent show only to take off with the money, a sadistically looking vigilante forces them to carry it out, but the real act of sadism here is to force the viewers to sit through the atonal eight-minute talent(less) show in what can best be described as the Trout Mask Replica of cartoons.

It's not entirely without merits – for one thing the characters are drawn decently amusingly – but overall it's pretty low on laughs and not remotely as funny as the Marx brothers movies it comes with as a bonus.