Gallopin' Gals

This is one of those rare MGM/Hanna-Barbera cartoon shorts that doesn't involve Tom and Jerry. In Gallopin' Gals, all the racehorses are female who dress in the fashions of the day gossiping about some of the other female racehorses behind their back. One female horse who's all alone is named Maggie who's shy and has hay fever. She has yet to win a race. Many witty lines about makeup and men horses abound as an announcer introduces many of them during this six-minute animated short. If you're familiar with many of these vintage cartoons from the '40s, you'll probably guess what happens here when the race is over. So on that note, I'll just say Gallopin' Gals is worth a look for animation fans of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera.

Gallopin' Gals takes all the tired, predictable jokes with the premise 'fillies are just like teenage girls' you can think of and wraps them into a 7-minute cartoon taking place on a race track. (Case in point: "I suppose he still gives her that old line about a woman's place is in the stable.") The horses talk about their guy problems, they gossip about other fillies, and they are worried that they will not look good when photographed.

I will admit that the coloration is appealing to the eye, there are a few vaguely amusing lines (- "But they say she's good on a muddy track." – "Why not? She's been slinging it for years."), and the excited narrator does a fine job during the final race, but overall, Gallopin' Gals is quite dire, and far from the best 40s cartoons I have seen.

It's the day of the big horse race and the fillies are in their stalls gossiping about another horse and making small talk, such as the cliché comment about "not being able to do a thing with my hair," etc. We other fillies doing the same. For example, one says, "The nerve of the guy. Some crust, I'll say. Beieve me, kid, he asked me out to the feedbag and tells me I eat like a horse."

This catty talk is all over the barn. Some of it is funny, such as "Yeah, dearie, last year that nag ran around with that fish magnate, you know: Seabiscuit."

Every cliché you can think of regarding gossip and puns with horses, are used here in the first half of this animated short. Some of them sound like Mae West. Today, feminists would demand this cartoon be banned for sexism.

One of the entrants is the super-plain, never won-in-her-life "Maggie," whom the others make fun of, so you can take a wild guess who wins the big race.

The second half of this cartoon went from clever to too-corny but it was an appropriate short to be included in the DVD of the Marx Brothers' film, "A day At the Races."