Van Beuren Studios

Happy sunshine-bottling gnomes battle gloomy swamp-dwellers.

Felix the Cat is perched in a tree playing his guitar and serenading himself and a canary with a little ditty called "Nature and Me." It is a beautiful day in cartoon-land but Mother Nature, perhaps not a music lover, whips up a lightning-laden thunderstorm and Felix is soon seeking shelter. He finds it at the castle of King Cole, a boastful, fabricating blow-hard. The King's ancestors, tired of hearing the braggart, come out of their pictures as ghostly specters and take the King to the dungeon and pump the gassy hot-air out of him.

American animal trapper Frank Buck travels with Ali, his "number one boy," on an expedition into the Malayan jungle. From their jungle headquarters just north of Singapore, Frank, Ali and a team of native helpers roam the area from Northern Johore to Perak in search of interesting wild animals, reptiles and birds. Hoping to find a tiger, Buck captures a monitor lizard and a black leopard, while another black leopard narrowly escapes an encounter with a giant python and then battles a bigger and stronger tiger. After trapping a spotted leopard, Frank adopts a baby honey bear and a baby elephant. The team catches an orangutan, but the tiger eludes their camouflaged pit. Meanwhile, Frank visits the "bathing festival" of a local tribe and watches as tribesmen kill an intruding spotted leopard with blow darts. The tiger then meets an enormous regal python, who has just crushed a crocodile, and fights to a draw with it.

Felix is feeding his various pets: a bird, two dogs, and a goldfish. But Annabelle the goldfish is unhappy; she's lonely. Felix sets out to catch her a friend. The fish drag him underwater. After a bit of searching, he finds a goldfish, but the fish cries for help, and Felix finds himself on trial before King Neptune. He's accused of wanting to eat the fish, but after he explains himself, Neptune gives him a fish from the fish orphanage, and everyone lives happily.

Felix is handing out relief, thanks to a goose that lays golden eggs. The evil Captain Kidd sees the goose and breaks into Felix's house to get it. He brings the goose to his pirate ship. Felix arrives too late to catch the ship. Goldie won't lay for the pirates. Felix sees a cannon and turns himself into a human cannonball to catch teh ship. With help from Goldie and another cannon, he subdues the crew, wrapping them in the sail and depositing them in the hold. He and Kidd have a swordfight, but their swords melt together. Kidd chases Felix up the mast, then foolishly cuts off his own support. He falls into the hold. They sail for home, where Felix fires off cannonloads of gold coins.

A frontier newspaper editor Kirby battles outlaw Tiger Morris who is causing indian uprisings to drive away settlers so that he will can claim a gold deposit as his own. With the help of General Custer, right wins out. Presented in serial form in 12 episodes.

It's a straight musical involving a barbershop quartet of alley cats and some dogs summoned from the pound to quiet them to little success. The animation and visual gags are simple and old fashioned, but the aural gags are nicely done and even if there's little coordination between the animation and the music.

In this Van Beuren cartoon a quartet of singers kidnap a girl and the mouse has to try and save the day.

This Tom and Jerry cartoon (the human versions, not the cat and mouse) is an opportunity for the animators to have fun with the medium. There is no specific plot. One of the boys uses a pencil to create a myriad number of animated illusions that could only work in a cartoon. For example, a short vertical line is drawn, which when held by both ends suddenly becomes a saxophone. When played, the notes pop out of the bell of the instrument to suddenly grow legs and transform into ducks. After the song, the saxophone itself quickly follows suit and becomes a goose. The entire short consists of these disjointed, though often creative and humorously unlikely events.

Tom and Jerry are police officers, driving around in their car and enjoying listening to some music on their police radio, when they hear a bulletin announcing another theft of a mummy from the local museum. They stumble upon the culprit, a mysterious and ghoulish man who is carrying a coffin through a secret door in a cemetery. They sneak in after him and watch him command the mummy to life; it is a beautiful woman, who he then commands to sing for his audience of skeletal theatre-goers.

Faux documentary told in first-person narration, about an "adventuress" who sets sail to Guatemala with her father and two male crewmen, rescues them when their fresh-water supply is compromised, finds a treasure map, and attempts to steal a fabulous emerald from a ruined temple, much to the aggrevation of a worshipful native princess and her subjects.

A Conestoga Wagon leads Molly Moo-Cow and some ducks through the hills. The ducks stop for a swim by a tepee and go to explore the settlement. Molly misses her friends and goes to look for them; when she finds them she discovers they're behaving like Native Americans, and she joins in. Meanwhile, a Native woman downstream loses her baby in the stream and chases after her. Seeing the baby's in trouble, Molly pursues it as well, and eventually retrieves it.

13th Cartoon in the Van Beuren Rainbow Parade Series.

Two passengers refuse to pay their cab fare, so the taxi drives chase after them.

The Aesop Sound Fables, while almost forgotten today, produced some of the strangest cartoons during the Depression with dream-like backgrounds, surreal imagery and some of the best cartoon scores.

In this comedy short not-so-smart copper Bert Lahr gets in over his head when he becomes a mock candidate for mayor.

Molly Moo-Cow washes to shore on an island, the one occupied by Robinson Crusoe. Much of the short is Crusoe extolling the virtues of the solitary life, Molly trying to ingratiate herself to Crusoe and Crusoe trying to get rid of her. He finally succeeds-just before cannibals come ashore, capture Crusoe and dump him in a pot. From the time they grab him Crusoe is yelling for help (from whom is unclear, given that he wants the island to himself).

The short starts with a mouse playing some bell-like tulips like musical bells....

A live-action little boy is caught stealing jam! When he asks his big sister how she knew he had done it, she answers "A little bird told me." This launches an animated segment about a newspaper run by birds and how they got the scoop on the little boy's crime.