ReFrederator Blog

Again with the anthropomorphized musical instruments! In today’s cartoon, Little Lulu gets clunked in the head while playing baseball, and has a truly bizarre nightmare about standing trial for mistreating her violin. The judge, prosecutor, witnesses and jury are all instruments who not only have arms and legs, but also compulsively rhyme whenever they speak. Before you can say “Busby Berkley meets Mack Sennett” the whole thing cuts to the chase… which also happens to be an elaborate production set to the song “You Gotta Have Music.” Our girl Lulu does wake up eventually, seems slightly more interested in her musical education, but has plunged even deeper into active fiddle abuse.

This one’s a classic — imaginative, funny and full of great imagery and witty visual puns (accordions as giant worms, musical notes as spiders, etc.) The director, Isadore Sparber, is unusually inventive in staging, cooking up little tricks like dissolving Lulu surrounded by violin bows into a scene of her behind prison bars. Here’s one of Lulu’s best… and the tune is kinda catchy too!

Oh, and about the title: the cartoon was originally released in 1947 as “Musica-Lulu,” but as you can see, it was re-issued as “Musical Lulu.” Still a great cartoon under any name.

ReFrederator returns tomorrow with more music, more mice.