Cinderella 1922

The title cards for this cartoon is gold in and of itself. The opening lines introducing the story state, "Cinderella... whose only friend was a cat." The cat is back!

I won't really waste a lot of time going over the origins of the Cinderella story because Disney later produced a feature length version of this story that I will probably spend a lot more time going over when I get to it. And I must admit I am surprised because the basics were all in tact in this cartoon.

Obviously the opening scene is of the cat. She is washing dishes with Cinderella "who lives with her two lazy homely step sisters." The step sisters are just chillin on hammocks on the lawn while Cinderella cleans and so forth with her cat. Then the film shifts gears and goes to it's shockingly ONLY completely off topic sequence as we're introduced to The Prince "who was a wonderful fellow." This is actually pretty amazing. The Prince (who is the same dude as the main kid from Puss in Boots... and on that note his father, The King, is the same king from Puss In Boots, and Cinderella is the same girl as the princess from Puss in Boots, AKA Little Red Riding Hood) is riding on a horse, followed by his Dog (the same Dog as ALL the films so far). They are chasing a big goofy bear and shooting at him repeatedly. Their chase even takes them through a body of water and they all have to swim. It's really a funny sequence because we just barely read that the prince is a wonderful fellow, and now we see him chasing a bear around trying to kill it. And we're talking about some scary rabid bear. It's a cartoony bear that looks TERRIFIED. We're left to sincerely question the Prince's ethics... but it gets even more amusing. There is a family of bears nearby having some sort of jamboree! Playing music and dancing and having fun. And then the Prince shows up and chases them all into a cave. We don't SEE any of the violence, but we see the Prince emerge with a rope tied to the carcasses of his kills and we get to see an endless trail of dead bodies being dragged out of the cave by the "wonderful fellow." Don't get me wrong, I don't like bears in the least. I HATE them in fact. They're big, stupid, don't have tails, steal picnic baskets, eat boy scouts... horrible creatures. But when you see them drawn like cute little fuzzy buddies, it's sort of hard to watch them all get horribly massacred. I liken it to that scene in Revenge of the Sith when Anakin kills all the children in Jedi Temple. Or when he kills all the separatists who are begging for their lives on that lava planet. Kinda twisted. Anyways, moving on, after the massacre Prince goes home and sends out invites to all the land to a ball he'll be hosting. The dog then rides a scooter around town handing out the invites. Okay I guess I lied, the bear scene isn't the only weird one. This one is odd too. The dog accidentally goes flying down a hill and ends up really injured. Some other guy comes up and asks "Are you hurt?!" and the Dog smashes a crutch over the onlookers head knocking him out... weird. But Cinderella and her sisters got the invite, and as per expectation, the step sisters leave Cindy home with the cat while they go off to have fun at the ball. Almost as soon as they leave, a cackling witch apparates into the room with Cinderella and her cat! The witch explains that she's a fairy godmother but I'm not so sure... she's really creepy looking. Regardless, she helps out Cindy by turning her raggy clothing into a smokin' hot 1920's flapper outfit. Then she turns a nearby garbage can into a car and turns the cat into... a cat. The cat is the driver. Cinderella heads off to the ball in her new car with the warning from the witch that all these things will go away once the clock strikes midnight. And from here it's pretty straight forward. She goes, the cat dances with the dog, Cinderella meets the prince, they fall in love, hang out for way too long, she realizes it's almost midnight and then she takes off running and all her clothes vanish back into rags as she runs. But one of her shoes gets left behind by accident and the Prince takes off on her trail to find her. It's a bit odd though. If all her clothes and her car disappear, why didn't her shoe? She should have lost ALL of her nice items because then they would have apparently survived past midnight. Oh well. So in the morning the Prince is following what he thinks are Cinderella's footprints only to get to the end of the line and find that they're actually the footprints of a duck (or pelican? Hard to say) wearing shoes. This marks the first time I have actually vocally laughed while watching these Laugh-O-Grams. It is pretty amusing I must admit. Anyways, within a few seconds after that he stumbles upon Cindy's house, makes the stepsisters try on the shoe (because he's an idiot and can't remember what her face or body looked like???). It doesn't fit, but it DOES fit Cinderella. They're way happy. The cat and the dog make out and we're punished for watching the cartoon by being forced to see a close up of this. And then it ends in "happily ever after" fashion.

This is the best Laugh-O-Gram I've seen yet. For multiple reasons. The animation is getting pretty good. I especially a majority of the character designs here. From the bears to the cross eyes goose-like step sister. This is also one of the few Laugh-O-Grams to ACTUALLY follow it's source story. I also really enjoyed the lack of cat and dog in this cartoon. It was also nice to note that the few parts they WERE in were pretty funny (except the make outs... cats and dogs don't make out. Ever.) It was just good times! A princess movie before the genre even existed! Is it perfect? Hardly. But it pretty much sets the standard for these goofy cartoons in my mind. Unfortunately, it also marks the final fully animated cartoon to come out of Laugh O Gram Studios. After this point Walt would go on to try some half live action half animated ventures, but they never ended up taking off from his Kansas City headquarters. The studio eventually ended in bankruptcy- but I'll discuss all this more fully in a latter blog.