Seeing Stars (1932) Online

As with a number of cartoons of its time, "Seeing Stars" shows caricatures of celebrities. Featuring famous persons is certainly one of many ways to get a big score for a cartoon. But even if they do, some animated films would only have short-lived popularity and they would fade into obscurity. The most entertaining scene in this short is when Krazy tries to pick a fruit from a bowl but ends up holding the waiter's long nose by mistake. In response to the inconvenience, the waiter speaks to Krazy in an eerie manner (I find this both scary and comical) before splashing the spaghetti platter on the cat. No need to worry because someone else there helped Krazy get clean. How it concludes was a happy ending for everybody.

This is one of the rare cartoons made during the early '30s that featured all of the Four Marx Brothers-Chico, Harpo, Groucho, and Zeppo! Also featured in caricature form were: Laurel & Hardy, Joe E. Brown, and Jimmy Durante. Krazy Kat is a piano player in a club full of many of these celebrities. Plenty of funny gags abound like Stan's trying to eat peas with a knife, Harpo's chasing many of the women-both human and animal! Of course, Durante's nose is part of the act! Also, Brown's big mouth. The song being performed is "Happy Days Are Here Again" which I guess was very popular during this Depression period. Really, all I'll say now is I highly recommend Seeing Stars.

George Heriman's Krazy Kat comic strip is a legendary work of brilliant creativity, but the animated cartoons that bear the name of his central character are a mixed bag. Some make an attempt to approximate Herriman's style, while others, like this product of Harry Cohn's Columbia Pictures, bear little or no relationship to the comic strip. Seeing Stars is one of many cartoons of the era that was produced mainly to showcase caricatures of then-popular Hollywood stars. On that level it's moderately entertaining, and you'll find a handful of decent gags, but for buffs who've seen other examples of the genre it has a familiar, here-we-go-again aura.

Our setting is a nightclub, where the band tears through "Happy Days Are Here Again." There are some amusing moments, as when the musicians all pause at the same moment so they can spit into a spittoon simultaneously. (Okay, that's kind of gross, but funny.) Then we meet our M.C., stuttering Roscoe Ates—and when did you ever see HIM in a cartoon? He manages to stumble through his introduction of Krazy Kat, but the moment our nominal star steps out on stage to take a bow, we know we're not in Herriman Land. This "Krazy Kat" looks like a feline version of Mickey Mouse, who, of course, was at the peak of his phenomenal popularity at this time. The cat proceeds to act just like him too, as when he sits down at the piano, dusts off both sides of the keyboard, and plays a jaunty tune, just like Mickey in The Jazz Fool and countless other mini-musicals crafted by the Disney animators.

From that moment on, this short presents us with a procession of movie stars in blackout gags. Some of them are the usual suspects one almost always finds in these offerings (Joe E. Brown, The Marx Brothers, Laurel & Hardy, Jimmy Durante), while others are more eccentric choices (Ben Turpin, Marie Dressler). The gags are fine, without being terribly original or striking. I noticed that when Harpo chases a couple of flapper-like girls, they closely resemble Betty Boop. Looks like the animators couldn't decide whether to imitate the Disney or Fleischer studios, so they veered between both styles. At the finale we see a gaggle of stars all dancing in a circle, some of whom flash by so fast it's hard to figure out who they're supposed to be. Was that Eddie Cantor? Was the cowboy Tom Mix? You decide!

The best known example of this kind of cartoon is, of course, a Disney product, Mickey's Gala Premiere. That one set the gold standard for this sort of thing, although the later Warner Brothers' short Hollywood Steps Out is, in my opinion, even better. Meanwhile, Seeing Stars is a more routine affair, pleasant and spirited, but nothing special. And if you want to see Krazy Kat, stick with Herriman's newspaper work.

This was fun. Krazy Kat is working in a night club. As he tries to play his piano, he is interrupted several times. The interrupters are some of the biggest box office comedians of the time: Joe E. Brown, the Marx Brothers, Laurel & Hardy, Ben Turpin, and Jimmy Durante. Krazy must hold forth in the company of all these people. This is depression time and the band is playing "Happy Days Are Here Again." This was the hopeful anthem of the time. Still, one couldn't help but be impressed by the joyfulness of this cartoon. There is some wonderful animation making the whole place seem to dance. One of the better Krazy offerings.