{"id":1234,"date":"2015-01-01T17:42:48","date_gmt":"2015-01-02T00:42:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/?p=1234"},"modified":"2024-12-31T20:15:59","modified_gmt":"2025-01-01T03:15:59","slug":"scrappy-in-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/01\/scrappy-in-chicago\/","title":{"rendered":"Scrappy at the 1933 Chicago World&#8217;s Fair"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>When the Scrappy series began in 1931, it had a premise. It really was about a little boy doing little-boy things, and cartoons such as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/29\/scrappy-yelp-wanted\/\">Yelp Wanted<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/2012\/08\/11\/lets-watch-the-little-pest\/\">The Little Pest<\/a>, despite their extreme lack of structure, had at least rudimentary plots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By the time Columbia released <em>The World&#8217;s Affair<\/em> in 1933, however, all that had changed. This cartoon shows multiple telltale signs that a studio has tired of a series: It has a topical hook (it&#8217;s set at the 1933 Chicago World&#8217;s Fair), it&#8217;s a spot-gag cartoon, and it&#8217;s rife with celebrity caricatures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"863\" height=\"486\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IGHKezwFNAg?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The cartoon begins with an elaborate production number featuring Fred Fisher&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chicago_(That_Toddlin'_Town)\">song<\/a> &#8220;Chicago (That Toddlin&#8217; Town)&#8221;&#8211;which was apparently already a standard even though it was a mere eleven years old at the time. Then a bunch of spot gags involving inventions, technical progress being the theme of this World&#8217;s Fair even more than usual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then in rush the celebrities: an especially loose-limbed FDR, Mussolini with a bucket of spaghetti, Von Hindenburg with a mug of beer for Scrappy, George V, Chevalier (who gets beer down the trousers), Gandhi and Durante in their diapers, Einstein, and others. They&#8217;re all swell folks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Between this short, <em>Scrappy&#8217;s Party<\/em>, <em>Movie Struck<\/em>, and <em>Hollywood Babies<\/em>, an awful lot of the Scrappy cartoons of 1933 were celebfests. (I sort of like old cartoons which are overly dependent on caricatures, such as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Gp1M6xzI2Z8\">Mother Goose Goes Hollywood<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ebaumsworld.com\/video\/watch\/82363595\/\">Hollywood Steps Out<\/a>, but I feel sheepish admitting it.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scrappy and Oopy don&#8217;t have all that much to do in <em>The World&#8217;s Affair<\/em> except grin, wear top hats, and tap dance, but they do it well. (Oh, and Oopy gets to smoke a cigar.) The animation of them is pretty darn charming&#8211;which is good, since the &#8220;story&#8221; and gags are so lazy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s a bit of good news: The Scrappy series eventually got a second wind. Some of the best shorts appeared long after thing one, including <em>The Puppet Murder Case<\/em> and <em>Let&#8217;s Ring Doorbells<\/em>, both of which were released in 1936. Neither of those ones are on YouTube at the moment, but I hope to be able to share them here someday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Bonus non-Scrappy footage:<\/strong> Here&#8217;s some live-action newsreel footage of the 1933 World&#8217;s Fair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"863\" height=\"486\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gjOBS8Nw7Wk?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When the Scrappy series began in 1931, it had a premise. It really was about a little boy doing little-boy things, and cartoons such as Yelp Wanted and The Little Pest, despite their extreme lack of structure, had at least rudimentary plots. By the time Columbia released The World&#8217;s Affair in 1933, however, all that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/01\/scrappy-in-chicago\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Scrappy at the 1933 Chicago World&#8217;s Fair<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cartoons"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2D9Zl-jU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1234"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5086,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234\/revisions\/5086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}