Lady, Play Your Mandolin! (1931)
At a Prohibition-era café dressed up as a Spanish cantina, a gaucho fox named Foxy watches a señorita perform the title tune while his own horse gets hold of a bottle of liquor and hallucinates its way through the rest of the night.
Lady, Play Your Mandolin! was the first-ever Merrie Melodies short, built, as the series was designed to be, around plugging a Warner-owned pop song; it was directed by Rudolf Ising, with future giants Friz Freleng and Bob Clampett working uncredited on the animation.
Background
Lady, Play Your Mandolin! was the first Merrie Melodies short, released by Warner Bros. in 1931. The series was designed to promote popular songs from the studio’s music catalog, and this film was built around its title tune. Rudolf Ising directed it. The cartoon’s characters include a gaucho fox named Foxy, and the action is set in a Prohibition-era cafe dressed up as a Spanish cantina. Several animators who later became well known in the field worked on the production without credit. It remains a notable early title, although the series’ later style differs greatly from it.
What to watch for
The short’s musical number is staged as its main attraction, while the humor comes from the horse who finds a bottle of liquor and hallucinates his way through the rest of the night. Watch for the drink-fueled sequences, which were a playful touch in a period when Prohibition was still in force in the United States. The film is an early example of how the series used lively animation to sell a popular song, a formula that shaped the Merrie Melodies line for years.
