The Song of the Birds (1935)
A destructive boy with an air rifle shoots down a baby bird, then watches in horror as its parents and the rest of the birds hold a mourning procession, until a rainstorm miraculously revives the chick.
The Song of the Birds is an uncharacteristically somber entry in the otherwise playful Color Classics line, its funeral-procession imagery and eleventh-hour redemption arc reading almost as a morality fable aimed squarely at children.
Background
The Song of the Birds was directed by Dave Fleischer and produced by Max Fleischer for the Color Classics series, with music by Sammy Timberg and animation credited to Seymour Kneitel and Roland Crandall; Paramount released it on February 27, 1935. The story follows a boy who shoots a baby bird out of its nest with an air rifle, then watches in horror as the bird’s parents and the rest of the forest’s birds gather for a mourning procession, treating the death with a solemnity unusual for a children’s cartoon of the period.
What to watch for
The funeral sequence is the short’s center of gravity, staged with none of the Color Classics line’s usual bright comic energy, and it holds that somber tone until a sudden rainstorm revives the chick in the final stretch. The boy’s response, throwing away his air rifle and feeding his new bird friends, turns the episode into a clear-cut morality lesson rather than a gag reel, closer to a cautionary fable than a typical Fleischer short. Paramount and Fleischer returned to the same title and premise in 1949, reworking it as a Little Audrey cartoon.
