The Old Man of the Mountain (film)

The Old Man of the Mountain is a 1933 live-action and animated short in the Betty Boop series, produced by Fleischer Studios.[1] Featuring music recorded by Cab Calloway and His Orchestra, like in Minnie The Moocher, the short was originally released to theaters on August 4, 1933 by Paramount Productions. Calloway voices all of the characters in the cartoon save for Betty herself (talking voice provided by Bonnie Poe and singing voice provided by Mae Questel). Calloway and his orchestra also perform all of the music in the cartoon, including two songs Calloway co-wrote.

The Old Man of the Mountain
Title card, from a Pathescope 9.5mm film print.
Directed byDave Fleischer
Bernard Wolf (animation)
Produced byMax Fleischer
StarringFeaturing the voice talents of:
Cab Calloway (Old Man of the Mountain / all other voices)
Bonnie Poe (Betty Boop - talking voice)
Mae Questel (Betty Boop - singing voice)
(all uncredited)
Music byCab Calloway and his Orchestra
Animation byBernard Wolf
Thomas Johnson
Color processBlack and white
Color (1972 redrawn color edition)
Production
company
Distributed byParamount Productions
Release date
August 4, 1933
Running time
6:57
5:45 (1972 redrawn color edition with titles and live-action footage and credits cut)
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Plot

The short begins with a live-action introduction of Calloway and his orchestra, who perform a short chorus of "Minnie the Moocher" (written by Cab Calloway, Clarence Gaskill and Irving Mills) before performing a vamp of the title song, "The Old Man of the Mountain" (Billy Hill [aka George Brown] and Victor Young).

As the cartoon proper begins, a lion on roller skates (made of rabbits) rushes from his guard post atop a mountain, racing into a nearby village shouting "Look out! The Old Man of the Mountain!" The lion's warning sparks a mass exodus of the other animals who pack up their things and start to flee as the lion continues to warn "Look out! The Old Man of the Mountain!"

In time, Betty Boop emerges from a guest house in order to find out what is going on. She confronts a passing owl, who in song describes the Old Man of the Mountain, a predatory hermit who threatens the livelihood of the villagers, particularly the women. Despite the owl's warnings, Betty is curious and declares, "I'm going up to see that old man of the mountain." and starts a trek up the mountainside. She passes several people fleeing from the Old Man, including a woman pushing a carriage with her triplets—who look suspiciously like the Old Man of the Mountain.

When Betty gets to the top of the mountain, the Old Man of the Mountain emerges from behind a rock. Over twice as tall as Betty, the Old Man backs the girl into his cave and, as Betty fights off his advances, begins to sing with her a duet of "You Gotta Ho-De-Ho (To Get Along with Me)" (Billy Hill [aka George Brown] and J. Russel Robinson). Betty loosens up and joins in, and the two begin to flirt with each other. After his first verse, the Old Man looms menacingly over Betty. When Betty asks what he's going to do, he says he's "gonna do the best I can" before launching into a jazzy dance routine. The Old Man and Betty continue to dance together, but when the song is over, the Old Man makes a lustful grab for Betty, who runs for her life back down the mountainside.

The Old Man gives chase, and grabs Betty just long enough to catch hold of her dress, which Betty jumps out of. As Betty finds refuge behind a large tree in her underwear, her dress comes to life and slaps the Old Man before running back to its owner. Betty climbs the tree to apparent safety, but as the Old Man comes over and attempts to coax her down with "The Scat Song" (C. Calloway, Frank Perkins and Mitchell Parish), he picks the tree up and bounces it on the ground, causing Betty to slide down.

Before he can have his way with her, however, the animals from the village rally to Betty's aid and surround the Old Man, tying his arms and legs together by a tree. They then proceed to beat him up, tickle and humiliate him, thus exacting revenge for all the times he had made their lives a misery, with Betty watching with glee.

Controversy
The original rare end card for this cartoon, cut off from the film negative in the fifties.

According to film historian Christopher Lehman, the sexually suggestive nature of this film caused "some Americans at the time, especially Catholics," to complain to exhibitors who then pressured Paramount Studios (distributor of the Betty Boop series) to tone down the Betty Boop character, which subsequently pressured Fleischer Studios to do the same thing. This can be seen when an old man sees Betty and acts crazy, a fish starts to follow her before getting hit by his wife, and Betty's dress even is removed in one scene. According to Lehman, "In dispensing with the African-American entertainers and their music after limiting the 'Betty Boop' series' sexual references, [Max] Fleischer thus acknowledged the widely assumed connection between raciness and blackness." After 1934, African-American jazz music (which was, in fact, often racier than other musical forms, though not exclusively so) would no longer appear in Betty Boop cartoons, and she metamorphosized into a more conservative, mature, domestic character who often played only a supporting role.[2]

Reception

The Film Daily wrote on July 24, 1933, "To the tune of Cab Calloway's music and vocalizing, this Max Fleischer animated unreels some amusing antics having to do with the kidnapping of Betty Boop by the old man of the mountain and her rescue by the forest animals. A nice subject of its kind, the Calloway musical background being distinctive and the cartoon stuff amusing."[3]

Notes
  • The Old Man of the Mountain was the third and last of the Fleischer cartoons pairing Betty Boop and Cab Calloway; the others are Minnie the Moocher and Snow-White. As in the other two cartoons, film footage of Cab Calloway was rotoscoped, or traced into animation, to provide the dance steps for the Old Man during the duet of "You Gotta Ho-De-Ho (To Get Along with Me)". As with many other Boop shorts, The Old Man of the Mountain is now in the public domain.
  • The dialogue between Betty and the Old Man ("Whatcha gonna do now?" "Gonna do the best I can!") is mirrored almost exactly in a scene between Santa Claus and Oogie Boogie in the 1993 film The Nightmare Before Christmas. The scene also features music very similar to Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher" and dance steps close to Calloway's own.

References
  1. Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books. pp. 54–56. ISBN 0-8160-3831-7. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
  2. Christopher P. Lehman, The Colored Cartoon: Black Representation in American Animated Short Films, 1907-1954 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press) 32-36.
  3. Sampson, Henry T. (1998). That's Enough, Folks: Black Images in Animated Cartoons, 1900-1960. Scarecrow Press. p. 193. ISBN 978-0810832503.
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