ReFrederator Blog

Celebrity Week is celebrated with today’s installment from 1936, “Cupid Gets His Man,” a 1936 Van Beuren Rainbow Parade cartoon directed by Tom Palmer. Movie personalities don’t just make cameo appearances here — they’re the stars of the show! Just about everybody will recognize the cranky old man as a W.C. Fields homage, but somewhat more obscure is his leading lady, a spinster type based on character actress Edna Mae Oliver. Ms. Oliver may just be the answer to a really hard trivia quiz today, but back in the Depression she was nearly as familiar and beloved as Fields himself. Personally, I’m thinkin’ her caricature and voice impersonation come off much better… I really like the way the animators handled her figure in the climatic battle with the dive bombing cupids.

And about those cupids. There are dozens of ‘em. And they’re all half way decent… or more precisely, they are decent only from the waist up. From the waist down, they’re stark naked. They are referred to as ‘men,’ but speak with women’s voices and would seem to have no visible reproductive apparatuses at all. Heck, don’t know what else to say on the subject.

P.C. Alert! There’s a nasty bit of racial stereotype humor early in this one. As usual, we’ve left the cartoon uncensored, its regrettable cultural context intact.

We hope you have fallen in love with ReFrederator — the worlds first daily classic cartoon podcast.

Dave Kirwan