Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 1936


The CooCoo Nut Grove

Buy The CooCoo Nut Grove now from Amazon

First, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.

Wikipedia article




'The CooCoo Nut Grove' is a 1936 Warner Bros. 'Merrie Melodies' short animated film, set in the famed Cocoanut Grove of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. The cartoon was directed by Friz Freleng, with animation by Robert McKimson and Sandy Walker, caricature design by T. Hee, and musical score by Carl Stalling. The short was released on November 28, 1936.

Plot



Master of ceremonies Ben Birdie (bandleader Ben Bernie, voiced by Tedd Pierce) is accosted in the opening scene by Walter Windpipe (Walter Winchell, voiced by Danny Webb). The short then proceeds to showcase many Hollywood stars in the form of Ralph Barton-esque caricatures, including Katharine Hepburn (as a horse named Miss Heartburn), Jean Harlow, Bette Davis, Ned Sparks (voiced by Dave Barry), W. C. Fields (voiced by Tedd Pierce), Clark Gable, Groucho and Harpo Marx, Johnny Weissmuller (in character as Tarzan) and Lupe Vlez, Mae West (voiced by Verna Deane), Wallace Beery, John Barrymore, Laurel and Hardy, Edward G. Robinson, Fred Astaire, and George Raft. Musical entertainments are provided by Dame Edna May Oliver as "The Lady in Red", the Dionne quintuplets (who were in reality two years old at the time, all voiced by Bernice Hansen), and Helen Morgan (voiced by Verna Deane), sitting on the piano, turning on the tears with a torch song that causes most of the guests to cry (except Ben Birdie and a few others), flooding the Grove in the process. Whereas other cartoons have caricatured celebrities as either humans or animals, this short does bothhalf are seen as human, half as animals.

Production notes



*The title is sometimes mis-labeled as 'The Coo-Coo Nut Groove'. This cartoon was followed by 'The Woods Are Full Of Cuckoos' (1937) and 'Have You Got Any Castles?' (1938), both parodying Hollywood personalities.

Home media



*'Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3'.

References




Buy The CooCoo Nut Grove now from Amazon

<-- Return to movies from 1936



This work is released under CC-BY-SA. Some or all of this content attributed to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1106952477.