There's something appealing for me in 2 strip color palettes. Perhaps their cheery, but limited designs make a nice look when they aren't over saturating and make the most of their colors? I don't know, but there is something nice when watching this week's cartoon, "The Calico Dragon", directed by Rudolph Ising, that even if I think despite it's impressive animation, it's far from perfect.
See, no film will ever be perfect imho, and nor should anyone try to make THE perfect film. And even for films that just okay or meh, there is stuff much to appreciate and respect. Sometimes the best of animation can be well animated and just tell a story that's pretty bad. Sometimes, a cartoon may have a great soundtrack and funny gags, but the timing and drawings hold back the potential. The Calico Dragon, like many Happy Harmonies, is quite flawed in story, but has enough charm & likability to make it worth watching.
Harman-Ising really had a bit of a struggle when it came to story in particular. After leaving Leon Schlesinger/WB and moving to Metro, their cartoons often dedicate too much time to the pure lavishness of the animation, and just decide to end once they write themselves out, leaving many plotholes loose. We will see this happen here, but it isn't a dealbreaker in some regards, as the visuals do leave enough for good watchability, as long as you don't binge watch these cartoons, otherwise they get annoying really quickly. But enough bickering, let's cover the cartoon itself!
We open with a little girl reading a bedtime story to her plushes before going to sleep. It helps to open the cartoon well and the zoom out down in the first shot is a nice touch. I must address one thing already: the design of this girl, and most of the designs of the characters for the first two film seasons of the Happy Harmonies are REALLY UGLY! I get that they wanna push in a more realistic move, but like Disney, struggled to get towards that goal right away, causing this wonky look that I can't describe any other way but ugly. With that said, the dolls, and most of the plush characters have really nice designs!
As we move towards our hero, the little doll boy, deciding he should go save the Princess in the story, with his Polka Dot Horse & Scotty Dog, the true star of the cartoon emerges: the fabric look. Besides the little girl, every character are dolls with various textures, drawn to the best degree, very impressive for 1935! This little post could do no justice to these animators, so I link Devon Baxter's Cartoon Research Post highlighting the animators using the original studio draft. You can learn the names of each animator & what scenes they do, and I suggest you read it before continuing!
Back on track, our hero begins his adventure and a song kicks in to describe the forest around him as he travels to the castle to slay the dragon. It's here where the storytelling first becomes flawed. Ising decides to spend a full minute dedicated to some side pieces of the rabbits playing happily (with the most impressive textures animated on them!), and then going into them heckling the Scotty Dog, but unfortunately it doesn't connect to anything in the main story, becoming pointless. It seems they got carried away in a little of the song just by highlighting them.
Luckily after this we focus back with the boy progressing his journey to the castle to defeat the Dragon, passing overly a river and a bridge that wisely use the texture theme very well (as well as the sky in the horizion, being a window cloth). We are then introduced to the 3-Headed Dragon in a charming song, also highlighting a noisemaker tongue that the middle head, before the battle commences. Our Hero is initially unprepared in some ways and struggles, but luckily the Scotty Dog manages to save the way and do most of the heavy lifting to defeat the Calico Dragon (using the noisemaker tongue) once and for all!
Our final issue comes into play here as we have a letdown ending with the little girl waking up after being scared from the wind, under her bed. It does leave a lot of things left out, such as the boy actually rescuing the princess, which I hoped would happen, and if it was all a dream (you only really assume that with the way it transitions back to reality).
That said, it's easy to appreciate other elements even with a loose story, but even then, considering you only were supposed to see for a few minutes once in a 70 year life, it's a good piece of entertainment for just that one or second watch. The animation and usage of cloth textures and patterns is highly impressive for 1935, and probably shined on screen very well on. I do hope eventually Warner Archive restores the Happy Harmonies to allow people to appreciate these things in a more clearer view than the typical copies floating around. Film Daily seems to of agreed with these points in mind, giving two reviews; one in April that is really in love with the way it's animated, and another in October that still promotes the draftsmanship, but overall seems to more explain the plot than anything.
Regardless of these shortcomings, The Calico Dragon managed to gain an Academy Award for best animated short, but lost to Three Orphan Kittens, a So-So Silly Symphony (imo) from Disney. Eventually, Ising would win an Academy Award in 1940 for his own Kitten short, The Milky Way.
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