"A Silly Symphony"

Release Date December 9, 1938

Running Time 8:34

Synopsis

A lush underwater backdrop provides the playground for the title characters and an underwater circus.

Credits

Director : Rudolph Ising

Disney Supervsion

Ben Sharpsteen

Dave Hand

Otto Englander

Walt Disney

Layout : Maurice "Jake" Day

Music : Scott Bradley

Videos

United States

Cartoon Classics : Limited Gold Editions 2 : The Disney Dream Factory : 1933-1938

France

Silly Symphonies Volume 1

Germany

Verrückte Musikanten

Italy

Le Fiabe Volume 2 : Il Brutto Anatraccolo e Altre Storie

Gold Editions : La Fabbrica dei Sogni

Laserdiscs

United States

The Disney Dream Factory 1933-1938

Japan

More Silly Symphonies

DVD

United States

The Little Mermaid II

Region 2 : United Kingdom

Walt Disney's Fables : Volume 2

Germany

Zauberhafte Marchenwelt 2

Television

Walt Disney Presents : More About Silly Symphonies

The Ink and Paint Club : #13 : Silly Symphonies Get Wet

Donald's Quack Attack : Episode 20

Technical Specifications

Color Type : Technicolor

Animation type : Standard

Sound mix : Mono

Aspect ration : 1.37 : 1

Negative format : 35mm

Print format : 35mm

Cinematographic process : Spherical

Original language : English

Released by RKO Radio Pictures, Inc.

Comments

A Silly Symphony.

This was one of the only Disney shorts to be farmed out to another studio. It was produced by Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising's new Harman-Ising studio when the workload at Disney studios became too great.

From Rod Bennett : The staggering workload of "Snow White" drove Walt to farm this one out to his old Kansas City buddies Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising over at MGM. And they quit themselves very well, I must say ... but then visual panache was never their chief failing anyway. "Merbabies" also has a "half-sister" so to speak; the 1939 "Happy Harmonies" short entitled "The Little Goldfish." This one also originated at Disney's and was to have been released as a Silly Symphony - but when Walt pulled the plug on the entire series "Little Goldfish" ended up being completed and sent out as a "Harman-Ising" after all.

From J. D. Weil : "Merbabies" was one of two Disney theatrical shorts (the other one was "Winnie the Pooh and a Day For Eeyore") that outsourced to another another studio (in this  case, MGM); the reason for the out-sourcing was to pay back a favor to Harmon and Ising for letting Disney use their ink and paint department in order to get "Snow White" finished on time. Three shorts were planned. (The other two were "The Wayward Goldfish" and "Goldilocks and the Three Bears"). The work would be supervised on a weekly schedule. But after "Merbabies" was released, RKO, Walt's distributor, complained that they were supposed distribute Disney's shorts, not MGM's. The other two shorts were then released as MGM cartoons.

From Tom Wilkins : I wonder if these merbabies were the greatest influence to Touchstone's first movie in 1984, Splash! A very cute symphony to say the least, considering I was very surprised that this came out from the Harman/Ising camps. The sea parade was certainly cute and a little parallel to 1935's The Cookie Carnival. Even the underwater circus could not be topped, but the underwater donkey and the musical turtle were pretty interesting to note because they were probably an influence to Harman/Ising's MGM film Little Gravel Voice (1942) and Tom and Jerry's Little Runaway (1952). From a Disney standpoint, however, the climax was the whale, who does absolutely nothing but powerfully sneeze once as the climax of the movie. Could it be sheer coincidence that this whale was the idea for Monstro in Pinocchio? Finally, the musical score is one of the finest for any Disney cartoon and is perfect for the final serene sea scene.

From Jerry Edwards : For me, this Harman-Ising Studios effort is very inferior to similar Disney Silly Symphony shorts of that time - both in story and animation. However, the background art is very nicely done.

From Baruch Weiss : This short is so cute. I just love those Merbabies so I am giving this short a 10. Also I am giving it a 10 for the wonderful music.

Referenced Comments

Water Babies (1935)

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