005 Slay It WIth Flowers

Title: Slay It With Flowers
Studio: Columbia
Date: 01/08/43
Credits:
Produced by Dave Fleischer
Director
Bob Wickersham
Story
Leo Salkin
Animation
Phil Duncan
Music
Ed Kilfeather
Series: Color Rhapsody (The Fox and the Crow)
Running time (of viewed version): 7:17
Commercial DVD Availability: -

Synopsis: Fox plants victory garden, crow eats seeds.





















Comments: Well well, look where Dave Fleischer pops up. Columbia is still integrating their title into the beginning of the cartoon. The music has a Famous vibe to it (as do the voices). Apparently they couldn't fit Hirohito on the poster; they could have easily fit Tojo tho. I guess they wanted to go after the foreigners in general, and couldn't afford to alienate Americans of German or Italian descent. Thus, internment of only one ethnic group. My experience with the Fox and Crow is minimal, but is the fox always a snooty rich guy? This version seems ot be missing significant amounts of information on the bottom; some jokes seem cropped (not to mention the extreme wash out due to brightness). The message is all kinds of muddled; the fox is acting patriotically by planting a garden, but he nails up a hitler by the crotch to scare the crow, who was acting unpatriotic by eating the seeds (until the eraser scene at the end). The patriotism is just a vague sheen. Unless it's laying a foundation for the cold war; the crow does dress up as a Russian (tho not Stalin, more of a cossack). The crow speaks in a northern tough white dialect, for a change from how that would tend to go. The cartoon is also mis-named; fox isn't planting flowers. Second cartoon in a row about corn (tho the last one wasn't theatrical).