A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

"Red-Headed Baby" is a cartoon from 1931 that has its 85th anniversary this year already. It is a collaboration between Warner Bros and Schlesinger Studios and the director is the prolific Rudolf Ising. I initially thought it may be a problem with the title including a color and the fact that this is still a black-and-white production, but it turned out fine. It's still not a great achievement by any means, but for 1931, it is certainly convincing. The voice acting was good, shame the actors are not credited, the music was fine too, spirit was appropriate as this film came out during the Christmas holidays. The villain, a nasty spider guy, is interesting and so are the little Napoleon and of course the title character. I enjoyed the watch. Well done, guys. It is in terms of atmosphere and tone similar to some Betty Boop work, but I must say I liked this one here even more than most Betty stuff. Watch it.

This is an early Warner Brothers short. There will be spoilers ahead:This is a very simple and basic cartoon. Warner Brothers used its animated shorts to move its music catalog. Red-Headed Baby was a song and the purpose of this cartoon was to showcase the song.Much of the short is spent in singing the song. The plot, such as it is, revolves around a baby doll made by a toy maker coming to life. She flirts with a toy soldier and they take turns singing the song. Then a toy spider sings a verse as he moves in to try to grab the doll.The obligatory conflict is rather perfunctory and doesn't work out very well for the spider. The ending of the short is probably the most novel thing in here.This short is an extra on the Cimarron DVD. If you're interested in Cimarron, this is worth watching. Recommended for LT/MM completists.

Included on Warners' DVD of CIMARRON (1931), what I said about the latter – that it is marred by the primitive technique of the time – also applies to this "Merrie Melodies" cartoon when compared to the studio's heyday in this art form. As was the custom back then, its sole raison d'etre is to promote a current hit tune (for which it is named); this is set against a backdrop of a toy-maker's workshop, where his creations come to life at night, and he eventually joins the chorus at the end. Typical ingredients here are the fact that the titular belle is at once romanced by a toy soldier and coveted by a large spider (which the latter ultimately defeats, with the help of the other toys). In the long run, though certainly a harmless enough short in itself, both the style of animation and the overall approach is very dated and, frankly, too corny to be appealing.

This early Merrie Melodie is fairly lively, concerning a room of toys who dance and sing along to the radio while their creator (Santa Claus?) is asleep.The song 'Red Headed Baby' is first squeaked by a rosy-cheeked doll with the requisite big eyes (one would assume they are blue), and later by a Napoleon clone. It isn't a memorable song, and these aren't memorable characters, but there's a villain (a spider), a chase, and a bit of derring-do before the song plays out.Harman and Ising has started with Disney, working on Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, before taking some of the ideas from that series to develop Bosko for Warner Bros. The trouble with their cartoons are that many are exactly the same, regurgitating the same gags and situations.That said, these cartoons do have a certain historical interest and hopefully they will make it on to later Golden Collection DVDs (even if it is as one or two extras at a time, as a few have been already).