steamboat

One of the most overlooked aspects of this cartoon is the backgrounds behind the dancing Koko. Example: The skeleton card game in the background. Owing to the morbid economic times in the early 1930's, cartoons like these, because of the musical content and visuals were very successful. The images that illuminated songs like St. James Infirmary
Blues were a mirror reflection of those economic times. Surprisingly, these concepts have not returned today. Does anyone have the guts to use rotoscopes today? I think not. This society is so married to computers, I sometimes wonder if people were aware films with imagination were made before their advent!

Astonishing.

This is probably one of the most astonishing cartoons on all history. The beginning and the end are typical of the animation of the time, with the wacky touch of the cartoons of the period, but the scene where Koko the clown is transformed into a ghost by the witch and dances as he sings on a scrolling background is an astonishing, spooky, eerie, and uneasy experience, coming from a time when cartoons were not only for kids.

I remember this cartoon from my childhood. It is by far the best cartoon story I have ever experienced. Seeing is believing.