Screen Songs
This series evolved from the earlier Song Car-Tune series. These animated cartoons took popular songs of the day and added a "bouncing ball" following the lyrics in an effort to encourage audience singalongs. To keep audience interest up in the 1930's, the series started featuring current popular musical guest stars such as Cab Calloway, Rudy Vallee and Ethel Merman. The series ended in 1938, but was brought back in 1945 as the Famous Studios Screen Songs series.
Cartoons
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China Town My China Town
Filled with old-fashioned Chinese stereotypes, this cartoon has the title song with the famous bouncing ball to sing along with, but no one is singing it to the instrumental soundtrack. The…
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Goodbye My Lady Love
Vintage animation for the title song. The film starts out with a title frame which says, "The Ko Ko Glee Club are on stage to help you sing along with the song." Then the cartoon starts tel…
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Smiles
A male vocal quartet is singing on stage. A spotlight close up shows their eyeballs shaking hands. The bouncing ball begins. Later, back on stage, one guy plays a series of instruments. Ano…
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Oh You Beautiful Doll
A Felix-like cat, Tommy, cleans up a musical instrument store with a vacuum cleaner. Behind him, a mouse spreads more dirt. The cat vacuums up the mouse, then they dance. A female cat, Mari…
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After The Ball
"Auld Lang Syne" begins the toon, and we are introduced to animated Charles K. Harris, composer of the "immortal song," presumably the title song, "After the Ball." We see him composing, pl…
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Put On Your Old Gray Bonnet
On a simple white background, an quartet of animals play flute, horn, banjo and violin. They are conducted by a fifth animal. The horn player switches to a mouth harp, and the bouncing ball…
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I've Got Rings On My Fingers
A traffic cop conducts air traffic from a platform with a stop sign, floating in the sky. He tickets a mouse. When the mouse drives off, his anchor hooks the cop's belt, and hauls him throu…
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Bedilia
A dog guy drives a roadster through a minimalist landscape. He stops, and calls out for Bedelia. She is sleeping, at home, in bed. We see her lying there, feet first, so the perspective mak…
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In The Shade Of The Old Apple Tree
The clock and whistle above a factory door sound for lunch, and the workers run out. A bear tries to eat his sandwich, but it opens like a big mouth, when he opens his. An apple is the boun…
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I'm Afraid To Go Home In The Dark
Two owls hoot in front of a full moon as a Bimbo-like dog whistles, and runs home in the dark. Afraid of his own shadow, he hides in his hat. His nose becomes the bouncing ball. A drunken v…
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Prisoner's Song
We hear a voiceover of a stickup, over an extended title card. Then it opens to prisoners on a rock pile, slowly making little ones out of big ones. A big guard with dog ears tries to get m…
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La Paloma
A suitor with dog ears and a cat tail throws a rose to his girl on a balcony. She throws it back to him, and the rose kisses him, as she would. His guitar playing forms a stair of notes, an…
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I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles
Mice form a line at a pump, where a dog pumps the water with his tail on the pump handle. The mice carry water to wash an elephant, cats, and a pig. A drunken dog uses a pig's screw tail to…
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Yes! We Have No Bananas
Two mice ski down a snowless city street, to a fruit vendor with a large stalk of bananas hanging over his cart. The mice steal, peel, and eat a few, then begin to dance. The fruit peddler…
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Come Take A Trip In My Airship
Kitty, a girl black cat, gets a piano delivered to her rooftop apartment by two Bimbo-like piano movers, using a pulley to hoist it up the outside. She plays happily until one note becomes…
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In The Good Old Summer Time
A cat leads a parade of animals, holding onto the cords from a clothesline, followed by more animals dancing and playing in the parade. Items from a butcher shop, and a pawn shop, join the…
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A Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight
A drunken mouse dances out of a newspaper office, and posts posters advertising a Hot Time. There is a barn dance, with mice, dancing to a fiddler and a piano player. A quartet of drunken m…
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The Glow Worm
A glow worm sing-along by Fleischer. A sexy black widow spider ends the episode by sending our hero to heaven.
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The Stein Song
Two football teams take the field, one all huge guys, the other all skinny mice. There is a persistent hot dog vendor in the stands. Rudy Vallee and His Connecticut Yankees, live, begin to…
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Strike Up The Band
A boat sails the sea at night, with the moon watching from above. Bimbo-like sailors march around the deck, then fall through a trap door. They land at the mess table, with lots of other an…
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My Gal Sal
Panning and scanning over tenement windows, we move down to street level to find a chubby dog singing. Various animal residents throw things at him, trying to stop the singing, until he is…
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Mariutch
Bimbo is an Italian immigrant who leaves his home and wife to travel to America, only to wind up in Coney Island. Bimbo flirts with a girl, and has a run-in with a cop. Bimbo soon sees this…
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On A Sunday Afternoon
A chubby dog woman drives her open car full of kids for a ride in the country. They stop to play golf. The bouncing ball bounces over a riverboat, then a Ferris wheel at night. One animal f…
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Row, Row, Row
A bad dog swaggers down the street to a bar. He goes in, perfumes his feet, then begins an apache (that's ah-PAHSH, not a-PATCH-e) dance with a Betty Boopish looking girl dog. Three kids sh…
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Please Go 'Way And Let Me Sleep
The sun yawns over a farm village. Tower bells ring, awakening a Bimbo-like sheriff. He ropes the tower, and pulls it over to silence the bells. The ball bounces over a haystack with feet p…
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By The Beautiful Sea
A mouse licks and kisses a picture of cheese while fanning a sleeping cat with his tail. Cat "Boopsie Woopsie," as he refers to himself on the phone, talks to his girlfriend, then drives hi…
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I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now
White boy and girl cats spoon at a desk. A black boy cat comes to call. She sends him away, but he tries to lure her with catnip on the end of a line. White "daddy" cat holds her back, and…
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I'd Climb The Highest Mountain
A black boy dog hikes up a mountain, carrying a chubby, Betty Boopish girlfriend on his back, followed by three hiking mice. The ball bounces, we see apples in a tree, mountains, and the mo…
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Somebody Stole My Gal
A boy dog walks down the train tracks singing "I Ain't Got Nobody," with a train coming. He looks at a photo of his girlfriend, and she razzes him. He lies down on the tracks, but the train…
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Any Little Girl That's A Nice Little Girl
A Casanova cat with a girlfriend for each day of the week visits his favorite, Lulu Belle, leading into a Bouncing Ball rendition of the title song.
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Alexander's Ragtime Band
Three distinct segments: 1) A dog is taking a music lesson from a lion when a mouse starts playing as well. 2) The "Bouncing Ball" segment, consisting of the words to the title song. 3) Som…
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And The Green Grass Grew All Around
It's a shotgun wedding, a big boy fly to a little girl fly, with her bearded dad holding the shotgun. A wedding party ensues, with an energetic hoe-down involving lots of dancing and playin…
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My Wife's Gone To The Country
A big dog-woman packs her bags with clothes. Three Bimbo-like pups help carry her baggage to the train station, and board the train with her. A bespectacled Bimbo-like doggy dad sees them o…
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That Old Gang Of Mine
A Yiddish girl alley cat (a Fanny Brice-type character) sits on a fence, crying a rain of tears on a mouse below. She looks at her boyfriend's picture, and bemoans her romantic situation. S…
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Betty Co-Ed
Betty Co-Ed is wooed by a dweebish frat boy. Rudy Vallee sings an unflattering song about her. No one is spared in this look at college life. In fact, one scene has graduates coming out in…
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You're Driving Me Crazy
Jungle animals sing and dance to a jazzy soundtrack.
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Little Annie Rooney
Based on the 1890 popular song, not the comic strip launched by King Features Syndicate in 1927 or the unrelated 1925 silent movie (with Mary Pickford in the title role). The cartoon ends w…
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Kitty From Kansas City
Betty Boop catches a train to a place called Rudy Valley. Rudy Vallee sings a song about a fat, stupid girl named Kitty from Kansas City. Betty then turns fat and guzzles beer. She ends up…
