I’ve decided that the spider in Midnight In A Toy Shop and Egyptian Melodies might be one of my favorite early Disney characters. It’s a shame that this fun-loving and mischievous fellow didn’t show up in more cartoons throughout the decades. Midnight… follows a similar premise as Egyptian… (actually, Midnight came first. But since since is a countdown…). Though this short came almost a year earlier, it’s even more “musical”, with many of the on-screen characters (the toys and the spider) singing and dancing to Bert Lewis’ score. The spider’s piano solo is a thing to behold.

Check the Silly Symphony page at the Disney Music Emporium for more info on the vinyl collection coming very soon!

Coming less than a year after the series debut, Night is an entertaining short that, not unlike the 4 “seasonal” Symphonies, presents a series of animals singing and dancing in perfect synchronization with the score (here by Bert Lewis). Some are presented more “realistically” like the frog pursuing a meal of mosquitos, while most are pure show biz vignettes, like the glow worms fantastic dance number.

Monkey Melodies is another winner from the team at Disney. As is often the case with the early Symphonies, there’s not much plot – but there’s plenty of personality. After being introduced to several monkeys (and a couple of birds) to the tune of “Abba Dabba Honeymoon,” we finally meet the main characters, a pair of monkeys in love. They’re funny and sympathetic characters, and we find ourselves rooting for them as they’re pursued by all sorts of predators – including dancing crocodiles (after all, this is a Disney cartoon). The animation, under the direction of Burt Gillett, works perfectly with Bert Lewis’ score, which incorporates several recognizable pop tunes of the day.

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Winter was the last of four Silly Symphonies to be themed after a specific season. It’s an exercise in gag-driven funny animal animation. It features more bear cubs that look suspiciously like Mickey. It has familiar and popular winter music. It shows animals skating on a frozen lake, predating Bambi by a decade. But most importantly, it features the only fart joke that I can ever recall seeing in a Disney short.

Remember to visit the Disney Music Emporium for information on the Silly Symphony Collection vinyl box set!

There’s a lot to recommend Playful Pan. First off, it’s worth noting the wonderful and creative score by Bert Lewis, a Disney composer who doesn’t get as much attention as Stalling, Churchill, or Harline. Second, the characterizations of the animals, flowers, and trees (and clouds… and flames…) are ridiculously clever. Third, the fire sequence, while played for laughs, is actually terrifying. It’s one thing to burn a forest in Bambi. It’s another thing to show an anthropomorphic tree try and fail to put out the fire that’s killing him. Wow.

Don’t forget to visit The Silly Symphony Collection page for details on the massive vinyl box set.

Birds of a Feather is another example of a perfect Silly Symphony. It begins as a series of humorous vignettes – introducing several different birds – with the birds themselves providing the melodies to the soundtrack more often than not. When the action of the third act occurs, the “animals as army” trope kicks in. This beautifully animated short would be a blueprint for many to come. 

Unlike Old King Cole or Mother Goose Goes Hollywood, Mother Goose Melodies isn’t a sly or sophisticated cartoon. Rather, it’s a clever early sound short that presents familiar nursery rhyme characters in a simple but clever presentation. A few Silly Symphony gimmicks are present (a spider that approaches the ‘camera’ for example), but it’s mostly a fun, charming, and family-friendly short.  

Aside from some unfortunate character stereotyping, The China Plate is a remarkable cartoon. Consider the source material: in the late 1700s, a story was developed to market a particular pattern on a china plate. Even though the plate was created in England, the design was based on a Chinese style, and thus the story (also created in England) was about Chinese characters. The ‘Willow Pattern’ legend had been told many times and many ways for almost a century and half before the team at Disney tried their hand at it. As a story that might have been familiar to audiences in 1931, there was no dialogue needed, and Frank Churchill’s brilliant score almost tells the story by itself. Disney’s embellishments to the story: a cormorant fishing sequence and a chase with a dragon, for example, only add to the fun and wonder of this mostly forgotten short.

Don’t forget to visit The Silly Symphony Collection page for details on the massive vinyl box set.

One of my favorite things about cartoons from the ’30s is how they often present an extremely complicated method of achieving something simple. The first 5 minutes of The Busy Beavers shows a group of beavers building a dam in a way that would boggle the mind of any architect but delight contemporary audiences. It’s no surprise that the same year this short was released, the Merriam-Webster dictionary added the term “Rube Goldberg”. Frank Churchill’s score – filled with pop music references – perfectly matches the action, which turns from light and playful to ominous and dramatic as a storm spectacularly threatens the beavers’ dam. A team of over a dozen animators, working under the able direction of Wilfred Jackson, turned out another winner for Disney.

Don’t forget to visit The Silly Symphony Collection page for details on the massive vinyl box set.

Like Egyptian Melodies, The Cat’s Out (also known as The Cat’s Nightmare) is a series of humorous and clever vignettes, perfectly synchronized to a fantastic score, composed and compiled by the great Frank Churchill. In this short, the hero/victim is a cat, put out for the night, who chases a bird and falls off a roof. He hits the ground and is knocked out (perhaps that’s what’s meant by the title?). In his nightmare, he encounters a giant version of the bird, owls, bats, spiders, and, in what might be the most clever gag of the short, a pair of hollow trees.

Don’t forget to visit The Silly Symphony Collection page for details on the massive vinyl box set.