Today’s Silly Symphony starts with a familiar theme: inanimate objects that come to life when people aren’t around to observe them. This device was previously used in Midnight In A Toy Shop, The China Plate and The Clock Store, to name a few, but it’s taken to a new level in The China Shop. Where the previous shorts featured a series of vignettes, The China Shop tells a story. Two dancing figurines (reminiscent of a couple in The Clock Store) are interrupted by a Satyr figure who kidnaps the female figurine. The ensuing battle is a tour de force for the animators under the direction of Wilfred Jackson. Leigh Harline’s score doesn’t feature any songs, but the dialogue-free short is served very well by his music.

The Grasshopper and the Ants is one of the most fondly remembered of the Silly Symphonies, no doubt due to the memorable song by Leigh Harline “The World Owes Me A Living”. Pinto Colvig’s delivery of the tune was perfect, and it became the theme song for another of Colvig’s characters: Goofy.

Funny Little Bunnies is a Silly Symphony that delivers exactly what the title promises, and very little else. Directed by Wilfred Jackson, the short presents Easter bunnies preparing treats for Easter – chocolate bunnies, chocolate eggs, Easter baskets… The song by Frank Churchill and Larry Morey is hummable, and the score by Leigh Harline is pleasant. Other than the bunnies, the only other characters are chickens (voiced by Florence Gill), who lay Easter eggs for the bunnies to decorate. There’s no real story or suspense – but the animation is clever and, as you may suspect, very colorful.

You can actually follow Pigs with Pigs, if you do it correctly. The Big Bad Wolf was Disney’s response to the public’s demand for more from the Three Little Pigs. This time, the Wolf plays the familiar villain in the story of Little Red Riding Hood – with the pigs serving as a frame for the story – Fiddler and Fifer lead Little Red Riding Hood through a shortcut in the woods, while Practical swoops in at the end to rescue Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother. This short reunited director Burt Gillett (this was to be his last Silly Symphony before leaving Disney for Van Beuren Studios – he’d return for The Moth and The Flame several years later) and composer Frank Churchill, who together had scored a huge hit with Three Little Pigs.

Some things are just unpredictable. It was clear that The Wise Little Hen was going to be popular. Wilfred Jackson directed some of Disney’s best animators in telling the story of the very practical and hard-working Hen and her chicks as they planted, watered, grew, and ultimately ate their corn, and their neighbors who feigned sickness when asked to lend a hand (until it was time to eat, of course). Leigh Harline’s memorable soundtrack was made even more delightful by Florence Gill’s singing voice in the title role. One of her lazy neighbors, Peter Pig, was played by Disney mainstay Pinto Colvig, who had originated the role of Practical Pig a year before in Three Little Pigs. The other neighbor was created to highlight the vocal talents of Clarence Nash, a performer whose funny voices were appreciated by Walt. They gave Clarence the role of a duck called Donald. And history was made.

The Flying Mouse is a fan favorite, though I’d venture to guess that it’s for the great character animation and catchy themes than the story. In short, it’s about a mouse who wants to fly, is given wings by a magical fairy, and is shunned by his family, the birds he wanted to emulate, and the bats (who have the best song in the short). Eventually, the fairy restores him to his wingless, original self with the admonishment “Do your best. Be yourself.” The human form that the fairy takes is another example of a proto-Snow White (or perhaps the Pinocchio’s Blue Fairy), and the bats and spider hearken back to the characters in the first few years of the Silly Symphony series.

This is another oddball short, mostly forgotten by time. Helmed by Silly Symphony vets Wifred Jackson and Leigh Harline, Peculiar Penguins is cute, clever, yet ultimately pales in comparison to the Symphonies that came before and after it. 

The Silly Symphonies were such a rich and important series for Disney in the 1930s, yet many fans today remember them only for their benchmarks: The Skeleton Dance for launching the series, Flowers and Trees for technicolor, Three Little Pigs for “Whose Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”, The Old Mill for the multi-plane camera… These are all worthwhile facts, but they often reduce these great works of animation art and entertainment to a footnote. Most Disney fans know of The Goddess of Spring as the short where the Disney animators experimented with a realistic-looking character, in preparation for Snow White. While that may be true, The Goddess of Spring is so much more. In an operetta (with a demonic jazz interlude) by Leigh Harline, the story of seasons is beautifully animated – with the Disney animators pulling out all stops and delivering images that continue to resonate in animation today.

One of the best Silly Symphonies. One of the best cartoons ever (according to me). The Tortoise and the Hare perfectly encapsulates what Disney did best. From the very first (silent) Disney cartoons to the biggest “Princess” movies, Disney used classic stories as a jumping-off point and made them exciting, fun, and relevant. Disney veteran Wilfred Jackson handled direction and the memorable score is by Frank Churchill. But it was animator Ham Luske’s animation of Max Hare that still resonates. Was Max an inspiration for another studio’s Bunny? Did that bunny appear in another take on The Tortoise and the Hare 6 years later?

The Golden Touch is a lesser Silly Symphony – with a decent song by Frank Churchill (sung by Billy Bletcher) and some fun a weird animation by Norm Ferguson and Fred Moore. Where the cartoon falls short is the story, which is odd because as an adaptation of a classic story, this should have been a shoo-in for the director – one of the best storytellers of the century – Walt Disney. Where Nathaniel Hawthorne showed Midas losing his beloved daughter as a victim of his greed, Disney presented the comedic Midas panicking because he couldn’t eat, eventually trading his golden touch and everything he owned in exchange for “one hamburger sandwich”.