WFMU is Not Trying to Start a Race War...

Almost exactly one year ago we posted this cultural relic courtesy the TerryToons company. Here's another in the genre of early nineteen thirties animated racism, courtesy the Van Beuren Studios. This one starts off crazy enough with the ol' "chinaman" type stuff, but it gets remarkably wilder when the customer that needs his laundry done turns out to be a jaw dropping Jewish caricature.

Comments

[john]

While in total agreement with everything you said, I'm every bit as distressed by the saxophone-playing one's obsession with Rudy Vallee and the chorus just before the end being frighteningly reminiscent of the thirty-odd-years-in-the-future "live a little, be a gypsy, get around" bit (and yes, I'm embarrassed to have that in my head at five in the morning) from Paul McCartney's Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey.

[Bomba]

Take a look at the tickee...er...ticket the Semitic fellow produces from his deep pocket. If you turn it a quarter turn clockwise, it says "JEW."

[Jaylefus]

john, that's Chinatown they're caterwauling at the end, I think. And, Bomba, good catch. I was scratching my head trying to see the joke with the ticket. Basher? Baser? Flesh? Huh? Oh, giving them too much credit. Yikes.

[Rick Garcia]

Wow, what kind of drugs could the animators have been using when they came up with this?

Being in my 40's, I vaguely remember watching television here in LA in the mid-sixties, and you'd still come across this type of cartoon being shown on the local independent stations, like KTLA or KHJ, at odd hours of the day. My parents would let me watch because it was a cartoon, but I remember being creeped out by stuff like this even at the young age.

Fascinating stuff.

[Kevin K.]

I looked up the Hebrew alphabet online. The ticket spellS either KSP or KSF. Whether it also spells JEW sideways is another question.

[hannah]

The ticket says KSR but the letter on the right looks more like a B than a K. It looks like someone was trying to spell "kosher" in Yiddish block letters and didn't know what they were doing... probably just lifted the word from somewhere, maybe even from a Max Fleischer (creator of Betty Boop, Popeye, etc.) 'toon.

[Ticklemouse]

If the past IS a different country then this cartoon has made me xenophobic.

[Dave]

Dogs and cats working together!

[Matt]

Hey, isn't the mouse on the right @ 1:50 Chairman Mou-se Dung?