Smile, Darn Ya, Smile! is a 1931 Merrie Melodies short directed by Rudolf Ising.
Plot[]
Foxy is a trolley engineer, whose problems include an obese lady hippo who can't fit into the trolley and a set of wheels that detach from the trolley car while it's moving. Foxy picks up his vixen girlfriend and gives her a ride, but then the car is blocked by a cow who won't get off the track. A group of nearby hobos sing the title song while Foxy tries to move the cow; he finally runs the car underneath the cow and goes on his way.
The trolley then goes down a hill and runs out of control; Foxy tries to stop it, but the brakes don't work. The trolley runs off of a cliff, throwing Foxy into the air. He wakes up from what turned out to be just a dream. The radio by his bed is playing the title song, but Foxy smashes it with a bedpost.
Availability[]
The Golden Age of Looney Tunes, Vol. 1, Side 1: 1930s Musicals
The Golden Age of Looney Tunes, Vol. 1: 1930s Musicals
The Public Enemy
Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 6, Disc 3 (restored)
The Public Enemy (part of "Warner's night at" movies in SD)
Dance, Fools, Dance
Streaming[]
Notes[]
- The title song was featured twice in the 1988 movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit, first when Eddie drives into Toontown, and again at the end of the film. The song plays as part of the background area music in the Esplanade at the Disneyland Resort as well as in the Mickey's Toontown area of Disneyland Park.
- The lady hippo's gibberish dialogue is actually the following sentence played backwards: "Susie heard one of those Atlantic bells! Whataya think?"
- After Foxy deflates the lady hippo's body, she then says the following sentence backwards: "...for a week...my diary looks like the register..."
- The backwards dialogue is lifted from the soundtrack of the 1931 film Expensive Women, spoken by Polly Walters.
- Inside the trolley car are a number of parody advertisements based on real products of the time, including Arrow collars ("Narrow Collars"), Smith Brothers cough drops ("Sniff Brothers Cough Drops") and Fisk Tires ("Risk Tires").
- A version of this cartoon with the title song's lyrics edited out appeared in the Pee-wee's Playhouse episode "Now You See Me, Now You Don't".
- This is one of the only three Merrie Melodies shorts to star Foxy, the other two being "Lady, Play Your Mandolin!" (2 August 1931) and "One More Time" (3 October 1931).
- This short is a mostly a remake of "Trolley Troubles", a Disney short featuring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, in whose creation Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising had once been involved.
- The scene showing the cow chewing and spitting tobacco was animation re-used from "Sinkin' in the Bathtub".
- This is the first and earliest cartoon to fall under the Associated Artists Productions / "pre-1948" package of shorts, which include all the B&W Merrie Melodies shorts (minus "Lady, Play Your Mandolin!" and the 1934-1935 B&W ones) and the entire color cartoons from 1934-1948.
- This cartoon entered the public domain in 1959 as United Artists did not renew the copyright in time.
Gallery[]
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