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Into Your Dance is a 1935 Merrie Melodies short directed by Isadore Freleng.

Plot[]

A blackfaced quartet singing the titular song welcomes guests boarding Captain Benny's Showboat. When the audience is seated, peg-legged Benny introduces "the world's most popular orchestra leader," and out walks Porky Pig as a caricature of Paul Whiteman. He is twice pelted off the stage with tomatoes as the audience laughs riotously at him, but comes back in disguise to lead the band. An old dog screws a light socket onto his tail, making him flail about frantically as he gets electrocuted. The musicians follow his lead and play the "William Tell Overture" at super speed.

Then comes Amateur Night. A singing lady cow shrieks and wails until Benny has had enough. He rings a bell, signalling a stage hand to drag her offstage with the hook. A tough-looking fellow recites poetry until the bell rings, and he too gets the hook. Next up is a singing dog, but before he goes onstage, he distracts Benny and swipes the bell, sticking it in the seat of his pants. He then stutters and stammers his way through the first couple lines of the title song. The audience laughs at the dog as well as Benny desperately looks for the bell to get him offstage, but it's too late. The audience has left as the dog discovers that his terrible singing has cleared out the theater. Benny gets his revenge by chasing the dog off the showboat and into the night with a wooden plank, striking at the bell hidden in the seat of the dog's pants several times.

Caricatures[]

Censorship[]

  • Airings of this short on Cartoon Network in the early 1990s remove the scene of a blackface minstrel group performing "Go Into Your Dance" as the crowd enters the show. By the mid-to-late 1990s, the short was rarely shown.

Availability[]

Streaming[]

Gallery[]

References[]

  1. Catalog of Copyright Entries
  2. (3 October 2022) Cartoon Voices of the Golden Age, Vol. 2 (in en). BearManor Media, page 37. 
  3. https://www.bcdb.com/cartoon/478-Into-Your-Dance



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