Paul Terry had definite ideas about what people wanted to see- and how much he wanted to spend making these cartoons. In its prime, "Terrytoons" were considered cheap and "disposable"- in theaters one week, out the next. Yet, more kids grew up watching them on TV, beginnng in the early '50s, than most other cartoon series, because Terry also knew what an impact TV would have on his "inventory" (and only HE profited when he sold his studio and library to CBS in late 1955).
So many well known animators worked at Terrytoons at one point or another (e.g. Art Babbitt and Ralph Bakshi, just to name two.). They didn't work on this particular cartoon, but the studio has an important place in history for being a training ground for those who went on to bigger studios. Yes, this is racist, and it was racist back then. The caricatures reflect the 3-5ths compromise, because they make these people look like animals instead of people.
I always considered it ironic that Walt Disney considered Paul Terry an influence on his own work - especially given how, in terms of spending money on animated cartoons, Disney ended up being Terry's polar opposite! (Disney = Tiffany's, Terry = Woolworth's)
*Really?* *There's commercials all over tube with 'Black guys dangling huge sneakers' for sale and ALWAYS 'surrrounded with White girls' wearing as little as possible* *Tell me that ain't 'Racist'*
with slavery abolished, while us southern whites still took advantage of the free blacks, everyone had to indulge in agriculture, cotton and otherwise, If your offended by the black characters running to the showboat, you must really be shocked by women screaming over Sinatra or Crosby singers.
It sure was not PC for today, but animation was awesome from artistic pov! The jazz of Cab Calloway, Louie Armstrong in many cartoons of this era deserve to be seen and heard. Comic distortions of all humans were seen in this era.
I love to show some of these works to my teenagers to show what people are talking about when they talk about prejudice. Who?, what?, why?, and how? are natural questions for any child watching this and knowing how deeply weird the world is portrayed. I have no love for the entire creative cast of this thing but they still left a legacy,.
All these archaic cartoons reminds me how simple things were and people enjoyed cartoons for face value and race wasn't the issue but cartoonist using the times to produce a funny cartoon and nothing more.
Sure when you have it all your way and look at people anyway you want like, without them complaining. Yeah, things were pretty simple. But thankfully they aren't now and people get to say no.
Maybe so, but the cartoon itself has some good music. The Terrytoons cartoons were not as good as those produced by Disney, Warners, Fleischer, or Walter Lantz.
idk I mean show me the "white" cartoon characters that also weren't depicted just as goofy in cartoons. That's what cartoons are for, to make people laugh. If they were all straight and dignified and accurately drawn nobody would want to watch, and if they weren't depicted at all they'd be complaining about that too. "This is the South! Where are the black people?" they'd say.
@@g.jameson3314 well like my father says. "Opinions and assholes. Everyone has got one"..... Anyway, how dare I right. Cartoons should only have dorky, goofy looking white characters juxtapozed against dignified, stoic and boring people of color. When we are laughed at, its justified; when they are, its racism. And when we even mention 'we', we're racist, but they get to celebrate the specialness of their group. Yeah yeah. Heard it all before. Was Goofy himself a white dog creature, btw? Surely he had to be, or he'd have been removed as racist too.
I honestly think Goofy IS black. If you just look at him: the white part is just his muzzle, and gloves. The face, ears, ankles, & wrists behind the white gloves are as black as Booker T Washington. In fact, with the white gloves and white muzzle, it looks dangerously close to a Sambo! And its high time people were now outraged at this outrageous and racist assault upon the dignity of the African American people.....
When the P.C. police whine about how these cartoons are culturally insensitive that innocence of just enjoying Saturday movies cartoons dies a little bit.
actually it had a reverse effect. They were 'pulled' or removed from circulation, due to "racism" and that saw them fall into public domain where anyone could get them and put them back in circulation, hence why Inki and the Myna Bird and so many others are in cheap video or dvd collections, and Little Black Sambo showed back up on tv. This one here is a Terry Toon and Terry Toons seemed to vanish completely from the landscape, and these seem to be some of the strongest efforts to show something of the life as being the life, no matter how much people want to scoff at it today. This is about the most minimum white lips I've seen, Scarlet and Red are depicted completely different from the couple who dance after them, but with each surprise advancement, bam, there come the watermelons. And the really funny thing is, all of this, picking cotton, lazing about while fishing, running to the celebrity visits, watermelon, was and is all done by white folk, but no one seems to want to realize that. I'm a bit "hmmph" about the slot machine. To appear in a cartoon, it had to be commonplace, so were black people wanting to make a fortune on those silly things with what money they had?
@@2up3rm4n1 Listen , I grew up in the 1970s when you could see these cartoons on MAINSTREAM TV and as a Black Kid from the American South we did not think TWICE on their "racism" ; I guess some of us were concerned about our fathers , brothers , coming home home from the Viet Nam War , among other REAL concerns.
@@anthonyjamieson3875 as a white kid who grew up in the American south in the '70s, the only editing done to old cartrons was the Bugs Bunny ones that aired Saturday mornings, but they had the strange violence editing. Can't recall any that aired racial images on Saturday morning. I do recall Tom and Jerry airing when I was real small, but don't remember the black stereotypes, if they did or didn't aire. I'm sure they did. About mid-seventies, all the other WB Merrie Melodies began airing weekdays and I saw Inki and the Myna Bird with no problem and didn't think, that's how black people are or why his lips were so big and red. I might as well have wondered why Yosemite Sam was so short or he and Elmer had round noses, or Elmer's speech impediment. And thought nothing of all those INdian depictions. Never saw All This and Rabbit Stew. The Stepin Fetchit depictions were pulled more than big lips or mammy images. And I saw the Tom and Jerry cartoons in the '80s and again, they seemed unedited. Mammy Two Shoes, mammies, black children, big lips alll were shown weekdays. An Australian aborigine Bugs met with kangaroos aired no problem. Terry Toons, for whatever reason, I never saw on tv back then.
@@boyofthesouth5327 we did not sell ourselves. What we did do was as punishment we forced those who didn't want to mind the rules into labor camps hence the "slave trade" we got nothing out of it just punishment lol
As usual, the best part of these cartoons is Phil Scheib's music score- and he did it without using any "current" tunes, because Terry told him not to use any (again, to save money). Some cartoon connisseurs claim Scheib's music sounded virtually the same in every Terrytoon, but he had a knack for blending "familiar melodies" and his own compositions (and they did have a tendency to sound alike at times, but at his peak, he composed scores for about 26 cartoons every year, for over 30 years).
@twan56chomp Originally, it wasn't aired on TV. It was made for theatrical release. Cartoons in the 1910's through 1950's were regularly shown in movie theaters accompanying the feature film. When cartoons began being sold to TV networks, it probably aired in the 50's and 60's on regular stations like ABC and CBS. I doubt it has been shown anywhere lately due to its content.
@ Joe Griffin: yeah... saddly, is hard to trully enjoy the happy, carefree and jolly spirit of the cartoon...when is impregnated with such retrograde ideas and painting black's miserable lives in the south as "jolly and happy"... like, i love the animation and energy of the caracters but... you know. i know this statement won't erase the historical pain but: whenever you encounter old stuff with "this tone" and you want to enjoy the piece but... the biases on it wont let you, remember: is a piece of it's time (not like that makes it less ofensive) but keep in mind all the people in this comment section who's also offended and angry, proving that we've overcome such way of thinking and we can reflect of terry toons cynicism when making this. and try to abstract the "good" on it, like thefluid and energetic animation! (also... that dancing animation...DAMN! i hate to like them dancing feet but is so smooth!)
@ESLinstructor1 actually watermelon reflects Southern food; When blacks moved to the factory towns up north during the 1920's the foreign emmigrants in the poor housing used their affection for Southern cooking and treats such as watermelon as a way to ridicule their oddness. It caught on in stage shows, cartoons, films and song. Everybody from the south, white black yellow red or cajun, likes melon (for the most part).
For those calling this "racist", it is for today, but when this was made in the 40s, it was considered acceptable. Tomes change, attitudes change. It's better to have this out there as a reminder than to bury it and forget.
Bull! It was just as racist then as it is now. But then we knew that no one would listen to our complaints. "Sit down and shut up, boy, if you know what's good for you."
Social relativism sounds like what you're talking about. But here a question: in a time when racially motived violence was most accepted (doesn't matter when), was that violence not still racist? You can still find photograph post cards showing and celebrating acts of complete barbarism in this country against minorities. It was as normal as this cartoon was in their day. Socially encouraged at times. Both the cartoon and the violence are racism incarnate regardless of social norms at a given time.
A racist cartoon like this was very uncommon for Terry Toons. Most of his cartoons had animals in them, not too many humans populated Paul Terry's cartoon world.
Thanks for posting this and so many other cartoons we'd never get to see if not for the internet.
These cartoons we grew up with on Saturday mornings seemed harmless and comic at the time.
Paul Terry had definite ideas about what people wanted to see- and how much he wanted to spend making these cartoons. In its prime, "Terrytoons" were considered cheap and "disposable"- in theaters one week, out the next. Yet, more kids grew up watching them on TV, beginnng in the early '50s, than most other cartoon series, because Terry also knew what an impact TV would have on his "inventory" (and only HE profited when he sold his studio and library to CBS in late 1955).
So many well known animators worked at Terrytoons at one point or another (e.g. Art Babbitt and Ralph Bakshi, just to name two.). They didn't work on this particular cartoon, but the studio has an important place in history for being a training ground for those who went on to bigger studios. Yes, this is racist, and it was racist back then. The caricatures reflect the 3-5ths compromise, because they make these people look like animals instead of people.
I always considered it ironic that Walt Disney considered Paul Terry an influence on his own work - especially given how, in terms of spending money on animated cartoons, Disney ended up being Terry's polar opposite! (Disney = Tiffany's, Terry = Woolworth's)
Notice how similar this is to the Universal cartoon "Scrub Me Mama With That Boogie Beat"
Oh god i got ptsd from that cartoon
They were even made the same year.
5:39-5:48 these clips would be reused in the Mighty Mouse cartoon the MAGIC SLIPPER.
The last scene: the showboat shovels it's own coke and gets speed superpowers. Note that coke was still legal back then.
Even beyond the insulting stereotypes, I cannot recall a cartoon with more WTF moments.
*Really?* *There's commercials all over tube with 'Black guys dangling huge sneakers' for sale and ALWAYS 'surrrounded with White girls' wearing as little as possible*
*Tell me that ain't 'Racist'*
There are plenty of WTF moments in life. Chill, amigo.
with slavery abolished, while us southern whites still took advantage of the free blacks, everyone had to indulge in agriculture, cotton and otherwise,
If your offended by the black characters running to the showboat, you must really be shocked by women screaming over Sinatra or Crosby singers.
It sure was not PC for today, but animation was awesome from artistic pov! The jazz of Cab Calloway, Louie Armstrong in many cartoons of this era deserve to be seen and heard. Comic distortions of all humans were seen in this era.
@@2up3rm4n1 If that only made sense…………
I love to show some of these works to my teenagers to show what people are talking about when they talk about prejudice. Who?, what?, why?, and how? are natural questions for any child watching this and knowing how deeply weird the world is portrayed. I have no love for the entire creative cast of this thing but they still left a legacy,.
@diddymuck It was in it's era. Different era, different customs.
ooh haha!!!its was a very entertaining cartoon!!!
Simple yet entertaining
All these archaic cartoons reminds me how simple things were and people enjoyed cartoons for face value and race wasn't the issue but cartoonist using the times to produce a funny cartoon and nothing more.
Sure when you have it all your way and look at people anyway you want like, without them complaining. Yeah, things were pretty simple. But thankfully they aren't now and people get to say no.
@@lazyel Well said
It's just you that's simple. These are all deeply racist, and you probably are as well.
What the hell are you talking about? This has to be one of the most asinine comments I’ve read on any social media platform.
are you fucking stupid? the race is the joke
that's funny shit!! 😂
Maybe so, but the cartoon itself has some good music. The Terrytoons cartoons were not as good as those produced by Disney, Warners, Fleischer, or Walter Lantz.
@Nen783 same reason as fried chicken its damn good
I don’t wanna hear anyone say this is racist or the creator should be canceled. The creator is dead!
Good Ole days, Funny
I think this short came out 80 years ago!
hahaha thats funny as hell.
Hahahahaha... cool.
3:42
Noggas wild goes
How was THE FROG PRINCESS more racist than this?
This is disgraceful.
Enjoyable show, likeable characters. If only it wasn't so racist.
oh hell nah!!! >:(
A very hurtful time in cartoon history
Poor snowflake.
idk I mean show me the "white" cartoon characters that also weren't depicted just as goofy in cartoons. That's what cartoons are for, to make people laugh. If they were all straight and dignified and accurately drawn nobody would want to watch, and if they weren't depicted at all they'd be complaining about that too. "This is the South! Where are the black people?" they'd say.
What an asinine comment
@@g.jameson3314 well like my father says. "Opinions and assholes. Everyone has got one".....
Anyway, how dare I right. Cartoons should only have dorky, goofy looking white characters juxtapozed against dignified, stoic and boring people of color.
When we are laughed at, its justified; when they are, its racism.
And when we even mention 'we', we're racist, but they get to celebrate the specialness of their group. Yeah yeah. Heard it all before.
Was Goofy himself a white dog creature, btw? Surely he had to be, or he'd have been removed as racist too.
I honestly think Goofy IS black.
If you just look at him: the white part is just his muzzle, and gloves. The face, ears, ankles, & wrists behind the white gloves are as black as Booker T Washington.
In fact, with the white gloves and white muzzle, it looks dangerously close to a Sambo!
And its high time people were now outraged at this outrageous and racist assault upon the dignity of the African American people.....
sNICCERS)))
When the P.C. police whine about how these cartoons are culturally insensitive that innocence of just enjoying Saturday movies cartoons dies a little bit.
actually it had a reverse effect. They were 'pulled' or removed from circulation, due to "racism" and that saw them fall into public domain where anyone could get them and put them back in circulation, hence why Inki and the Myna Bird and so many others are in cheap video or dvd collections, and Little Black Sambo showed back up on tv.
This one here is a Terry Toon and Terry Toons seemed to vanish completely from the landscape, and these seem to be some of the strongest efforts to show something of the life as being the life, no matter how much people want to scoff at it today.
This is about the most minimum white lips I've seen, Scarlet and Red are depicted completely different from the couple who dance after them, but with each surprise advancement, bam, there come the watermelons.
And the really funny thing is, all of this, picking cotton, lazing about while fishing, running to the celebrity visits, watermelon, was and is all done by white folk, but no one seems to want to realize that.
I'm a bit "hmmph" about the slot machine.
To appear in a cartoon, it had to be commonplace, so were black people wanting to make a fortune on those silly things with what money they had?
You wouldn’t say that if the blacks were southern white illiterates, and the captain was black.
@@2up3rm4n1 Listen , I grew up in the 1970s when you could see these cartoons on MAINSTREAM TV and as a Black Kid from the American South we did not think TWICE on their "racism" ; I guess some of us were concerned about our fathers , brothers , coming home home from the Viet Nam War , among other REAL concerns.
@@anthonyjamieson3875 as a white kid who grew up in the American south in the '70s, the only editing done to old cartrons was the Bugs Bunny ones that aired Saturday mornings, but they had the strange violence editing.
Can't recall any that aired racial images on Saturday morning.
I do recall Tom and Jerry airing when I was real small, but don't remember the black stereotypes, if they did or didn't aire. I'm sure they did.
About mid-seventies, all the other WB Merrie Melodies began airing weekdays and I saw Inki and the Myna Bird with no problem and didn't think, that's how black people are or why his lips were so big and red.
I might as well have wondered why Yosemite Sam was so short or he and Elmer had round noses, or Elmer's speech impediment.
And thought nothing of all those INdian depictions.
Never saw All This and Rabbit Stew. The Stepin Fetchit depictions were pulled more than big lips or mammy images.
And I saw the Tom and Jerry cartoons in the '80s and again, they seemed unedited. Mammy Two Shoes, mammies, black children, big lips alll were shown weekdays.
An Australian aborigine Bugs met with kangaroos aired no problem.
Terry Toons, for whatever reason, I never saw on tv back then.
The more the social justice mafia whines about these old films with archaic ethnic stereotypes, the funnier it becomes!
😅😝
Racism is funny
That’s an interesting defence mechanism you have.
😡😡😡
it ain't funny
Yes it is
How
Two minutes in and I have to turn this garbage off. I'm going to have to watch an episode of Deep Space Nine to flush this horror from my brain.
This is extremely racist when are they going to make cartoons about the white slave trade
@@boyofthesouth5327 we did not sell ourselves. What we did do was as punishment we forced those who didn't want to mind the rules into labor camps hence the "slave trade" we got nothing out of it just punishment lol
ad meliora that makes it even worse and more sick
What about the Arab slave trade of black (and white) complexioned people
Ahahahahaha!
Wash me mama with a boogie beat on steroids
As usual, the best part of these cartoons is Phil Scheib's music score- and he did it without using any "current" tunes, because Terry told him not to use any (again, to save money). Some cartoon connisseurs claim Scheib's music sounded virtually the same in every Terrytoon, but he had a knack for blending "familiar melodies" and his own compositions (and they did have a tendency to sound alike at times, but at his peak, he composed scores for about 26 cartoons every year, for over 30 years).
@twan56chomp Originally, it wasn't aired on TV. It was made for theatrical release. Cartoons in the 1910's through 1950's were regularly shown in movie theaters accompanying the feature film. When cartoons began being sold to TV networks, it probably aired in the 50's and 60's on regular stations like ABC and CBS. I doubt it has been shown anywhere lately due to its content.
I wish people would stop bringing negativity to these old cartoons just enjoy them . this 21st century is full of nothing but cry babies !
G Boo I agree!, I’m black and I’m not offended.
I agree. These were children’ s cartoons. No harm was intended by these artists & producers back then. The political agenda attached to art is new.
True.
@G Boo
They're Always politicizing
They keep that up, they'll take what was part of our childhood and that's not right
Produced by Terrytoons, this cartoon was released theatrically through 20th Century-Fox.
“Maaaah goodness!” 😂
2:33 = note asbestos fire curtain!!!!
Such a rollicking score and energetic animation, you're almost tempted to ignore the horribly racist character designs.
Almost.🙄
@
Joe Griffin: yeah... saddly, is hard to trully enjoy the happy, carefree and jolly spirit of the cartoon...when is impregnated with such retrograde ideas and painting black's miserable lives in the south as "jolly and happy"... like, i love the animation and energy of the caracters but... you know.
i know this statement won't erase the historical pain but:
whenever you encounter old stuff with "this tone" and you want to enjoy the piece but... the biases on it wont let you, remember: is a piece of it's time (not like that makes it less ofensive) but keep in mind all the people in this comment section who's also offended and angry, proving that we've overcome such way of thinking and we can reflect of terry toons cynicism when making this. and try to abstract the "good" on it, like thefluid and energetic animation!
(also... that dancing animation...DAMN! i hate to like them dancing feet but is so smooth!)
@ESLinstructor1 actually watermelon reflects Southern food; When blacks moved to the factory towns up north during the 1920's the foreign emmigrants in the poor housing used their affection for Southern cooking and treats such as watermelon as a way to ridicule their oddness. It caught on in stage shows, cartoons, films and song. Everybody from the south, white black yellow red or cajun, likes melon (for the most part).
Nice try.
diddymuck I wouldn't trust someone who don't like watermelon
ACTUALLY. It’s a racist ploy to put down successful black farmers who were outselling whites in especially watermelons.
Look it up
I like watermelons and I'm Caucasian.
Great music and animation
Anyone can like watermelons 🍉
@@mikhailabunidal9146 right.
I CRAVED WATERMELON WHEN I WAS PREGNANT🍉🍉
How could they?
5:53 Lol.
5:53
For those calling this "racist", it is for today, but when this was made in the 40s, it was considered acceptable. Tomes change, attitudes change. It's better to have this out there as a reminder than to bury it and forget.
I guess it's a question of acceptable to whom? Certainly not acceptable to the people depicted in the film.
Bull! It was just as racist then as it is now. But then we knew that no one would listen to our complaints. "Sit down and shut up, boy, if you know what's good for you."
Social relativism sounds like what you're talking about. But here a question: in a time when racially motived violence was most accepted (doesn't matter when), was that violence not still racist?
You can still find photograph post cards showing and celebrating acts of complete barbarism in this country against minorities. It was as normal as this cartoon was in their day. Socially encouraged at times.
Both the cartoon and the violence are racism incarnate regardless of social norms at a given time.
@diddymuck it was in it's time, making your comment about it not being funny invalid.
A racist cartoon like this was very uncommon for Terry Toons. Most of his cartoons had animals in them, not too many humans populated Paul Terry's cartoon world.
@ArlithCake so? it still ain't funny
This is Just one of the most Messed up Racist cartoon out there they whoever made this should be ashamed
"They" are now six feet under. Get over it. Don't watch.
Are you serious?
I swear who ever made this shoulda been sued for this racist bull
B.S.
@@mayaturnnow9110 Don't you have a swastika to polish?
@@1701echopapa bet your grandparents laughed their asses off
Kinda hard to do when they're six feet under at this point....
They are all dead
Hahaha, sjw gone wild crazy in 3 ....2 ...1....
0....Spoken like a true bigot.