Own the rights?
I had previously reviewed The Old Mill Pond which, in my mind, caricatured many African-American musicians in a mostly flattering light. In this cartoon, Bosko (who's here redrawn as a realistic-looking black kid instead of the monkey-looking one from Warner Bros.) is tempted in a dream by a Louis Armstrong-like giant frog, complete with trumpet, to give him and his many palace co-worker servants a bag of cookies meant for Bosko's grandma. Those servants include caricatures of Stepin Fetchit, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and, as Armstrong's cohort here, Fats Waller with his piano. Love the tap-dancing animation between Bojangles and Bosko and much of the singing, but, as with The Old Mill Pond, the Fetchit character is offensive and annoying as is Robinson almost successfully tempting to trade Bosko's cookies with watermelon. Good thing Bosko refused! And the Armstrong-Waller buffoonery is too close to stereotypical to be funny. Worth a look, however, for what MGM cartoons were like before the arrival of Tom and Jerry and Tex Avery...
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