CARTOON DANCE: Otto Messmer’s dancing bear
Oct 25th, 2007 by Marc Deckter
Check out this a-MAZE-ing dancing bear from the 1930 Felix the Cat cartoon “April Maze”:
Isn’t that move at the end wild? It would be impossible to do in real life, but is entirely possible in the world of cartoons.
Don’t you enjoy the loud clunking accompanied by bear grunts as this fellow gracefully gallops into his delicate dance poses? Great stuff.
Watch this entire cartoon and lots more on Tom Stathes’ very necessary TS15: Felix the Cat Volume 1 dvd.
Tom has 4 great dvd’s of Felix titles, and I’ll pick out more of my favorite moments in posts to come. But APRIL MAZE is definitely one of my favorites - lots of great cartoon dancing.
check out the "sausage links" tab at the top of the page for more sites to explore
This is just the sort of thing I love!
I’ve always dismissed “April Maze” as a really “blah” late-era Felix cartoon.
Now you’ve given me a reason to go back and re-evaluate it. Perhaps the component parts outweigh their sum total?
To the Batcave, Robin!
(Oh, and what Marc said about Tom’s silent cartoons..!)
Hi Craig,
Yeah “April Maze” is great - it’s got dancing flowers, galloping sausage links, birds plucking melodies on telephone wires, a tree that struts…
What more could you ask for in a cartoon!