A movie that is happily getting more attention lately is King of Jazz starring Paul Whiteman. This is an excellent film, with many great songs, some corny but funny comedy and a lovely two stirp Technicolor look. One of the highlights of that movie is a brief animated sequence from Walter Lantz about how Paul Whiteman was crowned the King of Jazz. This sequence was fast paced, funny and represented Lantz and his team at its best. This sequence however was not Walter Lantz's only work that had to doe with King of Jazz. Lantz also made a Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon that was in many ways an advertisement for the feature film.
This cartoon was titled My Pal Paul. As this film starts a silhouette resembling Paul Whiteman is standing in front of a billboard poster for King of Jazz. This silhouette turns around and reveals himself as Oswald. Oswald is playing a dog's tail as a musical instrument with a bow similar to what Mickey Mouse did with a cat two years earlier in Steamboat Willie. However a small dog finds that Oswald is not really playing the music as he discovers a record player underneath Oswald's "bandstand." All the animals in the barnyard make fun of Oswald and this upsets Oswald so much he decides to hang himself. He is stopped by none other than Paul Whiteman. Oswald decides to show off to his new pal by taking apart Paul's car and playing each part as a musical instrument. They join together in a jam session that includes songs from King of Jazz, such as Happy Feet, Song of the Dawn (Written by Jack Yellen and Milton Ager), It Happened in Monterey (Written by Billy Rose and Mabel Wayne) and Ragamuffin Romeo (Written by Mabel Wayne and Harry Da Costa). This is all fun until Paul realizes what his "pal" has done to his car.
It seems that many of the best Walter Lantz cartoons center around music, whether classical or jazz. There is something about music that always seemed to bring out the most energy in the films of this studio. One only has to think of the great Swing Symphony cartoons or the Woody Woodpecker classics Barber of Seville and Convict Concerto. My Pal Paul is no exception. James Dietrich's music direction here is fantastic as it is in all these early Lantz cartoons. There is a sense of pure fun and energy in this cartoon that I find irresistible. While the animation itself doesn't reach the level of what Disney was doing at this time, it is well above average for a Lantz short of this time. Adding to the fun of fun is that we get to here Paul Whiteman's real voice here singing some of the songs.
Also working on this film is a great crew of animators. Animating here are Ray Abrams, Bill Nolan, Clyde Geronimi, Manuel Moreno and Pinto Colvig. Geronimi would become a legendary Disney animator and director. He would go on to codirect such films as Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp and 101 Dalmatians. Abrams would continued animating for Lantz all the way through the 1950's. Nolan was an incredible animator who played a huge role in this early Lantz cartoons, and he would go onto to become an important animator and director for the Fleischer studio and later Famous Studios. Moreno would spend most of his career animating on these 1930's Lantz cartoons. Though Colvig worked as an animator for Lantz and as a writer for Fleischer, he is probably best remembered as the voice of Goofy for Disney.
Though many today recognize Oswald as a Disney character at this time he was not. Walt Disney would learn that he did not actually own the rights to Oswald, and after refusing to take a pay cut would have the character taken away from him. The man who was responsible for taking the character away was Charles Mintz. However Universal which was distributing these cartoons took the character away from him and gave it to the head of their new animation department, Walter Lantz, who would continue making Oswald cartoons until 1943.
This cartoon can be found on the Criterion release of King of Jazz along with another Lantz Oswald entitled Africa which features animation that is reused from the animated segment of King of Jazz. My Pal Paul can also be found on youtube.
-Michael J. Ruhland
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