Red-Headed Baby (1931) User Reviews

when the dolls wake up there's mischief afoot

[didi-5 · 6/10 · 28 April 2007]

This early Merrie Melodie is fairly lively, concerning a room of toys who dance and sing along to the radio while their creator (Santa Claus?) is asleep.

The song 'Red Headed Baby' is first squeaked by a rosy-cheeked doll with the requisite big eyes (one would assume they are blue), and later by a Napoleon clone. It isn't a memorable song, and these aren't memorable characters, but there's a villain (a spider), a chase, and a bit of derring-do before the song plays out.

Harman and Ising has started with Disney, working on Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, before taking some of the ideas from that series to develop Bosko for Warner Bros. The trouble with their cartoons are that many are exactly the same, regurgitating the same gags and situations.

That said, these cartoons do have a certain historical interest and hopefully they will make it on to later Golden Collection DVDs (even if it is as one or two extras at a time, as a few have been already).

Absurdly fun

[Horst_In_Translation · 6/10 · 18 May 2016]

"Red-Headed Baby" is a cartoon from 1931 that has its 85th anniversary this year already. It is a collaboration between Warner Bros and Schlesinger Studios and the director is the prolific Rudolf Ising. I initially thought it may be a problem with the title including a color and the fact that this is still a black-and-white production, but it turned out fine. It's still not a great achievement by any means, but for 1931, it is certainly convincing. The voice acting was good, shame the actors are not credited, the music was fine too, spirit was appropriate as this film came out during the Christmas holidays. The villain, a nasty spider guy, is interesting and so are the little Napoleon and of course the title character. I enjoyed the watch. Well done, guys. It is in terms of atmosphere and tone similar to some Betty Boop work, but I must say I liked this one here even more than most Betty stuff. Watch it.

RED-HEADED BABY (Rudolf Ising, 1931) **

[Bunuel1976 · 4/10 · 7 February 2009]

Included on Warners' DVD of CIMARRON (1931), what I said about the latter – that it is marred by the primitive technique of the time – also applies to this "Merrie Melodies" cartoon when compared to the studio's heyday in this art form. As was the custom back then, its sole raison d'etre is to promote a current hit tune (for which it is named); this is set against a backdrop of a toy-maker's workshop, where his creations come to life at night, and he eventually joins the chorus at the end. Typical ingredients here are the fact that the titular belle is at once romanced by a toy soldier and coveted by a large spider (which the latter ultimately defeats, with the help of the other toys). In the long run, though certainly a harmless enough short in itself, both the style of animation and the overall approach is very dated and, frankly, too corny to be appealing.

The usual sort of Harmon-Ising production.

[planktonrules · 4/10 · 6 March 2019]

Red-headed woman 32 Harmon-ising nice animation

I am suprised I watched "Red-Headed Baby" and I think it was mostly because I was having trouble finding something to watch on YouTube and just settled on this one. I say this because I am NOT a fan of the Merrie Melodies cartoons of the 1930s. While they were the best studio for cartoon shorts in the 1940s and 50s, too many of their 30s cartoons were cutesy things...filled with insipid singing and dancing instead of laughs. And, the fact that this was made by Harmon-Ising (who specilized in cutesy singing cartoons), it's even more surpising. Oh, well...here goes...

The cartoon is set in a toymaker's home. After finishing his work for the day, the toys all come to life and begin singing "Red-Headed Baby". Soon, however, the jerky spider arrives and causes trouble....and ultimately kidnaps the red-headed* doll. The toy soldier comes to the rescue...and all the toys begin singing again. If it sounds kind of insipid....well, you have the idea. Overall, a bit dull and lacking laughs...but very well animated.

*The cartoon was black & white....so you just have to assume she's a redhead.

Basically a vehicle to move the title song

[llltdesq · 5/10 · 22 April 2014]

This is an early Warner Brothers short. There will be spoilers ahead:

This is a very simple and basic cartoon. Warner Brothers used its animated shorts to move its music catalog. Red-Headed Baby was a song and the purpose of this cartoon was to showcase the song.

Much of the short is spent in singing the song. The plot, such as it is, revolves around a baby doll made by a toy maker coming to life. She flirts with a toy soldier and they take turns singing the song. Then a toy spider sings a verse as he moves in to try to grab the doll.

The obligatory conflict is rather perfunctory and doesn't work out very well for the spider. The ending of the short is probably the most novel thing in here.

This short is an extra on the Cimarron DVD. If you're interested in Cimarron, this is worth watching. Recommended for LT/MM completists.

This early Looney Tune features one of the scariest villains . . .

[oscaralbert · 7/10 · 13 December 2016]

. . . in the History of Animation. The fat hairy spider which kidnaps the RED-HEADED BABY doll, with its incessant Evil chortling, is far more frightening than any of the scare-mongers depicted in MONSTERS, INC. This villain's vicious venality goes well beyond mere arachnophobia-inducing loathing. Its visceral vice-grip on your vital organs suggests it's merely a vessel to convey the venom of a Real Life Victimizer through the theatrical venue into veins vibrating with the vicissitudes of very bad vibes. Exactly WHO (to paraphrase Martin Luther) is this Ancient Foe Warner Bros. is warning America against here? Would it be Herb Hoover, about to sic Ike Eisenhower and Dougie MacArthur, with their Legion of Imperial Storm Troopers, upon a defenseless tattered array of 60,000 U.S. World War One heroes, their wives and their children, simply requesting the bowl of soup denied them by the Mr. Potters running roughshod over normal Americans yearning for a nation free of Corrupt Capitalist Child Killers? (There STILL is not even a plaque on our National Mall's World War Two Memorial commemorating the thousands Ike had bull-dozed into the secret Mass Graves below in 1932.) Or could it be Putin's Puppet, the wild-haired bozo with an orange face and tiny fingers, hand-picked by the KGB to undo George Washington and Abe Lincoln's Nation? Elections have Consequences, especially when they're rigged by America's Foreign Enemies!

Catchy and cute

[MissSimonetta · 7/10 · 9 September 2014]

The Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies wouldn't hit their stride until the mid-1930s, but this early cartoon will be of interest to film history geeks and fans of early sound cartoons.

This is essentially a music video set to "Red-Headed Baby." The story is comprised of a theme so loved by Disney's Silly Symphonies theme: toys coming to life after night has fallen. It also uses the stock plot of the young lovers threatened by a lecherous villain, in this case an oddly-rendered spider.

The gags are predictable, as is the ending. The title song is catchy as can be/ The short is cute enough, but I expect it will only be of value to those who are already enthusiasts of older cartoons.