Date with Duke

At the urging of a bunch of perfume bottles, Duke Ellington plays -- what else? -- his Perfume Suite. A turban-headed grouch objects to music and dancing, until Ellington begins to play.

Do they still have those elaborate blown-glass perfume bottles? They had gone out of style when I was a child more than sixty years ago. My mother kept her perfume -- usually Chanel No. 5 -- in a cut-glass aerosol But the joy of this Puppetoon is, of course, the lovely way that Pal's cameraman, William Snyder, lights Ellington, and the variety of angles he shoots from. Even with what is an elaborate synchronized cartoon like this, you need to keep it visually interesting.