I have a lot to learn about being a grandfather to 4 girls.
I post cartoons here each weekend, thinking that they might enjoy them. It
turns out that I have been picking some of my favorites; like Popeye, or the
Road Runner, and Betty Boop; thinking that my granddaughters would of course
like the same cartoons which I enjoyed as a kid. Man, was I ever wrong!
So, I went looking at the Dora the Explorer cartoons, but
just couldn’t even understand them, let alone want to post them. You’ll have to
look elsewhere to see what I mean. In my mind; which is quite a disordered
place, I admit; these aren’t even cartoons at all.
Stuck for an idea I googled the phrase “classic cartoons for
girls” and came up with this character, Little Audrey, and I actually remember
seeing a few seconds of these on TV when I was a kid. They were the ones that
came on when I went to get a snack. Being a boy I wasn’t interested in Little
Audrey, but now that I’ve taken a look at one of these cartoons, I’m a bit intrigued.
Little Audrey is actually based upon the Little Lulu comic
strip character created by Marjorie Henderson Buell. These cartoons came about
between 1947 and 1958 when Paramount decided not to renew the Little Lulu
series. Little Audrey’s voice is done by Mae Questel, who also did almost all
of the other major female cartoon characters for Paramount, including Betty
Boop and Olive Oyl.
The plot of this cartoon, which was the first of the Little
Audrey releases, is fairly simple. Audrey can’t stop eating candy and her Nanny
is at her wits end concerning what to do about it. In desperation she finally searches
the entire house, discovering Audrey’s hidden stashes everywhere and destroying
them all. When Audrey discovers her candy missing, she goes into shock and
enters a dreamland of; you guessed it; Candy!
But even enough of a good thing can become too much and
Audrey ends up locked in a dream world where the very things which she craves
all seem to turn against her, singing out their warnings to her in a very
clever song “Tummy Ache Blues”, written by Winston Sharples and Buddy Kane. When
Audrey finally comes to, she is met by the face of her Nanny; who thought she
was dying; but now holds out a box of chocolates, telling Audrey that she can have
all the candy she wants.
These cartoons were the product of Seymour Kneitel and
illustrators Al Eugster, Bill Hudson and Irving Spector. Though the Nanny
character is a stereotype; just as the character of Little Audrey is; the Nanny
is clearly the wiser of the two. Now, I wonder how this one will stand up next
to Dora the Explorer?
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