The Fella with a Fiddle

The Fella with a Fiddle is a 1937 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Friz Freleng.[1] The short was released on March 27, 1937.[2]

The Fella with a Fiddle
Directed byI. Freleng
Produced byLeon Schlesinger
StarringMel Blanc
Billy Bletcher
Bernice Hansen
Music byCarl Stalling
Animation byCal Dalton
Ken Harris
Color processTechnicolor
Distributed byWarner Bros.
Vitaphone
Release date
March 27, 1937 (US) January 20, 1945 (Blue Ribbon reissue)
Running time
7:22 (one reel)
LanguageEnglish

The title is derived from the cartoon's theme song, written by Charlie Abbott.

Plot

When the kids fight over a coin for ice cream, J. Field Mouse tells his grandchildren the story of a mouse whose greed and dishonesty became his undoing. Feigning blindness and playing the fiddle, he collects enough money to live an opulent lifestyle. His home, marked by a shabby exterior, is in fact a mansion where he lives a lavish lifestyle with his riches. This life of luxury is in jeopardy when a tax assessor knocks on the door. The fiddler hurriedly presses a series of buttons to hide his opulence and make his home look like a hovel. He succeeds in confusing the tax assessor to the point that he flees in frustration, but an eavesdropping cat plays on the fiddler's greed and lures him into his jaws by placing a gold crown there. That, says J. Field Mouse to his grandchildren, was the end of the greedy mouse. One of the grandchildren asked if the greedy mouse was eaten. The grandfather says, "Yes, he ate him all up". But one of his grandchildren notices a gold tooth hanging on display and realizes that things were not quite what they seem.

Home media

Notes/goofs
  • This cartoon was re-released into the Blue Ribbon Merrie Melodies program on January 20, 1945. Because the cartoon credits Schlesinger on re-release, the original closing title card was kept. This Blue Ribbon reissue was the last to credit Leon Schlesinger. This meant that cartoons originally released between 1936 and 1944 that were re-released after 1945 also had their original ending titles scrapped out.
  • This short is the first Merrie Melodies short with Mel Blanc voicing characters.
  • The original ending titles have been found on an 8mm VHS.[3]
  • This was one of at least two cartoons depicting an opulent home capable of being quickly disguised as a hovel for purposes of tax evasion. The other was the 1949 Tex Avery cartoon The House of Tomorrow.

References
  1. Beck, Jerry; Friedwald, Will (1989). Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons. Henry Holt and Co. p. 57. ISBN 0-8050-0894-2.
  2. Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books. pp. 104–106. ISBN 0-8160-3831-7. Retrieved June 6, 2020.
  3. YouTube, a Google company. YouTube. Archived from the original on October 16, 2017.
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