A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.
A dapper young redbreast trilling his song to his lady love is shot with an arrow. WHO KILLED COCK ROBIN? The judge at the murder trial gets a rather surprising answer...
A very colorful and amusing cartoon, highlighted by caricatures of a few Hollywood stars: Bing Crosby, Harpo Marx, the Keystone Kops and, in the unedited version, Stepin Fetchit. The character of Jenny Wren is a splendid spoof of Mae West.
The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most interesting of series in the field of animation. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.