Base Brawl
About Base Brawl
The zoo cages are empty because the animals have gone to opening day at Zoo Stadium, Jungle Jumbos against the Forest All-Stars. A beaver carves his own bat, a skunk empties the catcher's side of the plate, and an elephant fields a fly by inhaling it through his trunk. A goose on the scoreboard lays a real goose egg. At the seventh-inning stretch a turtle umpire puts a bouncing baseball in the air for "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." The All-Stars then send up a lineup of mice, every pitch is a ball, and the mice conga around the bases to "Three Blind Mice."
Cast & crew
More about Base Brawl
A Screen Song, not a Noveltoon. Seymour Kneitel directed, with Dave Tendlar on animation. Larz Bourne wrote it. Paramount released it on January 23, 1948.
Themes
Making
From this short on, Famous locked the Screen Song sing-along: separate sections for men and women, then a last chorus in which the lyrics turn into pictures.
Technique
The sing-along uses a baseball in place of the old bouncing ball, split into men's and women's choruses.
Music
Winston Sharples scored it. The stretch number is "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," sung to a bouncing baseball, and the mice finish on "Three Blind Mice."
Preservation
U.M. & M. distributed it for television in the 1950s and NTA again in the 1970s. NTA did not renew the copyright.
Notes
- The title is a play on baseball.
- Jackson Beck is the commentator, Jack Mercer the turtle umpire, and Sid Raymond the elephant catcher and a kangaroo fielder.
- One of seven Screen Songs that U.M. & M. and later NTA reissued with most of the original titles left on.
- The turtle umpire is drawn close to the tortoise who shows up later in 1948 as Murgatroyd in The Old Shell Game.
- Fans bury the umpire in pop bottles after he calls the Jumbos out. He yells back, "I said it, and I'm glad!
Scenes
- Every cage has a note saying the animal has gone to the game. The monkeys leave a peanut bucket.
- A pitched ball grows a nose, smells a skunk at bat, and faints in midair.
- Mice too small for the strike zone walk forever while the elephants roll the ball.
Also available
- VHS: Somewhere in Dreamland (1990, Buena Vista Home Entertainment)
- DVD: 300 Cartoon Classics (2011, Image Entertainment)
Quotes
I said it, and I'm glad!
Ball. Take your base.
