The Last Mail
About The Last Mail
Cubby the Bear drives a sleigh pulled by squirrels and delivers the mail through the snow. In the village he dances a jig with Honey, who then hides in his mailbag. An evil raccoon holds them up and takes Honey. Cubby gets her back with help from an American eagle.
Cast & crew
More about The Last Mail
Mannie Davis directed the third Cubby short. Dr. Grob notes that Davis’s name is on the opening titles here for the first time in the series. Amadee J. Van Beuren produced it, and RKO released it on March 24, 1933.
Themes
Making
This is the first Cubby cartoon that puts him in a straight rescue plot instead of a revue. Cartoon Research, posting the film on March 3, 2022, called the squirrel team and the crowd shots a step up from Van Beuren work of six months earlier.
Reviews
Dr. Grob’s review of May 12, 2017 calls the story unusually straight for Van Beuren and still ranks the drawing under Disney’s mail-pilot short. He marks it as one of the more watchable Cubby cartoons.
Music
Gene Rodemich puts “Pop Goes the Weasel” under the dance with Honey and “The Stars and Stripes Forever” under the eagle.
Preservation
Wikimedia Commons holds a restored raw HD WebM. The short is also in the Internet Archive Cubby Bear collection under a public-domain mark.
Notes
- Dr. Grob sets the short next to Mickey’s The Mail Pilot, which came out about two months later.
- On Cartoon Research in March 2022, Steve Stanchfield agreed that Jim Tyer animated the fight with the raccoon on a tree branch.
- A reader on that page noticed the eagle landing in a pose like the National Recovery Administration’s Blue Eagle.
- The Internet Archive collection numbers this short as episode 3, after Opening Night and a file titled Love's Labor Win.
Scenes
- Squirrels pull Cubby’s mail sleigh through the snow.
- Honey climbs into the mailbag after the jig.
- Cubby fights the raccoon on a branch while the eagle comes in.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Mannie Davis - Aesop's Fables - Last Mail, The (1933) (restored raw HD version).webm)
- Internet Archive (van-beurens-cubby-bear-the-complete-collection)
