Lady, Play Your Mandolin!
Lady, Play Your Mandolin!
| 13 August 1931 (USA)
Lady, Play Your Mandolin! Trailers

In this first Merrie Melodie short, things are hopping at a certain Mexican café. And then Foxy walks in and the customers go really wild.

Reviews
CommentsXp

Best movie ever!

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Pacionsbo

Absolutely Fantastic

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Gurlyndrobb

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

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Tymon Sutton

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

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Hot 888 Mama

. . . Warner Brothers portrays Mickey Mouse as a swaggering fop in LADY, PLAY YOUR MANDOLIN! From the title of this "Merrie Melodies" cartoon short, you can tell that Warner's version of Mickey is not making a gentlemanly request, but issuing a misogynistic command. Six sheets to the wind from guzzling a gallon of then-outlawed booze, Mickey's stand-in rodent already has punched out his horse before summoning his surrogate Minnie (beating BLAZING SADDLES' "Mongo" by nearly half a century in accomplishing this equestrian feat). While complying with Master Mouse's directive, Minnie comes off like some kind of cheap stripper, as she warbles a verse which mostly rhymes the word "poop" with nonsense syllables. Because of LADY, PLAY YOUR MANDOLIN!, 10 of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes short stories are still under copyright, and will be forever, along with every other word and doodle that the world has produced since Steamboat Willie's advent in 1925. That's what happens when you make a mouse roaring mad with a mandolin!

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tavm

If it wasn't for the fact that the male and female leads had triangle ears and long bushy tails, they would've been mistaken for Mickey and Minnie Mouse (maybe Walt Disney did and threatened to sue so Leon Schlesinger told his cartoon directors Hugh Harmon and Rudolf Ising-former Disney animators-to stop making Foxy cartoons). Anyway, Foxy rides on his horse to a bar in a desert town to see his girlfriend play the title song. This being pre-Code (and no stigma of cartoons being only a children's medium then), there's lots of drinking of alcohol treated in a humorous manner especially of the horse at the climax. Historically important since this was the first Merrie Melodies short after a year of Looney Tunes with Bosko as the star. Highly amusing though a long way from the classics that starred Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, etc. Still, worth seeing for any animation buff especially of Warner Bros. cartoons.

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evanston_dad

This bizarre cartoon short is more disturbing than anything. The animation is creepy, and the content is rather adult for the art form. A bunch of unidentifiable animals (I know I saw a gorilla, and maybe some foxes?) drink it up until they're soused, and a grand finale consists of a horse exploding while a bunch of rowdy saloon customers dance around it maniacally. The songs are annoying, a quality not helped by the fact that they stick to your head like glue (I caught myself humming one of them in the shower). If I had seen this come on the screen as a little kid, I probably would have wanted to crawl under my seat and hide.This is on the DVD release of "Little Caesar," if you're interested in seeing it for yourself.

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boblipton

The first credited Merrie Melody is a poor effort. The animation is repetitive, the gags poor -- one involves a character's dentures coming out on an armature and acting like a castanet -- and the songs -- "Lady, Play Your Mandolin" and "I Am A Gay Caballero" are sung in annoying cartoon voices.

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