Somewhere in Dreamland (Fleischer Brothers Studio, Paramount,1035)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2022 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

After the 1935 Scrooge my husband Charles and I watched the next film on the disc, also from 1936, a color cartoon from the Fleishcer Brothers’ studio called Somewhere In Dreamland. It was produced at the Florida-based Fleischer studios under contract to Paramount, which funded construction of the studio but then took it paver in 1942 and froze the Fleischer brothers, producer Max and director Dave, out of the company they had built. It was shot in color, though precisely what color process remains a mystery: Walt Disney had cut a deal with the Technicolor company in 1932 that his would be the only animation studio allowed to use the new three-strip Technicolor process until 1935, and from the appearance of this film it seems the Fleischers used the competing Cinecolor process. The film itself is a charming fantasy about a poor single mother (voiced by Mae Quetzal, the second Betty Boop after singer Helen Kane departed the role, and designed to look a lot like Popeye’s girlfriend Olive Oyl, not surprisingly since the Popeye cartoons were the Fleischers’ biggest hits at the time) who can afford to feed her two boys only bread and milk. The kids dream their way into a magic land where all the sweets they can handle are there for the picking off fromthe trees. When they wake up they find that three local merchants have felt sorry enough for them to donate a huge feast, including a big turkey – only, as Charles noted, the boys fulfill the ultimate childhood fantasy by grabbing the dessert course first. It’s a clever,charming film and a welcome relief from the Disney conventions – it’s actually about human beings instead of anthropomorphized animals – though the song “:Somewhere in Dreamland,” credited to Murray Mencher (music) and Charles Newman (lyrics), seemed to bear more than a passing resemblance to a 1909 hit, “Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland,” by Leo Friedman (music) and Beth Slater Whitson (lyrics), so much so it’s a wonder the publishers of “Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland” didn’t sue Paramount for plagiarism.