“Pluto’s Blue Note”

The concept of the teen idol dates back to Franz Liszt. Lisztomania has its own Wikipedia page. However, it was as far as the records show something of an isolated phenomenon. True teen idols really only came into existence with recording and mass media. There were a few in the 1920s and ‘30s. Rudy Vallée, for example. But the concept as we know it came into its own with Frank Sinatra, and it seems to have taken the adult men who controlled pop culture by bewilderment, and there are several cartoons that seem to be those men working through their issues, sometimes more explicitly than others.

Pluto really wants to sing. He tries to sing along with birds; the birds fly away. He tries to sing along with several other animals, which hide. He ambles downtown and sees a radio, and he’s able to pound his tail along with the music. But the owner of the shop closes for lunch, taking the radio inside. Pluto sneaks into the shop when the owner goes to lunch and becomes the first, possibly only, lip-synching dog after a happy accident.

This short was nominated for an Oscar, despite its being in my opinion the weakest of the Disney shorts we’ve covered this month. It lost to “Tweetie Pie,” the first pairing of Sylvester and Tweetie, but what I find even more interesting is that another losing entry was “Tubby the Tuba,” which is about a tuba that wants to be a soloist. Which means that two of the nominees were about finding your voice in a society that thinks your voice is bad. And of course a third nominee, “Chip an’ Dale,” is about claiming what’s yours.

There are five female dogs listening to Pluto at the end. Two of them are Dinah and Fifi, love interests of his over assorted cartoons. (It’s kind of weird that Pluto has assorted girlfriends, right?) Another one appears to be something of an early draft of Nana from Peter Pan, before they went in a different direction with her. There’s also a poodle with an accurate poodle cut, showing us how creepy that appears in animation. There’s also what appears to be a pinscher or a Great Dane in a sweater. She’s fully unfamiliar.

This is another one that basically has one gag that we’re stretching for a long time. Pluto can’t sing. Pluto wants to sing. Pluto triumphs and sings, sort of. I don’t entirely have a problem with a one-joke cartoon if it’s done well, but this one is kind of blah. The context is kind of interesting, but that’s about all we’ve got here. There are a few references to The Three Caballeros through the music, but Disney calling back to its other works is hardly noteworthy, either.