Back to School with Mice and Frogs

BY GARY SCOTT BEATTY, PUBLISHER AND EDITOR, MUSKEGONONLINE.NET

As kids head back to school, classic cartoons are fun ways to show them how learning was done in the 1930s -- minus the talking animals, of course. 

Flip the Frog doesn't want to practice piano when the boys are outside swimming in The Music Lesson (1932) from Ub Iwerks, a two-time Academy Award winning animator who co-created Mickey Mouse with Walt Disney and was Walt Disney's collaborator in the formative years of Disney's studio (Steamboat Willie, Plane Crazy). Iwerks opened his own studio in 1930, producing Flip the Frog shorts and more.

Children used to learn in one room schoolhouses. The carried their books tied in a bundle, brought their teacher treats like apples, and, if they were exceptionally lost in their schoolwork, they were sat in the corner wearing a "dunce cap" for all to see. Good Old Schooldays (1930) is from Van Beuren Studio's "Aesop's Fables" series, originally begun by Fables Studios (Howard Estabrook, and Paul Terry, who by 1929 had left to form TerryToons Studios).

View these cartoons online this month at http://muskegononline.net/

These Works are in Public Domain and not Derivative as specified by U.S. copyright law (title 17 of the U.S. Code).