Bird Man (1935)
Article 5738 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-10-2020
Directed by Manny Gould and Ben Harrison
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Columbia cartoon

Krazy Kat straps wooden planks to his arms in order to fly. Though he eventually gets airborne, he finds it hard to be accepted by the birds.

Technically, he’d be a “bird cat”, but that’s neither here nor there. But since the whole story revolves around a non-flying character learning to fly, it qualifies in terms of fantastic content, so I’m covering it. Krazy Kat was originally a character in a George Herriman comic strip, and they’d been making animated cartoons featuring the character for years before this one, but I suspect the later cartoons had little to do with the comic strip. Most of the humor in this one seems to involve other birds making fun of Krazy Kat, and the song centerpiece only has one line of lyric, “I am the bird man.” Overall, this one is so-so.