The Bookworm (1939)
Article 5743 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-19-2020
Directed by Friz Freleng and Hugh Harman
Featuring the voices of Mel Blanc, Frank Elmquist, Martha Wentworth
Country: USA
What it is: “Books Come to Life” cartoon

In a bookstore, the witches from “MacBeth” send the title character from “The Raven” out to catch them a worm to add to their witches’ brew. However, the bookworm the raven encounters proves difficult to catch.

You can probably get a good idea which books were popular and well-known in the late thirties/early forties just by watching the several cartoons of the era in which books come to life. Here’s another one, and it’s a bit heavier in the horror department, as several characters from the scarier books of the era pop up. Like the others, it’s fairly amusing, but it does engage in some unfortunate racial stereotypes (always watch out when the book “Black Beauty” gets referenced). Most of the ones I’ve seen previously have been from Warner Brothers, but this one is from MGM.