Shuffle Off to Buffalo (1933)
Article 5993 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-18-2021
Directed by Friz Freleng and Rudolf Ising
Featuring the voices of Johnny Murray and the Rhymettes
Country: USA
What it is: Early Warner Brothers cartoon

We visit the assembly line at the baby delivery factory and get to hear the title song warbled.

I’m not sure that the presence of storks delivering babies in a cartoon is enough for me to definitely move the cartoon into the realm of the fantastic, but the existence of a factory with an assembly line that preps the babies for delivery is enough, especially as it appears that the main person in charge is Father Time himself (though he isn’t explicitly named as such). It’s a typical early thirties Warner Brothers cartoon; it opens with a series of gags surrounding the situation and then finds every chance it can to perform the title song. In the process we get a handful of celebrity caricatures; Eddie Cantor is the most prominent, but Joe E. Brown and Ed Wynn both pop up. The best gag involves the labels for the twins delivered to Nanook of the North.