A cultured spider attempts to charm and devour an ill-mannered fly in this funny Columbia cartoon.
It's directed by Paul Sommer. He lived a long time, dying at 98 in 2011. His earliest listed credit was in 1931, and he worked his way up the ladder at Charles Mintz' cartoon factory, until he directed 14 funny cartoons for Screen Gems -- Columbia had bought out Mintz from his heirs -- from 1942 through 1945. Then he disappeared from animation, until he popped up again at Hanna-Barbera in 19, doing work on HUCKLEBERRY HOUND. He worked there for more than 30 years, directing and animating and writing, and then retired like an 80-year-old man did.
His credits are sparse during the early years, and that's normal. Looking at a modern movie, even the short cartoons, one finds enormous banks of credits. In the early 1930s, credits were usually limited to the producer and the director. The enormous number of animators, sub-animators, clean-up artists and cel washers -- because in those days, it was cheaper to clean off the cel and use it -- were unworthy of note. Why happened in the fifteen years after the Second World War? There were an enormous number places for a skilled cartoonist t disappear to, that did not involve the often nomadic life of a movie animator: comic books, industrial cartoons, and advertising work were just three of them. Let's hope they were good years.
