The Oscar-nominated The Old Mill Pond (1936) opens on a very beautifull drawn mill & pond scene, with a soft instrumentation of "Down by the Old Mill Stream" on the soundtrack.
Slowly the camera pans right to reveal a musical event about to begin among the frogs.
As dusk falls, Cab Frogoway & His Orchestra rise out of the water on lily pads. Cab does some very nice dancing then begins singing an awful rendition of "Kicking the Gong Around," his orchestra answering some of the calls:
"Skippy boppy beepy hi-di-ho/ Where is Minnie (Where is Minnie)/ My poor Minnie (Your poor Minnie)/ Has she been here kicking the gong around?" Some of the scatting is better than the delivery of the lyrics.
 Minnie shows up, played by a pretty Ethel Waters frog in a red dress, singing with surprising sweet intonations:
"Oh nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh/ Now I ain't doin' old style wooin', I know better now/ A king kong man from jungle land has taught me how/ So I just give him jungle rhythm, right in style & how."
A chorus line of girl frogs emulating the top-hatted Cotton Club dancing girls. Cab then does a little instrumental introduction for Fats Waller, who is shown playing a grand piano as Froggy Bojangles Robinson dances down some steps, tapping out a repy to Fats' keyboared work.
Fats & Bojangles exchange a couple of "who dats!" then Fats, noting how well Bojangles is dressed, begins singing: "I declair, whozat there/ Looks to me like a millionaire/ See dat hat, see dose shoes/ Man like that oughta be good news."
 Bojangles begins singing in a deep voice that his name is Mister Sippy & does a vocal impersonation of a mute trumpet while tapping around the piano. This is good stuff throughout.
The four part harmony frogs begin to sing Don Redman's "I Heard," a classic jazz number of the time, & a hit for the Mills Brothers. One frog oomp-oomps a base line, another does a trumpet impersonation, & they're singing quite nicely in a Mills Brothers style without sounding at all like them. The jazz frogs appear in four cartoons, & the harmony frogs in three of those. They always sound like a different group, but this is their first appearance, & the Mills Brothers the obvious influence.
The one lame moment in the cartoon is when a Stepin Fetchit frog lazies through in slow motion until he sees a tiger, then he becomes a rocket to the tune of "Tiger Rag." The bit is improved when the Satchmo frog appears to sing "Hold that Tiger." Cab Frogaway scats a couple "Tiger Rag" riffs. The Cotton Club Swamp chorus line dances through again.
Thomas "Frog" Waller pounds his keys at the big finish for all. This is an animated masterpiece, despite what the terminally ill politically correct might say. Some cartoons are clearly offensive but this one ain't, the moment with Stepin Fetchit notwithstanding, & even that just captures rather than exaggerates an actual black commedian's character.
You don't create something as fabulous as the swamp full of jazz-loving frogs then forget about them.
So that pilot effort was followed up by a trilogy of jazz frog cartoons, adding as point of view character the hugely revamped Bosko, who was quite a different figure in 1920s & '30s cartoons.
The original Bosko in black & white cartoons was of indeterminate age, but kind of an adult with his girlfriend Honey, & his design was a so simple thatw hen I was a tiny kid watching Cartoon Carnival in the afternoon, I thought Bosko & Cubby Bear were the same character, & so was the Bosco Bear who pitched chocolate milk in advertisements. The technicolor Bosco & his girlfriend Honey were definitely just children.
Bosko is a little black boy with an enormous imagination. In Bosko & the Pirates (1937) he is sent to grandma's house with cookies. Along the way, he hears a woodpecker & tapdances with the bird's pecking.
He climbs into a wooden tub to take a shortcut across a pond, & spies a derilect rowboat. The sight of the rowboat & the sound of the frogs causes him to imagine frog pirates on board a pirate ship.
 Captured by his own fantasy, he's taken on board the ship, where a big fat frog with raspy voice says, "You got diss, you got dat, you got cookies," & Bosko's in a terrible predicament as the pirates want those cookies.
Four frogs do a harmony-group number almost evoke Delta Rhythm Boys, but actually sound most like the Cats & the Fiddle, who'd just been in the film The Duke is Tops while the Delta Rhythm Boys were on Broadway.
But neither harmony group would've been famous enough in 1938 to caricature, but these frogs are far from sounding like the Mills Brothers, which isn't to say they aren't awfully talented frogs.
After the fat captain-frog, who is supposed to sound like Louis Armstrong, raps in rhyme about the cookies, the harmony frogs sing: "We can't have no grandma's cookies today/ No grandma's cookies for us spies today/ Even though I love them so/ Even though I want them mo'/ We can't have no grandma's cookies today." It's a wonderful piece which will have variations sung & played by sundry frogs.
The Bill Bojangles Robinson frog dances down a staircase & raps about the cookies. Bosko taps with him. He still won't give up the cookies, so the captain makes him walk the plank, resulting in another tap routine along the plank.
Captain Satchmo ends up playing his trumpet & Frog Calloway comes out to do a jive-jazz version of the "no cookies today" number while dancing & flinging his hair.
All jazz breaks out as the storm rises. A Fats Waller frog yells "What's the matter with you?" as he starts pounding on his piano & declaring his love of cookies & Bosko taps his heart out. The ship is sinking in the storm & in the end, Bosko's fantasy comes to a close & he continues on to grandma's.
Bosko & the Pirates is a wonderful cartoon, & avoids race stereotyping unless you take exception to tapdancing, which would be silly.
He is a rural kid, & his relationship to his "mammy" is stereotypical, but considering the easy pitfalls that Ub iwerks' Sambo cartoons & the George Pal's Jasper cartoons tripped on, Bosko is simply great.
Even when using a stereotypical idea, Bosko transcends. Bosko & the Cannibals (1937) shows only a little of the expected & cliche cannibal stuff, being too full of actual wit. Once again Bosko interacts with those jazz-makin' frogs who want those cookies.
On the trail to grandma's house he passes through a swamp. He begins to imagine the swamp is the Atlantic Ocean, & he's on a cannibal island. The frogs he's been listening to become the frog-people of an African tribe.
 The fat frog-king, again doing a so-so Louis Armstrong gravelly voice, tries to wheedle cookies out of the boy by singing another cookie song.
It's a call & response number with Bosko replying: "I want cookies! (These here cookies?) Yes those cookies! (Not these cookies) Must have cookies! Grandma's cookies!" It's charming as all get out.
The harmonizing frogs, sounding more than ever like the Delta Rhythm Boys though intended to invoke the Mills Brothers, sing: "I like kale on whole wheat toast/ Black-eyed peas & chicken roast / Everything from coast to coast/ We love grandma's cookies most."
The Fats Waller frog does a little ragtime piano & sings another verse of "I Want Cookies."
Bojangles Robinson dances up a bamboo staircase with Bosko just like he did with Shirely Temple in The Little Colonel (1935).
Frog Calloway does his part of the number, with Bosko adding the "Hi de ho!" Throughout, Bosko is brave as can be, & why not, it's just his imagination.
The frogs are mostly sweet, but they do get pretty mean toward the end really wanting those cookies, & Bosko even duplicates the "walking the plank" tapdance routine from the Pirates episode, this time over a cookpot. Bosko fights bravely to the end, & makes his way back to the path to grandma's house.
The third & last Bosko & the Jazz frogs cartoon is Bosko in Bagdad (1938), sic for the mispelled Baghdad.
Our wee lad of a hero is sent on his way to delivering those fresh-from-the-oven presumptious cookies to grandma, his momma warning him. "Don't let yo' imagination go percolatin' off on any wild goose chase."
It's evening & he sets out with a keroseen lantern in one hand, bag of cookies in the other. Every sound in the night gets him full of imaginings, saying "Who dat!" to a frog & an owl.
All of a sudden, the Louis Armstrong frog rises up in the lamplight holding his horn. He conjures up a flying carpet & using his trumpet music for power, off they fly to Baghdad, a beautiful place of onion-dome architecture.
 They knock on the door of the old sultan. The frog-version of Stepin Fetchit takes his time opening the door. The sultan is the Fats Waller frog.
He whispers to the Satchmo frog, "Get those cookies!' & they're off on a jazz & exotica music journey to convince Bosko to part with the cookies.
Frog Bojangles turns up to dance in a turban, but this is theo nly one of the Jazz Frogs films lacking Cab Frogoway.
The electric sidewalk take Bosko down into the dark gloomy horrors of the castles' dungeon where a giant spoon of castor oil tries to medicate him. But he tap dances along the electric stairs & back to safety as he sings "You can't have no grandma's cookies today/ No! Hiddy-biddy-boy, oh hi-de-hay."
The Fats & Satch frogs wrestle then get stuck on the electric sidewalk singing like crazy, while Bosko functions as orchestra conductor to the big jazz-band close.
It's the least appealing of the three films about Bosko & the Jazz Frogs, but you gotta love that obsession for the cookies. Since it all happens in Bosko's imagination, it's gotta be himself he's battling against, as it's an awful temptation to personally eat grandma's portion of his mammy's cookie production.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
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