The CooCoo Nut Grove

The CooCoo Nut Grove
Directed by	Friz Freleng
Produced by	Leon Schlesinger Productions
Animation by	Robert McKimson Sandy Walker
Color process	Technicolor
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures
Running time	6:43

The Coo-Coo Nut Grove (released November 28, 1936) is a Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies short animated film, set in the famed Cocoanut Grove of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. The cartoon was directed by Friz Freleng, with animation by Robert McKimson and Sandy Walker and musical score by Carl Stalling.

Master of ceremonies Ben Birdie (bandleader Ben Bernie) is accosted in the opening scene by Walter Windpipe (Walter Winchell). The short then proceeds to showcase a large number of Hollywood stars in the form of caricatures, including Katharine Hepburn (as a horse named Miss Heartburn), Jean Harlow, Bette Davis, Ned Sparks, Hugh Herbert, W. C. Fields, Clark Gable, Groucho and Harpo Marx, Johnny Weissmuller (in character as Tarzan) and Lupe Vélez, Mae West, Lionel and John Barrymore, Laurel and Hardy, Edward G. Robinson, Fred Astaire, and George Raft. Musical entertainments are provided by Dame Edna May Oliver as "The Lady in Red", the Dionne quintuplets (who were in reality only two years old at the time) and Helen Morgan, sitting on the piano, turning on the tears with a torch song causing most of the guests to cry (except Ben Birdie and a few of the guests) and flooding the Grove in the process. Whereas other cartoons have cariacatured celebrities as either humans or animals, oddly, this short does both - half are seen as human, half as animal versions of the stars.

Notes

• The title is sometimes mislabeled as The Coo-Coo Nut Groove. This cartoon was followed by The Woods Are Full Of Cuckoos (1937) and Have You Got Any Castles? (1938), both parodying Hollywood personalities.

Home video

• Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3.

External links

• The CooCoo Nut Grove at IMDb