Baby-Face Mouse, Stealin' Yer Cheese!
A Walter Lantz character learns the consequences of ill-gotten gains
Today we are watching Baby-Face Mouse starring in his first cartoon feature appearance, Cheese-Nappers. The cartoon was a Walter Lantz production for New Universal Cartoon released in 1938. In the short, Baby-Face has been led astray by Public Rat Number One, Butch-Face Rat, who convinces the youngster to help steal cheese out of the kitchen icebox. Once the caper is discovered by the dishes, though, Butch-Face flees and leaves Baby-Face to deal with the consequences. After some pretty heavy-handed policing tactics by Officer Sugar Bowl, our small but fearless hero escapes and pursues Butch-Face, subduing him and turning him over to the dishy police force. Baby-Face has learned his lesson: crime doesn’t pay! Now, let’s hope some other well-connected criminals get the justice coming to them, Baby-Face.
Walter Lantz was responsible for many memorable characters over the years, his most famous creation arguably being Woody Woodpecker. You may recall from an earlier post about Happy Hooligan that Lantz got his start in media and cartooning young, arriving at Heart Newspapers when he was only 13 years old.
By the age of 16, Lantz was working in the animation department of International Film Service studio and later went on to the John R. Bray Studios, animating the Jerry on the Job series which was based on the popular newspaper cartoon strip of the era. Lantz received his first top billing in 1924, directing and animating Dinky Doodle, where the animator himself appeared on-screen alongside his animated creations Dinky and his dog Weakheart in retellings of well-known fairy tales such as Cinderella or Jack and the Beanstalk.
After his move from New York to Hollywood, Lantz took a few odd jobs before landing a job directing Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in 1928. The cartoon had been a creation of Ub Iwerks and Charles Mintz, the later of whom had managed to steal the character and several animators from Disney Studios to produce the cartoon for Universal Studios. But Universal had become dissatisfied with Mintz and decided to take the cartoon in-house. Famously, Lantz won the directing rights to Oswald in a poker game by beating Universal president Carl Laemmle, inheriting several former Disney animators who had originally come over to Universal with Mintz in the bargain. By 1935 Lantz had become an independent producer and supplier to Universal and by 1940 he was successfully negotiating rights for his own slate of cartoon characters. As interest in Oswald the Lucky Rabbit waned in the late 1930’s, Lantz and his staff created several new animated characters to fill out his production line-up: Baby-Face Mouse was one, but also Andy Panda (1939) and later Woody Woodpecker (1941) would take shape through Lantz’s operation.
Baby-Face Mouse appeared in a few more cartoons created by Lantz in 1938 and 1939. His last feature appearance is in the short Arabs with Dirty Fezzes (the title of the cartoon is a play on the 1938 Warner Bros. feature Angels with Dirty Faces, starring James Cagney). Putting aside the questionable level of force used by law enforcement, Cheese-Nappers is a cute one, and you can watch it here.
To explore more, check out these fine links:
Walter Lantz Wiki: Cheese-Nappers
Internet Animation Database: Cheese Nappers
What a gift Walter Lantz was! Thank you for this appreciation! Very classy!
Thanks Martini. It is interesting to me that mice and rabbits became the go to characters for so many cartoons. I suppose it has to do with the cuteness factor. But in real life if you found a mice infestation in your pantry or a rabbit infestation in your garden you would not be happy. Just a thought. When I see these old cartoons I am reminded of my childhood but not just because of cartoons on tv. My father loved gadgets so we had a projector with a box full of cartoons from the 1930s. Dad would set up the screen in the living room and we would run those cartoons over and over. The best part to us was the ability to run them backwards. We'd laugh ourselves silly. Thanks for the nostalgia Martini!