I love Abbott and Costello but never liked April Fools' Day. Neither did Charlie Brown of Peanuts.
That said, the great comedians of the silver screen and TV best demonstrate the adage there's no fool like an April fool - and the following classic bit from the dapper gentleman of silent film comedy, Charley Parrott Chase, is no exception.
Surprisingly, it's tough to find April Fools' Day cartoons and genuinely funny stuff about superstitions. While the Warner Bros. cartoons "Neurotic Claude Cat" series by the Chuck Jones production crew, commencing with The Aristo-cat, comes fairly close, it's The Stupidstitious Cat, a Paramount Noveltoon by Famous Studios, that focuses entirely and obsessively on this topic and features main character voices which strongly recall Jack Benny and Eddie Anderson.
Believe it or else, we actually like many of the cartoons produced by Famous Studios.
Noveltoons featuring Jim Tyer's rubbery animation, as well as the gorgeous backgrounds and foregrounds of Shane Miller and key contributions from animation legends Bill Tytla and Otto Messmer, have their share of blazing moments, especially when seen on the big screen in glorious Technicolor.
Here's an obnoxious April Fools' Day cartoon, cranked out quite a few years later by Famous Studios and starring Popeye. The series had slid substantially downhill from the spinach swillin' star's heydey in such rousing animated adventures as Popeye The Sailor Meets Sindbad The Sailor.
This blogger, even as a kid watching TV way back when, found the post WW2 versions of Bluto and Olive Oyl insufferable and could not comprehend why Popeye did not simply eat his spinach, beat the crap out of Bluto and deposit awful Olive on a slow boat to China - a very slow boat to China.
Still, even when Cookin' With Gags was made in 1955, many years after the departures of Jim Tyer, Bill Tytla and Otto Messmer, Famous Studios employed many talented Fleischer Studios animators responsible for the cartoon glory that was Ko-ko the Clown, Bimbo, Betty Boop and Superman. Fortunately, the Noveltoons from the 1940's can be seen on DVD.
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