Merrie Melodies - She was an Acrobat's Daughter (1937)

She Was an Acrobat's Daughter is an animated short in the Merrie Melodies series, produced by Vitaphone Productions and released by Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. on April 10, 1937. This animated short was directed by I. Freleng and produced by Leon Schlesinger.

Analysis:
The film depicts the typical audience of a movie theater in the early sound film era. The film-going audience of the era did participate in sing-alongs and group activities within the theater. But this lively-participating audience then had to turn silent. Due to technical limitations, the theaters offered poor sound quality. Listening to the dialogue of a sound film required silence. Sources of noise and distraction within a theater were annoying and disruptive to film viewers. Like other Warner Bros. animated shorts of the late 1930s, the film uses such typical nuisances and the reactions to them as a subject of comedy. The hippo who keeps changing seats and the goose who keeps talking both annoy their fellow viewers. It is the reaction of said annoyed viewers which is played for laughs.

Part of the film parodies The Petrified Forest (1936) and depicts caricatures of its leading actors, Leslie Howard and Bette Davis. The film is turned "funnier" by having an interference in the projecting booth altering and reversing its sequence of events. Donald Crafton suggests that the film also pokes fun at another figure familiar to its creators, though not necessarily the audience. A flea emerges from a purse marked with the initials "J.W.", and during the sing-along the attacking lion is called "Jack". Crafton sees both scenes as references to Jack L. Warner, who was reputedly stingy and vindictive.

There is a cameo of Adolf Hitler on screen. One of the segments of the film depicts a newsreel. It is called "Goofy-Tone News" and presented by "Dole Promise", parodying respectively Movietone News and its narrator Lowell Thomas. Inside the movie theater, a viewer has trouble viewing the newsreel. His seat only offers him a distorted view of the screen images, which are seen "at an extreme angle". The film image at this section of the newsreel is that of Hitler. Hitler is depicted marching in goose step and giving the Nazi salute. He is wearing an armband depicting a swastika.

Some gags seem to be recycled from the earlier films Bosko's Picture Show (1933) and Buddy's Theatre (1935).