Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning
 

Director: Dave Fleischer
Producer: Max Fleischer
Composer: Irving Berlin
Animators: Seymour Kneitel, Bernard Wolf
Cast:

• Les Reis — singing soldier
• Artie Dunn — singing soldier
• Mae Questel — Betty Boop (voice)

Fleischer Studios: 1932
black & white

Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning is an enjoyable soundie of Irving Berlin's famous Army song. Live singing by Les Reis and Artie Dunn in uniform, mellow voices with some dialect snappers, opens the one-reel film.

There are lots of characteristic Fleischer animated sight gags. Cartoon soldiers wake up in fine style, bunks and all, to bugle calls; and then rush to the mess hall for breakfast — where Army coffee, tea, and cocoa all are poured from the same pot. Trees and smoke and fireplace flame also rise to greet the day. One cute bit is an alarm clock in a tent checking the time on its own pocket watch.

Betty Boop has a cameo role, introducing a follow-the-bouncing-ball subtitled sing-along sequence of the title song, with Reis and Dunn and a little live action from a bugler, plus more cartoon antics.
  

If you like Irving Berlin tunes and semi-animated soundies, you'll enjoy Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning. The distinctive Max and Dave Fleischer style is in fine, pleasant form. For those possessing a serviceman's exquisite appreciation of wake-up calls, or a veteran's fond memory of them, all the better.

  
© 2009 Robert Wilfred Franson