The Coo-Coo Nut Grove


The CooCoo Nut Grove is a 1936 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. The short was released on November 28, 1936.

Plot

Master of ceremonies Ben Birdie is accosted in the opening scene by Walter Windpipe. The short then proceeds to showcase many Hollywood stars in the form of caricatures, including Katharine Hepburn, Jean Harlow, Bette Davis, Ned Sparks, Hugh Herbert, W. C. Fields, Clark Gable, Groucho and Harpo Marx, Johnny Weissmuller and Lupe Vélez, Mae West, Wallace Beery, 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 and Helen Morgan, sitting on the piano, turning on the tears with a torch song causing most of the guests to cry and flooding the Grove in the process. Whereas other cartoons have caricatured celebrities as either humans or animals, oddly, this short does both—half are seen as human, half as animal versions of the stars.

Production notes