Coming up next we have another one of those short sing-a-long-type films, 1932's "Time On My Hands", featuring Ethel Merman.
This very popular melody would have been known by most movie-goers in the 1930s.
We start out with a cartoon. Here a fisherman has to deal with some worms that don't take too kindly to being bait.
Under the water, one of the worms devises a method that keeps the fish at bay. He plays a ukulele, which mystifies the fish and causes a couple of them to dance.
Also under the water, a diver takes a shine to a Betty Boop-like mermaid.
The fisherman catches the mermaid and flings her right out of her fins. She lands on the hands of a nearby clocktower and becomes...Ethel Merman????
Ethel looks into the camera and says, "Come sing along with me the
melody it’s so easy to recall, and while your voices ring won’t you keep
following the little bouncing ball?"
She launches into the popular song, which the audience is supposed to sing right along with her.
It's actually quite a weird cartoon/sing-a-long combo. You can watch the short film in its entirety here. Fleischer Studios, which produced the film, was a major player in the animated film game in the early 1930s. Its main competitor was Walt Disney Studios.
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