Abdul Abulbul Amir - Cartoon

Cartoon

The song was adapted in 1941 into an MGM cartoon, Abdul the Bulbul-Ameer, with Fred Quimby producing and direction by Hugh Harman. Voice acting for the nine minute cartoon was provided by Cliff Nazarro, Harry Stanton, Leon Belasco and Hans Conried, while Frank Crumit wrote new lyrics. It features caricatures of Groucho Marx, Lou Costello and Al Ritz as news reporters. In this version, Abdul is depicted as a bully who picks on Ivan's dwarf friend, provoking Ivan into treading on the Turk's toe. He has many traits of 1930s and 1940s cartoon villains, such as Bluto, including thick lips, a beard and a big belly. There is a brief swordfight, which soon changes into a brawl, that ends with Ivan and Abdul literally "out cold", after falling through a frozen lake and emerging frozen in a pillar of ice. The more positive portrayal of the Russians could have been due to the newly formed alliance between Britain and the USSR following Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in the year of the cartoon's production and release.