This rare and delightful Mutt and Jeff cartoon directed by Charley Bowers is one of six American films from the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia that were preserved with the aid of the National Film Preservation Foundation, which can be seen online or downloaded as a high quality MPEG file here. (The Museum of Modern Art seems to be the archive that did the actual preservation; the NFPF, of course, is responsible for the wonderful series of Treasures from American Film Archives DVDs.)
The film’s plot in many ways anticipates Friz Freleng’s You Ought to Be in Pictures (1940). After seeing how their creator, Bud Fisher, is making a fortune off them, they demand a higher salary and better working conditions; when Fisher turns them down, they go on strike and decide to make their own cartoons.
However, the results are less than stellar …
… and they beg Fisher to take them back.
(Thanks to Jeanpaul Goergen.)
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