Little Audrey (1956, Pre-Origin Story)

Little Audrey is a 1956 American-Spanish animated musical comedy fantasy film produced by Famous Studios and released by Paramount Pictures. The animated supervising directorial debut of Vladimir Tytla, loosely based on the Harvey Comics' titular cartoon character series in the 1948-1954 cartoons, it features the voices of Mae Questel, Ray Milland, Mary Costa, Norma MacMillan, Cecil Roy, Louise Beavers, Jackson Beck, Jack Mercer and Dennis Day as Jiminy Cricket's reminiscent is "Peppy Grasshopper".
After having its world premiere in the United States on December 7, 1956 after The Ten Commandments premiered this November, Little Audrey was released by Paramount Pictures. The film eventually bombed out than $5,465,679, earning only $2 million worldwide and received predominantly mixed-to-negative reviews from fans and film critics for the characters including good Disney's ripoffs, decent musical numbers and sub-par voice acting, dark and disturbing content, lack of focus on the title characters and slapstick, and similarities to Disney's golden and silver age classics, although the good animation was praised.
== Plot ==
In a big American city, circa 1950, this story is just about Little Audrey is a caring, funny, lovable good girl with a kind heart. On Christmas Eve, Santa fills the stockings in another home. This time, there are names for each stocking hanging from the mantle: "Mom," "Pop," and "Little Audrey". As Santa fills up Audrey's, he realizes that the toys are falling through the bottom of the stocking, but then sees there is a waiting basket collecting everything, and he chuckles warmly. The other side of the room, where Audrey is pretending to sleep, sneaking open one eye to check on Santa's progress.
When the spring comes, Pal so much wants to go to school with Little Audrey, but she shoos him away. On his way to school, she was alone and full of good intentions, heads off to school, but is sidetracked by Lil' Patches. Little Audrey, torn between playing hooky and going fishing, or going to school, chooses to go fishing. In landing it, she bumps her head and has a terrible nightmare, complete with "Swinging On A Star ''- or would you rather be a fish? During her dream, she sees singing stars. One of the stars is Bing Crosby, the second is Bob Hope and the last one is Jerry Colonna. The theme of her dream is that Audrey should be at school learning. Little Audrey, while fishing, falls to the bottom of the sea, where she encounters all types of sea-life and then is arrested by the local fish-constable. She is tried by a jury of sardines who find her guilty, and she is sentenced to the 'eel-ectric chair." She makes an escape attempt; however, she gets caught and she sits on the eel-ectric chair. It begins shocking her and screaming in pain. Just then Lil' Patches wakes Little Audrey up to find it has all been a dream.
Back at school, Little Audrey is sitting in the middle desk of the second row, behind Melvin who says the right answer. She is reading "Pinhead and Birdbrain" comic books, but she doesn't like Mother Goose rhymes. She gets so involved in the crooks in her comic books that she doesn't hear when asked by the teacher to recite a rhyme. Instead she comes up with hip-gangster talk. Her punishment is to wear a dunce cap and sit in the corner. She goes to sleep, has a dream and finds out that Mother Goose is a "hep" character and that there is more excitement in the nursery rhymes than in her comic books.
Meanwhile, because it is an Audrey dream, peril awaits; this time, it is in the form of Pinhead and Birdbrain, loose from Audrey's comic and ready to turn the pleasantness to instant nightmare. They mug a piglet for a single penny, and when they discover a sideshow displaying The Goose That Lays the Golden Eggs, Pinhead imagines an egg slicer turning the eggs into a pile of gold coins in his hand. They stage a stick-up, and Audrey screams at them that they don't belong here. They swipe the goose and make their escape. Audrey chases after them, but the duo crash through a wall, on top of which was perched, as expected, Humpty Dumpty, who crashes to the ground. What is not expected is that Humpty is played as Edward G. Robinson. Assuredly, he has been unharmed by the incident. The Old Woman in the Shoe and other nursery rhyme residents join in the chase, but it is Audrey, atop the goose, who brings down the evildoers.
When they fire their pistols at her, she bravely turns their bullets back at them through Little Boy Blue's horn. She arrests them, and tries to drag them off to jail. Of course, this is the point where Audrey wakes up, and she is being laughed at by the class because she is wrestling the stool that she was asleep on. Back outside, Lil' Patches kisses Audrey's head, blurring her face in red.
Back at home, her mother and father take a small trip, and leave Little Audrey in the care of Petunia the Maid, sometime afterward. At night, Petunia catches Audrey reading by the light of the moon, when she should already be asleep, and Petunia asks the stubborn girl, "Are you reading in that moonlight again?". Audrey relents and settles down to sleep, laying down on his bed, listening to the sound of the rain. Little Audrey gets ready for sleep, but just couldn't take his eyes off the falling raindrops. When the rain stopped falling, Little Audrey dreams about visiting a realm where dreams are made. Audrey is shown climbing ghostly out of her own sleeping body, and then she floats over to the lost dream with pointy ears. He explains that because she took so long to go to sleep, he was late, and now he has missed the last boat to Dreamland. Audrey says she will help him, and together they walk to the clouds on a shaft of midnight moonlight.
The Lost Dream explains to Audrey that he has to report to the Sandman, who rules all of Dreamland. On the way to his castle, they watch workers scrape the stardust off of tarnished stars, and tailors sewing silver linings into dark little clouds. Meeting the avuncular Sandman, if the Lost Dream shows his dream girl about the kingdom, but is severely warned to stay away from "The Black Door". You can bet every dime that you have that any time there is something that shouldn't be touched or opened in a movie, it's going to get touched or opened. You can double that money in an Audrey film; she's practically opened it before the movie has begun.
The next section of the film is basically built like this: a couple of dream gags are shown, then the Lost Dream discovers Little Audrey trying to wrest open "The Black Door". This happens three times in succession before the obvious result of the door opening occurs. But some of the gags on the way are fun; apart from some obvious bits on pipe dreams, catnaps, and faded dreams, there are a couple of doozies. The first happens when they visit the Broken Dreams Department: a cloud poofs out and shows the image of a college lad getting his diploma, walking into a job interview proudly with the paper in hand, and then walking out the other side of the building clad in a janitorial uniform and pushing a streetsweeper. There is a combination gag when the Lost Dream and Audrey visit the dual Departments of Little Girls' Dreams and Little Boys' Dreams: the Girl Dream consists of a young girl emerging from a backstage door all-dolled up like a movie starlet, and making all of the waiting boys outside of the door faint from her presence; the Boy Dream is, shockingly but not surprisingly, that of a little red schoolhouse burning to the ground.
Eventually, that ol' Black Door has got to be opened, and when Audrey finally gets it there, the Lost Dream tries to push it closed, but a giant hoofed foot blocks its closure. Then a devilish head pops out, followed by two others of slightly less traditionally demonic appearance. As they sing "What You Did" this to her, they breathe fire at Audrey's little pantied bottom; she jumps from black cloud to black cloud until they turn into giant black demons that try to snatch her out of the air; she lands on what must be a quarter-mile long tongue attached to a gargantuan green dragon; and finally runs through a ceaseless series of red swinging doors until she ends up being trapped in a black cloud by the demons. They wrap her in their hands and she wakes up kicking and screaming in her own bed. Fades in overnight, implied that The Sandman had to help with Peppy Grasshopper (as the reminiscent of Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio) told Audrey about why she did not open the black door and the demons getting consumed Dream World and she gets sleep again.
The next morning, Little Audrey sees a baby bird learning to fly and shoots it. The mother bird tries to revive her baby, but to no avail. She begins to cry and mourn the baby bird's death, and Little Audrey feels remorse and guilt for killing it. She runs back into the house and hides under her bed.
The animals and plants of the forest arrange an elaborate funeral for the little bird. Audrey watches from her bedroom window and says a prayer, insisting she did not mean to do any harm. As rain begins to fall again, the mother bird gives her child a kiss goodbye. The baby bird wakes up, revealing it was only unconscious. Overjoyed, the birds celebrate and fly in a circular formation in the sky around the mother and baby.
Audrey sees what has happened and happily rushes out with her rifle. The birds flee in terror and hide in a tree. However, Audrey breaks the gun in half over her knee and stomps it into the ground. She also sprinkles bird seed to make amends, but the birds do not understand. Audrey sadly begins to walk away, but the baby bird flies onto her shoulder and rubs its face on Audrey's. The other birds realize Audrey wants to be their friend, and make the circular formation around her as the baby bird eats seed from her hand, then she reveals her bird's name, Timothew Bird. When Audrey befriended Timothew Bird and could play with him, she told Petunia that she was Timothew Bird and kept playing with him. When Petunia ignores Audrey off, she's alone in her room.
Just then, Petunia watches the cooking show on black-and-white TV. When Little Audrey had an idea that she noticed baking a gingerbread man while listening to a radio cooking show. When the dough is in the oven, she falls asleep. The gingerbread boy comes to life and he tells Audrey about the Cookie Carnival consumed, to replace it with Playland by the wicked Landlord from the black door. When Audrey follows the gingerbread boy and takes her to Cakeland, a colorful musical land of candy canes and ice cream cones. There is a big celebration because the Gingerbread Boy is taking Miss Angel Cake as his wife. There is a song, "Gay Holiday," with dancing and singing confections, including a drunken rum cake and a caricature of Maurice Chevalier as Mr. Eclair Debonair. This sends the Devil's Food Cake into a jealous rage. Interrupting the wedding, he kidnaps Miss Angel Cake and paddles her up the old milk stream. It's Audrey to the rescue.
When Audrey wakes up as Petunia notices that gingerbread burnt in the stove, she destroys the gingerbread and brings Audrey outside. In the town, Audrey arrived at Melvin, a delinquent boy, he is described as the most ruly of Little Audrey's class, though she is the boy's best friend, Lil' Patches. Melvin sends her to play in the park, where she gets into a motorboat, which sinks. Patches, forgetting he can't swim, dives in to rescue the little girl. Audrey saves herself, and, seeing the boy in danger, has the zoo elephants drain the lake. But Patches is saved before she has made any progress later, Audrey and Patches spend a long time catching some fish, she receives a jelly bean that she reveals Patches likes a jellybean and catches a little fish. Then the rain began to fall, Audrey and Patches inside the cave without bats, Audrey suffocating a little fish that she had no longer to cook. When the rain stopped, Audrey threw a dead fish in the lake. Instead of cooking raw fish, Audrey made a bow and arrow to hunt some rabbits to eat some big meal. However, the rabbits are cute where Audrey and Patches didn't notice, he shared a handful of chocolates from the bag with Audrey, kissed him and she got back home with Petunia.
Back inside, Audrey says "Eeny, Meeny, Minee, Moe! I think that I'll choose this one!" and then grabs a handful of chocolates from the bag, devouring them all in a single gulp. to nag her incessantly about not eating her lunch. Her lunch, it turns out, could feed an army, with a steak, and Petunia catches Audrey wolfing down her non-nutritious sack of sweets, and forces Audrey to the table. "I just can't understand where Audrey is eating candy for any few days.", as Audrey not only uses a fork to pick up bites of her lunch, but also uses a second fork to stuff even more candy into her mouth from the bag now tied to the side of the table. The first fork, however, never makes it to her mouth, instead being held out behind her to feed Pal on the floor, who salts each piece before he bites it. However, Audrey can’t stop eating candy and Petunia is at her wits end concerning what to do about it.
In desperation she finally searches the entire house, discovering Audrey’s hidden stashes everywhere and destroying them all. When Audrey discovers her candy missing, she causes her to scream and faint, and enters a Dreamland of Candy Horror Land. But even enough of a good thing can become too much and Audrey ends up locked in a dream world where the very things which she craves all seem to turn against her which is candy monsters narrate her painful plight in a swing song until Peppy Grasshopper arrives just in time to tell him that Evil Landlord is likely cursed to avoid the same terrible fate as the black door had opened, and the mother goose land is replaced with Landlord's Playland.
Together with Peppy, they rush to Playland to warn the newly arrived children about The Landlord. At first, The wickedness Landlord manages to portray Little Audrey as a liar and The Sandman as a wise old man. But when The Landlord attacks Audrey and threatens Peppy Grasshopper, the children and the others chase the Landlord, Pinhead and Birdbrain, until they are arrested by the police and take them back into the black door when the Dream World is restored as well as Mother Goose Land. Back at Dream Castle, The Sandman revealed Audrey as a heroine. Then the Sandman, Gingerbread Boy and the Angel Cake, Lost Dream, Real Mother Goose and Peppy Grasshopper bid Audrey to farewell. When Audrey wakes up, she is met by the face of Petunia, who thought she was dying. When Audrey notices his parents back from vacation. Audrey reunites them with Lil' Patches and Petunia leaves home.
Moments later at the city park, Audrey and Patches embrace. As they're embracing together, Audrey and Patches magically lift themselves off the ground and up into the sky. While flying upwards, Audrey and Patches share a very long kiss.
At the end, Audrey and Patches fly higher and higher through the sky, as they're kissing, and then, they magically disappear.
==Why The Little Girl Won't Be Back After Noveltoon (Bad Qualities, Even Though She Did Come Back)==
*Poor writing, bad comedy, worse acting and average/weird/disturbing art and good animation.
*Like Don Bluth's Thumbelina, similar in vein to other bad Disney-esque animated musicals of the 1950s decade, it feels like an unoriginal Disney rip-off that doesn't even try to be it's own film with numerous scenes and elements that are rip-offs to various Disney animated films. There are so many of all the scenes ripped-off from various Disney animated films that listing it will take forever, so here are just a few examples:
**The title card opening intro at the beginning is ripped-off from the cartoon opening intro seen in the older Disney movie such as Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan.
**Peppy Grasshopper as the minor progainist role have some wise cracking character, Jiminy Cricket from Disney's Pinocchio.
**?????
**The Landlord as the antagonist role have some pretty nightmarish villain, The Coachman from Disney's Pinocchio.
**?????
*On that topic, at times it also feels a rip-off of Walt Disney's own Pinocchio, as both films also feature a childlike protagonist who get lost in a big world and embark on a big journey to find their way home through a various perils and a hostile world of crooks and bugs, as well as both films also featuring Pinocchio to the protagonist and antagonists, with the Peppy Grasshopper and the Landlord characters overall basically being a dumb version of Jiminy Cricket and the Coachman from said animated film.
*Speaking of which, the songs, while not being direct copycats of pre-existing Disney songs and reused animation and a few scripts, are heavily derivative of those from Disney movies and other animated musicals produced beforehand, such as the script animation of Rain Drops being rivative of the song from Bambi.
*Most of the characters are bland, poorly written, and don't contribute much value to the movie.
**The Landlord is a generic one-dimensional protagonist who not only steals the spotlight from Little Audrey, but has very little personality apart from just being the typical villain who wishes to reunite with her father only so that the film can have a story regardless of who it should focus on. In fact, she herself is a pale rip-off of the same name from Disney's Pinocchio.
*False advertising: Instead of being focused on Little Audrey who is the main character and get a fair amount of screen time, the film mainly focuses on ?????. For this reason, Little Audrey feel like they are portrayed more as supporting characters than titular characters. While Little Audrey is the main protagonist of the film and gets a fair amount of screen time, the movie focuses more on Little Dot and Lotta (as a cameo in the end of the film), and Patches at St. John's Comics in 40s.
*The film used a final draft for Pinocchio, Bambi and Alice in Wonderland without permission from Disney.
*The plot of the film is also a humongous rip-off of a few Disney classics including Pinocchio, right down to the main villain of the film being a Coachman.
*The protagonist title stole the animation, the character designs, the music, the element of the screen adaption of Disney classics including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi, Melody Time, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan.
* It can be very disturbing and somewhat dark at times for young children despite its G rating, such as.
**In The Seapreme Court, Audrey goes fishing for fun and has a nightmare wherein several sea creatures arrest her. She is put on trial and eventually gets sentenced to the eel-ectric chair.
**In The Lost Dream, Audrey finally opened the Black Door, tries to push it closed, but a giant hoofed foot blocks its closure. Then a devilish head pops out, followed by two others of slightly less traditionally demonic appearance, they breathe fire at Audrey's little pantied bottom; she jumps from black cloud to black cloud until they turn into giant black demons that try to snatch her out of the air; she lands on what must be a quarter-mile long tongue attached to a gargantuan green dragon; and finally runs through a ceaseless series of red swinging doors until she ends up being trapped in a black cloud by the three demons. They wrap her in their hands... and she wakes up kicking and screaming in her own bed.
**In Song of the Birds, The Weeping Willows weep, and the whole world of nature mourns the passing of the young bird as Audrey retreats to her house in shame and remorse. But sometimes miracles occur, and as the mother bird is burying her child a sudden storm breaks out, unleashing the rain which revives the fallen bird.
**And like in the cartoon, Butterscotch and Soda, to compare that movie, but Audrey suffers a "lost weekend" after a sugar binge and then the sequence where the shadow of the canary turns into a bat's and Little Audrey subsequent scream is terrific.
**The candy people in Butterscotch and Soda when Audrey's dream turns into a nightmare. For example, a sequence of Audrey being chased by menacing candies singing about her "Tummy Ache Blues". The song ends with her being force-fed all the candy she bagged throughout the dream.
*The film noticeably rips off scripts, musically rip-off and the scenes from Disney films. The rain drops from Disney's Bambi also with any recycled and homage animation with Melody Time, Peppy Grasshopper was a resembled of Jiminy Cricket's name and his design of that character and The Landlord, his design of the Coachman and resemble that of that wickedness villain from Disney's Pinocchio.
*It feels somewhat unnecessary for a Disney-esque movie, it had no set up for another film and a dream sequences including The Seapreme Court has end already in 1954.
*Like any worst Little Audrey cartoons includes The Seapreme Court, the story is not exceptionally good or impressive written, as it is set to a dark tone.
*One of the villains, the Landlord, Pinhead, and Birdbrain (except Judge Fish, Devil/Goblins, Devil Food Cake and a genetically mutated candies), didn’t receive any punishment or harsh consequences, though this can be a perfect example that realistically, life is unfair and bad people can get away with their actions sometimes.
==Redeeming Qualities==
* The first 75 minutes of the movie started off as good, with additional highlights:
** Speaking of which, they do contain reanimated versions of sixteen cartoons.
==Short Films==
In United Kingdom on Warner Home Video at DVD, "Baby Puss" used a first short film in bonus features.
==Gallery==
Little Audrey & Peppy Grasshopper.webp
== Reception ==
Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 39% approval rating based on 5 reviews, with an average score of 4.5/10.
==Staff==
==Music==
The music score is composed by Winston Sharples, but some of the underscored tracks used are taken from the Disney films such as Pinocchio and Bambi, composed by Leigh Harline, Ned Washington, Larry Moley; also with that scene where Audrey discovers her candy missing, it always heard an underscore tracks used are taken from Paramount's The Lost Weekend, composed by Miklós Rózsa.
==See also==
*Felix the Cat: The Movie (1988)
*Tom and Jerry: The Movie (1992)
*Casper (1995)
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