The Autograph Hound (1939)

The Autograph Hound Review

The Autograph Hound is a 1939 animated short film from the Donald Duck series. It is a pretty flawed, but fun flick.

Donald tries to get autographs from celebrities in a Hollywood studio. This movie emphasized Donald’s star quality of the era when he surely was among the biggest cartoon stars, even bigger than Mickey himself. Donald interacting with celebrities was a great idea that led to some very amusing scenarios. Disney had a knack at doing these celebrity parodies and this was another winner, though an uneven one.

Mickey Rooney was extremely annoying here as he almost always was. I hated him here, but at least the interplay between the two was quite fun. Shirley Temple, on the other end of the spectrum, was quite lovely. Their scene together was super sweet and adorable. The comedic highlight was Greta Garbo kissing Clark Gable like a man. That was hilarious.

But my issue with this short is its lack of discipline. I was fine with them including some celebrities that are now pretty much forgotten, but I wasn’t okay with the movie’s hectic structure. The first half is quite slow while the second half is the opposite – it’s very rushed to the point that it did not give enough breathing room to all these famous actors and actresses. I couldn’t get to see them properly, which was a real shame.

The Autograph Hound is a fun celebrity parody cartoon that benefits from a great use of Donald and a couple of very funny moments. It’s an inadequately paced and structured movie, but one that was still charming and so much fun.

My Rating – 4