I Love to Singa

I Love to Singa is a Merrie Melodies animated cartoon directed by Tex Avery, produced by Leon Schlesinger, and released to theaters on July 18, 1936, by Warner Bros. and Vitaphone. I Love to Singa depicts the story of a young owlet who wants to sing jazz, instead of the classical music that his German parents wish him to perform. The plot is a lighthearted tribute to Al Jolson's film The Jazz Singer.

"I Love to Singa" was first a song written by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg for the 1936 Warner Bros. feature-length film The Singing Kid. It is performed three times in the film: first by Jolson and Cab Calloway, then by the Yacht Club Boys and Jolson, and finally again by Calloway and Jolson. During this period, it was customary for Warners to have their animation production partner, Leon Schlesinger Productions, make Merrie Melodies cartoons based upon songs from their features.

The cartoon has, in recent years, taken on something of a cult following, with a pervasive impact on popular culture. The short, one of the earliest Merrie Melodies produced in Technicolor's 3-strip process, is recognized as one of Avery's early masterpieces.

Plot
I Love to Singa depicts the story of a young owl who wants to sing jazz, instead of the classical music that his German parents wish him to perform. The plot is a lighthearted tribute to Al Jolson's film The Jazz Singer.

The young owl, voiced by Tommy Bond, best known as "Butch" of the Our Gang (Little Rascals) films, is unjustly kicked out of his family's house by his disciplinarian violinist father (voiced by Billy Bletcher) after he is caught singing jazz instead of "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes" to the reed (pump) organ accompaniment of his mother (voiced by Martha Wentworth). While wandering, he comes across a radio amateur contest, hosted by "Jack Bunny" (a pun on Jack Benny), and billing himself as "Owl Jolson" (a reference on Al Jolson), wins the contest, but not before his father has finally seen his son's potential and allows him to freely sing jazz.

Musical selections

 * The first owlet hatched sang the opening bars of "Chi mi frena in tal momento" from the opera Lucia di Lammermoor. (Papa Fritz compared him to the great opera singer Enrico Caruso.) Translated in Italian is "Who is holding me back at this time?"
 * The second owlet to hatch played the beginning of "Träumerei" by Robert Schumann on the violin. (Papa Fritz compared him to the violinist Fritz Kreisler.)
 * The third owlet, a flautist, played the first notes of "Spring Song" by Felix Mendelssohn from his work Songs without Words.
 * The first known reject in the contest played a few bars of "Listen to the Mocking Bird" on the harmonica.
 * The blackbird in the blue jacket played a few bars of "Nola", composed by Felix Arndt, on the saxophone.
 * The bird with the accordion briefly played "Turkey in the Straw".
 * The dark, operatic bird sang a line from the silent film Laugh, Clown, Laugh (even though the lyrics to the theme song don't have those actual words).
 * The overweight bird got only a few notes of "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" sung before being rejected.
 * The country bumpkin bird (voiced by Joe Dougherty, who was the original voice of Porky Pig) stuttered through the first and almost all of the second verse of the nursery rhyme Simple Simon before rejecting himself.

Cultural influence
The cartoon has built a cult following in recent years. In "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", the pilot episode of the animated series South Park, characters Eric Cartman and Officer Barbrady lapse into Owl Jolson's odd song-and-dance routine, complete with wide black 1930s-style eyes with pie-wedge pupils, whenever they get hit with an alien beam.

In Warners' 2003 film Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Owl Jolson's dance sequence from I Love to Singa repeatedly appears on the video screen of the ACME Corp. Chairman (played by Steve Martin), since he cannot properly operate his remote control. He also shows up in the Looney Tunes: Back in Action game, in the Las Vegas, France and Africa levels. He can be turned on and shut off by being hit by either character. When approached, Bugs and Daffy will make comments.

The song "I Love to Singa" was recently sung by Gossamer in "Gribbler's Quest", a 2013 episode of Cartoon Network's The Looney Tunes Show.

Other versions
This was one of many WB cartoons released prior to August 1, 1948, that was sold to Associated Artists Productions (a.a.p.) in 1956. That company's library would change hands several times over the years, ending up with Turner Entertainment in 1986, and years later became a staple of Cartoon Network's programming.

Edited version
When this cartoon aired on TNT's short-lived children's program, The Rudy and Go-Go Show, the part where Owl Jolson is forced to sing "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes" and some scenes of the auditions for Jack Bunny's radio show were cut for time constraints.

Availability
I Love to Singa was reissued with "Blue Ribbon" opening titles in the mid-1940s; it was this version that was released to VHS in the 1980s. The short was later restored with original titles for DVD release and included in the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 2 DVD box set, released in 2004. It is also included as a special feature on the Warner Bros. DVD releases of the 1927 Al Jolson film The Jazz Singer and the 2006 CGI animated film Happy Feet. It also included on the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 1 Blu-Ray and DVD.