Burt Gillett | Shanghaied / 1934

one of the last of the cinema pre-code pansies

by Douglas Messerli

 

Burt Gillett (director) Shanghaied / 1934 [7 minutes]

Even before this cartoon movie begins, as the sailors swabbing the deck sing out, their Captain Pete has “shanghaied" a girl—as well as, we soon discover, a “man,” Mickey and Minnie Mouse. The chorus of sailors sing out about his new acquisition for a few choruses before an obvious pansy, cleaning on an upper deck away from the rest of the crew, sings out as well in his high effeminate voice, dangling a hanky with a limp wrist (voiced by Elvia Allman). The Captain, leans out his window to hit the poor queer on the head with a bottle of wine before he quiets down the entire crew, turning his attention back to his recent captives, each bound up in rope.

      It first appears that he is more interested in Mickey than in Minnie, briefly torturing our favorite rodent, before turning his full attention to Minnie with clearly sexual interest. She screams, while Mickey, magically escaping his ropes, spots a wall trophy of a sword fish, pulling it down to use as a sword.

      For a long while to two engage in a fencing exercise that even Robin Hood might delight in, particularly since the peg-legged Pete has got, quite by accident, the rollers of a chair now attached to his leg, and goes rolling about a bit like a ballerina after every thrust.

 

     The swordfish eventually loses its scales like as if quickly carved up by a waiter, and Mickey is forced to chase after the evil Captain while also being attacked by the entire crew. Eventually, after a great deal of innovative cartoon imagery, is able to link them all on line and send them into the ocean where the sharks seem most interested in the Captain’s exposed and quite excessive derrière, their noses tickling him with screams of terrorized giggles, not so different from the pansy he had previously quieted.

 

      The delight of Burt Gillett’s presentation of the now almost prerequisite pre-code pansy is that there is absolutely no logical excuse for his appearance, particularly in 1934, the year when Joseph Breen declared in his new role of head censor that pansy pictures were now outlawed. As I’ve mentioned earlier, however, cartoons were the last cinematic form to be censored and often survived the cuts that feature films suffered throughout the later 1930s and into the 1950s, since, obviously, the hand-drawn figures were not presented totally as “real” human beings. Tell that to Walt Disney, whose voice evidently was in back of this film’s Mickey.

      What is also quite interesting about this 1934 cartoon is that it resisted almost all racial jokes, even when Captain Pete is completely covered with coal-dust from a stove, he is not converted momentarily to a singing black man, but shakes off the black coat of dust to continue on without the tempting racist commentary. The only real stereotype this film maintains, accordingly, that that of the effeminate homosexual, tolerated in the sailor’s world but obviously not approved of. Actually, given that all the other regular sailors have been strung off to sea, perhaps he is only survivor, along with Mickey and Minnie, to bring the boat home.

 

Los Angeles, January 21, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2024).