Wilfred Jackson | Egyptian Melodies / 1931 [animated cartoon]

walk like an egyptian

by Douglas Messerli

 

Albert Hurter, Harry Reeves, Ben Sharpsteen, Cecil Surry, Rudy Zamora, and David Hand (animators), Wilfred Jackson (director) Egyptian Melodies / 1931 [animated cartoon]

 

In this enjoyable-to-watch picture a spider, after a moment or two of debate, decides to enter an Egyptian tomb, and we follow along as he moves down several flights of stairs where he discovers mummies who quickly exit their cases and do a line dance. Even the hieroglyphics come to life.

    Who knew that the oddly positioned half limp hand children have for centuries witnessed in the pictures of their schoolbooks (if you recall, Jem attempts to teach Scout to “walk like an Egyptian” in To Kill a Mockingbird) was really an early version of Bobby Watson and his chorus boys doing a line dance? Walt Disney shows you how to be a proper sissy without even having to say the word “gay.”

     Soon everything is set into the motion which becomes very scary for our incy spider, he speeding out of that sphinx as fast as its eight little feet can carry him.

 

Los Angeles, April 20, 2022

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (April 2022).