2hotFeature one of my absolute favorites!

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Edgar Allan Pooh . . . the animated feature now playing in theaters--STORKS--is essentially a remake of SHUFFLE OFF TO BUFFALO. Baby-carrying birds, complicated assembly lines, random singing--it's all here in SHUFFLE. Coming out in 1933, SHUFFLE was under no obligation to be Politically Correct. Therefore, Warner Bros.' Looney Tuners were able to draw featured babies such as the Nanook of the North, Juniors, and the Gold Dust Twins with anatomical correctness, rather than Party Line Platitude Geometry. Those of us that have witnessed a Real Live Birth will recognize Warner Bros.' alternative process as being more True-to-Life that BRIDGET JONES' BABY, and most Hollywood pap of that ilk. The conveyor belt operation of the baby-care elves in SHUFFLE more closely reflects the workings of a 21st Century American NICU ward than almost anything else that Hollywood has ever trotted out as BIRTH IN OUR NATION. (Hosing the milk down wailing newborns' throats with gasoline pump tubing rings especially True.) Hopefully, the Warner Bros.' cartoon archives include an animated short built around "Shanghai Lil," too.

Lee Eisenberg One of the Warner Bros. cartoons from the days before Bugs, Daffy and Porky - at this time, it was still Leon Schlesinger Productions leasing cartoons to WB - portrays a baby-making factory. One of the requests is written in Hebrew, and so the factory makes a baby that looks like an infant Elliott Gould. The reason that "Shuffle Off to Buffalo" has a title song is that Merrie Melodies throughout most of the 1930s were named after songs owned by WB, and they would have the characters sing the song. By the end of the decade, they had dropped this policy.In 1946, Bob Clampett released a more famous cartoon about a baby-producing factory: "Baby Bottleneck" casts Daffy Duck and Porky Pig as owners of the factory who have an unfortunate experience one day. I certainly prefer that one more, as it has more of a plot. But this one should be of interest to people who want to know the entire history of Warner Bros. cartoons. At this point in time, they probably had no idea that their eventual star would be a witty rabbit.

tavm Another Warner Bros. Harmon-Ising Merrie Melodies cartoon short produced in association with Leon Schlesinger that I found on YouTube. Using the title song for inspiration, Shuffle Off to Buffalo is a series of gags surrounding a baby making factory with storks delivering various nationalities (and their representative stereotypes) to the proper homes. There's also caricatures of Maurice Chavalier, Eddie Cantor, and Ed Wynn animated here. If you're of a certain race who's easily offended by the way certain characteristics of them are emphasized, you may want to stay away from this but be aware they're only used here for humor purposes with no malice intended. This was a mostly moderately humorous short that mixed fairly tales with modern conveniences and popular music to usually entertaining results.

didi-5 An early Merrie Melodie, this cartoon uses the song 'Shuffle off to Buffalo' (originally heard in '42nd Street') as a backdrop and soundtrack to what goes on at Baby Central before the storks take babies to their new home.Singing and dancing babies (including Jewish and tribal, as this is in the days before PC) and an entertaining ledger writer, and an Eddie Cantor cameo, make this a punchy and fun cartoon, much better than some of the other fare coming from Termite Terrace at the time.These were the cartoons where later top directors cut their teeth as on-the-ground animators, so they are always worth viewing, especially if you have a yen to see what was going on pre-Porky, Daffy and Bugs.