The Magic Fluke

In Tex Avery’s brilliant “Magical Maestro,” a magician uses his magic wand to turn opera singer Poochini into various demeaning guises (child, western singer, Hawaiian chanter). Several years earlier, the UPA studio put out “The Magic Fluke,” where a magician’s wand turned into various things in the unwitting hand of Lips Fox and starts doing stuff to the orchestra.

The animation’s well-timed and gags are set up very well. Things build to a climax. A bass turns into a woman and the bow becomes a saw. (Is this Pat Matthews’ animation?)



Pigeons fly out of the tuba.



A triangle becomes a coat hanger that suddenly attracts the triangle player's evening wear.



Violins become long rabbits that, in probably the goofiest gag ever seen in a UPA cartoon, start la-la-la-ing that old cartoon workhouse, Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.



The fox turns his orchestra members into rabbits, then erases them with the wave of the wand.



Finally, with some spectre rabbits floating from the end in mid-air, the wand expires.



The cartoon was nominated for an Oscar but that didn’t matter to the Capital-A artists at UPA. The short featured the two things many people at the studio despised: funny animals and slapstick violence. So such things vanished from the studio’s cartoons.

There’s a great post about the art of this cartoon on Michael Sporn’s blog.