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Belly dance in cartoons

topic posted Thu, June 1, 2006 - 9:17 AM by  Shira 		Share/Save/Bookmark
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So, I'm making myself a compilation DVD showing belly dance scenes from cartoons. Here's what I've got so far:

1. The Sultan's Birthday (Mighty Mouse) - great dance scene
2. Goofy Goat Antics (no famous characters, made in 1933 before "personalities" became common) - a few seconds of a belly dancing accordion to the song Streets of Cairo
3. Chicken a la King (no famous characters, also 1930's)
4. Popeye Meets Aladdin (18 seconds of Olive Oyl dancing for joy at marrying Aladdin)
5. Ali Baba Bunny (Bugs Bunny does hip slides and head slides) - not exactly "dance" - he's a genie
6. Mr. Piper tells the Story of Ali Baba
7. Homer's Night Out (The Simpsons)

No dance scenes, but being included because they depict the Near East in some way:

1. Porky in Egypt (Porky Pig)
2. Sultan Pepper (The Little King)

Once I haven't seen yet, but look forward to seeing (I've ordered DVD's with them):

1. Big Bad Sindbad (Popeye) - I suspect this one will NOT have a dance scene
2. Popeye Meets Ali Baba & the Forty Thieves - again, I suspect no dance scenes
3. Pink of Arabee (Pink Panther)
4. I Dream of Genie with the Light Pink Fur (Pink Panther)
5. Aladdin's Lamp (Mighty Mouse) - I have high hopes for this one
6. Mighty Mouse in Gypsy Life - I haven't been able to find a DVD that claims to include this one, still looking


Does anybody know of any others? Are there any belly dance scenes in other vintage cartoons like Yogi Bear, the Flintstones, Huckleberry Hound, or others?
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Shira
offline Shira
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  • Ayperi
    Ayperi
    offline 148

    Re: Belly dance in cartoons

    Thu, June 1, 2006 - 9:23 AM
    Homer's Night Out?? Do elaborate... (I'm giggling to myself here at my desk).
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    • Shira
      Shira
      offline 412

      Re: Belly dance in cartoons

      Thu, June 1, 2006 - 9:53 AM
      Homer goes to a bachelor party, which features a belly dancer as entertainment. Her skimpy costume is basically a bikini with a chiffon scarf tucked into the hip at each side. Later in the episode, when Homer goes looking for her, the places he visits in his search include girlie clubs - the sorts of places that have Vegas-style showgirls in bikinis and feathers.

      The plot is that the belly dancer gets him up to dance with her. Bart has sneaked into the room where the party is, and uses his newly-acquired small spy camera to snap a photo. He gives a reprint to Milton, and soon copies of the picture are all over town with people chortling about it. Marge learns about it and gets upset because she believes Homer has taught his son to objectify women. So she demands that Homer take Bart to meet up with Princess Kashmir and apologize to her for objectifying her. They visit all these divy places looking for her, and eventually find her.
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  • Shira
    Shira
    offline 412

    Discovered three more today

    Fri, June 2, 2006 - 9:25 PM
    Today I got a DVD set of Pink Panther cartoons. (Yup, I'm building a collection of old cartoon DVD's! Should help me keep nieces and nephews entertained when they come to visit!)

    Three episodes caught my eye:

    Genie with the LIght PInk Fur
    Pink of Arabee
    Pink of Bagdad

    All run between 6 minutes and 6.5 minutes in length. Pink of Arabee and Pink of Bagdad appear to be identical for the first 4 minutes, and it's just some stuff near the end that differs.

    Unfortunately, none of these have dance-oriented scenes. Oh well, they were fun to watch anyway!
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  • Shira
    Shira
    offline 412

    Mighty Mouse: Aladdin's Lamp

    Tue, June 6, 2006 - 9:08 AM
    I got my new Mighty Mouse DVD's yesterday, a 3-DVD set which included an episode called Aladdin's Lamp. I had hoped it would be the episode that this clip came from: www.youtube.com/watch . But alas, such was not the case. (Whimper, whine.) The episode is still cute, especially the opening that has a snake charmer, who then in turn is charmed by his own snake. But it doesn't have the dance scene I was hoping for. I'll have to keep looking!

    I got a lead on another cartoon I'm trying to track down. The episode is called Sahara Hare, and it involves Bugs Bunny. I found a VHS tape on Amazon that has it. Apparently it also features Yosemite Sam. We'll see what that one is like...
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  • Shira
    Shira
    offline 412

    Re: Belly dance in cartoons

    Wed, June 14, 2006 - 9:27 AM
    I discovered a cartoon clip called Insultin' the Sultan. It appears on a DVD featuring animation by Ub Iwerks, who apparently was Disney's leading animator in the late 1920's before he struck out on his own in the 1930's. The plot is: guy is walking down the street in Turkey with his girlfiend, they go past a stage where dancing girls are being sold. (Includes a few seconds, maybe 5-10 seconds at most of dancing.) The Sultan who is shopping for dancing girls decides that the guy's girlfriend is the dancer he wants to buy, so he takes her. The rest of the cartoon is about the guy's efforts to rescue his girlfriend. Total cartoon length is about 6 minutes in length.

    There's another cartoon on the same DVD with "Sinbad" in the title, but I was disappointed by that one because there's nothing Oriental about it at all. Basically, the main character (Sinbad) has a tangle with a pirate ship, and the whole cartoon is about his fighting with the pirates. Yawn.

    There are a couple more cartoons on this DVD I haven't watched yet that have promising-sounding titles. There's an Ali Baba, and also an Aladdin.

    By the way, the article on my web site regarding the song "Streets of Cairo" has clips from 3 cartoons that have snips of this song - see www.shira.net/streets-of-cairo.htm near the bottom of the page under the headline "The Strangest Places".
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  • Shira
    Shira
    offline 412

    I found another one today, in Heckle & Jeckle!

    Wed, August 30, 2006 - 10:09 PM
    I found another cartoon that contains what you could construe as kind-sorta belly dancing today. It's an episode of Heckle and Jeckle called "King Tut's Tomb." In the episode, Heckle and Jeckle fall into a pit containing a tomb, where they encounter strange and wonderful things. At one point, they crack a combination lock, and out comes a marching band of mummies playing trombones, including a many-humped camel wearing the pointy-toed shoes and harem pants.

    At another point, they encounter a "jukebox" and when it begins to play a mummy case open and out steps a sexy kitty cat wearing harem pants and a halter top. This is the dance scene. The kitty cat does some head slides and quite a bit of sexy walking back and forth with those silly bent-arm Pharaonic poses. It lasts about 30 seconds, and is definitely good for a giggle.

    I found it on a Heckle & Jeckle collection sold on eBay.
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  • Shira
    Shira
    offline 412

    A Good Time for a Dime - Donald Duck

    Tue, September 12, 2006 - 11:22 AM
    I've discovered another - a Donald Duck cartoon from 1941. Donald visits a penny arcade and walks past a row of machines that you can put a penny into to see a movie clip. He discovers one labeled Dance of the Seven Veils, so he puts his penny in and sees Daisy Duck dancing with a veil. The music is mostly Mendelsohn's spring song, but there's also a brief phrase of Streets of Cairo. The dancing by Daisy is shown as a series of still images, with the effect of pages flipping, rather than a smooth video image. Altogether, the dancing portion of this cartoon lasts about 30 seconds.

    I found this on a DVD titled The Chronological Donald, Volume 1: 1934-1941.
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  • step...
    stephanie
    offline 65

    Re: Belly dance in cartoons

    Tue, September 12, 2006 - 12:28 PM
    Gosh, thinking WA-AY back, isn't there a Bugs Bunny one - not necessarily dancing but I have this vision of him in drag, with a face veil, removing it and kissing Elmer Fudd ... Maybe a dream (or a nightmare ;-))
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    • step...
      stephanie
      offline 65

      Re: Belly dance in cartoons

      Tue, September 12, 2006 - 12:30 PM
      oh, wait, nevermind - you have it (a homer moment here - d'oh!)
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      • Shira
        Shira
        offline 412

        Re: Belly dance in cartoons

        Tue, September 12, 2006 - 5:50 PM
        Stephanie, actually, I don't have the one of Bugs Bunny in drag. I've heard other people mention that there is one, but I haven't found it yet. (If anybody can steer me to it, I'd love to know about it! Especially if you can suggest a VHS tape or DVD that has it!)

        I have found two Bugs Bunny ones that are along that Oriental theme. There's Ali Baba Bunny, which is the one where Bugs dresses as a genie and does hip slides and head slides, but in that one his garb definitely male. The other I've found is A-Lad-In His Lamp, in which Bugs himself ends up at the end with a harem of female rabbits in face veils and such. Again, Bugs is himself. Elmer Fudd doesn't appear in either of these two, so there must be another one I haven't found yet!
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  • Beki
    Beki
    offline 28

    Looney Tunes bellydance???

    Thu, September 14, 2006 - 6:28 PM
    Do you know if there is a cartoon to accompany the Sultan or Genie Sylvester the Cat you just purchased on e-bay? I tried to look for one but couldn't find it. Anyone? Anyone? Looney Tunes bellydance???
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    • Shira
      Shira
      offline 412

      Re: Looney Tunes bellydance???

      Thu, September 14, 2006 - 7:40 PM
      Beki, I haven't found one yet, but you can bet I'll be looking for it after buying that Sylvester doll! A while back, I bought the 3-volume set called Looney Tunes Golden Collection. Each volume has 4 DVD's. I haven't yet had time to watch them all, but you can bet I'll be keeping an eye out to see if any of the cartoons have Sylvester as a genie!

      (For those who don't know what Beki and I are talking about, here's the link to the item I bought on eBay: cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll )
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  • Shira
    Shira
    offline 412

    Hootchy Kootchy Parlais Vouz

    Fri, October 13, 2006 - 2:03 PM
    I recently found a source for old Felix the Cat cartoons, including one called Hootchy Kootchy Parlais Vous, which is from 1930. The seller warned me that his master copy does NOT have sound and the image qualilty is poor, so I wasn't surprised when that turned out to be true. A lot of old movies and cartoons from that era don't even exist any more (the materials on which they were made were "harvested" and recycled, some were lost, some destroyed in fires, etc.

    Anyway, from the title, I was hoping it would have some attempt at "Middle Eastern" dance, ie, the "hootchy cootchy". I was disappointed to find that it doesn't. Instead, it's basically a portrayal of a cannon battle between cats and mice. It some ways, that wasn't surprising - the title seemed like a possible pun on "Hinky Dinky Parlez Vous" which was a song popular during the World War I era. But because of the words "hootchy cootchy" I was hoping a dancer would slink through, and that didn't happen. Sigh.

    And for those of you who speak French and are cringing at the horrid grammar of the cartoon's title, I'm cringing too. But I'm spelling it the same way the actual cartoon title spells it. So don't blame me! This mistake was made in 1930, and it's the title under which the cartoon was released so in that sense it's "correct".

    My search for cartoons with dance scenes continues!

    And, parlez-vous français?
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  • Shira
    Shira
    offline 412

    Felix the Cat - Arabiantics, from 1928

    Sun, October 22, 2006 - 11:54 AM
    I discovered another old cartoon short today with a "Middle Eastern dance" scene: Arabiantics, which stars Felix the Cat. It was made in 1928. The total cartoon is just under 8 minutes long.

    The story goes something like this: Felix the cat buys a carpet from a down-and-out dealer, paying the hungry carpet salesman with his bottle of milk. It turns out to be a magic carpet that whisks him off to Araby. A guy there recognizes it as a legendary flying carpet and buys it from Felix with a bag of jewels. Another guy steals the jewels. Felix figures out who stole them, and sees the guy distributing them to the women of his harem. So Felix plays a tune on an oud-like instrument, and the women start to dance. As they shimmy, the jewels fall off of them into Felix's waiting hands. Happy ending for Felix, not so happy for the guy who stole them from him.
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    • Elk ...
      Elk Dreamer Dancing
      offline 50

      Gulliver's Travels with Richard Harris

      Mon, November 13, 2006 - 9:21 AM
      An elegant animation of a bellydancer is in the 1970s British film Gulliver's Travels. The movie itself is all done with split-screen of real-life Richard Harris playing the role of Gulliver imposed on the animated story. The sequence with the bellydancer is a bit misplaced in the culture of Lilliput but well choreographed, drawn and executed. The funny thing is that although this is a children's animation feature, the dancer is bare-breasted! I'm planning on showing it at our next MECDA belly dance video party. Thank you for you list as it gives me other possible selections. I am trying to get a hold of some old Hal Roach and George Melies animation shorts from the 1920s & 30s but those might be the ones you are referring to above.
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