The CooCoo Nut Grove

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The Coo-Coo Nut Grove

Directed By: Friz Freleng Produced By: Leon Schlesinger Released: November 28, 1936 Series: Merrie Melodies Story: Michael Maltese Animation: Phil Monroe Ken Harris Ben Washam Lloyd Vaughan A.C. Gamer (effects) Layouts: Robert Gribbroek Backgrounds: Peter Alvarado Film Editor: Treg Brown Voiced By: Tedd Pierce Bernice Hansen Danny Webb Verna Deane The Rhythmettes Wini Shaw Peter Lind Hayes Music: Carl W. Stalling Starring: Ben Birdie Dionne Quintuplets W.C. Fields Helen Morgan Mouse Preceded By: Little Beau Porky Succeeded By: The Village Smithy

The Coo-Coo Nut Grove is a Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies short animated film, set in the famed Cocoanut Grove of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. The cartoon was supervised (directed) by Friz Freleng, with animation by Robert McKimson and Sandy Walker and musical score by Carl Stalling.

Plot

A night at Hollywood's fab-u-lous CooCoo Nut Grove restaurant. You never know who you will see, or be seen by. Master of ceremonies Ben Birdie (bandleader Ben Bernie) is accosted in the opening scene by Walter Windpipe (Walter Winchell). The short then proceeds to showcase a large number of Hollywood stars in the form of caricatures, including Katharine Hepburn (as a horse named Miss Heartburn), Jean Harlow, Bette Davis, Joe E. Brown, Hugh Herbert, W.C. Fields, Clark Gable, Groucho and Harpo Marx, Johnny Weissmuller, Mae West, Lionel and John Barrymore, Laurel and Hardy, Edward G. Robinson, Fred Astaire, and George Raft. Musical entertainments are provided by Dame Edna May Oliver as "The Lady in Red", the Dionne quintuplets (who were in reality only two years old at the time) and Helen Morgan, sitting on the piano, turning on the tears with a torch song.

The title is sometimes misspelled as The Coo-Coo Nut Groove. This cartoon was followed by The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos (1937) and Have You Got Any Castles? (1938), both parodying Hollywood personalities.

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