Disney got out of the cameo game for a lot of years, except by having famous people in bit parts in assorted movies—does Pola Negri’s role in The Moonspinners count, and all that—but this early cartoon is a sterling example of why. I, as a child, recognized a lot of these people. Probably more than many children my age, given my familiarity with older movies due to having an older mother who herself liked movies older than she was. I’ve also watched a ton more as an adult and am familiar with even more than I was. However, even with all that being true, I still had to look up someone else’s clarification of who most of these people are.

Donald sneaks onto the “Hollywood Studios” lot despite the efforts of a security guard (Billy Bletcher). He manages this by sitting on the fender of Greta Garbo’s car so that it looks as though he’s riding in it with Garbo (Sara Berner, a radio actress who also did almost all the female voices in the cartoon). He encounters an array of the big names of 1939 Hollywood, some briefly and some at great length. He’s trying to get their autographs and dodge the security guard, and of course the punchline is that Donald is, after all, himself famous.

Some of these are easy. Mickey Rooney (Donald Barry), the Ritz Brothers (Wikipedia doesn’t know), Sonja Henie (allegedly herself), and Shirley Temple (Barbara Jean Wong) get extended sequences. Now, I’d never heard of the Ritz Brothers outside this cartoon as a child, and I still haven’t seen any of their movies, but Donald tells us who they are. The security guard refers to “Miss Garbo,” so that one’s easy, too. And honestly it’s not surprising that the child is the one who recognizes Donald.

I probably knew Clark Gable as a child. Charlie McCarthy. Probably the Marx Brothers and maybe Katherine Hepburn—she’s only a maybe because it’s a very rough caricature. Likewise Bette Davis and Lionel Barrymore; to be honest, I only would’ve known Barrymore from It’s a Wonderful Life as a child, but that’s probably true of most children. I don’t think I would’ve known Joan Crawford. I remember seeing The Man Who Came to Dinner as a child, but no Joan Crawford movies. As an adult, though, you can add her, Joe E. Brown, Martha Raye, Eddie Cantor, Roland Young, Stepin Fetchit, and Charles Boyer.

As the article I found clarifies, Henry Armetta was a character actor who did Italian stereotype roles. I’ve seen a few of his movies, but most of them are forgotten. Mischa Auer was a Russian actor who was in Destry Rides Again and My Man Godfrey. Slim Summerville did Westerns and also All Quiet on the Western Front. Irvin S. Cobb was a writer/humorist/actor with whom I am completely unfamiliar. Edward Arnold was in the Capra stable. Hugh Herbert seems to have been a comedian; he was Snout in the ‘35 Dream.

Are these the actual biggest stars of ‘39? Good Lord, no. No Errol Flynn. No Cagney. No Myrna Loy or Gary Cooper. No Cary Grant, even, and he was really just hitting his heights at the time. It’s almost as though the Disney animators were picking a collection of people who would go on to become minor figures in a cultural footnote in decades to come. Yes, some of them were huge; many others were not. I almost think more people would’ve known Berner—that would certainly be true within a very few years, after she became a regular on The Jack Benny Program. Heck, Jack Benny was making enough movies to have been something of a draw and a more logical choice than Irvin S. Cobb.

I would also like to draw your attention to a fascinating error on the Disney wiki I use as a reference sometimes, which is amusing this week in particular, especially since a certain former White House figure this week commemorated D-Day on Pearl Harbor Day. The wiki solemnly informs us that this cartoon was released the day Hitler starter World War II by bombing Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. However, this cartoon was actually released the day he formally started the war in Europe by invading Poland. It’s just a tiny mistake, right?

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