Plot Summary
The short opens with introductions of Miss Cud (the school teacher), Beans (who is eating from a jar of jam), Porky, Oliver Owl (who are both shown at once), and Ham and Ex (twin puppies). Little Kitty is absent from this sequence. A poster is shown explaining that the school children are sponsoring a musical and recital for the benefit of teachers and parents.
The school talent show first features Porky Pig reciting Paul Revere's Ride, but due to his excessive stutter (causing him to recite his part with incredible strain and sweat on some moments). A small gag involves Porky pointing to offstage students to provide sound effects for his next poem The Charge of the Light Brigade (the underside of a turtle's shell for a drum, and falling light bulbs for gunfire). However, he points to the wrong student, but the intended student takes his cue, and Porky points to the correct one. The class children whistle and cat-call which makes several stray dogs burst into the schoolhouse and chase poor Porky out.
Next up, Little Kitty attempts to recite "Mary Had a Little Lamb". She is so nervous that she forgets a couple lines (even confusing snow for corn flakes) and then proceeds with the rhyme but gradually speeds up her voice to a high pitch. Throughout her performance she is fidgeting and crossing her legs in a way to suggest she urgently needs the toilet. She reaches the end of the rhyme as she makes a hasty exit, to a building that may be the school outhouse.
Third, Ham and Ex sing the song "I Haven't Got a Hat", written by Buddy Bernier and Bob Emmerich. During this performance, Oliver Owl refuses to share some candy with Beans.
When Oliver goes up for his piano recital, Beans decides it is time for payback and sneaks a stray cat and dog into the piano. Their commotion creates a virtuoso performance of Franz von Suppés Poet and Peasant overture to riotous applause. When the animals jump out of the piano (with the cat chasing the dog rather than vice versa) the ruse is revealed to the audience's disapproval and Oliver, humbled and vengeful, covers Beans in green ink from his pen, causing Beans to fall off his ladder and launch a pail of red paint onto Oliver. Caught in the same predicament, they shake hands as the cartoon ends. This end scene emphasizes the fact that this was a two-strip Technicolor cartoon, with only red and green hues. At the time (as stated before), the three-strip process (with blue hues added) was exclusive to Disney for use in cartoons. This contract ran out in the fall of 1935, and WB released their first three-strip Technicolor cartoon, Flowers for Madame, in November of that year.
Read more about this topic: I Haven't Got A Hat
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