There's a great deal to say about this short and some detail is necessary, so spoilers are ahead.
This short is an excellent example of a type of cartoon that Warner Brothers did very effectively: Characters from books and/or magazines coming to life or being used as part of a sight gag. Generally set in a bookstore, the first done was Three's a Crowd, done in 1933.
Castles originally featured a caricature of Alexander Wollcott doing an opening and a close as the "Town Crier", but the studio heads were afraid Wollcott might take offense and the framing sequences were removed. Caricatures were a staple of animation by this point and Castles features a number of them.
Why did the animators do these type of cartoons? I suspect it was because it gave them the advantage of using material that would be very familiar to the audience on at least two levels: books that were familiar to a fairly well-read public (or magazine titles familiar to that same public) as well as a visual connection, given that many of these books had also been made into films. Given that animation is a very visual medium by it's nature, audience familiarity with titles and faces allowed the animators to fire dozens of short sight gags at the audience in a short time-frame. Audience recognition of W.C Fields or Greta Garbo, coupled with wide familiarity with books like So Red the Rose and So Big makes the gags work in different ways for different viewers. They did these for the same reason books were adapted into films: audience familiarity with the subject matter. Studios routinely optioned film rights to best-selling books on the not unsound theory that someone who read the book and liked it would pay to see a film version as well. Back in the 1930s, the four principle forms of entertainment were radio, movies, reading and music. Cartoons strip-mined all four for material and Warner's did this superbly. They even re-used themselves on occasion, including a bit in Castles that was first used in Clean Pastures and is used here ("Swing For Sale").
This short is in print on Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. 2, with the original Wollcott framing sequences included. Highly recommended.
This short is an excellent example of a type of cartoon that Warner Brothers did very effectively: Characters from books and/or magazines coming to life or being used as part of a sight gag. Generally set in a bookstore, the first done was Three's a Crowd, done in 1933.
Castles originally featured a caricature of Alexander Wollcott doing an opening and a close as the "Town Crier", but the studio heads were afraid Wollcott might take offense and the framing sequences were removed. Caricatures were a staple of animation by this point and Castles features a number of them.
Why did the animators do these type of cartoons? I suspect it was because it gave them the advantage of using material that would be very familiar to the audience on at least two levels: books that were familiar to a fairly well-read public (or magazine titles familiar to that same public) as well as a visual connection, given that many of these books had also been made into films. Given that animation is a very visual medium by it's nature, audience familiarity with titles and faces allowed the animators to fire dozens of short sight gags at the audience in a short time-frame. Audience recognition of W.C Fields or Greta Garbo, coupled with wide familiarity with books like So Red the Rose and So Big makes the gags work in different ways for different viewers. They did these for the same reason books were adapted into films: audience familiarity with the subject matter. Studios routinely optioned film rights to best-selling books on the not unsound theory that someone who read the book and liked it would pay to see a film version as well. Back in the 1930s, the four principle forms of entertainment were radio, movies, reading and music. Cartoons strip-mined all four for material and Warner's did this superbly. They even re-used themselves on occasion, including a bit in Castles that was first used in Clean Pastures and is used here ("Swing For Sale").
This short is in print on Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. 2, with the original Wollcott framing sequences included. Highly recommended.