Horse Women of the 1930s

Just watch it. Gallopin' Gals from 1937.

Comments

[sykko]

I wonder if the creators of FiM were inspired by this when they created Derpy?

[Lunarwolf]

Did you notice the name above the brown horse's stall...... Nightmare!

[oblivion2k]

Lol, Dark Horse. Wouldn't be a 30's cartoon without some casual racism.

That was a fun watch, thanks!

[WubsAndCellos]

5742965
👀

[ShadowLDrago]

5742963

If memory serves, Derpy was an animation error that was going to be covered up by another pony, but wasn't due to Adobe Flash being tricky to work with.

[Black--Soul]

Great little story. Perhaps the inspiration for MLP?

NIGHTMARE needs more nightly features

[Vash_ts]

is it just me not being a native speaker, or are the mares really hard to understand with that accent?

Also, Blue moon is not a song I would have related to horse racing. (at least, not before MLP)

[Hilltopper2]

5743107
Some of it is just them being Southern California gossip stereotypes of the time, and a little outdated. They're about 8 years behind on trends, as the "babydoll" accent was on the way out after its heyday in the 1920s, leading to Betty Boop in 1930. The biggest resurgence in the affectation was Harley Quinn in the 1990s Batman Animated Series.

I think it may have also had to do with Telephone operators of the day over-exaggerating and drawing out their words to be understood over poor telephone lines.

[BradtheBrony]

5743001
Okay, I know I am late to respond to this post, but a "dark horse" is NOT casual racism (if you wanna say casual SEXISM about the entire cartoon, that is valid lol).

The term dark horse (which actually is derived from horse racing) means, and I quote the dictionary here:
"A dark horse is a previously lesser-known person or thing that emerges to prominence in a situation, especially in a competition involving multiple rivals, or a contestant that on paper should be unlikely to succeed but yet still might.

It is a term that actually gets used in politics too, mostly to describe someone winning a position in government when no one thought they would (very famous example being Jimmy Carter).

[oblivion2k]

5744250
A dark horse is not racism. THIS dark horse absolutely is. If you watched the cartoon, you would see the exaggerated facial features and extreme ebonics that were very common in Hanna-Barbera cartoons from this era, and were considered funny in their time, but today are universally considered part of our country's racist past.