A Love Story featuring two hats
Johnnie Fedora and Alice Bluebonnet is a Walt Disney Cartoon about two hats that fall in love in the window of a department store. It’s all set in the 1890s or early twentieth century. They dream of a hat box made for two and promise lifelong love.
Disaster strikes when Alice is bought for $23.94 (quite a lot of money circa 1900).
Johnnie becomes “gay” once more when he is bought (price unknown). When he is out he looks for Alice far and wide and briefly encounters her singing their song.
One day Johnnie is lost by his owner and gets into some seedy adventures. At one point he is picked up by a shady character and worn during a brawl in a bar. At this point he is desperately seeking Alice and goes back to the old department store haunt. Then ……………….
hey, nonny, nonny, a nice man found Johnnie
And he cut him to fit on his horse’s ears
‘Twas done without malice
For beside him was Alice
And they lived on for years and years
The moral of the story:
You Johnnie Fedoras, you Alice Bluebonnets
Whenever you find yourself blue
You’ll find it’s June in December
If you just remember that true love will come smiling through
Hats on horses were popular at one time here is a picture of one (you can buy reproductions of it on my Cafe Press store)
There are a number of bootleg posts of this cartoon on You Tube (apparently without sanction from Disney). You can get your own copy of the cartoon in the Make Mine Music 1946 movie and reissued in 1954 (it’s on DVD and a great item for kids today although a bit dated perhaps?). There were some very cute cartoons in this compilation.
The song was written by Ray Gilbert and Allie Wribel (copyright MCA). You can find the lyrics here.
The song was sung by the Andrews sisters in the Cartoon, they were very popular then. You can download the song from iTunes as well as a couple of other versions.
