Colonel Heeza Liar In The African Jungles

Colonel Heeza Liar jumps off the drawing board and into the real world to track down a stolen rooster.

Heeza Liar was a club bore who told Munchausen-style stories. In this one he tells of how he was a knight when he was a youngster and defeated a brigand.

Forbidden Fruit begins with New York in the grip of a banana shortage. Residents sing (or scream) “Yes! We Have No Bananas,” the hit novelty song of 1923 (inspired by real-life banana shortages—the film also references current events by mentioning mobster Louis Cohen, arrested for murder the same year). The scene shifts to animator Walter Lantz strumming the song on his guitar, before a co-worker presents him with a banana that transmogrifies into Colonel Heeza Liar, who tells the tale of how he ended “the great banana famine in 1923.”

Mistaking a tiger's tail for a snake, Colonel Heeza Liar puts himself in wrong with a big tiger, who gives him a very bad quarter of an hour, until the matchless courage and ingenuity of our hero overcomes him. Next our friend mistakes a bear's ears for a butterfly, and tries to net them, with the result that soon he is up a tree only a breath or two in advance of the bear. Things look very dark for him, especially as the bear energetically tries to shake the colonel from his perch like a ripe apple, but again his resourcefulness finds a victory. As a final grand windup he makes the biggest bag of game, all at one shot that anyone ever secured under similar circumstances.

A Colonel Heeza Liar short.

Early animated short from Bray Studios.

Colonel Heeza Liar goes to Africa hoping to outdo Teddy Roosevelt; there he encounters various jungle animals.

In this latest exploit of the inimitable little colonel, he goes upon a ghost hunt – but the hunter becomes the hunted.

Despite the bombs which he suffers from at the war front, war correspondent, Col. Heeza Liar succeeds to foil the enemy lines.

In this story he comes to the rescue of a baseball team and becomes the star pitcher and hitter.

Colonel Heeza Liar is a character a bit like Baron Munchausen. Many wild things occur to him in the cartoons and they are meant to be silly entertainment. Here, he gets into a fight with a kangaroo. On the verge of death, he's saved by a quack doctor--who gives him a transfusion of donkey blood! And, as a result, there is a funny lingering after-effect.

a Colonel Heeza Liar cartoon

A Colonel Heeza Liar short.

A silent Colonel Heeza Liar cartoon.

When the redoubtable Colonel, returning home, sees a footpad collecting his toll from an unfortunate "Johnnie" who fell beneath the impact of a blackjack, he quickly goes to the rescue. The befriended person is so grateful to the Colonel that he lets the Colonel drink as much as he likes, with the result that the Colonel gets somewhat stewed. The Colonel is certainly in very good spirits and has very good spirits in him, which accounts for the extraordinary occurrences which happen on the way to his downy (?) couch. The world seems to go spinning around as he makes his uncertain way through the streets. How he finally makes his entrance into his house is as funny as it is unusual.

A Colonel Heeza Liar Cartoon