When the cartoon opens, the cuckoo clock in the library sounds, and the camera pans over the room, to the Town Crier (a caricature of Alexander Woollcott, who did a radio show of that name) who gives a brief introduction. After this, we meet four monsters (Mr. Hyde, Fu Manchu, the Phantom of the Opera, and Frankenstein's monster) who introduce themselves roaring, but then dance briefly to Gossec's "Gavotte." As characters from other books cheer that performance, the protagonist of The Good Earth, his head the shape of a globe, says prayers by his bedside. The camera pans the library to the right, revealing the book The Invisible Man and an invisible man dancing, who hands off to Topper (a novel from a series by Thorne Smith, as well as a contemporary film) where a similar character continues a similar dance, then moves to The Thirty-Nine Steps where a caricature of "Bojangles" Robinson dances down the steps, So Big with a caricature of Greta Garbo, and The Green Pastures which turns out to feature a big band presentation of "Swing for Sale" led by a caricature of Cab Calloway. That clip was from the Friz Freleng short Clean Pastures.
After this, the Town Crier appears again, concluding the cartoon with a brief message ending with "All is well, all is well ...", and the camera pans back to the cuckoo clock where Rip, who has apparently muzzled the cuckoo, is finally sound asleep.
The musical performance of the big band song "Swing for Sale" by The Four Blackbirds and The Basin Street Boys is taken directly from the 1937 cartoon short Clean Pastures,[7] directed by Friz Freleng.
The "Town crier" in this short is a caricature of Alexander Woollcott, in reference to his CBS Radio program of the same name. He has similar mannerisms to the owl caricature of Woollcott in another Tashlin short, The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos, which was released the year before. When the cartoon was re-released, Woollcott asked that his scenes be excised from the film when he died, deducting about a minute from the film. Eventually, these scenes were restored to the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2 DVD set.[10] This version retains the Blue Ribbon opening and closing titles. The cuts are as follows:
After the cuckoo clock sounds and the camera pans over the library, the shadow of the Town Crier appears, and afterwards, instead of hearing him ringing his bell and shouting "Hear ye, hear ye! ...", we see a fade-out to the books being presented.[5]
The cartoon fades to black and then the end title card after Rip van Winkle eliminates everyone into The Hurricane and Gone with the Wind pops up. As a result of this, the brief scene where the cuckoo bird's mouth is covered and van Winkle sleeping on the clock is also cut.[5]
The daily publication The Film Daily called the short a "fine fantasy", and gave it the following review:
The story takes place in a library, with all the characters coming to life from well known works of fiction, both classical and modern. Rip Van Winkle is the center of interest, as he cannot continue sleeping with the noise. Finally he gets The Hurricane to blow all the noise-makers back into the covers of their books again, and he goes peacefully to sleep. The final titles show the pop book Gone with the Wind. Produced by Leon Schlesinger. Story by Jack Miller. Animation by Ken Harris. In Technicolor.[11]
^Beck, Jerry; Friedwald, Will (1989). Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons. Henry Holt and Co. p. 73. ISBN0-8050-0894-2.