text: Melodrama spoofs In 1945, Mighty Mouse and the Pirates was the first Mighty Mouse cartoon to feature sung dialogue, in the operetta style. Gypsy Life (1945) and The Crackpot King (1946) followed in the same style. Gypsy Life was particularly successful, earning Terry his third nomination for an Academy Award for Short Subjects (Cartoon).
  There was a romantic, damsel in distress element in these cartoons—in each one, Mighty Mouse saves a dark-haired beauty from terrible trouble, and in the latter two, the camera fades out on the hero and the girl in a romantic clinch. While these were very similar to the musical melodrama spoofs that were soon to emerge, they didn't have an overwrought narrator, or the suggestion that the cartoon is an episode of a continuing story.
  In November 1947, A Fight to the Finish was the first in a series of musical melodrama spoofs, with Mighty Mouse saving damsel in distress Pearl Pureheart (sometimes "Little Nell") from the villainous, mustache-twirling cat Oil Can Harry. Terrytoons revived the concept from their earlier Fanny Zilch series, a melodrama spoof that ran for seven cartoons from 1933 to 1937. Fanny was constantly tormented by a human version of Oil Can Harry, and protected by her lover, J. Leffingwell Strongheart.