For decades, Dauntless Dan has been searching for Nellie, who was lured away to the circus by Dan Rathbone. Although he has looked everywhere on the bottom of the sea, he has not found her, nor lost his unaccountable Swedish accent. One day, while trudging along a country road, Dan has his attention drawn by the narrator to a sign advertising Nellie's appearance at the circus. The Neliie series of cartons was directed by a young Alex Lovy for Walter Lantz, still searching for a major cartoon star to replace the decrepit Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. So far, the too-cute Andy Panda had been the best to show up. Woody Woodpecker was still a year away and the Nellie series, a burlesque of 19th century melodrama, was not doing the trick. Lantz' staff could not write for the antiquated form, and the gags seem random and a bit beaten to death, the form meaningless to an audience grown unfamiliar with the genre. So, after half a dozen cartoons, Nellie retired to... Well, wherever cartoon characters retire to.