Thursday 4 October 2012

Rabbit Meets Skunk

“Little 'Tinker” is full of those cute, cuddly-looking characters that have no place in a Tex Avery cartoon, unless Tex is making fun of them. Except one.

There’s this gangly-looking rabbit doing any number of man-crazy characters from the radio, likely Barbara Jo Allen’s Vera Vague.



“Oh, you great big beautiful hunk of skunk,” says the Vera Vague stand-in.



Then she realises what she’s said.



Now, the Avery take.



And the rabbit stretch-dives out of the cartoon.

The Disney-like characters (and the rabbit) were designed by Louie Schmitt, a former Disney artist who had worked on “Bambi.” Louis Walter Schmitt was born April 24, 1908 in Illinois to Louis P. and Olive Louise (Glasscoff) Schmitt. He, his widowed mother and his sister were in Pasadena by 1930. He was pulling in $3640 a year by 1940. He died in Los Angeles on May 3, 1993.

The model sheets for this cartoon are dated June 5, 1946 with the original title of “Smellbound” (it seems to me it had another working title as well). It was released May 14, 1948.

The credited animators are Bill Shull, Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton and Bob Bentley.

3 comments:

  1. This probably has the sweetest ending Avery ever put in one of his cartoons -- far more than anything Chuck Jones ever stuck in at the iris out of la série de LePew, with even wilder 'bad smell' gags than those cartoons ever trotted out (the end twist would also be used -- effectively -- a few years later by Famous Studios for the early Capser "To Boo Or Not To Boo", even though the final idea of Casper having sexual desires is a little interesting when you look at it from modern, more cynical sensibilities).

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  2. I love this cartoon!
    What is the source of your captures? Laserdisc? French DVDs? Bonus cartoon from "The Bachelor And The Bobby Soxer" DVD?

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  3. Anon, I got them on a torrent. Lord knows where it came from.

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