Friday 18 December 2015

A Dog Eat Cat World

The cartoon Sylvester and Tweety cartoon “Gift Wrapped” aired constantly when I was a kid, and I could never figure out why a dog would eat a cat. But after a while, you don’t worry about it.

These are nine consecutive drawings. From this post, you don’t get a sense of Friz Freleng’s great timing as Sylvester slowly lifts up the lid on the huge box and then, out of nowhere, is gulped by the bulldog, but the artwork is interesting nonetheless.



Friz had a great unit of Manny Perez, Ken Champin, Virgil Ross and Art Davis at this time; I think Warren Batchelder and Sam Nicholson were among his assistant animators then.

This 1952 Christmas classic features opening narration by an almost unrecognisable Daws Butler, with Bea Benaderet as Granny and Mel Blanc as the animal combatants.

And in case you’re wondering...



The little snippet of music that plays when Sylvester is an Indian stalking Tweety (and when the shot cuts to Granny at the end of the sequence) is “The Sun Dance,” a 1903 tune by Leo Friedman, who co-wrote “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.”

5 comments:

  1. That short (Gift Wrapped) makes me laugh in every scene!

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  2. Where did they get that totally religiously stripped down version of "Hark The Herald Angels Sing" from? They must have made it up on the fly, as I can't find it anywhere else.

    "Peace on Earth, good will to men
    Peace on earth, and end of fear
    We are full of Yuletide spirit
    Christmas comes but once a year
    Joyous yuletide bells are pealing
    Peace on Earth, good will to men
    Joyous yuletide bells will sing
    Peace on Earth, good will to men"

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  3. There's another kitty konnoisseur in Tom and Jerry's "The Truce Hurts".

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  4. A Foster original, I imagine. The same as how Hugh Harman or someone revised the lyrics to the same carol in MGM's "Peace on Earth."

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  5. (corrected for mispelling of "gag" as "gad")
    Dog-eat-cat makes sense to me, Yowp....just like

    cats eat mice

    cats eat birds

    tigers eat people

    lions eat every creature (they, after ALL, ARE the king of the jungle)

    coyotes chase roadrunners.:) SC I actually always have thought that dogs DID eat cats..and it's a gag that I'd use as writer or director if i was directing one of those old theatrical or early TV cartoons in my OWN right...:).Steve

    Top Cat James...glad to see another dog eating a cat..:)

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