Monday 22 February 2016

He's Right

There’s a long pan across a background a prairie background from Droopy and his insatiable grazing sheep to a cattle ranch owned by an unnamed wolf near the start of Drag-a-Long Droopy (released 1954). A sign reading “Bear Butte Ranch” with a fence, a bit of a road and a few steers are on a foreground overlay that’s panned and shot at a different rate of speed than the grazing cattle in the background. It was a comparatively inexpensive way to simulate depth and Avery used that 3-D trick in a bunch of cartoons at Warners and MGM.



Avery cuts to a shot of the wolf rancher on his front porch, surrounded by steers. The rancher (voiced by Avery himself) then casually remarks to the audience: “You know, I raise cattle.” In case we didn’t catch on.



Johnny Johnsen is the background artist, with animation credits going to Mike Lah, Ray Patterson, Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton and Bob Bentley.

3 comments:

  1. The cow imitating Lassie while trying to tell the wolf about the approaching sheep was a highlight of this bit.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Barnyard Dawg performs a more elaborate version of this gag in Don't Axe Me (1958) that I've always enjoyed.

      Delete
  2. “Sheep, ya durned fool!”

    ReplyDelete