Tuesday 2 April 2013

Slap Goes the Weasel

He’s hyper. He’s paranoid. He has bent wrists. He slurps all the time. He’s a weasel. And he gets a good slapping from the barnyard dog in “Weasel While You Work,” a 1958 Bob McKimson effort.



McKimson seems to have loved the weasel character, as he used versions of him in “Plop Goes the Weasel” (1953) and “Weasel Stop” (1956).

This cartoon is one of the Seely Six, where the music was supplied by John Seely at Capitol Records from the company’s Hi-Q production library. The opening theme is “Popcorn” by Phil Green, which was more commonly heard on Snooper and Blabber cartoons.

Warren Batchelder, Tom Ray, George Grandpré and Ted Bonnicksen get the animation credits.

2 comments:

  1. This was also the last of the Maltese trio -- the three Bob McKimson cartoons done in 1957-58 where Mike Maltese received story credit. It would have been nice to know how that came to be, since Mike had never received story credit on any cartoons except for ones by Jones and Freleng since adapting "Horton Hatches the Egg" for Bob Clampett in 1942 (was Bob having problems with Tedd Pierce's stories? Did Maltese see all the verbal gymnastics in the Foghorn shorts and want to get involved?).

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's easy to presume the worst, JL, that Pierce was either drying out somewhere or had been fired only to be rehired later. But we may never know at this late date.

    ReplyDelete