Becoming, Isn't it Girls?

Feminising men is a guaranteed laugh in old cartoons. Take, for example, Tex Avery’s Big Heel-Watha, where the title character (with Bill Thompson’s Droopy voice) is hunting for Screwy Squirrel, who quickly pulls a home permanent gag on him.



Cut to the next scene, where Heel-Watha gets the permanent contraption off his head. As Scott Bradley plays “I Dream of Jeannie” in the background, the native’s pupils look up at the hair, he strikes a coy pose and says to the theatre audience “Becoming, isn’t it girls?”



The animation in the second scene is by Ed Love. He uses the same mouth movements and teeth positions on Heel-Watha in the cartoon that you can spot in his work at Hanna-Barbera in the late ‘50s. Preston Blair and Ray Abrams also received animation credits. Heck Allen wrote the story and Johnny Johnsen did another fine job painting scenic forest backgrounds. Thompson, Wally Maher, Frank Graham and Sara Berner supply the voices.