The runty Droopy is easily pushed around the bull, who views him as a pest rather than a combatant. Finally, Droopy breaks down, realising he’ll never win the bullfight and achieve his dream of meeting MGM actress Lina Romay, whose picture is on the cover of a fan magazine he carries around.
The bull goes over to see what Droopy is looking at. The drawings tell it all. I love how the bull (voiced by Avery) pounds the ground with his fist-like hoofs in uncontrollable laughter. And the angles on the bull’s head in the second drawing are great.
The insult imbues Droopy with super-human strength. He gives his credo to the bull: “You know what? That makes me mad” (re-used in Homesteader Droopy, released in 1954). Droopy dispatches the bull.
Bobe Cannon, Walt Clinton, Preston Blair, Mike Lah and Grant Simmons are the animators in this 1948 short. Anyone know if this is Blair’s work?
I spoke with Lina Romay a couple of times in her late years, when she was appearing at various old-time radio conventions, and she said she never thought, out of all the things she had done in her career, that a few seconds in a Droopy cartoon would be her lasting fame. She said every time it came on TV (this was while the Turner stations were running the MGM package incessantly), her grandkids would come running and yelling "Grandma's on TV with Droopy again!"
ReplyDeleteJust imagine the brouhaha Aurora Miranda endured if The Three Caballeros was playing in the vicinity - "Grandma's making out with Donald Duck!"
DeleteThanks for the great anecdote.
i'll never forget how wonderful it was to see it on the (CBS) T&J show in the 60s!
ReplyDeleteMichael Lah would use the bit a third time, for "One Droopy Knight" which ended up as the only Droopy cartoon to be nominated for an Oscar.
ReplyDelete