Porky Chops

Here are frames from two scenes of another underrated cartoon from Art Davis at Warner Bros., Porky Chops. In a way, this could have been a Fox and Crow cartoon at Columbia (though Davis didn’t work with those characters), except the pace is quicker, the expressions are better and the smart alec squirrel has lippier dialogue (and a few familiar old gags). Carl Stalling’s score is far more subtle than anything Eddie Kilfeather did for Screen Gems.

Porky’s chopping down the tree where the squirrel is resting on a vacation. The squirrel unzips an exit in the tree trunk (an ingenious idea by Lloyd Turner and Bill Scott, helped by Treg Brown’s zipping then opening noise), and grabs the blade off Porky’s axe. I like the expression on the squirrel.



Cut to the next scene. The force from Porky’s axe-handle hitting the tree jerks his body and his hat around, and finally pops out (with a cork-popping sound) of the pig’s tail.



Then the great line. Porky looks at the axe blade and says “Gee, you don’t need to fly off the handle like that.”



Emery Hawkins, Don Williams, Bill Melendez and Basil Davidovich are the credited animators.