Pantsless Pig 1, Unmighty Mouse 0

For some reason, Warner Bros. cartoons in the mid-‘30s loved having hick characters or characters named Elmer. We get both in Friz Freleng’s The Country Mouse (1935). The farmboy mouse is named Elmer.

The mouse fancies himself a fighter but gets clobbered by the champ. Mighty Mouse, he’s not. In one of the better gags of the cartoon, a pig corner-man (without pants, just like Porky) is cooling Elmer down with a towel between rounds. Suddenly, Elmer gets up and starts throwing punches, including some straight toward the camera. The pig isn’t pleased his work has been interrupted, so he socks Elmer and resumes his towel waving.



Earlier in the year, there was a Friz Freleng cartoon named The Country Boy. There’s also a Friz cartoon of the same year called My Green Fedora with a baby rabbit named Elmer. Of course, the most famous Elmer we all know at Warner Bros. was a human who evolved from Tex Avery’s Egghead character.

The music credit is given to Bernie Brown, though the soundtrack features a Norman Spencer original named for the cartoon title; it may be the theme that Elmer sings and turns into a double-time version later in the cartoon. The music features that clip-clop, off-beat rhythm heard in a bunch of the Spencer scores. It sounds like Tedd Pierce plays the ring announcer.