“Don’t do that!!” screams a woman in the “theatre audience” watching this cartoon, who stands up and waves her hands.
“Aw, we never have any fun,” say the disgusted boy mice (all played by women), who throw away the hypodermic needle.
This isn’t one of Avery’s best by a long shot, but it’s been preserved by the Library of Congress. I don’t think his heart was in it, doing a cartoon about cutish (Charlie Thorson designed?) mice, even though the cat at the end decides to wait for Susie Mouse to get pregnant so he can eat her offspring.
Sid Sutherland received the animation credit.
In Joe Adamson's bio on Avery, it sounded as though he had completely blacked this one out of his memory until reminded of it by Adamson, after Tex said he didn't do the type of "cutesy-cutesy" cartoons Chuck Jones was making in the late 1930s.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I think no one likes or appreciates the Chuck Jones "'cutesy-cutesy' cartoons" except me. Don't underestimate them: there's a subtlety and sophistication to them that distinguishes them from Disney-style cutesy-cutesy.
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