This is from Two Gophers From Texas (1948), an inappropriate Warner Bros. tie-in title for a nice cartoon from the Art Davis unit. I love the gophers. Emery Hawkins gives the dog some insane expressions in this short. Don Williams, Bill Melendez and Basil Davidovich animate scenes as well. And you’ve got to love Milt Franklyn’s arrangement of “Sweet Georgia Brown” toward the end of this short, especially the piano. Why isn’t this on DVD?
As mentioned in anothe rpost, the dog, who also appears in the Davis (uncredited)-McKImson (credited) 1949 release A HAM IN A ROLE, looks like Terrytoon's HECKLE AND JECKLE dog, Dimwit, due to Emery Hawkins being the animator. Of course TWO GUYS FROM TEXAS, the actual Warner Bros.musical, had Bugs Bunny...(along with MY DREAM IS YOURS, the first of their laregely family film forays with Doris Day, followed by the non-Bugs 1964 Don Knotts film THE INCREDIBLE MR.LIMPET)
ReplyDeletePS Sorry for the typos, but the context makes it understandable what the words "anothe rpost" is SUPPOSED TO Mean..Mel Blanc as the dog and one of the gophers, Stan Freberg is the other..ah, so that's Sweet Georgia Brown being heard? Nice to hear WB with another of their shorts with Ben Bernie's classic!
ReplyDeleteDavis makes the dog very angular at times, both when he's frozen and falling here, and in the end gag, where he's trapped in the piano. It both foreshadows the more angular UPA look of the 1950s, and goes backwards, to Artie's work as an animator for Frank Tashlin, when he was experimenting with more angular characters in his final year or so at Warners.
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