Naughty Neighbors Backgrounds

You know how some Hollywood musicals just scream to a stop for an uninteresting singing number? That’s what happens in Bob Clampett’s, go-through-the-motions, Porky Pig cartoon Naughty Neighbors (1939).

The cartoon stops for a pretty much gag-less musical number, as Mel Blanc as Porky and some woman ridiculously sped up as Petunia croon “Would You Like to Take a Walk.” Writer Warren Foster doesn’t even bother trying to imbue this with a sense of parody of musicals which halt everything because stars are expected to sing in a musical.

Instead, let’s look at frames of some of the backgrounds. There’s a pan near the start of the cartoon where we get a rural scene with a pun.



The pan comes to a stop here.



A nice farm country road.



I like the layout of this one. Porky and Petunia are still walking and singing in the distance.



There’s no doubt the backgrounds are by Dick Thomas. A few of them have the same scratchy grass that he painted in his cartoons at Hanna-Barbera in the early ‘60s.

The start of this cartoon is butchered in the recent Porky Pig DVD but I don’t want to beat that dead horse other than to say it spoiled Clampett’s opening gag.