Roller Skate Rockabye

Chilly Willy wheels a roller skate into place in his battle to get rid of a hungry bear and claim all the blue fin tuna on a ship for himself.



He succeeds. Look at the eye take on the bear! Tex Avery’s unit at Walter Lantz was a beacon of light in low-budget darkness.



Here’s how you do a swirl turn to become upright again.



The bear (played by Dal McKennon) rocks the dog to sleep.



The Legend of Rockabye Point is probably my favourite Lantz cartoon of the 1950s. Avery’s pace is quick, the story is well-constructed and the gags are good variations on the kind of stuff Avery did with writer Heck Allen at MGM. Here he has Mike Maltese, who once admitted he got miffed with Avery for not using his material.

Ray Abrams, Don Patterson and La Verne Harding are the animators of this 1955 short.