Smearing the Vienna Woods

Bugs Bunny wearing a blue bra.

Elmer Fudd with his hands down his pants.

A swan ploughing her face into her own rear end.

Where else would you find such things except in a Bob Clampett cartoon?

They certainly wouldn’t be in a Walt Disney cartoon. But they are in Clampett’s answer to Disney’s Fantasia, A Corny Concerto, released by Warner Bros. on September 25, 1943.

Clampett took two pieces of Johann Strauss’ music and animated two mini-cartoons. Musical director Carl Stalling treats the classical music fairly straight and having the full Warner Bros. orchestra behind him certainly helps set a high-class atmosphere, which juxtaposes very nicely with the un-Disney-like gags Clampett and writer Frank Tashlin came up with. That includes the travesty commentary by Clampett’s stand-in for Disney’s Deems Taylor, Elmer Fudd. The two have little in common. Suffice it to say, Wascawwy Elmer never broadcast in dulcet tones from Carnegie Hall.

The cartoon has something else I doubt is found in the Disney feature—smear animation. It looks like the smears Virgil Ross did in other cartoons for Clampett (and later Friz Freleng).

You’ll find it in the second half of the cartoon, set to the music of Strauss’ “The Blue Danube.” A vulture has absconded with a mother’s little baby swans. Mama Swan lifts a branch over the water to let them pass under it. All that appears are the baby’s shadows. Then she realises something is wrong and goes on a mad hunt.



Here’s where the mother swan has her head up her ... well, almost. Then she realises it.



Back to the hunt.



Clampett told historian Mike Barrier he was not happy with some of the timing. One of the animators—who it was he didn’t say—felt the animation should be timed closer to the accents in the music. Clampett wanted a more balletic approach (the first cartoon ends with Bugs Bunny as a ballerina).

One of the puzzling things about Virgil Ross at this time was his treatment on screen. After Eatin’ On The Cuff was released on August 22, 1942, Ross never got another screen credit in the Clampett unit. Bob McKimson and Rod Scribner alternated, though Ross was animating in the unit. He was bypassed (McKimson is credited in this cartoon). Late in life, Ross admitted that he and Clampett hadn’t gotten along. “I didn’t seem to have what he wanted most of the time,” Ross said.

It’s not clear when he left Clampett, but Ross moved over to the Freleng unit and received his first rotational animator credit on Slightly Daffy, released June 17, 1944 (ironically a remake of a Clampett short, though using Clampett’s 1930s, non-Ross unit).

Clampett also mentioned to Mike Barrier the uncredited background artist was Dick Thomas. Also uncredited is the effects animator, probably Ace Gamer.

References of the times seem to be something found in every Clampett cartoon. The vulture claps his hands like Hugh Herbert and plants a 4F sign on the eventually-heroic baby duck, signifying he is unfit for military service. A war is on, you know.

1943 was an interesting year for Clampett. His Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs and Tin Pan Alley Cats were released before this cartoon, along with Daffy’s burlesque strip act in The Wise Quacking Duck and the suicide-ending Tortoise Wins By a Hare. His next cartoon would be Falling Hare, where Bugs and a gremlin play head games with the audience, and the dog/butt-rubbing An Itch In Time.

And Clampett’s cartoons only got better.