Good Night, You All

Tex Avery tries to repeat an idea Bad Luck Blackie in Billy Boy, but fails.

In the earlier cartoon, increasingly larger and more outrageous things fall on the bad guy. Here, a little goat continues to eat anything until in the final gag, he is shot to the moon—and eats that.



The problem is there’s no antagonist, so there’s no real satisfactory comeuppance. The goat eats and the gag is dependent on how outrageous it is, or the “adopted father” wolf’s comment afterward.

The idea of a character not getting rattled was probably new enough at the time to be amusing in itself. At the end, the world plunged into darkness because of Billy Boy’s appetite, the wolf flicks on a match, and happily says “Good night, you all.”



The tape-loop effect which has the wolf repeat his last word was fairly new technology at the time, so perhaps that’s why Avery tried it. He only used it in this cartoon.

The animators on this cartoon are Bob Bentley, Walt Clinton, Ray Patterson, Grant Simmons and Mike Lah.