Little Kitty (played by Berneice Hansell) is in front of the class doing a recitation, forgetting the words to “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” She gets stuck on “lamb” and looks off-stage.
Miss Cud is in a panic (Friz loved those sweat drops; his unit was still animating them in the 1950s). She mouths the word “lamb,” then quickly pulls out a drawing of one she conveniently happens to have.
That triggers it. Little Kitty is happy now. Oh, but she gets stuck on the second line, “Its fleece was white as.....”
After a quick “I wanna strangle her” expression, Miss Cud pulls out a box of cereal and gently tosses some golden flakes of corn in the air.
Miss Kitty responds with what she sees: “Corn flakes!” Then realises she screwed up.
She finally gets so nervous, twisting her dress and pacing back and forth, she runs out of the school, never to be seen again (well, until the next cartoon).
I still like the “corn flakes” gag, no matter how hokey it is. It is perfectly logical. Kitty saw a lamb and describes it. She sees corn flakes and describes them. Friz may have been prescient, though. Cereal companies and cartoons became very connected when television animation took off more than 20 years later.
Ham Hamilton and Jack King, normally a director, are the credited animators.
It seems like Freleng reused this gag of Kitty two years later in Dog Daze (1937), even using Berneice Hansell again.
ReplyDeleteI always assumed she was headed for the "exterior comfort facilities".
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