The Sound of Distant Laughter

One gag flows into another in Tex Avery’s Rock-a-Bye Bear.

You know how this works. A character tries to force a second character to make noise to bother a third character. The second character runs off somewhere to make the noise so the third character doesn’t hear it. Little Dog, Spike, Bear are the three characters here.

No sooner has the little dog captured Spike in an extension table and burned his tongue with a firecracker, he tickles Spike.



These are consecutive frames.



Back to the house and the next gag.



Rich Hogan and Heck Allen assisted with gags; Hogan left animation during production. Walt Clinton, Grant Simmons and Mike Lah are the animators. This was the last cartoon Avery did until he returned to the studio after a year in July 1951. MGM was so far ahead in production, this short was released in July 1952.