Pre-Droopy

Tex Avery reused or reworked routines over and over again. He took the title of his Warners cartoon Dangerous Dan McFoo (1939) and reconfigured it at MGM as The Shooting of Dan McGoo (1945).

In McFoo, we see something else he saved for MGM. The camera pans across a saloon as Robert C. Bruce dramatically intones “At the back of the house, in a solo game, was Dangerous Dan McFoo (note the overlay that frames the group in the distance).



The camera trucks in to reveal the “dangerous” guy is just a little pip-squeak, kind of like Avery’s Droopy at Metro.



“Hello, everybody,” he says to the audience watching the cartoon in the theatre. Avery put the same kind of audience greeting in Droopy’s mouth at MGM.



Avery and writer Rich Hogan re-write Robert Service’s poem.

And watching his fate
Was his heavy date
The girl who was known as Sue.

Being an Avery cartoon, Sue is a takeoff of Kate Hepburn. “I’m so happy to be here. Rally I am,” she tells us.



Arthur Q. Bryan is McFoo, Sara Berner is Sue, and the animation is supplied by a group including Virgil Ross, Sid Sutherland, Ham Hamilton and Paul J. Smith.