Surprising the Weasel

Bob Clampett got a chance to direct a couple of colour cartoons with his original unit in 1941 before taking over Tex Avery’s crew later in the year and leaving black-and-white shorts behind.

Both featured familiar routines. Goofy Groceries was another stuff-in-a-store-comes-to-life shorts, with Farm Frolics was a spot gagger.

Clampett goes for a weasel gag that starts off the like the bobcat gag that Tex Avery planted in Cross Country Detours (1940). Avery had the weasel stalk an innocent young quail, as narrator Lew Marcelle and composer Carl Stalling set up the suspense. Suddenly, the weasel breaks down and says “I can’t do it,” pounding the ground in footage inspired by Avery acting before a studio camera.

Here, Clampett and writer Warren Foster start off the same way as narrator Bob Bruce’s trembling voice matches Carl Stalling’s trembling strings. The weasel creeps closer and closer.



But Clampett goes a different route than Avery. Suddenly, the eggs hatch and the chicks yell “Boo!”



The surprise almost kills the weasel. “Don’t ever do that!” he says. It may be Joe Penner’s catchphrase, but Mel Blanc treats the line with a fairly straight voice.



Whoever animated the scene did a nice job with the weasel’s fingers and hand expressions. John Carey and Izzy Ellis are the credited animators. Dick Thomas is the uncredited background artist. Foster gets in some good gags and the opening is creative where the scene is sketched by a “moving” hand and then there’s a wipe to turn it into a coloured background.