The Impatient Patient

This blog has neglected Norm McCabe’s career as a director at Warner Bros. It hasn’t been totally deliberate. For one thing, decent quality versions of a number of his cartoons haven’t been available. And for another, some of them just don’t do anything for me. I can’t get into his one-shot characters.

Here’s the list of McCabe’s directorial efforts for Leon Schlesinger, in order of release. There were only 13 in all.

The Timid Toreador (with Bob Clampett), Production 9638, released December 21, 1940
Porky’s Snooze Reel (with Bob Clampett), Production 9772, released January 11, 1941
Robinson Crusoe Jr., Production 172, released October 25, 1941
Who’s Who in the Zoo, Production 224, released February 14, 1942
Daffy’s Southern Exposure, Production 442, released May 2, 1942
Hobby Horse-Laffs, Production 768, released June 6, 1942
Gopher Goofy, Production 440, released June 27, 1942
The Ducktators, Production 770, released August 1, 1942
The Impatient Patient, Production 774, released September 5, 1942
The Daffy Duckaroo, Production 802, released October 24, 1942
Confusions of a Nutzy Spy, Production 804, released January 21, 1943
Hop and Go, Production 1054, released March 27, 1943
Tokio Jokio, Production 1058, released May 15, 1943

Why did McCabe co-direct a pair with Clampett? Clampett needed to take sick leave, so McCabe finished the cartoons for him. When Clampett moved to take over to Tex Avery’s unit in fall 1941, McCabe was given the Clampett unit. There was shortly a change. Clampett had worked in a separate building as Ray Katz Productions, which was considered a different studio for union bargaining purposes. When McCabe took charge, his unit was soon moved in with the rest of Leon Schlesinger's operations at Fernwood and Van Ness. Ray Katz Productions quietly disppeared. Soon Warners wanted half the Looney Tunes in colour. McCabe was assigned all the black and white ones.

His story crew was Tubby Millar with ex-Disneyite Don Christensen added later (they rotated credits).

I enjoyed Daffy’s Southern Exposure, so I thought I’d take a look at another of McCabe’s Daffy cartoons—The Impatient Patient. It’s been at least 50 years since I’ve seen it.

McCabe doesn’t do a bad job here. There’s an opening pan with overlays of a swamp. Daffy’s doing a parody of the old song “Chloe” that Spike Jones revived a few years later. Chloe turns out to be the persona Dr. Jerkyl takes on when he drinks some potion. The cartoon ends with a Red Skelton radio show reference after a Baby Snooks reference.

Daffy still is a bit of the crazy, woo-hoo Daffy and a bit of the later smart Daffy, while Chloe is just too much of a dullard to really be threatening, try as Carl Stalling might to set an atmosphere of drama with his score. For example, Christensen’s story has Chloe break into a dance. A better director-writer team could have seized on that and turned it into a running gag (imagine what Avery might have done with it). In fact, it took me some time to figure out the first dance music was coming from a radio Daffy accidentally turned on.

There’s a throwaway wartime gag, too. The camera pans across some boiling liquid in a chemistry set’s glass tubing. There’s dark metal piping in the foreground panned at a different speed to create depth.



The camera moves in as the liquid makes its way into a glass bowl.



The camera pulls back to reveal it’s coffee. Note the sugar bowl is chained. Sugar began to be rationed in the U.S. about four months before this cartoon appeared in theatres.



And a bit of the woo-hoo Daffy.



McCabe started out as an in-betweener in 1932. In November 1942, he was inducted into First Motion Picture Unit of Army Air Force. By law, he was supposed to be offered his former job when the war ended. Instead, in 1946, he was hired as a director by Meridian Pictures, which intended to make industrial and educational cartoons (Harry Love was his art director). One of his cartoons for Meridian’s subsidiary, Oscar Productions, can be found here. In August 1952, he replaced Howard Swift as animation director of Five Star Productions. He made stops at other commercial studios. McCabe went to work for old Warners colleague Friz Freleng at DePatie-Freleng and ended up back at Warners itself working on its TV cartoons beloved by ‘90s kids until retirement in 1996. You can find a filmography elsewhere on-line.

McCabe died in 2006, well into a time period where fans could check out some of his work (even if it had been ruined years earlier by cheap colourised tracings, and a whole new generation of animators could learn from one of the real pioneers of sound cartoons and the last of the Schlesinger directors.

P.S.: I should have remembered Dexon Baxter profiled McCabe. Learn much more about Warner Bros.’ most famous Geordie in this article.