The Narrator Was Right

If you want proof that times change, consider the fact that old cartoons I saw on TV 60 years ago are withheld from DVD release today because they’re “offensive,” but ones that were censored back then are seen without editing today.

In 1962, I could watch All This And Rabbit’s Stew over and over again. It wasn’t among the Bugs Bunny cartoons I liked because the antagonist was whiny and annoying. I didn’t mind another Tex Avery short for the Schlesinger studio that I saw innumerable times, but I was shocked when it came out on DVD years later because there was a gag I had never seen before. Whether my local TV station censored it or someone else did, I don’t know, but I suppose it’s irrelevant at this point.

In Cross Country Detours (1940), a pan over one of Johnny Johnsen’s layered backgrounds sets up a gag in a reedy swamp. A frog crawls onto a lily pad. Cut to a close-up. Narrator: “Here we show you a close-up of a frog croaking.” No sooner does Lou Marcelle finish his line than:



It takes 12 frames, most of the animation on ones, for the frog to enact the dialogue literally and shoot himself.

But Avery doesn’t stop there. We get a sign-gag topper.



Paul J. Smith receives the animation credit, but I imagine Virgil Ross, Sid Sutherland, Chuck McKimson and Rod Scribner worked on this as well.

Something else we don’t see today is the original credits because the release on DVD is from the Blue Ribbon print. The chopped music over the credits is “There’s a Long Long Trail” by Zo Elliott and Stoddard King.