Here’s a brief example in Mouse Menace, the first cartoon from the Davis group to be released. Writer George Hill’s gag has the robot (Porky pronounces it “roe-butt”) cat behaving like a real cat by cleaning himself.
Porky disappears halfway through the cartoon as the cat battles a one-shot mouse, destroying the pig’s house in the process.
Manny Gould and Cal Dalton also received animation credits and Tom McKimson handled layouts. It sounds like Carl Stalling wrote much of his own music in this cartoon.
Davis became a director in April 1945 but this cartoon did not hit screens until November 1946.
This is probably my favorite Davis short in terms of its animation. Gould did a lot of scenes and definitely was in his A-game for this one. Williams and Dalton have also done some stellar scenes too.
ReplyDeleteThere were a few scenes that didn't exactly match the style of the credited animators. I'm suspecting it could've been Fred Abranz before he moved to the McKimson unit later on.