Here’s a gag from Avery’s final black-and-white cartoon at Warners. A hen and a chick are fighting over a watermelon in Porky’s Garden (from the cartoon of the same name).
The chicken takes care of the chick, who walks off feeling sorry for itself.
The chick comes to a stop at an inside gag. A plant doesn’t come from garden seeds. It comes from JONES garden seeds. But the chick isn’t thinking about that. It knows, no doubt from watching Fleischer cartoons, that spinach means only one thing.
The best part is that the chick doesn’t grow Popeye-like muscles. It turns into Popeye, complete with muttering, growling voice (likely supplied by Danny Webb). There’s even a line about “sweet peas.”
The music after the transformation switches from “Chicken Reel” to the Warners-owned “Shovin’ Right Off Again” from the Warners feature musical The Singing Marine, released the same year as this cartoon.
Now the chick takes care of business.
The reference to Chuck Jones wasn’t the only inside joke. Here’s another one.
Bobe Cannon was out of Avery’s unit and into Bob Clampett’s by now.
I wonder if this is someone on staff as well.
The credited animators on this cartoon are Sid Sutherland and Elmer Wait, who died two months before this cartoon was released at age 23. Virgil Ross, Paul Smith and Irv Spence were animating in the unit at this time, as far as I know
This gag always makes me wonder how Popeye would have fared in the hands of another animation studio.
ReplyDeleteWell, there's always Gene Deitch. ;)
DeleteI enjoy the Fleischer cartoons. Good songs, fine voice work, a different approach to animation. When I was a kid, I could sure tell the Famous shorts were a step down.