Hearing the Dover Boys

The Dover Boys is yet another Chuck Jones cartoon where oodles has been written about it (including by Jones himself on numerous occasions) being some kind of animation breakthrough.

It also includes a hoary gag that dates back to the silent cartoon days, when a written word would come out of a character’s mouth.

The scene focuses on the Dover Boys’ arch-enemy Dan Backslide (“coward, bully, cad and thief”) playing a solo game of pool inside a haze of cigarette smoke.



Backslide draws himself up (with a little dollop of cloud on top of his head), puts his hand to ear and exclaims “Hark.” Just like in a Felix the cat cartoon from the 1920s, the letters of the word come out of his mouth before floating upward and out of the scene.



One of the things this cartoon is known for is its stretch in-betweens. Here are a couple of examples in this scene.



I wonder how animator Ken Harris felt about the buck teeth on Backslide, since the character is a caricature of him.

Reviews of this cartoon at the time of release (Sept. 19, 1942) didn’t wax on and on about Chuck Jones’ employment of limited animation. Here are two from the Motion Picture Herald:

This is a college satire in a big way and definitely should get its share of laughs from your audience as it did from ours.—Thomas DiLorenzo, New Paltz Theatre, New Paltz, N. Y.

I report one short every five years (only because of exceptional merit or the very opposite). This is of the latter variety. This is a poor one in the midst of a fine series of cartoons.—L. V. Bergtold, Westby Theatre, Westby, Wis.

Tedd Pierce receives the story credit on screen, while it was Bobe Cannon’s turn for the rotating animation credit.