Who's the Real Monster?

Tex Avery tried a split screen gag in 1939 in Thugs With Dirty Mugs, and did it again the following year in Cross Country Detours.

Narrator Lou Marcelle intones over a tympani roll the next scene is quite gruesome, so the screen will be split with one side for grown-ups and one side for children.



Grown-ups get a “hideous gila monster” snarling and growling. Children get a recitation.

Avery loves violating split screen gags, and he doesn’t disappoint us here.



Avery uses a split-screen again in A Bear’s Tale (1940), Tortoise Beats Hare and Aviation Vacation (both 1941). The “Mary Had a Little Lamb” recitation routine goes back to Harman-Ising’s Bosko in Person and Bosko's Mechanical Man (both 1933). Avery used it in Hamateur Night (1939) and again as late as 1954, when MGM released The Flea Circus.

Rich Hogan is the credited story man on this short, with Paul J. Smith getting the rotating animation credit and Johnny Johnsen getting no credit for backgrounds.