It’s a pretty tame cartoon for either of them. There’s a dullard crow with buck teeth (Pinto Colvig doing his Goofy voice, same as in Little Rural Riding Hood for Avery at MGM) and a slicker seagull (Mel Blanc, sounding much like Technical Fairy First Class in the Snafu shorts). They two engage in a competition for an island bird (Sara Berner). Unlike Avery’s Spike vs. Droopy at MGM, neither of them is evil; the bad guy shows up out of nowhere near the end of the cartoon and is quickly quelled. And the procreation gag at the end is familiar, too.
There are really few highlights, but one is for freeze-frame fans. Cecil Crow tussles with a starfish that attaches itself to various parts of the body, which seems like something in an early Jones cartoon. This provides dry-brush work for the ink and paint department. Cecil shakes his head to no avail.
Cut to a medium shot. The swirls remind me of the ones with Bugs and the sumo wrestler (by Virgil Ross?) in Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips (1944). First, the starfish attaches itself to Cecil’s butt (and kicks it), then puts him in a toe-hold.
Ross is the credited animator on this short, with story by Mike Maltese. Carl Stalling fills the soundtrack with Arkansas Traveler.
This frames above are from a laser disc.
I noticed over the years that Avery's early 40s WB output is a lot slower, more detail and attention in character design/layouts than his 30s work (it arguably seemed to happened in the late 30s). It works excellent for emulating travelogues. He apparently noted in an interview how much the pacing in A Wild Hare drags when he attended a screening of a rerelease.
ReplyDelete