“I knew that’d get him,” Screwy tells us (he talks to the audience through the picture), then does his shoulder-hunch laugh before playing Meathead’s note like a Jew’s harp.
Screwy does one of his twirling exits back into the phone booth.
Meathead follows and it's on to the next gag.
I like Screwy. I don't know how many cartoons were left in him, but there are good gags in all of them before Tex gave up on him. I love the barrel gag in this one, where it turns out the drum roll on the soundtrack is being played by Screwy.
Heck Allen assisted Avery with the gags, with Preston Blair, Ray Abrams and Ed Love animating (Love did the above work). Wally Maher, using his Wilbur voice from the Tommy Riggs and Betty Lou radio show, is Screwy.
The great thing about Screwy is that he's standing the Disney (and early Jones) tropes on their heads, with the cartoon opening with Sammy Squirrel and his cute friends. But did Avery give up on him or did MGM, thinking he wasn't that marketable as a result? I think of McKimson creating the Tasmanian Devil, and then Eddie Selzer telling him to stop and Jack Warner having him brought back.
ReplyDeleteI love when Sammy mentions all the cute names and he even throws in Barney Bear. 🤣
DeleteI was under the impression it was Avery himself who decided he had enough of Screwy.
DeleteMGM didn't do an awful lot of marketing, at least Joe Barbera didn't think so in one interview, so I doubt it was that. But this is all speculation. Avery told Joe Adamson he wasn't big on the Screwy cartoons. Mark Kausler might have some first-hand knowledge about it.
I have the theory that kids loved him and that some adults found him annoying. I think he could have been a relatively popular character if he had been continued. A friend of mine who passed away many years ago mentioned to me that the funniest cartoon character he ever saw was a crazy squirrel that all the kids loved and looked forward to in the 1940's but just disappeared.
ReplyDeleteI definitely would have liked more Screwy, maybe till the early 50s.
ReplyDelete