The Forest Rabbits

Forest rabbit Bugs Bunny is reading “Little Hiawatha” and gets to a line about the “mighty warrior” hunting “the forest rabbit.” Bugs suddenly realises that means him.



Bugs runs around in circles before leaving, stage left. To make the exit seem faster, Bugs develops multiples of himself. Some drawings.



Maybe Leon Schlesinger liked this cartoon as he put it into Oscar contention, but Hiawatha is too much of a dullard for me. (Clampett. Re-used footage. Yes, I know).

The original credits said Gil Turner animated some of this short for the Friz Freleng unit.

Granny's Holiday Home

Granny (Bea Benaderet) will force the Christmas spirit on Sylvester (who has tried and failed to eat Tweety) and her bulldog (who has tried and failed to eat Sylvester) whether they want it or not in Gift Wrapped, a 1952 Merrie Melodies cartoon.

The short ends with Granny playing a secularised version of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” at her old organ.



Cut to Tweety happily singing.



Cut to Tweety, and a glowering Sylvester and dog. There’ll be no more swallowing now. Fade out.



Whoever animated this has the characters’ turning from side to side and up and down a bit to ensure the scene isn’t static.

Ken Champin, Manny Perez, Virgil Ross and Art Davis are the credited animators for director Friz Freleng with fine backgrounds by Irv Wyner. If I had to pick a favourite Warners Christmas cartoon, this would be it.

The Timeless Pepper Gag

It goes back to Felix and Disney's knock-off version of the cat in the silent film days. The old pepper/sneeze gag (my guess is it was in comic strips before that).

Here is how it unfolds in Warners' Prince Violent (1961). Bugs Bunny is fed up with Viking Sam's elephant shooting boulders into his castle with his snout. The poses below are fun. Well, I like them.



Dave Detiege's story has some other old favourites in the comedy. They all still work.

Here’s an inside gag on the opening title card: the Warners shield. Hawley Pratt had been moved up to co-director at this point; Willie Ito was the layout artist with Tom O’Loughlin painting backgrounds.



And here's a pun that some of you might not get.



Back in the days of network radio and pre-network television, watch companies sponsored time-checks. One was Gruen. Ages ago, E.O. Costello put up a site devoted to explaining dated references in Warners cartoons. It's a little dated itself, but still useful. You can find it by clicking here.

I Don't Care What You Say

Here we have an eight-frame cycle of a camel chewing on, well, I’m not quite sure. Note the spacing of the drawings. There seems to be barely any movement at one point.



This is the cycle slowed down, which gives you an idea of how the mouth moved.



Yeah, I know. Not the post interesting of posts, unless you are into timing of poses and in-betweens. The director is Friz Freleng, and the cartoon is Hot Spot, a 1945 Snafu short. The gag is an example of how everyone borrowed from Tex Avery. In fact, the short is like an Avery travelogue in places.

In this scene, the narrator (the Devil, played by Hal Peary, complete with Gildersleeve laugh), informs us “Here, the native beast of burden, the camel, is the only one who doesn’t mind the heat.” After chewing a bit, the camel (Mel Blanc) turns to the viewing audience and says “I don’t care what you say, I’m hot,” and resumes chewing.



Say, that gag is familiar, isn’t it? Let’s think back to Avery’s Wacky Wildlife (1940), where a camel is strolling across the desert. Narrator Bob Bruce informs us the camel “plods over scorching desert sands, in terrific heat, never once desiring a cool, refreshing drink of water. The camel (Mel Blanc) turns to the viewing audience and says “I don’t care what you say, I’m thirsty,” and resumes strolling.



Say, that gag is STILL familiar. That’s because Avery used a variation of it earlier in the year in Cross Country Detours. In this one, a polar bear is shown on a chunk of ice. “Mother Nature has provided him with layer upon layer of fat, plus a thick coat of heavy fur, to keep him good and warm,” says the narrator. The camera moves in and the bear (Mel Blanc) tells us “I don’t care what you say, I’m cold.”



Is it any wonder that Avery came up with the idea of footage of real animals with superimposed cartoon mouths that made wisecracks. The idea ended up at Jerry Fairbanks Productions, which made the Speaking of Animals series for Paramount. If the “I don’t care what you say” routine was one of the gags in those shorts, I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

What about the end gag of Hot Spot, you ask? Thanks for reminding me. The short has emphasized how hot it is in Iran, hotter 'n Hades as they used to say. The short finishes with the Devil discovering the camel is now in his office in Hell. The camel turns to him and casually remarks, “I don’t care what you say, I’m cool.” It resumes chewing to end the cartoon.



None of the artists who worked on this are given screen credit.

Cuckoo Kitten

It’s good some attention is being paid to the mid-1930s Warners cartoons so they’re upgraded from laser disc and VHS dubs to something more pristine.

But funny? Uh….

In The Cat Came Back, a kitten is being swept away in the sewage system. A cuckoo clock drifts into the scene. The kitten tries to grasp it. The cuckoo bird comes out. The kitten swats at it (never making contact). Apparently it was so funny the first time, it happens again with the same animation.



The third time, the bird pecks at the kitten before going back inside and the clock continues its journey over top of the cat.



Yeah, that’s the gag.

Friz pulls off one of those surprise turnabouts at the end where the happy cat and mouse families start fighting again (and why is the mother mouse the same size as the mother cat?)

The restoration is a Blue Ribbon (13 re-issues were released in 1943-44 because of a lack of raw film stock; this was one of them). This means there are no credits, though Jerry Beck must have seen a print with them as his book with Will Friedwald lists Bob McKimson and Ben Clopton as the animators.

There is no mistaking the score is by Norman Spencer, arranged by Norman Spencer, Jr. It features his beloved backbeat woodblock, and double-timed theme song played by muted trumpets in the “chase” portion. Spencer’s music, together with the squealy voice of Berneice Hansell, the Rhythmettes quietly crooning the opening song, and the concentration on kid animals makes this an atypical mid-‘30s Merrie Melodies short.