Ping Pong Ball Eyes

By the time Tex Avery and Heck Allen got around to making Wild and Woolfy, they had to figure out different sexual-excitement gags for the wolf when he sees Red on stage than they had used before.

They kept things to a minimum. The first one features the MGM ink-and-paint department’s brush work, some multiples, and eyes popping out of the head, bouncing away like table tennis balls.



Showmen’s Trade Review of Jan. 5, 1946, reported:

After viewing the MGM Color Cartoon, "Wild and Woolfy," Marines stationed at Camp Pendleton, Calif., have requested the Culver City studio for permission to use the leading character, a little dog in a ten-gallon hat, as their official mascot. The studio is now working up an insignia featuring the pup for the Marine outfit.

Wild and Woolfy was copyrighted Sept. 21, 1945 and released Nov. 3, 1945. Claude Smith’s model sheet for the cartoon is dated May 5, 1944. The short was animated by Preston Blair, Ed Love, Ray Abrams and Walt Clinton, whose name was taken off the October 1952 re-release. Johnny Johnsen was the background artist; the cartoon opens with a pan over one of his lovely paintings with buttes, plains, cacti, and rocks with the credits on a foreground overlay.

You Know How These Gags Will End

Literal gags found their way into all kinds of Tex Avery cartoons. Eventually, it got to the point where he’d top the gag with a sign or some kind of commentary on the gag.

In Screwball Football, he treats them as is. Football announcer Reid Kilpatrick tells us Slobbovitz gets the ball and fades back for a long pass. “He’s fading. Fading. Fading.” He does.



There's a touchdown. Kilpatrick: “The cheerleader is yelling his head off.” He does.



I think my favourite literal pun is when Blottovich “recovers the pigskin” and the football escapes from his arms, squealing like a pig.

These are all pretty hokey, but I suspect they went off okay in 1939. Too bad the football didn't turn into a real pig, stop and turn to the camera and say, "This is silly," then continue on its run.

Avery does switches on a few of these gags in other cartoons, like the multiple horns (Car of Tomorrow, 1951, though I’ve seen it in a Columbia cartoon, too), and the stop-to-listen-to-the-radio one (Thugs With Dirty Mugs, 1939).

The running gag is great. There’s a murder, just like in Avery’s Batty Baseball at MGM.

The rotating animation credit goes to Virgil Ross.

Carl Stalling loads the soundtrack with that college favourite, “Frat.” We hear J.S. Zamecnik’s “College Stunts” and a bunch of old favourites, including public domainers “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” and “She’ll be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain,” “The William Tell Overture,” and “Rock-a-Bye Baby” for the running gag.

How Not To Get Rid of a Starfish

Aloha Hooey is said to be a cartoon Tex Avery started before he left Warner Bros. and was finished by Bob Clampett directing his unit.

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.

A Box Gag Returns

Some old cartoon ground is ploughed by director Dick Lundy in Caballero Droopy, an MGM release starring Droopy, the matador wolf and a bull. We saw them all in Tex Avery’s Señor Droopy, released three years earlier.

Avery had been given time away from the studio to deal with some personal things. His writer, Rich Hogan, left animation at the same time. In came Lundy, with Jack Cosgriff and Heck Allen to help with the gags. They crafted yet another story of Droopy and the wolf vying for the hand of a Latina (in this case, a cartoon, not a live-action Lina Romay).

There are Avery-type gags, too. One was lifted from King-Size Canary (1947), where a hungry hobo cat piles two boxes on top of each other to reach a window; the boxes suspend in mid-air.

Here, it happens after the wolf sends an Avery-style anvil into the air. Ignore the horrendous DNR in the frames below; there's a better version out there but I don't have it.



The stacking starts in mid-action.



He’s got the girl! Oh, no, he hasn’t. The anvil he sent in the air earlier returns, thanks to the laws of gravity.



Exhibitor magazine of July 30, 1952 rated it “fair” and complained the cartoon slowed down after the first half. By comparison, Señor Droopy is superior. It has some great posing and animation by Bobe Cannon.

The animators here are Avery’s team from when he left: Grant Simmons, Mike Lah and Walt Clinton, with Ray Patterson from the Hanna-Barbera unit taking care of some scenes (Bob Bentley would soon be hired). Johnny Johnsen is uncredited as the background painter.



The official release date was Sept. 27, 1952 but the cartoon played at the Paramount in Bristol, Tennessee from Aug. 24 to 28 with The Merry Widow.

Life Imitates Tex

Tex Avery’s Car of Tomorrow (1951) made fun of the step-down Hudson and the wrap-around-window Studebaker; both were joked about on network radio comedy shows of the day. But there was also a gag where, eventually, life imitated art.

A small car appears on the screen, and narrator Gil Warren describes it: “The super-thrifty Scotchman model. This car uses absolutely no gasoline.” Dissolve to the gag.



It turned out someone actually made a “Scotchman.” Studebaker produced the Scotsman (scotch is a drink, not a nationality). Studebaker produced the economy car in 1957 and 1958.



No, it didn’t run on pedal power. But it got “25 to 29 miles per gallon,” according to newspaper ads in June 1957 (“Oil industry trembles,” the ad announced). The Scotsman came in two-door, four-door and station wagon models.You got a heater and turn signals as free extras.

By this time, Avery was in the cartoon commercial business, though he wasn’t animating a Studebaker.