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.

Cartoon Video News

It’s always a good day to read about restored cartoons that can find their way to your home.

Once again, the Warner Archive Collection is coming through with what you see on the right as of March 24th. You can see the list of shorts HERE.

There’s a lot of Chuck Jones in this two-volume set, but there are some cartoons by Art Davis, one by Tex Avery (The Heckling Hare) and even two of Norm McCabe’s efforts (the less than exciting Hop and Go and the in-need-of-restoration The Daffy Duckaroo). And there’ll be a clean, clear version of Jim Backus as the Hubert Updyke III genie in Bob McKimson’s A Lad in His Lamp that was last seen on laser disc.

Don’t expect Bosko or Buddy to show up here.

If you’re a fan of Famous Studios, you’ll be happy to hear word from Cartoon Logic that a 1940s collection will be distributed soon by ClassicFlix. There will be more about this in the new year.

These shorts really needed loving care; it seems the versions I’ve seen are either faded or turning a shade of pink. In fact, the TV prints I watched in the ‘60s don’t strike me as being all that great.

You can watch a clip below. The restoration is exemplary.

Of Dog and Jowls

Tex Avery said (paraphrased) that if you gave him an idea and a string of gags, he could make a cartoon.

That certainly describes what he did in later years (think of The Legend of Rockabye Point), but he also had some nice cinematography and interesting layouts in his earlier shorts.

In several cartoons, he engages in a slow pan across one of Johnny Johnsen’s background paintings, with something in the foreground on a cel moving at a different frame rate to simulate depth without resorting to a multiplane camera (Disney) or sets (Fleischer).

One of a number of examples is Of Fox and Hounds, 1941 Warners release. It has been nicely restored so you can see the cartoon opening. The sign and stone fence are on a cel.



The scene fades into what I can only presume is rotoscoped action. There are no gags here, and these shots don’t really set up a gag (not like the opening of, say, Screwball Squirrel at MGM a few years later).



Even the next scene when Willoughby slides into the frame is Disney-esque in the way it handles follow-through and overlapping action as the dog shakes his head.



The cartoon is basically Avery (and writer Rich Hogan, I guess) doing a different take on the Bugs Bunny-Elmer Fudd relationship. Bugs and Elmer are stronger characters; the fox is far more casual. The difference is the dopey character wins in the end. I always liked that watching this over and over as a kid 60-some-odd years ago and I still like it today.

Newfoundland?

Charlie Dog had a routine where he was “50%” various kinds of dogs and enthusiastically went into cliché gags about different breeds (Often An Orphan, 1949).

There were earlier cartoons which foisted the same doggie puns on theatre audiences. One of them was The Pooch Parade, a 1940 spot-gag short from Columbia.

The puns in this one really make you cringe, and you can probably guess the punch lines before they happen. There’s a Spitz, a watch dog, a Mexican hairless, a bird dog, Doberman Pinchers, everything except the “setter” gag. But there’s one I don’t get.

The film cuts a couple of times to a Newfoundland dog, except he’s not there. The narrator wonders where he could be. A hand pulls down a map of Newfoundland. The map morphs into a barking dog. “Thanks a lot,” responds the narrator.



Someone is going to have to explain this one to me.

Allen Rose was responsible for the story on this one. Harry Love and Lou Lilly are the credited animators, but there’s no director mentioned on screen. Mel Blanc supplies his dullard voice and his falsetto/lady voice. The narrator is Jack Lescoulie-esque, but it’s not him.

Let There Be Light

In the 1930s, the Leon Schlesinger studio had a story department and everyone would pitch gags for each cartoon. In some cases, it’s a wild guess who may have come up with a gag, though Tex Avery is an exception as certain comedic bits were tried out and refined over the years in his cartoons.

One gag in Buddy in Africa (1935) strikes me as it came from the mind of Bugs Hardaway, who directed the cartoon. Buddy stars as a travelling salesman, hawking stuff from his truck to the natives of Snake-Eyes

One of the villagers buys a battery kit. To me, only Hardaway would come up with a routine where someone plugs light bulbs into his ears, sits on a battery to create electricity, and then reads a newspaper.



Tom Armstrong was the story director for the studio at the time. He was never credited on a cartoon (he moved on to Disney); no writer got screen credit in 1935. Hardaway ended up back in the story department when Tex Avery was hired to direct.

Jack Carr and Don Williams are the credited animators. Good portions of the score were from musical director Norman Spencer, who also includes “Marchin’ Towards Ya Georgia” by Carmen Lombardo and Cliff Friend. Motion Picture Reviews wasn’t impressed. “Loud, unpleasant music accompanies Buddy through Africa, surrounded by wild animals. Poor,” was its declaration. And that doesn’t even take into consideration the weak story. “Poor” is almost a compliment.

Familiar Duck, Familiar Gags

If you want to watch a Warner Bros. cartoon that isn’t a Warner Bros. cartoon, then seek out Columbia/Screen Gems’ 1947 epic Wacky Quacky.



No, that’s not Daffy Duck. It can’t be. This duck is green, with a red ring around its neck. Any resemblance is, um, coincidental. Just like the hunter isn’t Elmer Fudd.

The cartoon is filled with switches on familiar gags. There’s a log gag (without a cliff, like in All This and Rabbit Stew) which segues into brick building gag (kind of like Bugs Bunny Rides Again).

To speed the pace, director Alex Lovy uses multiple Daffys non-Daffys when building the wall.



Fudd The hunter hits the wall so hard, he knocks the mortar away from the bricks.



Cal Howard (formerly of Warner Bros.) provides a story twist. The duck grabs the gun and becomes the hunter.

The character, by the way, wasn’t named Wacky Quacky, if you want to go by a shorts list in Boxoffice magazine in 1947. I don’t know where it got the names. The Sylvester knock-off in several Columbia cartoons is apparently named “Klever Kat.” And the less said about “Mitey Mouse,” the better.

If the score sounds like something from a late-‘40s Woody Woodpecker cartoon, that shouldn’t be surprising as it was composed by Darrell Calker.

Wabbit Switch

One of the great things about Hare Tonic, a 1945 Warner Bros. release, is that the action never lets up. Bugs Bunny continually gets the best of Elmer Fudd in a stream of gags that doesn’t slow down. The best part is the ending, which I loved as a kid 60-plus years ago and still love now.

In one scene, Bugs—purchased by Fudd at a meat shop!—cons Elmer into looking into his grocery basket because there’s no rabbit inside. Bugs then shoves Elmer into the basket and switches places with him, strolling along and singing a wabbit-ized version of “Shortnin’ Bread.’

Elmer stretches up from the basket. “Ooooh, you twickster!” he says to Bugs, and shoves him back into the basket. The action is one drawing per frame.



We’ll skip several drawings where the action is indicated by dry brush.



Elmer carries on as before.

Tedd Pierce is the credited story man (I can’t help but wonder if he was still teaming with Mike Maltese), with Ben Washam, Ken Harris, Basil Davidovich and Lloyd Vaughan being credited with the animation.

In the days when Warners cartoons ran endlessly on local stations that signed a deal with AAP, this one aired often, at least where I grew up. The rabbit-titis sequence at the end is still a treat.