Ape Mouth

There’s not a lot of mountain music in the 1933 Warner Bros. cartoon I Love Mountain Music. There are some western musicians and Will Rogers at the start of the short, and an ice skater twirling around to the title song in the middle. Things then switch to Hawaii, then Switzerland (okay, it has mountains).

The last third of the cartoon involves some crooks robbing a cash register, with the good guys ganging up to catch them.

This is a magazine-covers-come-to-life cartoon, so we get the ringleader chased by “Ping Pong” from the pages of “Screen Play” magazine.

There’s another of those familiar gags when a character comes right at the camera and swallows it, which probably looked better in theatres than on the small screen.

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Friz Freleng and Larry Martin are the credited animators.

The version of this cartoon in circulation has an odd iris-out at the end, followed by an urchin who does not appear in this short exclaiming “So long, folks!” Was this tacked on from another cartoon?

Neon Mouse

Through the 1930s, directors of Merrie Melodies were forced to spotlight a Warner Bros.-owned song in a cartoon. I can’t help but wonder if Tex Avery was distracted by trying to figure out a way to incorporate a song into The Mice Will Play (1938). The short is earth-bound by some pretty weak material (though the ending is good).

Here’s an example. A mouse living in an experimental lab drinks some neon liquid.



Yeah. That’s the gag. Not even the mouse spelling out “Eat at Joe’s” while flashing like a neon sign. This might have been considered high comedy for the weak-sister Hardaway-Dalton unit, but Tex liked adding something extra, something odd that came out of nowhere. This gag is obvious. What else could happen in a cartoon after drinking that stuff?

As for the music, Avery and the writing crew settled on turning things in the lab into big band/boogie woogie musical instruments, with Johnny, Susie and the preacher all playing solos instead of speaking the usual wedding dialogue.

Jack Miller is the credited story man, with Sid Sutherland handed the rotating animation credit.

November Flies By

What’s the best turkey dinner cartoon without the word “yams” in it?

This is all very subjective, but my answer is Holiday For Drumsticks from the Art Davis unit.

Daffy Duck craves all the food for a turkey that hillbillies want to fatten up for Thanskgiving, so he eats while forcing Tom to do athletic stuff to sweat off the weight. There’s an imaginative scene where the passage of time is shown by Daffy and the turkey irising in and irising out while letters and numbers form in the distance (a solid blue background is originally a star of pain when Tom hits a cross-bar) and swoosh forward out of camera range.



Davis pulls off a great bit of timing in one scene. He has the hillbilly slowly reaching for his rifle (animated on twos), then grabbing it and shooting it, which takes up five frames. The barely moving arm emphasizes the quick movement that follows.

Milt Franklyn comes up with a clever arrangement of Sunny Skylar’s “All the Time” over the opening titles. Since the cartoon is called Holiday For Drumsticks, it opens with a drumstick against a cymbal (score by Carl Stalling).

Lloyd Turner is credited with the story. Emery Hawkins and Don Williams animate along with Bill Melendez and Basil Davidovich.

We Canadians have already celebrated Thanksgiving so we send best wishes to our friends and readers in the U.S.A. today. We’ll have posts to mid-December.

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.

Gangster Hideout

A streetcar carries Duck Twacy to the gangster hideout in The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946). Neon signs and search lights give him some directions. A quick pan across a background shows the hideout is so close, the signs and lights aren’t necessary.

Here is the scene snipped together.



Phil De Guard is the background artist in this cartoon. Layouts are by Tom McKimson.

This wild effort of the Bob Clampett unit was officially released July 27, 1946 but, as usual, it appeared on screens before then. At one theatre in Burlington, North Carolina, it was shown starting the 23rd, as advertised in the local newspaper. What’s funny about the ad is it leaves the impression Porky Pig is the star of the cartoon. He’s not. He appears in disguise in two scenes taking up less than 10 seconds.

The Showmen’s Trade Review rated the cartoon “Good” and gave as a summary: “Daffy Duck, who follows Dick Tracy with great avidity, decides to look into the mystery of the stolen piggy banks. After many horrifying encounters with macabre characters and animals like you’ve never seen before, he locates the banks in a cave. It is all a dream, but don’t worry—Daffy is as Daffy as ever. Good anywhere, although there is some doubt about it for over-impressionable children.

This was the second-last Clampett Merrie Melodies cartoon at Warners. He got through part of Bacall to Arms and left the studio. Whether he quit or was fired is something only Dick Tracy could solve.

Conducting the Conductor

“What will the audience least expect” was the Tex Avery credo. And he pulled it off in cartoon after cartoon after cartoon.

An example starts off the proceedings in Hamateur Night, a 1938 cartoon for Warner Bros. A theatre pit conductor gets the attention of his musical crew.



Swiftly, Avery switches the situation and the musicians conduct the conductor.



His eyes extend when the slide on his trombone extends.



The number being played is “It Looks Like a Big Night Tonight” by Harry Williams and Egbert Van Alstyne. After one chorus, the conductor ducks down and switches instruments for a fanfare.



Being a professional of the theatre, he bows to the audience in appreciation.



Jack Miller is given a story credit, though we wonder how much he contributed as the gags are typical of Avery’s sense of humour. Paul Smith is the credited animator. Did Virgil Ross do this scene?

It’s good to see this cartoon has been restored. It’s one of Avery’s finer efforts for Leon Schlesinger.

Going Up?

A stretch in-between and dry-brush help move the “Gildersleeve” clerk who continually gets outsmarted by Bugs Bunny in Hare Conditioned (released in 1945).

Bugs is disguised as an elevator operator and tricks the rabbit-chasing clerk into getting off the lift, who suddenly realises what has happened.



He gets into the elevator again and Bugs shoves him out. Another reaction with multiples and dry-brush as Gildersleeve rushes to take the stairs instead.



Ken Harris, Ben Washam, Basil Davidovich and Lloyd Vaughan are the credited animators for director Chuck Jones.

The official release date was Aug. 11, 1945 but, naturally, it appeared on movie screens earlier. The Varsity in Iowa City showed it July 14 along with Rosalind Russell and Jack Carson in Roughly Speaking. Say! Someone should make a cartoon parodying that title. Are you listening, Mr. Jones?