Leap Frog Backgrounds

Animated cartoons were moving into representational background art as the 1940s moved toward the 1950s. Even an industrial studio like John Sutherland Productions, founded by a former Disney-ite, realised stylisation was the way to go.

In Why Play Leap Frog? (commercially released in early 1950), you can see that buildings and other things in the background are represented by line art. It makes the foreground stand out better.

Ah, the Travelsnatcher 6! Note the number "1948" above the doors. I wonder if that’s when this cartoon was started.

It’s really a shame none of the artists are credited on this short, one of a number of pro-business propaganda cartoons made for Harding College, some of which were released by MGM. I like the leapfrogging roll of money and price tag, and the bull going to market, but this is a weaker cartoon to me than Make Mine Freedom and Meet King Joe, which were released earlier.

Bud Hiestand is the narrator and Frank Nelson supplies a couple of voices. I don’t know who is playing Joe.

An-Udder Gag

An out-of-control airplane takes aim at a cow in Plane Crazy (1928).

Comedy ensues as we get a perspective of the propeller-driven plane going under the cow’s udder.

Next comes the Mickey-gets-a-face-full-of-milk gag. This was used in Steamboat Willie the same year. Did it appear in one of the Disney Oswald cartoons?

Finally, Mickey gets back on the plane by pushing in the cow’s tail, and lengthening its neck in the process.

Ub Iwerks animated this short with a bit of assistance from Ben Clopton, according to Mike Barrier's book The Animated Man.

The Fickle Finger That Touched Mary Hilt

This is the story of a woman who went on a TV show she didn’t watch and didn’t even like, a woman who won a prize then said it wasn’t enough to meet her needs but asked for something less, a woman whose husband chose a dolphin over the vice-president of the United States, a woman who kicks televisions and chickens.

This was published in the Albany Times-Union of March 8, 1970.

Area Mother's Gag Is a Laugh-In Matter
By BILL KENNEDY
How did Mary Hilt of Averill Park wind up as an anonymous gagster on the Rowan and Martin "Laugh-In" that's due for local showing Monday night?
Here's how Mary tells it:
"I was out delivering eggs one night and Butch said, a detective is coming out to see you. You won a contest. Then this man from the Burns Detective Agency showed up with a four-page affidavit and the first thing I said to the kids was get out or you'll queer it, whatever it is, and I put them out in the chicken coop."
Butch, who brought the good news, is one of the seven Hilt children ranging from 15 to six (Pam, Wendy, Butch, Marjorie, Nicky, Nancy and Alison) who wound up in the coop where the Hilts keep their chickens. The chicken business started three years ago when Mary ran the Park Perkies, an Averill Park 441 Club which had 25 chickens. By the end of this year the Hilts will have 9,000 chickens.
"If I knew in the beginning what I know now, Mary said, "I'd have gassed them all."
So the detective sat in the Hilt kitchen and told Mary she'd won a contest sponsored by Breck, the shampoo firm, but he didn't know the details. He just wanted to know if she had any connection with Breck or the Laugh-In or the advertising agency which represented Breck. She didn't. She was a legitimate winner of The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Contest.
"It was a moron contest," Mary said. "I didn't write anything. It was just a sweepstakes and you sent in your name and address. There were 212,000 entries and out of 30 drums they picked 300 names and took the names to Miami for Miss Breck to pick the winner.
WHEN MARY HEARD that she'd won she checked back to see what the prize was and found it was $20,000. So the Hilt family sat down together and figured out the things they all needed and made a discovery. "The $20,000 wasn't enough," Mary said.
The next day they made an other discovery. Mary had won second prize, not first. That was $1,000 plus a week in California, all expenses paid, and an appearance on Laugh-In. A man from Breck called and told her the prize. She said she couldn't take it.
"I've got seven kids and a lot of chickens," she told the caller. "I could cut off the chickens' heads and put them in the freezer but I couldn't do that with the kids."
So come out for four days for $1,500, the man suggested. We'll pay baby sitters. Fly out, fly back. But I don't fly, said Mary. You don't fly? No said Mary. And I don't even watch Laugh-In and I don't let the kids watch it because of the dirty jokes. Then why, asked the man, did you enter the contest?
"I WANTED A FLYING Fickle Finger of Fate," Mary said, referring to the replica of the Laugh-In gag award — winged finger on a bronze hand.
The Breck man cajoled but Mary resisted. Send us a color TV set and we'll call it square, she suggested. She explained: "My husband won't buy a color set till our black and white one gives out. I been kicking it, we all kick it when we go by it, but it won't give out."
The powers of persuasion prevailed, at last, and the Hilts decided to accept the prize and spend the four days in beautiful Burbank. The decision, said Mary, was chiefly her husband's. Leonard Hilt, a foreman with St. Regis Paper Co. in Scotia, had been a paratrooper in World War II. "He was up 18 or 20 times," Mary said, "but he always got pushed out the door and he said it'd be nice just once to come down with the plane."
It was also Leonard Hilt's decision to immerse the family in chickens, business "Best of the Nest" that grew to such proportions that the Hilts have built (themselves) a $15,000 poultry house, 40 by 100 feet.
"MY HUSBAND thinks this is the way to raise kids," Mary said, "shoveling manure and plucking chickens. Anything to keep them out of jail. The kids've made up a song they call The Poultry Plucker's Plea. One chicken attacked me the other day and I kicked it in the head and killed it, poor thing. I made believe it had got leukosis, but my husband came in and saw it and said to me, 'You been kicking chickens again?' I'm laughing, but I'm not happy. You ever been that close to chickens?"
The Hilts went west on separate planes and Mary went into the rehearsal hall and started looking around for celebrities. The place was full of them, all the Laugh-In regulars and Milton Berle and Carol Channing, but Mary didn't recognize anybody.
"I thought Buddy Hackett was a plumber," she said.
Finally she saw one, obviously a movie star. It turned out to be Ed Friendly, one of the originators of the Laugh-In. "He wasn't a movie star," Mary said, "but he was stunning."
Mary drew applause from the Laugh-In cast when she entered the set. The public relations people asked Mary if they could do anything for her. "Yes," she said "would you mind clearing the set while I say my lines? I heard Bette Davis did that once."
MARY'S LINES — two — come first during the party sequence of the show when all participants are dancing and gyrating. She sits quietly on a stool, looking, she says, like a visitor from the Legion of Decency. She at last says: "That's a no-no." But she doesn't know what it's in reference to. That was to be put in later. The second line comes when Dick Martin takes her by the hand and leads her off-camera. She comments as they go: 'Why me? Why always me?" She's not quite sure what that means either.
Her appearance is never explained on the show, nor is she introduced. "It's all a put-on," explained Mary.
When it was all over and they were leaving they found out that Spiro Agnew was next door at a studio being taped for the Bob Hope show and was scheduled to speak downtown the following day.
"I WANTED TO see him," Mary said, "but my husband wanted to go to Marineland and see Flipper so we missed Sprio." [sic]
The whole event has been an odd experience for Mary Hilt and her family, but then odd experiences are not totally new to her. Some years ago Topps department store in Menands burned down and Mary wrote the owners and expressed regret and explained how much she'd liked the store and wondered whether they'd build another one. Topps liked her letter so much that they paid her $500 to come to the opening of the new store with her family to cut the ribbon. Her husband resisted and Mary retorted: How can I go down there with seven kids and no husband? Finally, Leonard Hilt agreed to go.
His attitude, Mary recalled, I was like that of a man touched by the flying fickle finger of fate: "Who else but my wife would write to a burned-down store?"

You may be thinking we’re dealing with an oblivious, humourless couple of people in this story. Remarkably, that’s not the case. Mary Hilt later became a newspaper columnist, kind of a local Erma Bombeck looking at the odd, ordinary things in life. She was a very community-minded individual, and it’s sad to learn her last years were plagued by Alzheimer’s. She died in 2012. You can read about her interesting life here.

Tex Cracks Him Up

Perhaps it’s because he grew up in an era of silent films, but Tex Avery avoided dialogue when it really wasn’t necessary. This blog has all kinds of examples where we’ve shown one of his gags with frames and no commentary.

Wags to Riches is one of many cartoons where the premise is set up at the start with a bit of dialogue (Spike wants to kill Droopy to get Droopy’s inheritance), and almost the rest of the cartoon is visual with sounds effects.

Here’s a gag we’ve condensed into 17 drawings. You can follow what’s happening. I’ve left in three head shake frames to give you an idea of how the take was handled.

Bobe Cannon, Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton and Mike Lah are the credited animators with Jack Cosgriff and Rich Hogan helping Avery with the gags. It sounds like Don Messick as Droopy, with Pat McGeehan as the lawyer and the Irish cop on the phone, and a cameo appearance by Bill Hanna's scream.

Books by Bob Clampett

Bob Clampett’s Book Revue is a cartoon that whips along and hits you with everything—perspective animation, rubbery characters, an incredible scene of Daffy Duck as Danny Kaye topped with him turning into an eyeball, an Mohawk-to-Gene Krupa transformation, a few pop culture references and some inside jokes.

Since it is called Book Revue, books are a necessity. Several were written by Bob Clampett.

The middle one has a book written by Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng (misspelled), Chuck Jones and Bob McKimson, the studio's directing team after Frank Tashlin left in September 1944 (there's a better view of McKimson's name earlier in the scene).

The last one has one book with phrases including covered words that can't be used in cartoons, such as “Damn the torpedos” and “Go to Hell.”

Tom McKimson and Cornett Wood are creditted with layouts and backgrounds in this cartoon.

Jack Benny on Mary and Mary Jane

Jack Benny toking up?

We don’t know if it ever happened, but he wanted to give it a try (You’d think one of his musicians would be able to find some pot for him).

That revelation comes from an April 16, 1972 interview in the Detroit Free Press, where he talked about a bunch of things, including Vietnam and the idea of an autobiography.

He May Look 39 and Stingy, But He’s Not—Just Ask Any Cabbie
BY BOB TALBERT
Free Press Columnist
Jack Benny does the BEST Jack Benny I've ever seen.
That is, if he wants to; if he's in the mood; if a dozen people aren't swarming around him, tugging on his sleeve and asking a million of the same questions they've asked for decades.
When he wants to, Benny can cock his head just a trifle, hike up one shoulder a touch, rest his cheek on a hand, elevate his voice and eyebrows ever so slightly, and, pausing set you up with the precision of a poolshark for the prescribed, patented and priceless one-world line: "w-e-l-llll!?!"
Right on the floor you go, knocking over tables, rolling on the carpet, getting tears in your eyes—Wow!
I mean, Jack Benny has just laid a Jack Benny on you.
I mean, is anyone else in the world 39 and stingy? I mean, for the past 39 years?
I DEFY anyone to be around Jack Benny for more than two minutes, 14 seconds without falling into a Jack Benny imitation. The only person in the whole wide world who doesn't do this is his best friend, George Burns, who's too busy doing a George Burns imitation.
At 78, all Jack Benny needs to do is be 78. He's earned whatever grand retirement and imperial status show business offers its patriarchal monarchs. And when you can be 78 years old and damn-near-for-true look 39 and for sure act even younger then you should just walk around the country and let people look at you.
But for most people, just looking at Jack Benny is enough to cease a break-up. All-down, knee-walking, table-grazing break-up. It's because Benny can lay a little take on you that's beyond description. He can do his number that wonderful combination of posture, timing and delivery and you're gonna cry happy tears. But enough enshrinement of Jack Benny. I mean, Jack Benny was in town to do a benefit—the Adas Shalom Synagog fund-raiser—and he was feeling good, exceptionally good. Rested and running on at the mouth like a teenager about a lot of things.
What did he have to say? Well, let's listen to Benny, talking off-stage and behind the scenes about what Benny thinks:
AMERICA'S sense of humor: "The biggest problem with the public's sense of humor is that we keep losing a laugh at. National issues don't have much humor in them. Vietnam, the economy, busing, credibility of one lenders? You can find some humor in the economy, no matter how had it gets, because we always come out of any economic phase.
"But you don't come out of lot of the things we like to boys losing their lives in wars. They know more about this in Washington—at least I think they do—but I think Vietnam has been handled wrong. We're getting out now, and as sure as I'm sitting here, the Viet Cong is going to take over and we've lost 50,000 of our young men for nothing. I've never been for or against Vietnam, but I've always thought you got into a war to win it. People still like to laugh, as long as it doesn't hurt someone and isn't painful to laugh."
ETHNIC HUMOR: "I don't care who tells it, if it's a clever story and doesn't hurt anyone, it works, ethnic or what-have-you. I don't prescribe to the theory that only blacks can tell black jokes or only Jews can tell Jewish jokes. I don't htink [sic] the public demands anything from a performer except a good performance of what you do.
"Personally, I don't like to play to any 'one group' an all-jewish affair, an all-ethnic group, or all one-age audience. I like a mixture, a broad range of people.
"I don't like to do stags anymore, either. If I want to say something risque, I want to be able to say it in front of a mixed group. God knows I'm not a prude, but even my risque material has to stay in character. I've never used a blue line or a dirty word just for shock value."
ARCHIE BUNKER: "I love 'All In the Family' and 'Sanford and Son, too. Archie Bunker sort of proves that he's not all that much of a bigot in each show. That show they did with Sammy Davis, Jr. was a great show. That's what television can be and should be more often. It was great for Archie and great for Sammy, too."
MOVIES: "I've really liked some I've seen lately: 'The French Connection,' 'The Godfather' and 'The Last Picture Show.' But others seem to have gotten too dirty. Nudity, to me, is useless unless it has a lot to do with the story and how many times does nudity really have something vital to do with the story?"
MARIJUANA: "I don't even smoke cigarets but I'd like to try pot once, just to see what it tastes like. I only smoke cigars, but I don't smoke them too well."
HEALTH: "I watch my diet. I have a touch of diabetes and have to stay away from sweets, which I love. I eat and drink moderately and never late. I always need more rest than I get and I get my exercise from constantly working and staying on the go."
BEING 78: "Everyone tells me I look about the same, but they never say the same what. As you get older you try to look as good as possible. We're all vain. I may be vainer than most. It takes 800 make-up men for me today and we still keep moving the cameras back."
STINGINESS: "I've always liked the stingy image. I think it's very funny. But if you really thought I was the stingiest man in the world, there would be no way I could play that role. I tip big. Always have. Particularly cab drivers, because I use them for such short distances."
FAVORITES: "Ed Wynn, I think, was the funniest, most honest funny man who ever lived. Al Jolson was the greatest entertainer. Phil Silvers is another comedian who never, but never makes a mistake. Bob Hope is the epitome of a gagster. George Burns? I'm his greatest audience. New comedians? Flip Wilson is a marvelous young talent, but a very tough person to write material for."
PEOPLE HE ADMIRES: "Pablo Casals, for one. I met him once and played with him. He played the cello and I fiddled. I've been friendly with most of the Presidents. I was closest to Harry Truman and the Kennedys. Today, I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican. I'm a registered Whig. I'm also a Millard Fillmore man. At least HE kept us out of Vietnam."
AUDIENCES: "The most important thing is to make instant contact with the first few rows. If you do that, you can make contact with thousands of rows. Keep those down front with you and the others will be with you, too."
THE BENNY BOOK: "I wrote an autobiography once. Then I read it and tore it up. Many nice things have happened to me that should be in a book, but I don't feel comfortable writing about them. I would prefer a biography. I'd like Shana Alexander to write it. She knows me. Or Candy Bergen. You know. Candy Bergen could write it very well, too.
"A book about Jack Benny should be done, but it would be a tough one to do. I've never been very poor. In fact, my personal preference for a book's title would be 'I Always Had Shoes.' Publishers want titles I can't stand: "My First 390 Years' or 'W-e-l-lll! !' I never walked barefoot in the snow to sell newspapers. I never got beat up and cut like Joe E. Lewis. And I never grew up having to face the problems Sammy Davis Jr. did.
"I've never been thrown out of anything. My career had a slow, but steady rise. No setbacks, no personal misfortunes. I've been married to one wife, Mary Livingstone for 44 years. I've never been to a psychiatrist. For a comedian I'm surprisingly normal and really very dull. I've had a wonderful life, but not the sort of sensational one that sells books. Anyway, I won't write it. Let other people white [sic] it."
NOSTALGIA: "To hell with it. The past is gone. I'm interested in how I did last night and what I'm going to do tomorrow night. Thinking about the past makes you older quicker than anything else. I always like the next thing I'm supposed to do better than what I've just done."
HIS SECRET: Does there have to be a secret? A reason for my success? Let's see. Most people say timing. Some say likability. Both pacing and material have been named. I've been analyzed by the best and the worst also, I might add. I think basically I enjoy my work. I love what I do and I feel the audiences have always known this.
"Sooner or later in this business, everyone finds out what he's supposed to do. From the beginning, when I walked on the stage at the tough 125th Street Theatre vaudeville stage in Manhattan, I knew I wasn't a one-line jokester. My thing was and is, to this day to get on a subect [sic] and stay on it, then switch carefully and gracefully to another subject without the audience knowing it.
"I never have advocated college for a comedian. Finish high school, by all means, but a college education takes away something. It makes you a little too aloof or something. You stop being down-to-earth-ness. Not earthiness, but down-to-earth-ness. Of course, this is only my opinion, but it's an opinion I respect. Comedy writers don't suffer from going to college, but I think the fellow out in front does. The most educated comedians I know never went to college.
"I sincerely believe my strongest point as a comedian is probably the least understood: I may be the-best editor of comedy material I've ever met. When Hillard Marks, my writer, and I put it down on paper I have a sense about what is right—right for me, right for the occasion and right for the times. An exemple [sic] of selectivity: there is no humor in the issue of busing because it is an issue that makes too many people from too many areas too uncomfortable for too many different reasons.
"As the editor of my own material, I have always had an advantage. My writers have always given me the best of material. It's easy when you only have to deal with good material, picking the best from the best. I think I put together a very good show, with the right timing and proper pacing. It's as an editor I have this sense of what WILL work and what WON'T. I make my decision based on which line or sketch or piece of material I will enjoy doing the most. If I don't enjoy doing it, how can anyone enjoy hearing it?"
See what I mean about Jack Benny doing Jack Benny?

Musical Miniatures

The Walter Lantz studio may have reached its peak in the late ‘40s. The irony is the peak suddenly ended with the studio being closed for more than a year.

The Lantz team had developed Woody Woodpecker into a popular character. The studio had a roster of good artists—Pat Matthews, Ed Love, Fred Moore, Ken O’Brien, Grim Natwick. Over the decade, Darrell Calker came up with some great boogie-woogie scores and won praise when he turned to classical music. The studio won the best film music award (shorts category) for 1945 by the Musical Courier for Chopin’s Musical Moments, which was nominated for an Oscar and lost to MGM’s classical counterpart The Cat Concerto.

The Musical Miniature series was heavily publicised in the trade press. And it was profiled in part of an article in the May 1946 edition of “Film and Radio Guide” out of Newark. It would appear Lantz considered non-theatrical releases of the Musical Miniatures much like other cartoons he made for educational/industrial use.

Forthcoming Walter Lantz Cartoons of Educational Interest
Walter Lantz, head of the Walter Lantz Cartune Studio, and creator of such animated cartoon characters as Woody Woodpecker, Andy Panda, and Wally Walrus, is producing a new series, titled “Musical Miniatures.” These shorts will present well-known classical music played “straight” rather than as an adjunct to the gags and comedy situations of cartoon subjects.
Already completed is Poet and Peasant. In production are Chopin’s Musical Moments and Overture to William Tell. The Chopin film will feature two well-known pianists, Ted Saidenberg and Ed Rebner; the other two films will furnish music with a full orchestra. The studio will produce four of these pictures each year.
Heretofore, in cartoon musicals, the stories have been written first, and the music made to fit the action of the picture. But in this new Lantz series the music is first recorded, and then the story department goes to work fitting the script to the music.
In these pictures, a movie-goer can close his eyes (if he chooses), and just listen! There will be no discordant sounds to jar him. Thus if the music-lover wishes to hear one of his favorite selections played without the distraction of the cartoon comedy that accompanies it, he may do so.
Producer Lantz believes that many people, children particularly, do not like “good” music because they have never been exposed to it. It is his conviction that music served up with popular cartoon stars will make these selections from the classics palatable to audiences that, up to now, have been interested only in boogie-woogie and juke-box numbers.



"Reddy-Made Magic"
The Lantz studio has also just completed a twelve-minute Technicolor and sound cartoon, which portrays episodes in the history of electricity and dramatizes present-day electric service. The film is available through local power companies.
Prepared in both 16mm and 35mm, the film is non-commercial and suitable for use in churches, schools, and clubs, as well as theatres.
The film introduces a new cartoon character, “Reddy Kilowatt.” Walter Tetley, the “LeRoy” of the Great Gildersleeve radio show, is Reddy’s voice.
The picture outlines the history of electricity from the year 600 B.C., when Thales, the Greek philosopher, first discovered magnetism in a piece of amber. The spirit of electricity is personified by Reddy Kilowatt. The trials that he has endured up to the present time are portrayed. After Thales’ experiments, which he recorded but abandoned because of public ridicule, Reddy lies dormant for 2000 years until an English scientist, Dr. William Gilbert, revives Thales’ theory and proves that it is correct.
From Gilbert, the cartoon follows Reddy’s career through the invention in 1660 of Otto Von Guericke’s friction machine, which produced sparks, to Stephen Grey’s experiments in 1729, which proved that some materials are conductors and some non-conductors of electricity. Next Reddy went to Leyden, Holland, in 1755 and let Professor Musschenbroek prove a further enlightening theory about his power by storing him up in what came to be known as “Leyden Jars.”
Reddy’s big chance came in 1752 when Benjamin Franklin, with his well-known kite-and-key experiment, announced that electricity and lightning were one and the same. On that day Reddy shook hands with Franklin and made an announcement himself: “Now I’m getting some place!”
Following Franklin were Michael Faraday, who in 1831 produced continuous electric currents, Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone in 1876, and Edison’s incandescent light bulb in 1879. Reddy really went into action when Edison started the first power plant, and electric power was given to the world.
In addition to presenting side-lights of the epic of electricity, the film illustrates the modern system of distribution from generating station through transmission lines to sub-station, and into the “Reddybox” where the user can always plug in and find Reddy ready. The film concludes with a brief description of Reddy’s many services in the home.



Lantz told the trades in 1946 there would be four Miniatures:

The Poet and Peasant, released March 18, 1946
Musical Moments from Chopin, released February 24, 1947
The Overture to William Tell, released June 16, 1947
The Bandmaster, released December 22, 1947.

The last one, featuring the overture to Zampa, was intended for Universal release. But Lantz jumped to United Artists when Universal demanded licensing rights to his characters. Unfortunately, the U-A deal wasn’t as lucrative to Lantz as he anticipated, so he decided to close his studio and re-release old cartoons to bring in income for minimal expenses.

The other United Artists Miniatures were:

Kiddie Concert, released April 21, 1948
Pixie Picnic, released May 28, 1948.

All six are among the highlights of the shorts released by the studio. When it re-opened, the animators, save La Verne Harding, were gone; researcher Devon Baxter discovered Les Kline was packing tomatoes. Woody Woodpecker didn’t talk, the characters had a thicker ink-line with less interesting animation, and no more Miniatures. The closest the studio got was A Convict Concerto (1955), a good cartoon but without the subtlety of Darrell Calker’s classical shorts.

Puzzled Pals

One has to wonder whether the family life wasn’t the life for Van Beuren animators, judging by Puzzled Pals (1933).

Over at Warner Bros., happy babies, music and celebrities hooked up in Shuffle Off to Buffalo. In this cartoon, a stork tries to make a delivery in a small community and the gag is he’s clearly unwanted.

One little house looks ripe to be a home to a new infant. The gag is even the kids living there don’t want another child as everyone pours outside to chase the stork away.

Finally, the baby is delivered to the home of Tom and Jerry, where he punches them out and uses a super vacuum to wreck the place. The stork returns, uses his birdie fists and flies on our heroes and flies away with the youngin’.

George Stallings and Frank Sherman are the directors. Sherman worked for Bill Nolan and Walter Lantz at Universal before returning to New York and a job at Van Beuren. One report said he slipped on the ice and developed a blood clot in his brain. Another said he had a heart attack at his home in East Orange. Nonetheless, he died March 20, 1934 at the age of 34. He had no children.

Lo, the Shameless Cartoon Thefts

The Warner Bros. cartoons provided more than inspiration at Columbia/Screen Gems. They were the targets of outright thievery.

A duck that looks like Daffy stars in Wacky Quacky. A cat that looks like Sylvester stars in Up n’ Atom. But the 1948 short Lo the Poor Buffal is based around wholesale pillaging.



Remember how Yosemite Sam would say “I hate rabbits!”? In this cartoon, Buffalo Billingsley says “I hate buffalos.” Remember how Foghorn Leghorn would copy Senator Claghorn and remark something like: “There’s one thing, I SAY, there’s one thing I hate. Weasels. Weasels, that is!” In this cartoon, Billingsley says “I hate buffalos. I SAY, I hate buffalos. Buffalos, that is.”

But that’s not all. Remember how Elmer Fudd substituted the letter “w” for the letter “r”? Guess what the buffalo in this cartoon does.



Writer Cal Howard seems to have decided the purloining was enough to make audiences laugh. There isn’t one real joke in the cartoon. Oh, a rock deflates like a tire when hit by an arrow. But it’s like the cartoon is one long set-up with no payoff. Even the last line is the same as the first, just substitute “vultures” for “buffalos.” The most amusing is something audiences won’t have caught—Howard names Billingsley’s jeep “Calvin.”

The real irony is I’m pretty sure the “Foney Fudd” is played by Dave Barry. That’s the guy who played Fudd in the wretched Warners short Pre-Hysterical Hare some ten years later. My guess is Jack Mather is the Indian whose design appeared earlier that year in Topsy Turkey (Barry is in that cartoon, too).

The score is by Darrell Calker, and sounds just like the stuff he was writing for Woody Woodpecker cartoons around the same time, complete with peek-a-boo clarinets.

The cartoon was backlogged for release after the Screen Gems studio closed for good.