Woo Hoo!

It’s always fun to see Daffy Duck bouncing around going “Woo Hoo!” He started out that way but as time went on the Warners directors and writers took him in other directions.

But he still does it in a scene in Frank Tashlin’s The Stupid Cupid (1944). Here are some of the drawings. I like the yellow and black brush lines to indicate movement.



The Independent Film Journal liked the cartoon, remarking in its edition of December 9, 1944: “Built around a novel idea it contains a goodly quantity of laughs and is suitable for a spot on any program where a bit of comedy is desired.”

Izzy Ellis, Art Davis and Cal Dalton were animating for Tashlin at the time of this cartoon, but the credits no longer exist on Blue Ribbon versions in circulation. Showman's Trade Review of Dec. 30, 1944 gives the credit to George Cannata.

The Granny of Beverly Hills

Irene Ryan wasn’t a grizzled old woman when she made her name as Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies, nor was she a newcomer to show biz. She and her ex-husband Tim Ryan (her maiden name was Noblette) appeared in vaudeville and then in short films and on radio; in fact, they headlined a show called Carefree Carnival in 1933 that went from KECA Los Angeles to the NBC network, a time when shows rarely were broadcast from West to East. When the two split up, Irene continued on the airwaves, perhaps enjoying her greatest success in the late ‘40s/early ‘50s as one of Bob Hope’s stooges.

On Hillbillies, Granny’s son-in-law Jed Clampett became a millionaire. In real life, Ryan did, too. She was generous with what she earned, setting up a foundation two years before her death to give scholarships. The American College Theatre Festival named an award in her honour a year after she died.

Here’s what that great Los Angeles-based publication Radio Life had to say about her in its edition of October 13, 1946. It’s before she arrived on the Hope show.

AT HOME ON RADIO
Comedienne Irene Ryan, Proud of Being One of Radio's Pioneers, Returns to the Ether as Jack Carson's Newest Nemesis.
By Peggy Carter
IRENE Ryan turned the tables on us. We, who are supposed to know all about radio, found ourselves learning about radio's early days from Irene—and we couldn't have picked a better raconteuse!

The petite, blonde, and very attractive comedienne is the lady who keeps the air-lives of CBS' Jack Carson and Arthur Treacher [in photo, right of Ryan] in a constant flurry. And even if you've never seen a performance of the Carson show, you're probably still familiar with Irene. She's appeared in a score of movies and was once co-star of the Tim and Irene Show.
There were a hundred questions we were anxious to ask Irene when we met her, but she just threw up her hands and cried, "Stop! I'll start at the beginning"—and she did.
At thirteen, Irene Noblette made her debut in a professional show. "I must have been awful, but I was so stage-struck I couldn't think of anything else. Then followed years of stock companies until I met one Timothy Ryan. We were married, formed a team and joined vaudeville circuits. We were the type who stuck to the bitter end. Even while we saw vaudeville folding, we refused to believe it."
"Carefree Carnival" Days
"It was while we were living in San Francisco during the late twenties that we decided to look into this radio thing"—with a vague wave of her hand—"and they offered us a job without even an audition. "Because we liked radio, we stayed and finally landed on a wonderful show called 'Carefree Carnival.' That was the first time I'd ever heard of Meredith Willson, Tommy Harris, and Senator Fishface."
To date Irene has had several seasons of her own show, and regular spots on the Ransome Sherman and Rudy Vallee shows. "So don't look upon me as a newcomer," she grinned, "because I knew radio in the days when—"
Irene, who is now Mrs. Harold Edwin Knox, is as gay, informal, and chatty as you'd expect Irene Ryan to be. At present she's bubbling over with enthusiasm about her new home in Westwood.
"You don't know how much a home can mean to you after having been on the road for years. I love it so much, I hate to leave it for a minute."
Learning to Cook
It's a thrill to the comedienne to be able to discuss the price of meat with the butcher, and the laundry situation with the launderer. "I feel just like a bride," she giggled.
Because Irene is well known for her quivering lip, crying songs, we weren't happy until she had performed over the luncheon table for us. "I don't mind," she confided, "because strangers constantly ask me to cry. But a gal can't cry all of the time."
From where we sit, it looks as if Irene's "crying days" are over. She's a successful comedienne, a charming woman—"And best of all, a contented housewife, who likes to do her own work and is just learning to cook!"

Not all the critics were kind when The Beverly Hillbillies debuted in 1962. Granted, the first show was kind of like an extended joke about stupid yokels, with the worst laugh track in TV squawking in the background. But the Bunch from Bugtussle quickly rose in the ratings because people wanted to see the underdog beat the pretentious and/or not-terribly-honest city slickers.

Ryan doesn’t talk about ratings, or even the show, in an interview with the Newspaper Enterprise Association not long after the programme started. She talks about how television suddenly made her a household name. This appeared in papers on March 23, 1963.

IRENE RYAN—PERSISTENCE PAYS
Veteran Performer a Big Star Now—Has Tax Problems
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
HOLLYWOOD (NEA) — TELEVISION can put you to sleep, baby sit, keep you awake and entertain visiting relatives. It also can send a gal to heaven—show business heaven.
That's where Irene Ryan is.
“How do I feel about all this?” she said. “It's like I had gone to heaven.”
She's "Grannie" [sic] of the Beverly Hillbillies. Since the age of 11, when she won an amateur kiddie singing contest, she had pursued big time fame. Then — wham! — she's co-starring with Buddy Ebsen in the nation's top television show.
Suddenly, after all those years, Irene Ryan has discovered the real meaning of those words, “There's no business like show business.”
• • •
“HONESTLY,” she said, “It's so funny I sit and just laugh. Six months ago no one cared whether I was alive or dead. Now everyone I meet asks:
“ ‘How old are you, really, Grannie?’
“ ‘Well,’ I ask, ‘how old are you?’
“So you’ll never know,” she said. “Let's just say I'm older than Shirley Temple but younger than Sophie Tucker.”
• • •

SHE WAS sitting in a booth at the Brown Derby in Hollywood. In a high fashion gown, silk scarf over her head and diamond ring glittering on a finger, Irene looked about as much like Grannie as Sophia Loren looks like Ma Kettle.
She dropped a clue about her age.
“Honey,” she said, “I’m getting letters from people who remember me when I acted with a stock company at the Empress Theater in Omaha in 1925.” She kept repeating, “It's so funny.”
Funny, that is, in a great big wonderful way.
A year ago she was doing a night club act in a Seattle spot when word came from Hollywood that the Hillbillies had been sold to television. Suddenly, as we talked, a part of what was funny made Irene wince.
“Now, at my age,” she said, “all of a sudden I have income tax problems.”
• • •
EVERYBODY wants Irene for something. Her price has gone way up for personal appearances, and the tax now becomes a problem in determining personal appearances. Still, she flies out on week-ends with Donna Douglas and Max Baer because she can't say no, and besides it's good for the show. Buddy Ebsen, who plays Jed Clampett, doesn't like to fly, so he stays at home.
“We appear in costume,” says Irene. “That's the attraction.”
• • •
IRENE SERVED in vaudeville, stock companies, radio, movies, and in television roles.
In radio there was some success in “The Tim and Irene Ryan Show.” Tim was her husband, gone now.
She was always on her toes, always giving slick performances. But never a big, big star.
“But I loved show business,” she said, “every minute of it. Why? To really love show business you have to be of it, not just in it. That's me, honey. I'm of it.”
• • •
A $500 WIG and those duds she wears are about all Irene needs to transform herself into Grannie. There's make-up, sure, but it is 90% talent that transforms chic Irene into the role.
Out of character, and wearing slacks, a silk blouse, high heels, people who work on the show sometimes fail to recognize her.
About her talent, director Richard Whorf comments: “She's fantastic. She puts facial takes on top of facial takes.”
She's been a regular on television before, in Bringing Up Buddy, with Ray Bolger in Where's Raymond? But as Grannie, Irene finally has it made. She predicted the show would click even before air time.
“It's so simple—just good old-fashioned comedy,” she explains. “No one is neurotic; we solve no world problems, and there's no message about anything.” Except, for Irene Ryan, that “there's no business like . . .”

The years took their toll on The Beverly Hillbillies. The show finally became just too silly and was practically a comedy soap opera when it left CBS prime-time in 1970-71, an era where the network was dumping any show smelling of hay and hickory switches. Ryan died only three years later. She had a stroke on stage in a production on Broadway and passed away in hospital in Santa Monica six weeks later.

The Critics Have Enough

The critics doted on Mr Magoo. They loved Gerald McBoing Boing. All hail UPA, they said.

That was in the early ‘50s. By the late ‘50s, they had enough.

Here’s a review from the magazine of the British Film Institute from 1959:

HAM AND HATTIE No. 2 (Sailing and Village Band), U.S.A., 1958
Straining to be original, UPA cartoons are in danger of toppling into preciosity. The first part of this cartoon deals with Hattie, a small girl sailing her toy boat on a pond to the accompaniment of a simple song. The drawings are simple to match, so simple that they often become dull. The second section tells the story of Ham, who, with his dog, his cat, and his bird, provides his English village with a brass band to welcome a visiting dignitary. Although the mood is, if anything, more fey than in the first half, the drawings of the flag-decorated streets are delightful. Nevertheless, the freshness and spontaneity of previous UPA work is missing; the result is forced and outré.

UPA became all about artwork. Still artwork. There was not a lot of movement in Village Band and some of it was reused. Here are the streets the author referred to. Compare these first two drawings (granted they’re not in register).



The train animation gets reused. So does the drawing below. The train station is on an overlay, the foreground characters and characters behind the station are on separate cels.



See the townsfolk on the left? This is the first of three held drawings of them. They move less than Bullwinkle moose. Come to think of it, that green cat is from a Fractured Fairy Tale, isn't it?



Fred Crippin directed this short with designs by Jimmy Murakami, and a “color” credit to Jules Engel and Jack Heiter. Only two more Ham and Hatties were made. UPA lost its distribution deal with Columbia in 1959 then tried to peddle some Magoos on its own until the studio was bought in 1960.

Mother-in-Law of Tomorrow

“This king-size station wagon will comfortably seat every member of the entire family,” says the narrator in Tex Avery’s Car of Tomorrow (released in 1951). The station wagon has a front grille and side body portholes of a Buick.



The narrator lists the occupants of ersatz Buick. The husband, the wife (powdering herself), the maid, the kids (fighting), the dog (with its head out the window, tongue out), cat (the standard Avery design), canary...



Cue the mother-in-law joke.



By the way, the gag was borrowed for an episode of The Jetsons. How much did Hanna-Barbera steal from Tex Avery anyway?



The main narrator is Gil Warren, who voiced some spot gag cartoons for Avery at Warners. June Foray is easily recognisable as the female narrator.

The Cartoon That Jack Built

The most famous Jack Benny cartoon made at Warner Bros. is a bit of a disappointment.

Celebrity spoofs and references provided story and gag material for cartoons soon after sound became popular. Sometimes, ersatz versions of Hollywood and radio stars made up whole cartoons. Jack Benny began his regular radio show in May 1932, eventually playing a phoney version of himself. Cartoons from a number of studios soon began taking advantage of Benny and his characteristics. Let’s focus on Warners (including the Leon Schlesinger studio).

In Into Your Dance (1935), Captain Benny emcees an amateur show on a boat, while in I Love to Singa (1936), the host of a radio amateur show is Jack Bunny. Benny never hosted an amateur show, though he did play a showboat emcee in the 1935 film Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round. Neither of the cartoon characters mentioned sound or look like him, but the Bunny in Singa smokes a cigar just like Jack Benny.

The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos (1937) is a parody on the Community Sing radio show starring Milton Berle but features other radio stars of the day turned into animals. Included once again is Jack Bunny, though this time an attempt is made to make him sound like Benny. And it’s not a very good one by Tedd Pierce, a writer who did voice work at the studio for a while. Mary Livingstone and Andy Bovine also appear; cowboy actor Andy Devine appeared with Benny off and on for several years. Livingstone may be voiced by Sara Berner, who later had a semi-regular role on the Benny radio show; Bovine is likely impressionist Danny Webb. They perform a one-gag play based on a film; the second half of the Benny show in the ‘30s generally consisted of a parody of a movie.

A radio host named Jack Lescoulie, later one of the originals on the Today show on NBC, used to do a Benny impersonation on his show on KFWB called The Grouch Club. Lescoulie was hired to provide the impression in several Warners cartoons. One was Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur (1939), which features a caveman that doesn’t look like Benny and is identified with him only through the voice, his attitude to some extent, and his show-ending farewell line.

But there were other cartoons which had a more direct connection. Meet John Doughboy (1941) includes a gag about “the latest war weapon: a land destroyer, 100 times faster and more effective than a tank.” When it skids to a stops, it turns out to be Jack Benny’s Maxwell containing caricatures of Benny and his butler Rochester, no doubt designed by assistant animator Ben Shenkman, who specialised in celebrity caricatures. The gag here would be obvious to any radio listener—Benny’s car was the slowest thing on Earth. Benny removes the cigar from his mouth and turns to the camera. “Hello again, folks,” he says (Lescoulie is voicing him), a play on Benny’s “Jell-O again,” greeting on the radio show (which changed to “Hello, again” when he began plugging Grape Nuts Flakes in 1942). Rochester is voiced by Mel Blanc and the scene ends with Carl Stalling playing the five-note Jell-O signature from the Benny show. Neither star is mentioned by name. Both the scene and Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur end with the ersatz Benny aping the real radio Benny and saying “Good night, folks.”

Lescoulie-as-Benny can also be heard in Slap Happy Pappy (1940), again as a cigar-smoking rabbit named Jack Bunny, greeting the audience watching the cartoon with “Hello again, folks.” Bunny is about to bash a black Easter egg to bits when a Rochester chick (Blanc) pops out. And there’s a Devine sound-alike chicken (Webb) We get another cigar-smoking Jack Bunny rabbit “Hello Again”ing courtesy of Lescoulie in Goofy Groceries (1941). In this one, the cartoon ends with a stick of dynamite exploding, turning Bunny into Rochester (Blanc), who finishes the short spouting a reference to the “tattle tale gray” ad slogan of Fels-Naptha Soap (not a Benny sponsor, but director Bob Clampett loved radio references in his cartoons).

Benny makes a cameo appearance in Hollywood Daffy (1946). He’s at a claw machine digging out an Oscar, which gets dropped when a security guard runs into him while chasing Daffy. Blanc plays Benny. The routine reflects a running gag for several seasons on the Benny show where Jack was peeved that he had never been nominated for an Academy Award.

But the studio’s best attempt to parody parts of the Benny show probably came in Malibu Beach Party (1940). This short once again features Shenkman’s celebrity caricatures but the story by Jack Miller centres around Benny, who is again named Jack Bunny even though he’s a human and not a rabbit. Bunny’s smoking a cigar and the cartoon opens with him being cut down to size by Mary Livingstone (Berner). There’s a strolling Andy Devine (Webb) shouting “Hi-ya, Buck!” just like on the radio show, a bandleader named Pill Harris (Lescoulie again), tanned, smiling and curly-haired like Benny’s orchestra front man Phil Harris, and an appearance by “Winchester” (Blanc), who engages in Rochester-like banter and typical Benny show jokes like filling drink glasses with an eye-dropper. The cartoon ends with Bunny forcing Winchester to listen to his mediocre violin playing (by sitting on him), a variation of a gag lifted right from the Benny show. Stalling again adds the Jell-O signature to the score. Why Benny’s name kept being parodied while Mary’s wasn’t is a mystery that we will likely never solve.



This brings us to the cartoon we referred to at the top of the post, and we have to jump ahead a few years to the age of network television. Bob McKimson was now directing at Warners and his storyman Tedd Pierce got the idea of satirising “The Honeymooners” by turning all the characters into mice and calling it The Honey-Mousers. This 1955 release basically took all the catchphrases from the Gleason show and had Daws Butler and June Foray provide voices reminiscent of three of the comedy’s four characters. That was about as far as the satire went. There was no attempt to send up any of plots you’d find in a “Honeymooners” episode, nor Gleason’s bug-eyed takes (which would have worked well in animation); it was a garden-variety mice-versus-cat cartoon.

The cartoon must have been popular as another one with the characters followed the next year. And it seems to have inspired what was called a “switch” in vaudeville—take the same idea and give it a different spin. McKimson told historian Mike Barrier that Benny wanted the Honey-Mouser treatment. So Pierce turned the cast of the Jack Benny show into mice and wrote The Mouse That Jack Built.

There was a difference, though. In this cartoon, members of the Benny cast agreed to provide their own voices, including Jack Benny himself. Convincing them likely wasn’t difficult. Mel Blanc was a personal friend of Benny. McKimson lived on the same street as Benny, Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills. And Pierce had a bit of a connection, too. He drank at Brittingham’s, the restaurant/bar in Columbia Square on Sunset Boulevard adjacent to where Benny had made his CBS radio shows (the Benny TV broadcasts came from Television City on Fairfax).

Pierce had a golden opportunity to do a Malibu Beach Party-type send up of the Benny show; whoever designed the characters did an excellent job so they looked like mouse versions of the cast. Unfortunately, Pierce didn’t do an awful lot original with the concept and likely didn’t get any help from McKimson. He seems to have settled for the caricature itself being the gag and that wears thin rather quickly.

There are little bits of parody that shine through and the cartoon starts off well. Composer Milt Franklyn opens the short by incorporating the Kreutzer Etude No 2 into his sub-main title theme, the same music that Benny butchered on his radio show when receiving violin lessons from Professor Le Blanc (played by Mel Blanc). After the titles, there’s a shot of a stylised version of Benny’s real house on Roxbury Drive and a sign that’s a takeoff on Benny’s claim of being “star of stage, screen and radio.” A mini-sign is attached reading “Also Cartoons.” Cut to a Benny-like mouse who is given the bent wrists and flouncing walk Benny was famous for on television. But Pierce proves to be no George Balzer or Milt Josefsberg when it comes to writing for Benny, at least when he’s not using their material. The Rochester mouse makes a crack about Benny’s baby blue eyes. The best Pierce can muster is “They are nice, aren’t they?” And the sing-song question and answer between Benny and Rochester is far more sedate than what you’d hear on radio; McKimson needed to punch up their energy to compensate for not playing in front of an audience.

Fortunately when this cartoon was released in 1959, general audiences were familiar enough with Benny that they’d get the references. There’s a vault guarded by Ed, who is unseen to save money on animation (he is voiced by Blanc instead of Joe Kearns, who was the character most of the time on radio). There’s Rochester singing off-key. There’s the Maxwell. But all Pierce does is repeat radio/TV routines, treating them straight. The one nice bit of satire, my favourite moment in the cartoon, is when Don Wilson shows up to read the commercial. While he fits in the word “lucky” as in Lucky Strike cigarettes, Benny’s radio sponsor during his last decade or so, the spot appropriately refers to Warners cartoon characters:

If you’re feeling mighty lucky,
Bugs Bunny-ish and Daffy Ducky,
And tot you taw a puddy tat
There just one thing to do for that.

The plot also revolves around a cat that wants to eat the Benny mouse troupe, and appeals to Jack’s cheapness by inviting him to a free dinner at the Kit Kat Klub. Pierce fits in a wine pun where Jack exclaims that he likes “a good mouse-catel.” Jack and Mary stroll into the cat’s mouth, which slowly closes. Suddenly, Jack realises he’s been eaten (“Yipe!” he says in true Benny fashion) and yells for help.

Now, we get a nice twist. The cartoon fades out and in fades a live-action Benny, squirming in his chair and calling for help. Oh, he realises, it was all a dream. Or was it? We and Jack hear echoing violin music. Cut to a still photo of a real cat with the cartoon Jack and Mary escaping from a superimposed drawn mouth and running away and then through a mouse hole in the wall on the next shot. Cut again to the real Jack, turning to the camera with one of those expressions he became famous for on TV. Compare how he looks to how the Mouse Benny did it earlier in the cartoon.



The sight of Jack Benny in colour would have been fairly novel for many people in 1959. It loses its impact today.

The absence of Dennis Day hurt the cartoon a bit, but there may simply have not been enough time for him. Phil Harris, of course, left the show in 1952 to its detriment.

Anyway, the cartoon was a nice try for Warners but it should have striven for more than mere Benny duplication. When it did, the cartoon was very good.

The animators of this short were Tom Ray, Ted Bonnicksen, Warren Batchelder and George Grandpré, with layouts by Bob Gribbroek and backgrounds by Bob Singer, who is the only one in the crew still alive.

Incidentally, the short had one effect that lasts even today. It was viewed by a little girl named Laura Leff. She knew nothing of Jack Benny but liked the cartoon. So she started to learn about Jack Benny and set up a fan club. Today, the International Jack Benny Fan Club has a fine newsletter and a friendly presence on the internet, especially on Facebook.

Bugs Bunny, Wartime Icon

Bob Clampett once remarked to historian Mike Barrier “Bugs Bunny ... has never been loved the way he was during those war years ... Bugs Bunny was a symbol of America's resistance to Hitler and the fascist powers.”

Clampett may have a point, judging by a series of columns that appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer in early November 1942. The columnist’s subject was the war-time prosperity that hit the city; at times, his monologue reads like something out of a B detective novel. But among the things he talks about is Bugs Bunny. The press didn’t generally mention the rabbit back then, and then generally only when discussing film releases. These columns are one of very few places where there’s a reference to him relating to popular culture.

I’ve snipped out irrelevant text about crowded trolleys, tramping across city courtyards and “smoking with artificial nonchalance,” sticking instead to his copy involving Warners’ top cartoon star.

Money in Their Pockets
By FRANK BROOKHOUSER
THE PHILADELPHIA tune in tumultuous days of war is "Jingle, Jangle, Jingle."
It is a tune played on the cash registers of a city that has struck an unprecedented bonanza, a bonanza manufactured in far away countries by the evil ambitions of the world's No. 1 and No. 2 public enemies, Hitler and Hirohito.
It is a city which has a new cinema idol, an idol who is as rollicking and rambunctious as the people feel after a tough day's work, a rabbit named Bugs Bunny, who is the fair-haired boy of the cartoon shorts. A buck-toothed rabbit, who chews carrots, wants to know "What's cookin', Doc?" and is as tough and talkative as the Army and Navy will have to be to beat the Axis.
They both came in with the war, the boom and Bugs Bunny. ...
IN THE days before the little from the Land of the Rising Sun finally touched off the slow-rising tempter of America, Philadelphians waited for the good movies to reach the neighborhoods, legitimate theatre owners watched Broadway with bated breath for a big hit, and the Mastbaum was a colossal "white elephant."

Now, with money jangling in their pockets, Philadelphians hurry into the central city cinema palaces because the price differential is no consideration ...
Favorite spot of the service men is the Earle, where there are stage shows. The choice in pictures ranges from one extreme to another—something topical like "Wake Island" to genuine escape. And Bugs Bunny. Because we're not forgetting that carrot-chewing gentleman. He's the tough guy, typical of the feeling of the times. He doesn't get a cent for his work but he'll get the marquee before the cinema guys and dolls with big contracts.
"If we have to leave out an important star to make room for a 'Bugs Bunny Short', we'll do it every time," one official said.
SCORES of theatres have special 30-minute shows of Bugs Bunny cartoons periodically, presumably for the children.
"And if we advertise in advance," an official said, "the adult business always climbs."
It's all a part of changing Philadelphia, a great gold rush which resounds day and night to the tune of "Jingle, Jangle, Jingle," as the cash registers click merrily away.
And when Bugs Bunny gnaws at his carrot he has them in a fancy cigarette case now, his latest short reveals; no doubt a sign of the opulent times and asks, "What's cookin', Doc?" he isn't simply making conversation.
It's plenty, brother. Plenty in a city of plenty, a city of power, a city made lusty and loud by the evil ambitions of the gangsters Hitler and Hirohito.

Plenty of Warner Bros. cartoon characters were part of the war effort, in a way. Daffy Duck bashed Hitler with a mallet. Porky Pig blew up a “Nutzy” spy. Heads of the “Ducktators” ended up mounted on a wall thanks to an unpeaceful dove of peace. The Fuhrer fizzled against some gremlins that looked suspiciously like Leon Schlesinger’s staff. Bugs was in there, too, coming out on top of Hitler, Goering and the Japanese fleet in various cartoons. And it was about the time the war came around that he surpassed Porky Pig as the studio’s number one star and stayed that way until, well in a way, even today.

Carving the Pig

Want a surreal, unexplainable gag from a Warner Bros. cartoon? Then look no further than The Pest That Came to Dinner, from the Art Davis unit.

Porky spends the bulk of the cartoon battling Pierre the termite with “assistance” from I.M. Sureshot, the smiling dog exterminator. Pierre reduces everything wooden in Porky’s home to sawdust by gnawing on it. In one sequence, Porky ends up at the bottom of the stairs when the bannister is partially eaten, followed by crockery that bops him on the noggin.



The next scene has a truly bizarre gag. Pierre carves a replica of Porky’s head from the decorative ball at the end of the bannister—then the fake head sticks out its tongue at the pig. How? Why? Back in the early ‘30s, everything in a cartoon came to life. That had stopped by the mid-‘40s. It comes out of nowhere here. Its so unexpected and weird, it’s still funny, even if it may be disconcerting.



Davis is in too much of a hurry here. The gag is capped with a reaction from Porky, but Davis quickly fades out before the audience can get the full impact of the take.



George Hill wrote this cartoon. He arrived at Warners around February 1945 originally to help Warren Foster in the Bob McKimson unit but was transferred (with gagman Hubie Karp) when Davis became a director a few months later. Lloyd Turner, who ended up writing for the unit along with Bill Scott, related to historian Mike Barrier how Hill gave the Bronx cheer to producer Eddie Selzer and got fired (Hill had worked for the Fleischers in New York). Hill’s ending for the cartoon is superfluous and a little off-kilter. Toward the end, Porky and Pierre take revenge on Sureshot, which would have been a good way to end the cartoon; all Pierre had to do was make a wise crack to the camera. But instead Hill tags it with a scene where Porky and Pierre are in business together making furniture. What?! What brought that about? And why?

Don Williams provides some fun animation in this cartoon. Bill Melendez, Basil (Dave) Davidovich and John Carey are credited as well. The cartoon was released in 1947.