More trick and interactive endings, and some behind-the-scenes looks into both animation and television studios, provide this week’s program. All action comes from leading stars of Warner, Paramount, and MGM, with the added attraction of the final appearance by Terrytoons’ Dinky Duck, exploring new career options.
Fox Terror (Warner, Foghorn Leghorn, 5/11/57 – Robert McKimson, dir.) – A lively installment that features a new one-time worthy foil for Foggy and Barnyard Dawg, who is deviously clever and quite the operator, plus an additional new supporting player in the form of a lesser rooster, who, for obvious reasons of stunted vertical growth, is no match for Foggy’s position as ruler of the roost. A fox is in the vicinity, and Dawg has the chicken yard prepared, with an emergency bell reading “In case of fox, pull cord.” However, Dawg responds too late to a ring of the bell by a very small rooster, and when he arrives at the scene, the fox is nowhere to be found. The rooster attempts to communicate in pantomime about the threat he has seen, but Dawg isn’t good at charades, and entirely misinterprets the rooster’s cues. He takes the rooster around a corner, and then fills the audience in on his thoughts, informing us that the little fellow wanted a drink of water. Meanwhile Foghorn is setting out for the day, with fishing pole in hand for an afternoon’s recreation. Outside the barnyard gates, the fox spots him – and can size up a patsy when he sees one. A quick change into appropriate costume, and the fox appears, leaning against a tree and reading a racing form, in a square-knit outfit of a track racing tout. (This bit is an homage to Sheldon Leonard, who had originated the character of an all-knowing racing tout on The Jack Benny Program. Leonard would open the conversation with, “Hey, bud. C’mere.” Whatever his customers wanted to do or bet upon, Leonard would always respond with the catch-phrase, “Uh-uh”, and give them a hot tip on something better. Such information expanded from mere tips upon the horses to advice on just about anything, including, for example, advice on selecting the best table in a restaurant, based on analysis of the breeding of the trees and the woodcarvers, and whether the table had been “scratched”.) The fox, imitating Leonard’s read, asks where Foggy is going, and when Foggy reveals his wish to fish, he receives the expected “Uh-uh” from the fox. Why not go hunting, and take along a good hunting dog? Foghorn takes the suggestion, and slips a rope around Dawg’s neck, dragging him off into the woods – just what the fox was planning on. “Oh, he’s a goood one”, quips the fox to himself. The fox enters the chicken yard, trying to grab at several fowl to dump them into a sack. But the little rooster pulls the alarm cord again. Rope or no rope around his neck, Dawg comes racing from the woods, now dragging Foggy behind. Fox beats a hasty retreat, and is gone when Dawg jumps the fence, towing Foggy headfirst into the door of a bird house. Of course, all Dawg can see upon arrival is the little rooster, and again takes him around the corner, grumbling, “This kid sure is thirsty.”
Foghorn attempts to revert back to his original plans, but is met again by the fox, now in the outfit of a television emcee, who quickly ushers Foggy into a game show isolation booth as a contestant. (The booth is most popularly remembered from the rigged game show, “The $64,000 Question.”) Foggy is asked to recite a poem that contains the words “red” and “blue”, and to push a buzzer button within the booth when he gets to the key words. “Roses, I say, roses are red…”, recites Foggy, pushing the button – which is wired to a pair of dynamite sticks which the fox has slipped into Dawg’s jaws as he sleeps at his doghouse. The first stick explodes, charring Dawg’s lips and blowing out a tooth on one side of his jaw. Dawg rises, tracing the wires, then returns into frame carrying the buzzer button but minus the second stick of dynamite. “And violets are blue”, he mutters angrily, pressing the button. Back at the isolation booth, Foggy stands, the second dynamite stick stuck within his bill. POW!!! Half the booth is blown up, and Foggy’s body left sorely lacking in feathers, as Foggy proves unequivocally his relationship to Senator Claghorn on the Fred Allen show, uttering Claghorn’s radio catch-phrase, “Somebody, I say, somebody knocked.”
For his third scam, the Fox opens a crate containing a large Magic Folding Box. He tosses a bone into it to get the Dawg to jump inside, then folds the walls of the box over and over upon the Dawg, compressing him and the box to the size of a small paperweight. Foggy again comes along with fishing pole, and the fox assumes the disguise of an Indian fakir, selling magic fishing charms for good luck. Foggy purchases the paperweight, and is instructed to blow on it three times and toss it over his left shoulder. Foggy does so, tossing Dawg’s box into a well. But Dawg rapidly reappears from the well, dripping wet and weatherbeaten, to fold Foggy into sections, and toss him into the well. The little rooster is ringing the cord again, and Dawg again arrives too late, telling the rooster that he has something for him – and it ain’t a drink of water. Dawg pulls out a small mallet to bop the rooster with, but gets clobbered by a bigger mallet held by the rooster.
Foggy emerges from the well, and asks the dog (in reference to a popular song title), “How come ya do me like you do do do?” Dawg accuses Foggy of keeping him from guarding the chickens, but Foggy denies any such intent. Dawg insists somebody wants it, and sharp-eyed Foggy informs Dawg that he thinks he knows who that somebody is, spotting the foz making another entrance through a gate into the chicken yard. Dawg wants to try brute strength, but Foggy whispers a better idea into Dawg’s ear. Within the yard, the fox cuts away most of the length of the alarm cord, making its end too high for the short rooster to reach. Fox shows the rooster where his missing pull cord went, dangling the cut end of it from his hand. The rooster snatches at the end of the cut cord and tugs – and by cartoon miracle, the bell sounds by long-distance. The fox makes a retreat outside the gates, but meets up with an unexpected inquiry uttered in unison: “Hey, bud. C’mere.” Foggy and Dawg both appear in the outfits of racing touts, and ask fox where he’s going. Caught in an unexpected fix, fox has no answers, but merely mumbles in gibberish. “Uh-uh” respond Foggy and Dawg together. Both of them convert momentarily into twirling whirlwinds, performing a quick-change into the outfits of Frenchmen armed with dueling pistols. They stand with backs pressed up against both sides of the fox, step three paces apart, turn, and fire point blank at the fox in the middle. Fox loses most of his fur, and runs off in panic for the hills. Foggy and Dawg make another whirlwind change of outfits, transforming Foggy into the outfit of a British fox hunter, and Dawg into the reins of a trusty steed upon which Foggy can ride to give chase. As Dawg rears up on hind legs to gallop after the prey, Foggy informs the audience, “We fixed, I say, we fixed that fox, and that’s o-only the beginning!” But before they can race away, another high-pitched voice is heard, which we have not heard before. “Hey, bud…” The camera pans left to reveal the little rooster, also dressed as a racing tout. “Uh-uh”, he remarks, opening his racing form to the audience and giving us the eye, as we view the contents of the revealed page, reading “The End”.
• Watch FOX TERROR online by CLICKING HERE.
It’s a Living (Terrytoons/Fox, Dinky Duck, 2/57 – Win Hoskins, dir.) – The final theatrical appearance of Dinky – the only classic Terry character to appear under Gene Deitch’s supervision. While the film is made in widescreen Cinemascope, it opens after the cedits in traditional 4:3 ratio, in a woodland chase sequence that strongly resembles all the cartoons of the past. Just to make the sequence look accurate, animation of this fully-animated moment is unmistakably provided by the pencil of Jim Tyer. As Dinky finds himself pursued down a river by an alligator’s jaws (a setup he had actually faced in “Sink or Swim”), Dinky, much like Spoofy in his first appearance, calls out, “Wait a minute. WAIT A MINUTE!” The action of the waves and alligator freezes, as Dinky approaches the bottom edge of the picture frame, reaching for the edge as if to climb out. “I’ve been taking a beating in these cartoons for years.” The screen ratio widens, filling the screen with the image of the interior of a theater, as Dinky actually climbs out of the projected picture, and up the center aisle of the theater. “I’ve had it. I quit. Chase, chase, chase. Always getting thrown off a cliff. Getting beaten up by weasels, and alligators. How much do they think a duck can take? I shoulda quit years ago.” Dinky leaves the theater, wandering into the big city, and stops outside the window of a TV store. A screen pops on inside the window, where a cat sings in a high-pitched yowl about the merits of a comfy mattress he is resting upon. Dinky is enlightened by the advertisement – not about the product, but by the performer. “Boy what a soft job. I can do that. I got a squeaky voice, too!” Dinky races to the Go Go TV studios, determined to get a job on television.
Dinky boards a crowded elevator, to ride to the top floor executive offices of the company in a tall skyscraper. Outside the elevator, the needle of the floor indicator whirls in a blur, until the cab stops at its destination. Dinky exits the elevator, compressed from the speedy ascent like a black pancake. He finally pops back to shape, finding himself in an audition/waiting room, along with four other human would-be applicants. The humans all snub Dinky when the duck looks their way. The door of an inner office opens, and a small bespectacled talent scout peruses the group in wait for him. The four humans immediately break into their own respective random song and dance, including a rocker, an operatic soprano, a cowboy, and a fourth of indeterminate talents. The scout ignores them all, bit, spotting Dinky nearly being trodden upon below their feet, remarks, “Now here’s a fresh personality.” The background fades away, and morphs to a board room table, where the scout shows Dinky off as his “new discovery”. Another background transformation, and Dinky is put through a hurried screen test. The scout urges management to sign Dinky up, and just like that, Dinky is standing on a table, atop a contract five times larger than he is, taking in the fine print. “Whereas, said duck agrees that his entire services,…whether asleep or awake???…” reads the puzzled Dinky. “I knew ya’d like it. Just sign here”, urges the scout, grabbing up Dinky in his hand, dipping his beak into an inkwell, and using it to sign Dinky’s name to the contract like a fountain pen.
No sooner is Dinky signed, then his tasks begin. He is promptly thrust before a camera, to perform a live advertisement for the water resistance of the Draincoat raincoat. Dinky has one line of dialog: “Like water off a duck’s back.” This slogan is startlingly demonstrated, by dousing Dinky with a high-pressure fire hose, nearly drowning the duck in three feet of water. The water subsides, and pours out of Dinky’s ears like twin fountains. He is promptly grabbed up by another announcer, for a commercial upon the merits of a freezer in retaining the flavor of succulent fowl. Wet Dinky is placed into a freezer compartment, and immediately frozen into an ice cube. Next, he is handed to the salesperson of the Sweat Beam Super Sun Ray, a lamp guaranteed to bring the rays of the beach directly into your home. Its heat melts Dinky out of the ice, but toasts him to a red hot state over his entire body. The duck is handed to a caricature of John Cameron Swayze, well-known salesman in real life for Timex watches. Here selling Allproof watches, the announcer demonstrates with Dinky that the watch is heat proof (by fastening it around Dinky’s neck while still red hot), shockproof (by bopping Dinky and the watch headfirst against a table top), and waterproof (dunking Dinky in an aquarium tank, while a chorus sings a jingle about the watch running even better when it’s wetter). As drenched Dinky crawls out of the tank, a metallically-reverberating voice repeats over and over in menacing tones “Niripsa, Niripsa, NIRIPSA!” The unseen announcer (voiced by Allen Swift), continues, “You can duck your work, but you can’t duck a headache.” Dinky has no idea what is coming, and in a panic starts to run. But his path is blocked by a human hand holding a large bell, tipped so that Dinky runs right inside it. The bell is dropped over Dinky, then sounded loudly with a hard blow from a hammer. As the bell is raised, we see Dinky inside reverberating, while the announcer talks of “that ringing headache”. The audience is advised to take Niripsa – that’s Aspirin spelled backwards.
More voices are heard, calling for Dinky on the next set. But the duck can plainly see this dream life is not what it’s cracked up to be, and decides to flee before he cracks up himself. As spotlights shine down upon his path, Dinky makes haste with his feet. He manages without further repercussions to reach the street, and races back to the movie house, where the frozen image from his cartoon is still lit up upon the screen. “I’m back. I’m back!”, he shouts to the audience, and climbs back into the theater screen. Signaling with a wave to the alligator, Dinky urges him forward, saying, “Let’s go, buddy.” The action picks up right where it left off, with the alligator snapping at Dinky’s heels. Dinky turns to the audience and camera while swimming like mad, remarking in calm tones, “Oh, well. It’s a living,”
Ghost of Honor (Paramount/Famous, Casper, 7/19/57 – I. Sparber, dir.) – At Grauman’s Chinese Theater, a full-blown movie premiere is underway for a Casper cartoon. A limousine arrives carrying the featured star, who surprises the theater doorman by not waiting for the car door to be opened before exiting the vehicle. Casper is asked to say a few words about how he broke into animated cartoons. Casper states that he has always liked animated cartoons, and wanted to see how they were made. (Shades of “Makin’ Em Move”!) In a flashback, he flies to Hollywood, finding a decidedly West-coast looking Paramount Cartton Studio on the main studio lot (ignoring the fact that Famous Studios was actually back in New York as they had been for many years). Casper stops at the switchboard desk to see if he can go in to watch how it is done. The startled operator leaps into her phone receiver, and the switchboard plugs all dart in panic into random holes, lighting up the entire board with frantic calls. Casper first peeks in on the writers’ room, where two writers act out a Herman and Katnip-style gag. Of course, one sight of Casper laughing, and they either slam into a door or disappear in flattened form underneath it. Next, the animation department. Casper stands behind an artist, unseen by him, and asks how the drawings move. The animator flips a series of drawings to show how the different positions make Baby Huey seem to trot down the road. Again, however, when the artist spots who he is talking to, his facial features jump right off of his face, and all of him leaps into an inkwell, doing a Koko the Clown exit by pulling in the bottle stopper. In the background department, another artist completes a scenic painting, and places a cel of Spunky the mule upon it. When Casper is spotted, the artist leaps into the picture atop Spunky, and gallops awau upon him to the horizon.
The ink and paint department finds the girls busy painting away. Casper volunteers to fetch more paint, but a scream from one of the girls clears the room of employees. Casper is dejected, convinced they just don’t like ghosts around here. But someone in the room has other opinions. The characters, upon cels, sketch pads, and various artwork, rise one by one to observe the little ghost. Most of Paramount’s stable of characters make cameo appearances (with notable absence of Buzzy the crow, who was formally out of production, and who would only appear in a cameo in one subsequent film to frame a flashback to a past clip, and Audrey and the Popeye cast, who, being humans, might have been among the scared bunch). Though Audrey does not appear, her little dog Pal does, and is the first to greet Casper with a friendly slurp. Though no dialogue is spoken by the supporting players (which would have been more fun, but probably beyond budgets of the time), Casper observes them all, and remarks that they are a “swell bunch of characters.” (Harvey comics soon though so.) The studio staff peers in at the window, and are surprised to see Casper and the characters getting along. One of the writers observes that Casper is friendly, and the other is inspired to create a series of films featuring Casper, the Friendly Ghost (odd in that the writer never seems to have been previously introduced to Casper by name). “And that’s how I got into animated cartoons”, concludes Casper back in the present. Casper is asked to place his footprints in cement – but a ghost’s feet make no pressure points. Casper resorts to returning, wearing an old boot on one foot to press into the cement, while inconsistently writing his name in the cement above with his finger (how come that prints?) for the fade out.
Zoom and Bored (Warner, Road Runner, 9/14/57 – Chuck Jones, dir.), establishes a bit of a running gag, that sets us up for the terrific surprise ending. The starting chase has the coyote left in a five-foot tall trail of dust in the Road Runner’s wake. It is like a fogbank, and the coyote can’t see a trace of where he is running, so stops, with only his ears visible above the dust. The head plume of the Road Runner appears right next to him, and a “Beep Beep” makes the coyote jump out of his skin, his head now visible above the dust. He scowls fiercely at the bird, but suddenly becomes aware that something worse is wrong. He can feel nothing below his feet, and pauses to look down through the base of the lingering dust. Nothing below but thin air, and canyon floor far below. He has run right off a cliff, and takes the plunge. The dust finally clears in the meanwhile, revealing the Road Runner to be standing on solid ground right at the cliff’s edge. The coyote crawls and climbs all the way back up the canyon face, puffing with exhaustion as he gains a footing on the upper ledge – only to have another loud “Beep Beep” startle him again into a jump – right off the ledge again. Another dive. As the battered coyote rises, brushing the dust out of his fur, the Road Runner again pops up behind him with a “Beep Beep”, causing a third jump – which pops the coyote’s head clear through a low overhanging rock ledge directly above him.
In the finale sequence of the film, Wile E. takes aim at his prey with an Acme Harpoon Gun. The rope tied to the harpoon is, however, snagged around Wile E.’s foot. The coyote is thus dragged along with the flight of the harpoon, while the Road Runner avoids it altogether by making a sharp left turn, escaping the harpoon’s trajectory. The harpoon shoots out over a canyon, while Wile E. struggles with the line, finally un-knotting it from around his foot. But he is already out over the canyon, and quickly has to grab back his hold on the line to keep from falling. The harpoon enters a narrow drainage pipe protruding from the opposite canyon wall, dragging the coyote inside along with it. They emerge at the other end, following a desert road, with Wile E. playing the role of land-skier, dragged into the path of an oncoming moving van, and leaving a silhouette hole through its cargo container. The harpoon leaps off the road into another canyon, lodging itself in a cliff face. The coyote falls, dangling from the rope’s end, and winds up suspended right at the mouth of a train tunnel in the hillside. Right on schedule, a train arrives, smacking the helpless coyote a blow so strong, it propels the coyote into a flight at rope’s limit, curving up to the top of the cliff, where the coyote finally safely lands gently upon his feet. Wheezing, trembling, his legs barely able to sustain his weight, the coyote pants in exhaustion, looking down into the canyon and contemplating what has just happened to him. Who should sneak up behind him unnoticed but the Road Runner. We all know what is coming next – or so we think. But the bird looks out to us in the audience, then holds up a sign, on which is inscribed the merciful comment, “I haven’t got the heart.” After a pause to let us read, the Road Runner zips off over the horizon, leaving only the sign, which twirls around in the cyclonic force of the bird’s exit, to read to the audience, “‘Bye!”
• Watch ZOOM AND BOARD online by CLICKING HERE.
Hare-Way to the Stars (Warner, Bugs Bunny, 3/29/58 – Chuck Jones, dir.) – A semi-iconic installment in the recurring battle between Bugs Bunny and Marvin the Martian. It begins as something of a remake of the original “Haredevil Hare”. This time, a rocket base is constructed directly over Bugs’s hole. Bugs has had a bad night, swearing never to mix radish juice and carrot juice again. Grabbing a bath towel from a set marked “His” and “Hare’s”, Bugs climbs the ladder of his hole to take a morning dip in the lake. Instead of being a volunteer or experimental rabbit, Bugs winds up in the space ship by pure happenstance, continuing to climb from his hole right into the exhaust hole of the rocket. He comments from within that the hole seems awful long this morning. Unnoticed by him, the rocket blasts off into space, as Bugs continues to climb. “Hey, who plugged up the hole?” queries Bugs, as he unscrews the rocket’s nose cone. Peering out into the blackness of space, Bugs thinks the sun hasn’t even come up yet. “No wonder I’m sleep – – – eeee”, as he sees the Earth falling rapidly away. A comet whizzes by, and Bugs asks, “Hey, what was that?” A moment later, he is struck in the chest and picked up upon a passing satellite ball. Bugs can only comment in knowing fashion, “Ask a silly question…”
Bugs lands amidst a weird dimensional terrain of jagged zig-zag paths floating in space, punctuated with various platforms and structures that seem to be nothing more than latticed geometric lines – a background layout that rivals the creativity of “Duck Dodgers in the 24th 1/2 Century”. He attempts to seek directions and assistance from the passing Marvin, holding his newly-created scientific marvel – the little firecracker that we know as the good old Uranium PU-36 explosive space modulator. Catching up with the preoccupied Marvin as he screws the device into the vase of a humungous space cannon, Bugs asks if there’s someplace he can rent a saucer to get back to planet Earth. “The Earth will be gone in just a few seconds.” observes Marvin. “Oh, well, don’t bother then”, responds Bugs, thanking him for sparing him the expense of a rental. Then, reality kicks in with a jolt, and Bugs returns to Marvin, asking what he meant by that last crack. Marvin cooly remarks that he’s going to blow up the Earth. “It obstructs my view of Venus.” Another jolting reality check, which puts Bugs into quick reaction. A little sleight of hand as Marvin closes his eyes in anticipation of the explosion, and Bugs has unscrewed the modulator and made an escape with it. “Delays, delays”, grumbles Marvin, as he proceeds to a galactic gumball machine containing green pellets, labeled “Instant Martians – just add water.” Placing three of the pellets on the floor, Marvin sprinkles them with an eye-dropper. The first two instantly sprout a six-foot green vulture-like bird-creature with a small red sprout of feather from its forehead – a creature Jones had previously created for use in Porky and Sylvester’s Jumpin’ Jupiter.
Marvin fails to spritz quite enough fluid upon the third pellet, which results in a tiny bird only a third of the others’ size, until Marvin adds an extra drop, zooming the bird up to full dimensions. The newly-created goon squad is ordered to capture the Earth creature and retrieve the modulator. A series of chase gags follows. In one sequence, Bugs and one of the Martians hop upon a pair of jet-powered scooters and buzz across the never-ending pathways. Bugs slams on his brakes, letting the Martian pass him, who stops about twenty feet ahead. As the Martian reverses course, so does Bugs, placing them as distant as before but at opposite ends of the pathway. They dart back and forth, matching each other’s actions, until they finally manage to meet in the middle. Seeing that he has the Martian acting in a sort of “Simon says” mode, Bugs begins making various expressive poses and funny faces at the Martian, with the Martian matching every move. So Bugs turns his scooter sideways, aimed to go off the edge of the pathway. The Martian does the same in mirror-opposite direction. Both vehicles take off in a cloud of smoke. But Bugs pulls the old Road-Runner gag, hopping off his own scooter amidst the dust cloud and standing stock still, as only his scooter goes over the side. The Martian, however, goes over the edge riding his craft – and disappears in a fall into the nothingness of space. A trio of additional Martians pursue Bugs on foot through a maze of paths and doors. Bugs, in gentlemanly fashion, holds open one door to let the Martians pass through. In copycat fashion, the Martians hold open the next door to let Bugs pass through. Finally, Bugs holds open a trap door, letting the Martians pass through, and again fall to their unknown demise.
Marvin can see no recourse at these failures but to create more Martians, and turns to return to the gumball machine. Bugs meanwhile finally reaches a platform where several small flying saucers hover tethered to the platform, powered and ready for flight. Bugs hops in one and takes off. Uncertain of the controls, Bugs zigs and zags, then heads straight toward the gumball machine. He intercepts it just as Marvin reaches it, and winds up picking up the glass bowl full of the Martian pellets upon his chest. But in the course of the collision, resourceful Bugs somehow pulls a switcheroo. Instead of the glass bowl, Marvin finds his explosive space modulator resting in the slot for dispensing the pellets – except, its fuse is now relit. BOOM!!! The futuristic background is reduced to tatters and bent/warped objects, with Marvin himself looking equally warped. “Well, back to the old drawing board”, utters Marvin weakly.
Bugs’ saucer returns to Earth, and flies in low across a big-city landscape. Bugs remarks that it’s really wonderful to be back in “cilivization” – until his saucer collides with a sign advising of danger in a construction zone. Bugs is thrown from the saucer, together with the bowl of the Martian pellets. All fall down an open manhole into a sewer below, with a splash. Bugs emerges on the run from the hole, placing the metal lid atop the hole in attempt to seal it – but before running, pauses, observes the audience over his shoulder, and turns to us with a dire warning. “Run for the hills, folks, or you’ll be up to your armpits in Martians!” Bugs disappears down the road at full speed, as the asphalt pavement rumbles and cracks, the red head feathers of dozens of the Martians appearing through the cracks from below.
Mutts About Racing (MGM. Droopy, 4/4/58 – Michael Lah, dir.) – Droop and Butch in an auto race setting. Though there are moments of Avery-like action, I’ve tended to think of this as one of the weaker episodes of the late series, with several gags that feel old or misfire, and an ending that devolves into a bit of a “preachment”. This was the day and age of the Italian sports/muscle car, so both drivers have their own take on the trend. Butch approaches the starting line in a 2 1/2 liter hand-tooled Pastrami special. The track announcer mentions, “This car is all motor”, which Butch exhibits by flipping the entire chassis open, to reveal and engine block that extends from stem to stern. “Buzz” Droopy now arrives, driving a 2 1/2 liter, 3.5 Pizza 8, a pipsqueak red buggy that looks like a toy compared to Butch’s souped-up number (and proves it, when Droopy winds it up with a key). Butch picks up Droopy and his whole vehicle, pops open its hood to reveal a flame, and usus it for a cigarette lighter. The flag is down, and the race begins, with Butch zooming off with such force, he pops the mainspring out of Droopy’s hood.
A first of several weaker gags makes the film at first appear to be headed for being nothing other than a “Tortoise and the Hare” remake. Butch is so far ahead, he takes time out for a hearty meal at a local diner. As he is about to chow down on his first hamburger, Droopy passes as seen through the diner window. Butch scarfs down the remaining burgers, and slurps up six bottles of soda pop on one swallow through straws. He jumps into his car, but has to pause for a brief moment, disappearing behind a corner of the building to utter a Tex Avery burp. (The only mild laugh in close to a minute of footage.) Butch quickly takes the lead again from Droopy, but blows out a tire. He disguises his vehicle with a switch that activates a Towne Car roof and windshield, and himself dons a wig of feminine curly locks. (Interesting how long stock props would remain in the Hanna-Barbera arsenal, as the exact same wig design can be seen again in use in H-B’s first feature, Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear during the “St. Louie” number – giving away the heavy presence of ex-MGM-ers in such later production.)
Posing as a damsel in distress, Butch sweet-talks Droopy into changing the tire for him. Then, when it is fixed, Butch slaps the wig down on Droopy, and calls him a sucker. Butch slams a foot down on the accelerator, but gets nowhere. Droopy passes right by him, stating in a somewhat somber tone, “Don’t forget your jack” – which is still holding the rear wheels of Butch’s car off the ground. Various gags which appear during the remaining course of the race include the old-as-the-hills painting a tunnel on the side of a mountain face – with no surprises. A gag entirely inconsistent with what has preceded it has Butch pull out an engine block from under Droopy’s hood, and hide with it behind the bushes. (What happened to Droopy’s wind-up mainspring?) Yet Droopy’s car takes off as if nothing has happened, while the puzzled Butch lets the engine block drop upon his foot. (This sequence provides another artifact and link to later H-B television product, reused for the ending of “Lion-Hearted Huck” with a better payoff – when Huck starts his vehicle, the disconnected engine block starts up under the lion, carrying him away into the air, with the fan blade acting as a propeller.) Another gag has Butch push a large billboard into the road, containing a view of a scenic national park road disappearing over hills. Droopy drives right into the billboard view and off into the distant mountains, while Butch pushes the billboard with Droopy still in it over a cliff. (Of course, this would again have a reappearance in H-B television product, with Yogi Bear appearing in his opening credits each week, driving a jeep into a Kellogg’s billboard with a scenic road background, then reappearing in another billboard under lettering of Yogi’s name, still holding the Kellogg’s lettering he has nabbed from the first billboard.)
No explanation whatever is provided as to how Droopy gets out of the billboard. Instead, we get an embarrassing animation shortcut where a single still drawing of a beach beauty in sunglasses reading is passed off as alive through what seems an interminably-long shot (come on, guys, this is a theatrical cartoon, not Crusader Rabbit!), and Butch, taking time out to flirt a la Max Hare, hears a radio announcement on the race, indicating that the sure winner seems to be Buzz Droopy. Butch’s jaw drops to the sand in a standard Avery pose. He is quickly seen stepping on the gas to make up for lost time. Here, the cartoon begins to feel like an instructional safety film, with several sequences showing first a traffic sign, then the consequence of not following it. Roaring through a “Cattle crossing” sign results in a cow on top of Butch in the driver’s seat. Ignoring of a no passing over yellow line sign puts Butch in a head-on into the radiator of an oncoming truck. (To Lah’s credit, whenever I encounter view of a truck rising over an inclined grade, I think either of this film or of similar shot in Goofy’s “How To Be a Detective”.) Finally, as Butch ultimately passes Droopy, he turns his head to stick his tongue out at his competitor, ignoring another road sign reading “Dead End”. The inevitable crash, and Butch winds up in traction in a hospital bed, even before the race is over. The end of the race is tuned-in on the hospital room TV set, where Droopy takes the $100,000 prize unopposed. His few words to the television audience are “Safe driving sure pays off.” (I told you we had a preachment – not subtle by a long shot). Butch remarks from his bed, “Aw, shut up”, and reaches for something to fling at the set. Unfortunately, it is a metal weight holding up his busted limbs, and disturbance of the weight flips Butch topsy turvy and upside down, knocked for a loop and with his tongue handing out, his face close to the TV set. In a final exhibition of screen consciousness, Droopy repeats the H-B gag from “Pecos Pest”, reaching his own hand out from the TV screen, to repeatedly wet his thumb on Butch’s extended tongue, the better to count out his $100,000 with.
• Watch MUTTS ABOUT RACING online by CLICKING HERE.
Whoa Be Gone (Warner, Road Runner, 4/12/58 – Chuck Jones, dir.) – Another go round in the pursuit that never quits, which receives honorable mention for its ending. A traditionally-brilliant series of mishaps with unexpected payoffs. A running gag has the coyote falling so often into the same canyon, he is leaving imprints in the canyon floor atop his own previous imprints. So he rigs up a trampoline on the spot to keep it from happening again. On his third fall, he hits his expected mark – but goes right through the trampoline canvas as if it were made of paper, for another crash. Later in the film, he rigs up a circus-style “slide for life”, attempting to balance upside-down upon a tight wire by way of a crash helmet with a small wheel affixed on top. He no sooner gets himself in a balanced state atop the wire and ready for release, when the wire snaps under his weight. He again leaves a deep imprint in the canyon floor, but to make things worse, the fallen wire drapes over some high-voltage electrical wires, with the loose end of the wire falling inro Wile E’s silhouette hole – lighting the coyote up like a neon sign. Finally, a can of Acme do-it-yourself tornado seeds (just add water), and a water pistol. (Jones was really into the science of dehydration this year.) A defective water pistol ejects its load downwards through the handle instead of at the seeds left in the road, dousing Wile E’s entire seed can. The coyote can’t escape the resulting vortex, and is swept over an abandoned Army mine field, exploding each mine under him along the way. The Road Runner appears in the foreground over this repetitious sight, hanging from a curtain pull, with which he pulls down the traditional “That’s All Folks” card for the fade out.
• Watch WHOA BE GONE online by CLICKING HERE.
Ghost Writers (Paramount/Famous, Casper, 4/25/58 – Seymour Kneitel, dir.) – A cheater, that sort of wants to be “Ghost of Honor” all over again. Story again takes place at the Paramount cartoon studio – still looking as if on a West-Coast studio lot, using the same introductory shot from the preceding film. Inside the hallowed halls are various artifacts of the industry, displayed in museum-like settings – a “Gag File”, depicting a metal file bent at right angles in two places. A pistol under glass in a fire box, with the inscription, “In case you’re fired, break glass.” A water-cooler for the writers – but instead of water, it is loaded with a giant bottle of aspirin. Beneath a poster of Casper on the wall, two writers bounce ideas off each other, as one paces the floor, while the other stands ready to perform typing chores (again working off the fiction that stories are plotted in written script form). The setup is excuse for use of extended clips from three of Casper’s best from the early days following his promotion to a regular series – “Once Upon a Rhyme”, “To Boo Or Not To Boo”, and “Casper’s Spree Under the Sea”. Two plots are rejected, for the alleged reason that Casper hasn’t found a friend.
The third has him find a goldfish friend, and is thus promising enough to set to paper, using the old gag of the typewriter carriage popping out of its mount at every “ding”, to be slapped back into position by the writer’s hand to type the next line. Now, the writers claim they need a good ending. They toss ideas back and forth about Casper being chased by a shark, caught in a fisherman’s net, finding a sunken treasure… Meanwhile, the image of Casper on the wall poster comes to life, listening to and assessing all of these suggestions. Suddenly, Casper leaps off the poster, “Pardon me, fellas. I’ve got a swell idea for an ending”, he says to the writers. “HE’S FOR REAL!!”, shout the two gag men in unison, clambering inside a roll-up desk and closing the top upon themselves like a turtle shell, then extending their feet out the bottom, to carry the desk away out the studio doors and down the road. Casper appears behind them in the doorway, and remarks, “Gollee, that was just what I was going to suggest for the ending.”
I’ll be attending a Jay Ward screen event hosted by Jerry this weekend, cutting into my usual writing time, so we’ll take a brief one-week hiatus from these posts next Wednesday. We’ll thus resume in two weeks, moving into the waning days of the theatrical short.
