Half of our episodes presented today wait until the end of the film to fall into the category of films under discussion – involving custom iris-out gags that defy the plane of existence upon which the characters perform, a few allowing for breaking-the-fourth-wall interaction of character with audience. Two provide for interplay between animator and character. And one allows for character to try his own hand at one of the routine duties of a theater projectionist. All again evidence that these characters know they are on a screen, and stand prepared to use this edge to their greatest advantage.
Saved By the Bell (Paramount/Famous, Herman, 9/15/50 – Seymour Kneitel, dir.) – The formula was beginning to take shape for what would become the Herman and Katnip series. Katnip had not yet acquired his voice or traditional brown fur – instead, a prototype black cat stands in his place, first seen in a prior episode, “Naughty But Mice”. Herman is this time not a family relative of the mice terrorized by the cat’s attacks, but a door-to-roor salesman of cat bells – with a special introductory offer to provide free installation of the musical alarm around the cat’s neck. Otherwise, the episode is largely indistinguishable from those that followed.
Herman’s first attempt at installation utilizes an auto jack to prop up the head of the sleeping cat, in hopes of tying the bell around the cat’s neck. It fails when the jack lever falls loose from its safety catch, jostling the head of the cat awake. The cat slams the bell over Herman, but sawing sounds within rouse the cat’s curiosity. He lifts the bell to find Herman cutting through the floor with a small saw, and, when caught in the act, Herman bends the saw to slap the cat in the face. An attempt to pin the cat’s neck down with a pitchfork fails to hold. The cat chases Herman into a mousehole, but Herman reappears through a knothole in the floorboards below the cat’s head – another perfect position to toss the bell’s fastening strap around the cat’s neck. Without looking as he tosses, Herman launches the strap through the hole, then catches the other end of it as it falls within reach, tightening the strap with a buckle.
Job done – or so Herman thinks. The clever cat has pulled back, substituting a wooden pole where his neck should have been to take the bell. Herman, hearing no bell, blindly walks right into the cat’s open mouth, using his uvula as a punching bag (a gag borrowed from Tweety Pie in “I Taw a Putty Tat”). He escapes just in time, causing the cat to bite his tongue. Herman gets the cat caught up upon a spinning wagon wheel, then drops a mallet into the cat’s way to knock him out cold. Using a blacksmith’s bellows, Herman fashions a new collar of steel for the bell out of a hot horseshoe, hammering it in place around the cat’s neck. The mice feast in celebration of Herman’s feat, and when the cat awakens and approaches, easily retreat back to their mousehole with grace, forewarned of the cat’s approach. Herman makes ready to take his leave to make further sales elsewhere, but, without explanation, the cat waits outside, somehow having managed to remove the horseshoe collar. He again slams the bell over Herman, and catches him inside, clinging to the clapper. But Herman pulls a final stunt, shoving the bell into the cat’s throat, causing him to swallow it. Now, the cat performs a sort of conga dance, intermittently wriggling his torso in hopeless effort to shake the bell out of his digestive system, and disappearing over the horizon, while Herman, his sales suitcase in hand, dances across the scene in the foreground to the bell music, pausing a moment as an iris begins to close upon the scene, to step through the circle just before it closes. The blackened frame behind him fades in to the Paramount mountain, and Herman keeps right on dancing in the foreground, across the base of the mountain, and out of the scene to the fade out. (This conga ending was likely inspired by the lost ending to Tex Avery’s Lucky Ducky, discussed a short time ago in this article series.)
Rival Romeos (Terrytoons/Fox, Heckle and Jeckle, 11/7/50 – Eddie Donnelly, dir.) – Not to be confused with a Disney Oswald episode from which it snitches its title. Normally, we expect to see our favorite talking magpies in complete accord and harmony with one another – a well-oiled team of mayhem-doers. However, in one of possibly only two episodes in which the birds ever worked at cross-purposes to one another, we find one thing that can place them in a position of every man for himself – affairs of the heart. This leads to one of the funniest and finest-animated episodes of their career, artwork and timing nearly matching some of the best work of larger rivals such as Warner and Famous. Even voice work by Roy Halee is exceptionally convincing and natural for the birds, giving them standout personality. Seemingly the only flaw is the voicing and presentation of the female guest character, as the studio appears to have been hamstrung as to a choice of personnel for a feminine Southern dialect, having only one actress who recurrently provided same in this and other films in similar unconvincing fashion (for example, Squirrel Crazy). Oddly, IMDB provides no guidance as to who this actress was – nor as to the voice of Pearl Pureheart in the Mighty Mouse films, presenting the likelihood she was one and the same. Perhaps they could have done better if they had mined some talent from the ranks of The Satisfiers, who continued to provide vocal arrangements for Dinky cartoons and some Mighty Mouses of the period.
Spring is n the air, and all the species are pairing off to pitch woo. The magpies joke between themselves, as Jeckle asks, “I say, can you imagine some female trying to snare us?” “What a chance”, laughs Heckle. But no sooner said than did, as a shapely white bird (a dove, perhaps) struts past them, making both magpies’ eyes bulge out. The girl drops a handkerchief, and the magpies engage in a rough and tumble brawl to retrieve it, emerging from a cloud of dust with each magpie holding a torn half of the cloth. In unison (multitracked, since both birds were voiced by the same person), the magpies both ask “Pardon me. Is this yours?” They receive an invite to the girl’s home, as she refers to them in Southern belle drawl as “My great big handsome Romeos.” Both magpies melt from internal heat into respective puddles. Reviving as she gives them a farewell wink, the magpies in their haste crash into one another. They chuckle nervously. Heckle states, “She thought we’d fall for that romantic stuff.” “Silly of her, wasn’t it, old boy?”, responds Jeckle. They bid each other goodbye, as if going off their separate ways – but both head to opposite doors of the same tree, where they maintain adjoining apartments. Heckle dons a fedora, while Jeckle puts on a straw hat and monocle, and both add a spritz of cologne. Heckle grabs a handful of posies and attempts to exit his room, only to be tripped up at the doorstep by Jeckle, who swipes the flowers. Jeckle is already carrying a gift-wrapped surprise package of his own, and appears with both gifts to knock at the girl’s doorstep. The door to the home opens, where, to our surprise, we find Heckle already inside, who announces, “She’s not in”, then grabs back the posies, slamming the door to present them to the girl. When Jeckle persists in knocking again, Heckle rigs a wire from the electric doorbell to the doorknob, giving Jeckle a powerful multicolor electric shock when he tries the knob. After hearing the sound of an explosion from the shock, Heckle reopens the door, finding Jeckle nowhere to be seen, but his package still on the porch. Heckle now absconds with this too, presenting it also to the girl. However, the box springs open, revealing Jeckle inside, well and sound, and extending his lower lip to add to the effect of his straw hat, in an impression of French romantic lovemaking a la Maurice Chevalier.
As Jeckle attempts to get comfy with the girl on the sofa, Heckle tells him he’s wanted on the phone outside. A convenient phone booth of sorts has appeared just outside the front door, and Jeckle enters. Heckle slams the booth door behind him, and nails it shut – then lights a skyrocket strapped to the back side of the booth. The entire booth launches straight into space as if destined for orbit. Heckle returns to the living room, seats himself on the opposite end of an ultra-long sofa from the girl, and little-by-little tiptoes his way toward the girl on the tips of his fingers. But before he can reach her, a crash is heard through the roof, and down falls Jeckle into the room, minus the phone booth and seemingly none the worse for wear, just in front of Heckle. “Shall we dance?”. Jeckle asks the girl. This leads to perhaps the best timed and funniest sequence of the film, rivaling the surprise-element of a Tex Avery installment, as Jeckle takes the dance floor with the girl for a waltz. As the two circle the floor, never missing a beat in their steps, Heckle makes all manner of surprise attempts on Jeckle’s life. A swing at Jeckle’s head with a mallet. A thrown stick of dynamite that takes out a section of wall. A snapping bear trap. Five thrown daggers that lodge into the wall. Random swings with a baseball bat, that rebound off the door frames, smacking Heckle himself in the head. Heckle finally succeeds in throwing a sack over Jeckle, dragging him outside, and packing him in a mailing crate, addressed to Mexico, which is deposited in the local mailbox. Clearly this gag is borrowed from Porky and Charlie Dog’s “Little Orphan Airedale”, with a payoff that could likely have played even funnier in the hands of Chuck Jones. There is a knock at the front door. Heckle opens it to find Jeckle returned, in a full Mexican outfit, bringing Heckle a present from South of the border – a live bull! The gag backfires, as the bull isn’t too picky about who he chases – especially when Jeckle accidentally kisses him when the bovine appears unexpectedly in a doorway. Both magpies wind up on the run, while the girl seems to take the whole idea of a stampede through her living room in stride as good fun entertainment. The magpies race for the front door, smashing through it and taking it with them. The bull catches up from behind, and butts both magpies and the door sky high, sailing in an arc into a nearby pond, leaving the magpies dunked and drenched. The two stand up in the shallow water, their hats gone, and only Jeckle’s monocle remaining. “That settles it”, says Heckle, “I’m through with women for good.” “Me too, old boy”, says Jeckle, and the two extend hands for a handshake, their friendship restored. An iris out almost closes. But the respective hands of the magpies reach out for the edge of the circle, just preventing it from shutting entirely. They have spotted something out of the corner of their eyes, and push back open the circle, to pop their heads through, and oogle a strutting buxom canary strolling past the screen on the audience side, strongly resembling Jenny Wren’s Mae West act from Disney’s “Who Killed Cock Robin?” The magpies are smitten again, and thrust the iris open, long enough to allow us to see them again return to their apartments to doll up. Both birds are seen simultaneously in a split-screen shot, hats restored and applying the cologne again, as they turn toward the audience, Heckle remarking, “Here we go again.” They simultaneously race outside, colliding with one another, and end the film in a heap on the ground, seeing stars in a happy daze.
Goons From the Moon (Terrytoons/Fox, Mighty Mouse, 4/1/51 – Connie Rasinski, dir.) – The title is actually a misnomer – as the invaders come from a traveling planet which comes to a stop next to ours and lowers a gangplank. An invasion force worth of H.G. Wells descends – of multicolor cats with a variety of varying physical “extras”. Many have the equivalent of bats’ wings. Others have wheels instead of feet – one even gets a “flat tire”, and is able to apply a tire patch and pump his foot up again. They also carry a variety of space weapons, including a bubble gun that catches mice in soap bubbles, to be floated upward to a cloud where other cats wait with pins to pop the bubbles and nets to catch the mise in. Another gun-like contraption uses a boot on a hinge to kick mice into the air, where other flying cats catch them. The panic is broadcast in alarming radio form by a chain-smoking reporter mouse voiced like reporter-columnist Walter Winchell. In an effective scene well-angled for dramatic effect, several cats squeeze their way inside the transmitter tower atop the radio station, travel down inside the center pole, and the camera sweeps angularly down the building face to the front entrance, where the cats exit carrying the radio announcer on his desk and chair, still in the middle of broadcasting the rumor that the radio station was being invaded!
The power of the broadcast media is also lampooned in another shot, as another mouse is abducted from his living room along with some of his furniture including a TV set – and is too involved in watching the invasion on the TV broadcast to note that it’s happening to him in real life. Of course, the call goes out to Mighty Mouse. I had believed this to be the first use of the unusual entrance scene for mighty, until an observant blogger in the course of these posts noted a quite similar entrance used in “The Wicked Wolf” – so this would mark the gag’s second time around. An animator’s hand paints in Mighty on a blank sheet of paper, riding atop a Nike missile. While he is still only halfway painted, Mighty sings at the unseen artist, “Hurry up! I have a job to do!” Mighty finally makes his grand entrance, steering the missile into an aerial squadron of the cats. As isolated cats fly at him in solo attack, Mighty becomes unusually playful, dispatching each one with a mere flick of his finger. A cat uses a more traditional anti-aircraft gun from the ground. Mighty merely catches the bullets in his mouth and spits them back. One cat’s nine lives have to be yanked back into his chest by the cat to keep going. Another Earth weapon is employed by the cats – a cannon is fired. Mighty catches the shell, reloads it into the cannon, and turns it on the cats. As they lay in a heap on the ground, Mighty uproots a large tree, inverts it, and uses the foliage to sweep the cats neatly away off a cliff. What’s left of the cat air force is socked back to the planet they came from. Then Mighty delivers a super-punch to their planet itself. The planet bounces off of various stars, lighting them up like targets in a pinball machine. Then the planet catches on the point of the crescent moon, punctures, and deflates, to hang from the moon like a limp teabag. Now they can correctly be called “goons from the moon”! Mighty is seen through an observatory telescope waiving farewell, as he soars off into the heavens, in wait for his next adventure.
Droopy’s Good Deed (MGM, Droopy, 5/5/51 – Tex Avery, dir.) receives honorable mention. A strange premise puts Droopy and Butch (sometimes interchangeably called Spike in previous years, though the tendency was away from such name by this time, due to the recurring roles of another Spike in the Tom and Jerry series) in competition once again. Butch, a homeless bum, discovers a boy scout jamboree event to pick the best scout, with a prize including an all expense-paid trip to visit the President in Washington D.C. Butch takes the place of the scout competing against Droopy, and attempts all manner of methods to upstage or destroy his competitor. Many racial gags are frequently censored on this film’s rare presentations, mentioned below. The scouts first begin by lighting a campfire. Butch tries to plant a stick of dynamite in Droopy’s fire, but is caught in the act. He attempts to conceal the stick behind his back, but gets the fuse lit by the fire accidentally in the process. A mirror behind him discloses the aftermath of the explosion – a denuded rear. A lightning storm causes Droopy to warn not to stand under trees, as a bolt blasts a tree away, almost taking Butch with it. However, the boy scout manual also says lightning never strikes twice in the same place. Butch thus races to the very spot where the tree was stricken – and is promptly blasted by a second bolt, into a charred black mess, with the accompanying music of Stephen Foster’s “Swanee River”. (With modifications, this gag would be borrowed for the ending of Paramount’s Fido Beta Kappa).
In attempting to cross a stream adjoining a waterfall, Droopy climbs out on the end of a log which covers only half the width of the water. Butch follows with a saw, cutting away Droopy’s end of the log. Droopy’s end stays put in the middle of the steam – and Butch’s section goes over the falls. Butch next booby-traps a log cabin, setting a fire inside, running out the back door, and shouting in a feminine voice where Droopy can hear for someone to come save her. Droopy enters the burning cabin, and reappears, carrying a damsel in distress never before seen. Butch is so stricken by the lass’s beauty, he races himself into the cabin to see if there are others to rescue. The whole place goes up in flames, with Butch charred to black again. Droopy reappears at the door, asking him, “Hey, Blackie. Any more babes in there?”
Butch poses as a rich man, dropping a wallet in Droopy’s path that he knows the honest scout will pick up – loaded with dynamite. Butch repeats much of the globe-trotting speed-escape action in the manner of the wolf in “Dumb-Hounded”, exiting to a hotel room somewhere in another state or country, only to have Droopy knock at the door and return the wallet – in time for another charring explosion in Butch’s face. Butch next disguises as a little old lady wanting to cross the street. He allows Droopy to escort him halfway, then tosses Droopy in the path of an oncoming streetcar. Butch runs to the lobby of a nearby building to avoid connection with the expected horrid accident. Amazingly, the streetcar mows him down in the lobby.
A real rich man loses his hat in the wind. Butch stuffs a bomb in the hat before Droopy can reach it. Droopy retrieves it, and is offered a reward by the man. Butch’s eyes turn to dollar signs at the sound of a reward, and, forgetting about the bomb, he pushes Droopy aside to claim the reward. The bomb explodes while the mam is counting out money from a stuffed wallet, leaving both Butch and the man charred in blackface, and the money transformed into cinders. The man’s voice changes to Southern dialect as he continues counting the ragged bill fragments: “…One hundred twenty, seventy two, nine billion trillion…and two bits.” Finally, Butch poses as a baby, about to fall off the top of a skyscraper. Droopy climbs up inside the building, discovering the “baby” wants his bottle at the end of a flagpole. Droopy steps out on the pole, while Butch saws nearly through the pole’s base. But the pole refuses to sever, and Droopy returns with the bottle. In Wile E. Coyote fashion, Butch tests the strength of the pole himself – and snaps it off. Droopy races downstairs with a baby carriage, catching Butch with its strong springs, and returning the bottle. The act of heroism defeats all chances of Butch’s victory, and wins Droopy the prize. Our hero travels to Washington, enters the White House, and the door to the oval office. Then, the music of off-key strains of Harry Truman’s favorite, “Missouri Waltz”, are heard within the room. The camera finally enters, panning across the room, but finding it unoccupied – except for Droopy, seated at the piano, batting out the tune. Droopy turns to the audience, and remarks, “Well, who did you expect to see? The president?”
• You can try watching the whole film HERE.
Wicket Wacky (Lantz/Universal, Woody Woodpecker, 5/28/51 – Walter Lantz, dir.) – The cartoon isn’t incredibly exceptional, but features a trick ending. Woody trespasses on the grounds of an estate, to engage in a pastime of a game of croquet. His above-ground efforts, disturb a quiet afternoon in the underground living room of J. Goofer Gopher, where he is attempting to catch up on his reading of “The Good Earth” and a local newspaper called “The Daily Dirt”. Goofer begins by bouncing Woody around above, first by jabbing a broomstick into the ceiling of his underground tunnel under Woody’s feet, then by repeated leaps using his head to raise the dirt under Woody above. The second method proves a problem for Goofer, when he comes up under a large metal roller used for flattening the greens. The impact leaves Goofer with a concave cranium. Goofer finally comes to the surface to investigate, directly under Woody’s ball, spoiling his shot. Woody tries the shot again, but Goofer again raises the earth just ahead of the wicket, causing the ball to roll right back to where it started. Goofer then begins uprooting the wicket and all the target frames from the green, then shows his face to directly address Woody in gibberish about the bird’s disturbing of the peace. Woody doesn’t take kindly to this, and begins attempting to attack Goofer below with the blade of a shovel. Goofer stays one jump ahead of the shovel blade, by shifting his front teeth onto the shape of a power drill for fast boring. Those teeth must be plenty strong, as proven when Woody’s shovel begins to cut off Goofer’s escape forwards and backwards. Goofer finds the solution by merely biting through the shovel blade like a can opener, leaving a gaping hole cut in the center of the blade, so that it misses Goofer entirely every time Woody violently plunges it into the earth.
Woody changes tactics, launching shots off at Goofer with the croquet balls. A good cutaway view below the earth follows the ball and Goofer in a zig-zag path, as the ball trashes every piece of furniture in the underground tunnels. Goofer finally comes to the surface again, where Woody is waiting to grab him. Goofer easily escapes, by peeling back strips of Woody’s glove off of one finger like a banana peel, then taking a bite on his finger. Goofer runs through a one-board gap in a picket fence, and Woody sticks his head through the hole. Uphill from the fence, Goofer removes a chock from under the metal roller seen before, allowing it to roll downhill into the edge of the fence, pushing the pickets together as if they were a sliding curtain, and trapping Woody in the fence by the neck. Woody’s eyes spin, and he faints. Goofer reacts in shock, thinking he has decapitated Woody, and investigates further by raising one of Woody’s closed eyelids, revealing an image of a grave with a tombstone reading “Rest in peace.” Goofer turns green, then collapses unconscious. But the image in Woody’s eye isn’t quite accurate, as one of Woody’s eyes opens again, back to normal. Seeing the prone Goofer, Woody exhibits a devilish grin, and merely parts the fence pickets as if reopening a curtain, displaying himself all in one piece, to grab Goofer. However, when he sees the gopher unconscious, Woody takes pity upon him, attempts to administer some artificial respiration, then finally revives Goofer by burping him over Woody’s shoulder like a baby. Goofer is repentant and amazed when he examines Woody’s neck to find it intact, and it appears the two will end the cartoon as friends with their differences resolved. Woody breaks into his signature laugh, but the screen iris out begins to close rapidly. It closes at an odd depth – behind Goofer in the foreground, and directly upon Woody’s neck – causing deja vu, as Woody again repeats the strangulation eye-roll and faint, and Goofer again turns green and collapses. But again, Woody’s eye pops unexpectedly open, and he turns his gaze to the audience, winking an eye at us as if to say “I’m all right.”
Ballot Box Bunny (Warner, Bugs Bunny, 10/6/51 – I. (Friz) Freleng, dir.) – Yosemite Sam for Mayor? Sam thinks he can’t lose, with campaign promises like “There’s enough fresh air and sunshine in this great country of ours for everybody, and I’ll see to it that you’ll get your share.” And especially his promise to rid the country “of every last rabbit.” Bugs, listening from underneath the speaker’s platform while drinking a can of carrot juice, coughs and sputters at hearing this campaign platform, and vows to fight fire with fire. Bugs begins as a one-man band, marching with a trombone and bass drum with the sign, “Vote for Bugs Bunny.” “Shut off that Judy box. I can’t hear myself a-speechin’!”, howls Sam. A round of shots from his revolvers punctures Bugs’s drum like a sagging balloon after deflation. But Bugs erects a small speaker’s booth of his own, with a poster crossing out Sam’s name and inserting Bugs’s own. He out-shouts Sam, calling for the crowds to get on the Bugs Bunny bandwagon. “From the rockbound coast of Maine, to the smoggy shores of California – that is a long walk”, exclaims Bugs in typical campaign rhetoric. Then Bugs assumes the disguise of Teddy Roosevelt, repeating his slogan about speaking softly, but carrying a big stick. The crowd cheers, but Sam retaliates. “Oh yeah? Well I speak LOUD! And I carry a BIGGER stick – and I use it, too!”, proceeding to whack Bugs on the head with it. Then Sam calls for babies to kiss. Another quick change of disguise, and Bugs appears in a baby bonnet and carriage. Bugs kisses Sam first, then proclaims to the crowd that “The bad man bit my widdle nose.” Yosemite is surrounded by irate mothers, who whack him with their purses, and claim he should be run out of town.
Bugs tries new tactics to win over the voters with freebies. He tries giving away cigars for votes. Sam horns in on the giveaway with his six-guns, claiming if there’s any giving to do, he’ll do it. Bugs fixes his wagon by switching cigar boxes, substituting Atom Explosive Cigars, getting Sam a sock on the jaw rather than a vote from the first burnt-up customer. Bugs tries a free picnic spread, but Sam sends in a box of trained ants to make off with the food. Bugs double-crosses Sam again, by planting a firecracker inside the picnic watermelon.
Sam now makes the next move, towing a cannon to the door of Bugs’s campaign headquarters, and tying a rope between the doorknob and the cannon’s firing lever. “No one will vote for a flattened-out rabbit skin – I always say.” (Leaving one wondering, how many opportunities has Sam ever had to say this?) Sam then runs to the back door, gets himself invited in with overtures of friendship to Bugs, then informs Bugs that someone is knocking at Bugs’ front door. Bugs leaves the scene to answer it, but returns unscathed, claiming, “That was someone for you, Sam. She said to mention St. Louie.” Sam brightens. “St. Louie? Emma!” He runs to reunite Emma with her “Sammy boy”, and takes the cannon’s blast. Sam staggers back into the room, his whiskers reduced to narrow threads, wearily remarking, “Same ol’ Emma. Full o’ laughs.”
Bugs debates Sam, claiming that anything Sam can do, he can do better. Sam challenges him to play a piano, and provides one, with one key triggered to light a stick of dynamite. This allows for a repeat of the classic “Those Endearing Young Charms” gag, first seen in Bob Clampett’s “Booby Traps” in the Private Snafu series – where Bugs repeatedly misses the booby-trapped key, until Sam demonstrates himself by showing Bugs the right note. BOOM!
Finally, Sam chases Bugs all around town, with guns blazing. But the populace has had enough. The election is conducted while Sam and Bugs are preoccupied, and a parade celebrates the election of “our new Mare” – a horse. “Dark horse?” “Mare?”, respond Bugs and Sam in perplexed fashion, then exchange looks of hopelessness. This time, Bugs produces a revolver. “Well, anyone for Russan roulette?” Sam takes the pistol first, aims it at his temple, then pulls. An empty click. Now Bugs holds the gun, and takes aim at himself. An iris out closes before him, blotting out our view of the next grizzly scene. A loud shot rings out, its retort echoing for a few moments far and wide. The iris partially opens again on Bugs’ side of the screen, revealing Bugs still standing, his head ducked to dodge out of the path of the pistol’s aim. “Heh, I missed”, Bugs states directly to the audience. A second iris hole opens on Sam’s side of the screen, revealing a charred and smoldering Sam, who took the brunt of the bullet’s fire. He also turns directly to the audience, and closes the film with the remark, “I hate that rabbit.”
• Most of “Ballot Box Bunny” is posted HERE.
Magical Maestro (MGM, 2/8/52 – Tex Avery, dir.) – It is opera night at the local opera house – in performance, Butch as “The Great Poochini”, starring in a recital performance of Largo Al Factotum from the Barber of Seville. Butch has an odd visitor at his dressing room – a corny stage magician, who thinks Poochini’s performance can be livened up with the addition of “a sure-fire magic act.” The magician performs a few puzzling but corny tricks, producing rabbits and flowers with a wave of a magic wand. Poochini’s reaction is to kick the magician out the stage door, leaving a visible footprint on the seat of his pants. The frustrated performer gets an evil idea for revenge. Eyeing a poster of Poochini being conducted by an orchestra leader while on stage, the magician envisions himself in the place of the conductor, with his magic wand substituted as a baton. It becomes obvious at this point that Avery, for one of the few times in his career, is “borrowing” a plot premise from a rival studio, in an effort to do it one better – that of UPA’s Fox and Crow episode The Magic Fluke from 1950. This choice was surprisingly conspicuous, as “Fluke” had been nominated for an Oscar just a scant few seasons ago. (Avery’s other instances of premise-borrowing were still to come – including One Cab’s Family, a considerable reworking of Warner’s old chestnut, Streamlined Greta Green with perhaps a dash of Disney’s Susie the Little Blue Coupe, and Little Johnny Jet, perhaps very loosely inspired by Disney’s “Pedro” from Saludos Amigos, which effort gleaned Avery an Oscar nomination certificate of his own.)
The curtain rises on Poochini’s performance. But while Poochini receives the applause of the crowd, the magician appears below the stage, petrifying the conductor with his wand, drawing hum into the orchestra pit and below the stage, and then magically replacing the magician’s clothes with those of the conductor, garment by garment, leaving the conductor in flannel underwear. To complete the disguise, the magician zaps away the conductor’s hair and nose, applying them to his own face, the hair being worn as a wig. The magician then takes the podium, and the concert commences. As Poochini extends one hand for a gesture during the song, the magician’s flower pot appears upon it. Disposing of the flower, Poochini extends both arms – and the magician’s two rabbits appear on each hand. Poochini lowers his arms behind his back, but when his arms rise again, a whole family of smaller rabbits appears across his shoulders between the two original bunnies. Poochini ducks them out of sight, and takes a sniff of a flower in his own lapel – which squirts water at him. Poochini reaches for a handkerchief, but gets a whole string of many-colored handkerchiefs, and finally his own trousers tied to the end. Poohini pulls his jacket down to cover his underwear, but ends up garbed in a ballet tutu. He suddenly undergoes many costume changes, including that of an Indian, tennis player, convict, and football player receiving a forward pass. A cymbal tossed at his head by the magician expands into the outfit of a Chinese. He suddenly becomes a cowboy singing “Oh my darling Clementine”, as his guitar turns into the two rabbits again. Poochini tears away these various outfits, and for a moment is back in his performance tuxedo, as he reaches for his high notes in performance. The magician accompanies the high notes by levitating Poochini higher and higher toward the opera house ceiling, then letting him fall with a crash.
At this point, a common sight in early theater projection appears to the screen left of Poochini – a wiggling hair, as if caught in the projector’s framing aperture. Theater projectionists were trained to watch for such foreign objects caught on the projected film, and to be ready to either blow the objects out of the system, or attempt to remove them with fine brushes, short of stopping the film entirely to get at it. Thus, this sight would have put such prohectionists on the alert, causing them to open projector panels and do their best to keep the screen uncluttered. But this was perhaps the most magical trick of the whole film. Avery, who had only succeeded in an unconvincing attempt to include an animated hair in a prior Warner film (”Aviation Vacation”, where the hair’s movements were unnatural and it was drawn too thickly), had learned from his mistakes, and this tine had an image of a real hair caught in a projector rotoscoped! The result was so real, actual projectionists receiving first prints of the cartoon were confused. So busy were they with efforts to remove the hair during projection, they failed to look up at the screen – to see Poochini deliver the payoff of the gag, by pausing in his performance to reach down himself to pluck the hair out of the frame’s edge, and toss it away! The gag routinely delivers howls at live screenings – but the frustrated projectionists, still in the dark as to where the hair was coming from performance after performance, began returning the film prints, complaining of being unable to dislodge the aggravating interruption. MGM was finally forced to send out prints with a warning instruction to the projectionists on the can, informing them that the hair they would see was only drawn on the film.
Poochini continues to undergo multiple identity crises, transforming into a square dance caller, a widdle kid with an inflating red balloon, Carmen Miranda (and the Duo Los Rabbits), the tenor and then the bass singer of the Ink Spots, and a Hawaiian native for performance of the Hawaiian War Chant with rabbit dancers. Finaly, as the magician leans back to extend an arm to conduct a long-held note, his wig of the conductor’s hair falls off. Outraged Poochini spots him for who he is, and grabs away the wand and wig. The magician makes a dash for the exit up the aisle. But Poochini assumes position on the conductor’s podium, and with a wave of the wand, paralyzes the magician in his tracks. Another wand wave, and the magician is dawn backwards, onto the stage. Now, in rapid-fire succession, Poochini subjects the magician to a dose of his own medicine, including the transformations into Chinaman, cowboy, kid, and Hawaiian native, finally bringing down the heavy theater curtain upon the magician’s and rabbits’ necks, with the words “The End” appearing on the red velvet.
• Most of “Magical Maestro” is on Facebook HERE.
Born to Peck (Lantz/Universal, Woody Woodpecker, 2/25/52 – Walter Lantz, dir.) is to Woody Woodpecker cartoons what The Old Grey Hare was to Bugs Bunny – a journey through time to see what our hero was like in the distant past, and what he’ll be like in the hopefully distant future. Told entirely in pantomime (excepting Woody’s laugh), we open in the remnants of what once was a forest, with nearly every tree reduced to a splintered stump, and a sign visible with enough holes in it so as to resemble Swiss cheese, reading “Woody Woodpecker was here.” But this is a vision of a sad future, as, standing at the base of the only standing tree is Woody himself – without a trace of the signature red head, his topknot having turned stark white, and with a long white beard to match. He is stoop-shouldered, supported by a cane, and tries desperately to peck at the tree trunk – but without making a dent. His nose, from years of serious workout, has softened to the point that it folds on impact like an accordion. As the decrepit creature tries in vain to straighten out his bent beak, his mind’s eye wanders back to memories of the past. In his thought cloud, we see a gradual turning back of the clock, progressing Woody back to his youth, when he could devour a whole tree with one series of pecks upward. To his school days. when he could poke enough holes in the schoolhouse to resemble a sieve (though inable to drill through the tower bell). To his toddler days, when he could escape a playpen by consuming it stick by stick. And finally to the day he was delivered by Old Doc Stork as an egg. Papa Woodpecker brings the new bundle in to Mama. All Mama can see in her mind’s view is endless hours of egg-sitting – an activity she’s obviously had enough of, as she already has a string of seven small daughters in tow. She leaves Papa to do the dirty work.
Papa notices some activity inside the egg, and holds it up to a candle, revealing the silhouette of baby Woody attempting to peck away at the eggshell from the inside. Papa decides to give him some help by pecking opposite to him at the outside of the shell. The two birds meet nose to nose as the egg hatches, Papa’s beak taking a beating from Woody’s determined pecks. Woody comes equipped with a junior version of a timepiece he had previously displayed in “The Redwood Sap” – a special watch. The earlier version had lacked any hour numbering, instead depicting only the various meals of the day to point to, and with an alarm in the shape of a dinner bell. Here, the meal pictures have been replaced with illustrations of a baby bottle and a bowl of mush. As the alarm rings, Woody seats himself in a high chair and pounds the table with knife and fork, demanding in pantomime what’s for dinner. When nothing is served fast enough, he starts taking his frustrations out on the furniture, devouring portions of the chair. Offered a spoon of mush, Woody not only eats the mush, but the wooden spoon as well. Papa tries a trick to stop Woody’s ferocious pecking – offering Woody the wooden handle of a hammer. Woody eats the handle upward – and gets his head trapped in the hammerhead. But the trick backfires on Papa, as Woody uses his neck to bash Papa on the big toe with the hammerhead. Efforts to feed him with a baby bottle leave Woody quite dissatisfied with the rubber nipple, which he removes from the bottle and stretches over Papa’s beak. Eventually, Papa is so caught up in the stretchy rubber, he is wearing the nipple like a suit, and dangling in it from the limb of his treetop home. Woody gets him down by pecking away the base of the tree itself, causing the old homestead to collapse along with Papa. As Pop lies in a heap, with a phone receiver balanced on his head, Woody shows his only act of charity, inserting a coin into a slot in Papa’s nostril, and “dialing” with Papa’s eyeball to call the local ambulance service. Then Woody is off to pursue his wood-pecking career.
Time phases through stages back to the future, and thought-cloud Woody and real-life Woody are now of matching age. The old geezer in Woody’s thoughts taps the real Woody on the head, and points to a location offscreen, with the definite indication in pantomime of, “Don’t you think it’s time to go?” Real Woody sadly nods, and shrugs his shoulders to the audience as if to say, “What else can I do?” Woody approaches a high cliff, covers his eyes, and jumps. Panning the shot to the ground below, an open grave rests in the canyon, with a headstone reading “Reserved for Woody Woodpecker”. But this somber scene just can’t be permitted to last – and like the salvation of Scrooge from the graveyard, an artist’s hand enters the scene with eraser, and erases the entire background to white. Then a paintbrush enters, and just as quickly paints a new backdrop – the Fountain of Youth! Woody falls in – and is miraculously rejuvenated to his normal youthful self. He is so happy, he decides to celebrate by zeroing in on a nearby clump of trees as target for tonight. Unfortunately, he should read signs before he leaps – and hits a solid barrier, not realizing it’s the petrified forest. He is briefly knocked silly, but before the iris can close, manages to give us his happy trademark laugh anyway.
Next Time: Further into the early 1950’s, with multiple battles between characters and artist’s supplies.
