The Disney and Pixar Studios have recently given us a bit of an over-saturation of feature animation spotlighting one of nature’s reputedly most industrious critters. At least one of such kind appears in a prominent part in Zootopia 2, while a swarm of them form the principal animal cast of Hoppers. As I have not yet been able to acquire home media versions of these films to review, I am not up to speed on them, and they will not be further discussed in this series. However, it might be said that this recent cinema trend is setting us up for the Year of the Beaver – so I thought it might be fun to trace the buck-toothed, flat-tailed character’s history in animation, and see how these character-actors of nature have fared in the dam-dest of situations, starting from the earliest days of sound.

(A note here is in order. While in the process of writing this first installment, which I had actually been percolating the research for as of at least a year ago, I happened to discover by chance online that another author, in anticipation of the “Hoppers” premiere, has been thinking along the same lines, and attempted a brief survey of the same subject on Cartoon Brew. I swear this was a case of coincidental independent creation. Nevertheless, in reviewing the other article, I observed that most of its material consisted of title-dropping and some clips without much discussion of cartoon content, and (as in the case of our recent coverage of bullfighting cartoons) many on-subject films were omitted from the title list. I thus proceed full steam ahead with the present project, to add some depth as to the gags and ideas presented in the subject films, and to fill in a number of gaps.)

Correct me if I’m wrong. It’s rather surprising that I seem to have come up empty in locating any verified appearances of a beaver in any known surviving silent cartoon. You would think Paul Terry’s Aesop’s Fables would be loaded with them somewhere – but they don’t seem to even turn up in natural settings where you’d expect all varieties of animals to be represented, such as “If Noah Lived Today” or “Amateur Night On the Ark”. Maybe the primitive pencils at the Terry studio couldn’t hit on a model design for the creature they felt comfortable with. Similarly, Max Fleischer missed his chance to include the species in his first Talkartoon, Noah’s Lark. It thus appears that Disney (as he often did in those days) got the jump on everybody, including the characters in one of his earliest Silly Symphonies, Autumn (Columbia, 2/13/30 – Ub Iwerks, dir.) (noticeably overlooked by the Cartoon Brew coverage, as were nearly all of this week’s films).

Part of a four-episode quad-rilogy, themed about the four seasons of the year (though one might say the follow-up, Night feels like it makes the series a set of five). All of the films are relatively plotless, concentrating on well-synchronized cavorting to a lively Carl Stalling score. The first half of this one deals with various animals gathering their stores for Winter while the leaves fall. Squirrels do most of the heavy lifting, while scavenger crows raid the squirrel’s hollow tree homes and swipe corn, storing it away inside the pantlegs of a farm scarecrow who isn’t scaring anyone. A skunk tries to roll a large pumpkin into a tree, but when it doesn’t fit, gives it a running tackle to push it through, only resulting in the fragile pumpkin shell cracking and depositing its innards all over him. A porcupine has a better method of harvesting, shaking a fruit tree and catching the falling fruit on the ends of his quills (a gag later repeated in Father Noah’s Ark, discussed below). Now comes a brief sequence for the beavers, changing subject.

The beavers dance atop a dam under construction in the foreground, tamping down lumber into its structure with their tails, while several other small groups of beavers are seen in the stream, constructing beaver dens with entrances below water. Two beavers dance together in synchronized rhythm along the bank, then chew down a small tree, which topples onto the head of one of them. In the later climax of the film, as the first cold blasts of winter wind are felt, one beaver calls an alarm to the others, and one-by-one, several beavers dive into the water and are seen as bulges and vibrations within the structure of a beaver den, having entered it from below. A stranger appears – a misguided duck, who doesn’t have the good sense to fly south, and instead also dives under the water, attempting to join the beavers in their comfy abode. He is quickly and rudely ejected, swimming away with complaining quacks. The skunk looks for shelter, but gets hit with a back of porcupine quills from inside one tree already occupied – so moves into another one, sending all of its furry occupants scattering for another tree next door. The crows get the final shot, taking up residence inside the hollow clothing of the scarecrow. One small crow is left out, and kicks the pantleg of the trousers, hoping for access. In an ending which nearly duplicates that of “The Skeleton Dance”, the bony foot of one of the crows reaches out from the drop-seat of the trousers, yanks the little crow inside, then re-buttons the drop-seat.

---

Minus Iwerks (who by this time had moved on to another animation studio), Disney’s beavers make a comeback in The Busy Beavers (Columbia, Silly Symphony, 6/22/31 – Burt Gillett, dir.). Obviously, with the beavers taking center stage, there’s a lot more room for action and gags in this one. It’s rather comical also to note that in both of these early cartoons, the sound engineers seem to have no idea what a beaver should sound like (their natural sounds are more like grunts), so decide to use what sounds like a squeaky toy to emit puppy-dog like high-pitched barks. This does have the advantage of permitting quick one-note tones that fit easily into the punctuated rhythms of an average cartoon score, but must still bring howls from anyone who’s studied the behavior of the animals in the wild. The sound effect also proved rather interchangeable – I swear I’ve heard the same “voice” given to foxes and bear cubs in productions from various studios, not to mention used in its proper place for Bosko’s pup at the end of early Looney Tunes. (Who was that pup anyway? Baby Bruno?)

The film opens with the usual construction under way of a dam and beaver dens – though with broader scope that the previous film’s opening shot, panning back and forth across the river full of busy workers. A first gag has one beaver curl up his tail to form a place to carry a load of lumber, then hold a small cylindrical stump between his hands. The beaver loading the lumber on takes hold of the other beaver’s rear feet, balancing him upon the held stump, and carts the lumber to the worksite, using the first beaver as a living wheelbarrow. Another beaver searches for just the right lumber in what seems to be a woodpile, but finds within a sleeping moose, who stands to reveal the beaver trapped as a passenger in his antlers. Another pair of beavers mix a muddy mortar in a hollow tree stump, one beaver loading up his cheeks with water from a nearby pond to spit into the stump, while the second mixes the solution in the stump with his tail. Then, a line of beavers arrives as hod-carriers, using large leaves held aloft atop Y-shaped tree branches as their tools to carry the mud to the dam, emptied into them by the tail of the mixing beaver.

More heavy construction occurs elsewhere. One beaver hangs by his tail from the limbs of a flexible sapling, whole another tugs at a lower branch like a crane operator, maneuvering the higher beaver into position to chomp upon and transport cut logs from a pile to an assembly line. One by one, the logs are threaded between two husky beavers, who combine with their sharp teeth to hone each log down into an elongated conical shape. Then, the shaped cones are flipped by beavers’ tails into the shallow water, point down, where they are hammered into place by the tails of two more beavers to serve as pilings. (I’m not aware that a dam requires pilings – are they also building an auxiliary pier?) In the woods, a team of two cutting beavers moves along, making short work of felling trees marked with X’s, while a scout beaver proceeds ahead of them, choosing just the right trees of strong grade for marking and felling like a lumber crew boss. Two large worm-like creatures in one tree save their home by spotting the freshly-chalked X left as a marker, and rubbing it off before the cutting crew spots it. Some beavers approach the cutting task solo. One, who might be the laziest of this beaver colony, is large and lethargic, casually cutting a very puny sapling and slowly walking away with it toward the dam, in a gait that suggests he is in no mood to exert himself. Eclipsed behind him is a much smaller beaver who is all energy, and fells an older-looking tall pine while an owl is still perched on its branch. Single-handedly, the young beaver pushes the heavy tree down a slope and into the river, then propels the tree downstream by spinning his tail as an outboard motor, tugging on the owl’s tail as if a ship’s whistle cord to pass a slower-moving log team of beavers who is rowing their lumber with tail action like the crew of a scull in a college boating race. As the young beaver’s log hits the riverbank, rolling the beaver off and up onto land to collide with a rooted tree, a lightning flash illuminates the sky, and the first drops of rain begin to fall.

In one of those elaborate long-cycles of animation that only Disney seemed capable of carrying out successfully in those days, a full shot of the river and just-completed dam shows the entire beaver community scurrying for the safety of their dens. The little beaver is bringing up the rear, and is the only one to spot that the construction project has not gone quite according to plan. The earthen-packed base of the dam has sprung a small leak, with a spout of the newly-arrived rain water shooting out. The beaver begins to play the role of the Dutch boy at the dike, plugging the hole with one paw, only to have another hole develop elsewhere. One paw after another, and even his face, are used to block the holes, but he soon finds himself short on number of appendages to hold back the current. Cleverly, he spies several small sticks protruding from the dam edge, and grabs them up, throwing them like darts to plug each of the previous holes – only to find that they had already been serving a blocking purpose in their original position, as a delayed spout of even more forceful water bursts from where he plucked the sticks out. In desperation, the beaver sits in the hole, providing a temporary plug, until his tail is chomped upon by the jaws of a snapping turtle swimming in the waters on the backside of the dam. The turtle is pulled through as the beaver leaps out of the hole in pain, and the beaver makes due by propping the turtle’s shell up against the hole in the dam to do the plugging job, the beaver bracing the turtle into permanent position by wedging a stick between the turtle’s chest and the dry river bottom.

Troubles are not over. A dark rain cloud above bursts as a lightning bolt tugs at a zipper in its bottom, dropping enough rain to form a massive wall of water in an area about a mile above the dam. A couple of wonderful shots show the progression of the flood that develops in the hills down the river, particularly a tracking shot just ahead of the flow as it careens around a continuing curve, taking out trees protruding into the river bed in 3-D style detail as it goes. The little beaver, now standing atop the dam edge, watches in horror as the leading edge of the flood waters reaches the beaver dens, nearly swamping them, and subjecting the dens to a beating from the floating logs passing in the waters. The beaver hops down into the river bed on the front side of the dam, and tries to hide in its shadow from the oncoming rush of water and debris. The water pounds repeatedly upon the dam’s backside, then suddenly breaks through, seemingly destroying the dam’s entire middle expanse – until the water recedes somewhat, showing that the beaver has been left on a small island of safety in the river’s middle, only a sliver of the dam center still standing to offer him protection.

With the other beavers still having their hands full within the dens, little beaver is forced to come to the rescue. He races for the tallest and largest pine along the riverbank, and like a buzzsaw chews deeper and deeper into its trunk, about 90% of the way across. The tree begins to tremble, and the beaver does an about-face to get out of the way, nearly getting trapped when the sagging trunk briefly catches his tail. He pulls out just in time to let the tree fall across the river, but is right in the path of its collapse, as the felled tree lands in perfect position to cover the complete expanse of the river width, proving to have dense-enough foliage to stop the flood water in its tracks. (Unlikely, given the general amount of space between branches of the average tree.) Dozens of birds emerge from the greenery and fly away from the fallen forest giant. In one of the earliest Disney moments where we are led to believe a character has passed, there is no further movement from the tree for a few seconds, and the musical tone turns somber as the camera slowly closes in on the tree’s uppermost limbs. Suddenly, the tension is relieved, as the smiling face of the little beaver, safe and sound, pops out of the greenery, wearing a bird’s nest as a hat. The other beavers, now safe in the still waters surrounding their dens, dance for the little one in celebration. The little beaver smiles and bows to his adoring fans, and takes off the nest as if tipping his hat to his public. His moment of glory is briefly marred by the egg in the nest choosing this moment to hatch, allowing a featherless baby to repeatedly utter “Cuckoo” at him, for the iris out.

Were this cartoon produced later, without the need for music synchronization timing to eat up footage and slow general pacing, the plot/gag material for this early outing was actually quite strong, and full of typical Disney innovation for a first cartoon focusing on a new subject idea. Though the picture hasn’t achieved an everlasting spot as a timeless classic in the Disney hall of fame, it deserves a second appraisal. And it seems a “dam” sure bet it was remembered by at least some folk in Chuck Jones’s unit in the 1940’s, as its story structure bears substantial similarity to and seems the direct inspiration for Chuck’s own classic, “The Eager Beaver”, to be discussed in later pages of this series. It’s easy to imagine how much of this cartoon’s material could have been directly interpolated by Jones into his own film had scripts been swapped, with Jones probably achieving just as lively results as his own film from the Disney gags.

---

Beavers almost miss the boat in Disney’s major animal adventure, Father Noah’s Ark (UA, Silly Symphony, 4/8/33 – Wilfred Jackson, dir.). They are never seen involved in the initial construction process for the ark, nor in woodland group shots, not in the stampede racing for the ark, nor on the boarding gangplank. And they certainly didn’t tag along with the pair of skunks who make the voyage on the roof of the ship. Yet, somehow, they are seen in the third-to-last shot of the film, disembarking. The male and female beavers march down the gangplank, side by side, each one carrying a new youngster along on its tail. Guess they stayed busy on the trip, even if they missed being on the passenger list and traveled as stowaways.

---

Either competing studios were blown away by the Disney efforts above, or just for unknown reasons were slow to adopt the beaver into their animation models for various forest-related cartoons of the period, as, for a few more years, no beavers seem to turn up in cartoons I’ve been able to discover. I again could be overlooking something, as reference to beavers rarely turns up in the titles of episodes, so if anyone remembers any other early beavers, feel free to comment. Harman and Ising seem to have missed their opportunities entirely, choosing not to include beavers in such possible vehicles as “Ain’t Nature Grand?”, “The Trees’ Knees”, and “Bosko’s Woodland Daze”. But, as Leon Schlesinger began to shift the Merrie Melodies series to color, we get Pop Goes Your Heart (Warner, 2-strip Technicolor, 12/8/34 – Isadore (Friz) Freleng, dir.). In essence, this is Friz’s idea of a Silly Symphony, considerably behind the times, and resembling something Disney might have produced several years before. It is another plotless romp in nature, with the likes of humming birds and humming bees, a papa grasshopper teaching his young ones to spit with chewing tobacco, turtles learning to swim by flipping over on their backs and stroking with reeds like a rowing crew, and some harp-stylist spiders playing the title tune on the strands of their web, while worms inside two apples simulate the limbs of a pair of dancers, and a trio of croaking frogs sings the lyric. (The song, by the way, was a semi-hit from Dick Powell’s feature, “Happiness Ahead”.)

About two-thirds of the way into the film, our attention shifts to a community of beavers, engaged in the usual dam and den building. Two beavers, however, prove that a beaver’s life shouldn’t be all work and no play, engaging in some recreation between shifts, finding their tails to be of natural use in an intense game of tennis, using them as racquets to hit a ball (where did they get it?) over a net of cobwebs. A bear comes lumbering through the woods, trying to let out intimidating roars, but having his first come out like a kitten’s meow – causing him to spray his throat with an atomizer to correct his tone. He first begins following one of the turtles too closely, only provoking the amphibian to bite a painful snap upon his nose. The bear thus turns to easier prey, chasing the beavers. The beavers duck into a hollow tree, and the bear sticks his head into the trunk to snarl at them, but can proceed no further. One beaver sneaks out of a hole in the upper trunk, then administers a light spanking to the bear’s rear with his tail. At the top of the tree, another beaver chomps at an overhanging limb, dropping a bombshell of a hanging bee hive upon the bear’s back. The hive bursts open, plastering the bear with honey and attracting the bees to swarm upon him. The bear runs for it, colliding with the fence of a farmer’s field and tumbling over the top of it into a pasture. With the gooey honey mixed into his fur, the bear is a magnet for the dry grass, and rolls down an incline, developing a growing coating of grass around his entire body in the manner of a rolling snowball. At the base of the hill, a farmer works with a hay-baling machine. He can’t tell the difference between a bear covered in grass and a haystack, so tosses the bear into the machine with his pitchfork. The bear emerges with torso encased in a bale of hay, and exits at a gallop over the hills, leaving the farmer to scratch his head in puzzlement.

• “Pop Goes Your Heart” is on Dailymotion

---

Though Ub Iwerks may have invented the animated beaver, he didn’t find much opportunity to use him in productions from his own cartoon studio. What appears to be the only such instance was a brief cameo shot in Iwerks’s wintertime classic, Jack Frost (ComiColor, 12/24/34). A forest full of various animals opens the first shots of the film, cavorting in a public game of leap frog (no, Flip is not a participant). A small bear is the first to notice an observer on a tree limb, with the mere utterance of his name drawing the undivided attention of the forest folk. A magical elf, by the name of Jack Frost, has appeared, carrying a paintbrush and artist’s palette, with which he performs magic by changing objects’ color and appearance to render them harbingers of approaching Autumn. He is seen painting the green leaves into orange and brown hues, and calls down an advance warning that summer’s gone, and Old Man Winter will be knocking at their door. Better get their food and nuts stored away. A dancing quartet of beavers responds, “Thanks, Mr. Jackie for your advice. We’ll hurry home to our wives”, while various squirrels complete the rhyming couplet by stashing nuts in their trees, and stating that they’ll “have their cupboard filled with supplies, when Old Man Winter Arrives.” That’s all the beavers get to do. The rest of the film follows the misadventures of a determined grizzly bear cub, who thinks he’s too tough to have to worry about winter cold thanks to his furry coat, and doesn’t want to hibernate like his parents. When the cub ventures out into the forest, Old Man Winter locks him away inside a hollow log with a row of icicle bars to block his exit. But Frost takes pity on the disobedient cub, and uses his paint magic to change the ice bars into peppermint sticks, allowing the cub to lick his way to an escape. Jack flies the cub home, tucks him in to sleep, then writes in frost upon the window as he exits, “Finis”.

---

Beavers also don’t get a lot to do in Van Beuren’s The Hunting Season (RKO, Rainbow Parade, 8/9/35 – Burt Gillett/Tom Palmer, dir.). This was in essence the first starring vehicle for the budding character of Molly Moo Cow, who had first appeared as a guest nemesis in the color Toddle Tale, “The Picnic Panic”, and who even as of this production had still not received a name. The beavers are oddly the first to be spotlighted in the film (Gillett by this time well-acquainted with animating them), building a dam and tamping down mud with their tails in a serene forest scene, shared with squirrels gathering nuts, a mother bird tending to two young ones in a nest, and two ducks swimming in circles in the river. Enter Molly, just randomly venturing through the woods. She decides to take a dip in the stream, and tests the water with her hoof and tail, which seems to be a bit colder than is to her liking. The ducks pull a prank upon her, tugging at her tail to pull her abruptly into the water. Molly counters the prank by sticking her head underwater and blowing bubbles that float the ducks off of the water surface into the air, pop, and deposit the ducks onto her back. Little by little, the joking relationship makes her and the ducks fast friends. Meanwhile, a human hunter prepares one of his shotguns at a nearby campsite, and strides into the area. Spotting the same serene forest scene we started the film with, he soon wreaks havoc upon it with his shotgun full of buckshot. He fires upon the bird family, shooting away the branch upon which the nest rests, causing mom to have to rescue in mid-air her falling flightless chicks. He blasts at the squirrels’ tree, piercing a gaping hole in the trunk, out of which pours all the nuts and the squirrels as well. And he takes pot-shots at the fleeing ducks in mid-air. Yet he takes no shots at the beavers! I guess he’s not in the market for trappers’ pelts. Molly gathers up the two ducks as they fall from the sky, at first mourning them, but finding them to be all right, as one of them rings her cow bell. They inform her what just happened, and Molly carries them to the hunter’s campsite, where they pick up a crate full of ammunition and a small arsenal of the hunter’s other shotguns, all threaded upon Molly’s tail. Together, they race back to the forest, where they deposit the weaponry for the others to see, inform them of a plan for revenge, and distribute shotguns and ammo to each of the forest residents. The hunter enters a clearing, looking for the fallen ducks but finding only a handful of feathers on the ground, while the camera pulls back, revealing the forest army surrounding him from all sides. This appears to be the first of many instances in which multiple studios would find use for beavers in “Give him the works” sequences of mass forest retaliation. Everyone opens fire upon the hunter from all directions. The beavers play their part in only one scene, apparently stocked for gunpowder but not for bullets, so they load their rifle with marsh reeds, which don’t have much lethal effect, but spear-off the hunter’s jacket, then tickle him like crazy under the armpits and in the tummy. The ducks decide to launch pumpkins off the end of their gun barrel, leaving the hunter wearing the shell of one like a helmet, with two more pumpkin shells rolling around his ankles like a set of wheels. The ducks next launch a bee hive, with end results similar to the bear’s retreat in “Pop Goes Your Heart”. Molly and the ducks march back to the rest of the forest folk in triumph, but the ducks drop their rifle, causing it to accidentally discharge, leaving Molly awkwardly scurrying up a tree, to moo to the camera for the fade out.

---

Porky in the North Woods (Warner, Porky Pig, 12/19/36, Frank Tash[lin], dir.) features a lot of beaver involvement. Porky is ranger of a game preserve (he calls it a game refuge), where there is (as declared by an endless display of signs posted in the forest) no hunting, no fishing, no trapping, no fires, and no, no, a thousand times NO! But one shadowy figure, who is seen through half the picture only as a silhouette on the snow while heard speaking in a French-Canadian accent, seems determined to ignore, and break, every rule. He shoots down the No Hunting signs, catches fish, starts campfires carelessly left burning, and lays strong steel traps throughout the woods. Two playful young beavers are engaged in a game of leap frog, propelling each other forward by flips of their tails under the other’s feet. They encounter a bright shiny apple hanging from a thread draped over a tree limb. One’s pulling upon the string triggers one of the jagged traps behind him to clamp upon his tail. He yells to his brother to go get Porky to help. Some historians, including Leonard Maltin, have incorrectly given credit to Tashlin’s work on the later “Porky’s Romance” as an innovation in the cutting and timing of action in super-speed. They neglect to mention that Tashlin was already experimenting with high speed and rapid-fire cutting at least as early as the battle finale of “Little Beau Porky” in mid-1936, and here in the beaver sequence, easily as finely timed as Petunia’s high-speed run after candy in the later acclaimed film. Beaver #2 zips out of frame, and in movement deliberately blurred by speed lines, traverses six scenic backgrounds in perspective in under four seconds! Just to make sure nobody blinked and missed it, the beaver screeches to a stop, realizing he’s forgotten something. At the same lickety-split tempo, he runs the course in reverse, to nab the coveted apple for his meal, before repeating the action a third time in his quest to locate Porky.

When Porky hears the news, he comes a-running, prying open the cruel trap holding beaver #1. The beaver’s tail is bent in a zig-zag, and the beaver frets that he hopes it isn’t a permanent wave. But Porky’s worries are only beginning, because the beavers aren’t the only victims. Everywhere he looks, he spots more traps, with more animals caught in them. A rabbit is caught by the ears. A fox by his bushy tail. Yes, even a skunk by his striped rear appendage, which Porky has to free while holding his breath with a clothespin on his nose. Each of the animals suffers the same zig-zag creasing from the traps’ jaws as did the beaver. So Porky sets up what resembles a laundry business in his ranger’s cabin, though his services are free of charge. A seemingly-endless queue of victimized animals waits their turn, as Porky performs miracles with a towel and hot flat iron, ironing smooth the ridges left in the animals’ anatomies by the traps. There is one, however, who is displeased at this turn of events. The mystery trapper, who can easily see the tell-tale signs of Porky’s and the animals’ footprints around each of his empty traps. Someone has confiscated all his prizes, and he wants revenge.

The trapper is finally revealed as one Jean Batiste – a large, burly, lumberjack-style dog. He easily traces the tracks back to the ranger station, and walks in on the line waiting for Porky’s ironing. Grabbing the iron, he uses it without the aid of insulating towel directly on Porky’s tail, straightening it like a dart, then sticks the rigid tail into the table woodwork, suspending Porky above it, to be punched back and forth like a punching bag. He throws Porky across the room, his tail again piercing the wood of the cabin wall like a dart, placing Porky’s rear end over the escaping hot steam of a whistling tea kettle atop Porky’s stove. Then, Batiste pulls out a sled dog whip, and removes one of his snowshoes. He lassoes Porky with the whip, pulls him out of the wall and back to him, then smacks Porky with the snowshoe, bouncing him off the wall like a tennis ball, and playing a painful one-man tennis game with Porky taking all the hits. Beaver #2 sees all this happening from the doorway, and again retraces his previous steps through the six scenic backgrounds at super-speed, finally coming to a stop below a fuzzy hanging object above, which he pulls. It is the goatee-like fur hanging from the throat of a giant moose, who bellows out a low-pitched wail as an alarm of distress to the forest. In several shots of fine animation detail, rows of bears come charging out of caves, skunks from within trees, a parade of snapping turtles tapping a beat on their shells with drumsticks as a marching band, and of course, hundreds of beavers from dens in the river bed. They converge on the cabin just as Batiste has succeeded in knocking Porky cold. Jean prepares to leave the cabin, but quickly spots the approaching stampede, and tries to bolt the door. No matter. The animals smash it down. Jean speeds out of a rear exit on skis. It’s time to “give him the works” again. Two bears launch the beaver twins at him via crosscut saw catapults, and they slap his head around with their tails as well as wooden sticks. The turtles slide between Jean’s skis, beating his bottom with clubs as they pass under. More beavers launch a barrage of small logs at the back of Jean’s head via slingshots rigged into the antlers of moose. The skunks also launch fitting weapons from their tails – smelly, rotten eggs. Finally, the beaver twins pull the old vine-across-the-path trick, tripping Jean and launching him skyward and off the mountain slope. Jean begins to descend, upside down, and his skis act like whirling propeller blades, spiraling him into a twist, so that he screws himself firmly into the snow-covered ground below, only his ankles and skis left protruding from the snow. The revived Porky, who seems to have recuperated entirely, joins the animals in cheers of victory – then smile at observing what the beaver twins are up to. They have taken advantage of Jean’s downfall and present position, by converting his inverted skis on Jean’s ankles into their new playground attraction – a see-saw (an ending likely “borrowed” from Morty and Ferdie’s similar see-saw atop Mickey Mouse’s head in Mickey’s Steam-Roller of a few seasons back).

---

Little Hiawatha (Disney/UA, Silly Symphony, 5/15/37 – David Hand, dir.) is a forest masterpiece that certainly earned director David Hand the future right to be supervising director of “Bambi”. It tells the tale of Longfellow’s mighty Indian warrior – when he was just starting out as a tiny boy, out for his first day of solo hunting in the woods. He is capable enough in rowing a canoe, but has a lot to learn when it comes to bringing back prize game. Try as he might, he can’t get close enough to the animals to take a shot with his small bow and arrow, as they keep running out of range. The only two creatures who stay still long enough for him to aim are a grasshopper (who proves himself the better marksman by spitting in Hiawatha’s face), and a tiny baby bunny, who is too inexperienced and becomes cornered atop a tree stump. Hiawatha shouts, “Yippee” and aims his bow. The bunny, however, turns on him a set of what Charlie Dog at Warner Brothers would have called the “big, soulful eyes”. Hiawatha starts losing his nerve to go through with it, sniffles, and sheds a single tear. He then gets hold of himself, and decides to make it a fair fight, reaching into his Indian trousers (which, by the way, someone really needs to buy him a belt for – as the running gag of the film has his pants falling down at least seven times!) and pulling out a matching bow and arrow with which he arms the bunny. Positioning himself and the bunny back-to-back, he paces off five steps in duel fashion, turns, and pulls back his bowstring to fire. The bunny, however, is no opponent, having no idea what to do with the weapon, which drops out of his trembling hands. Frustrated, Hiawatha kicks at the dirt, shoos the bunny away to his waiting parents, then breaks his bows and arrows across his knee. He’s given up picking on the little guy. This reaction brings cheers from the creatures of the woodland, embarrassing Hiawatha, who shyly backs out of the scene.

Hiawatha’s day seems to be entirely spoiled, until something catches his keen eye – large paw prints in the soft earth. Bear tracks! Forgetting his lack of weapons, Hiawatha’s tracking instincts take over, and he bends an ear to the ground to listen for vibrations of movement, then follows the trail of tracks deeper into the woods. Though the tracks seem large, the one that made them is by far not the largest of his species – a bear cub, whom Hiawatha comes up upon nose-to-nose. Hiawatha becomes excited, and seems to think he can bring this one back alive with his two “bear” hands, so pursues the cub further into the woods. He spots the cub hiding behind what seems a large brown rock, and climbs atop the rock to obtain a position of advantage over his opponent. Until the “rock” moves. We are never made aware whether it’s the mother or the father – but with an angry bear, does it really make a difference? The character model for the beast is gorgeous in detail, expressiveness, and ferocity – the most memorable design in the film – and was never surpassed until the ultra-realistic grizzly who battled Copper in The Fox and the Hound. Disney would fall back upon the same design for several films to follow, including Good Scouts, The Pointer, and Donald’s Vacation.

But where do beavers come into the picture? Right about now. The forest animals can see Hiawatha is in trouble, and decide to repay the act of kindness Hiawatha showed them. Thus begins another elaborate “give him the works” master plan to slow up the bear. Several beavers rally the forest creatures with an alarm, beat out in rhythms upon a hollow log with their tails. A squad of raccoons pull down a long vine from the branches of a tree and stretch it across the bear’s path to trip him up. The beavers are ahead at the bank of a stream, floating a log up to the shoreline for Hiawatha to climb upon as he reaches the water. The beavers paddle him a short distance into the stream, hoping to leave the bear high and dry. But they are not fast enough, and the beast leaps into the water, getting his front paws upon the end of the log, and flipping Hiawatha into the air and onto the trunk of a nearby tall tree. The bear continues swimming and reaches the base of the tree, swiftly climbing up after his target. The beavers shift to plan “B”, and a trio of them quickly gnaw away at the base of the tree. The tall pine begins to topple, with the bear clinging to the trunk for dear life. Hiawatha also clings above him, but begins slipping as the tree’s angle changes in its fall. A family of opossums are prepared for this, and hanging by their tails from several tress, grab Hiawatha before he can fall, swinging him from tree to tree like living vines might be used by Tarzan.

At a ledge closest to the last tree waits a deer, who has put her head though some vines connecting two long branches of wood, trailing the branches behind her in the fashion of an Indian travois. Hiawatha is tossed onto the branches, and begins to be towed through the woods with the swiftness of the deer who pulls him. And not a moment too soon, as the fallen bear has climbed out of a canyon, and gives chase once again. The beavers get back into the act, felling over a half-dozen trees into the bear’s path, but narrowly miss their attempts to conk the bear on the dome with them. The deer develops a good lead on the bear, allowing for some rabbits to carry out a masterstroke of deception. As the deer passes them, taking Hiawatha on one path leading back to the river, the rabbits get under, then uproot, a small shrub, shifting its position to block view of Hiawatha’s path, and exposing a second path that leads off to nowhere in the distant hills. The bear, seeing only one visible thoroughfare, assumes he is on the right track, and continues on at full speed into the mountains, presumably never to be seen again. Meanwhile, the deer makes it back to the lower riverbank where Hiawatha left his canoe, and two turtles act as stepping stones so that Hiawatha can board his vessel. For the return trip, Hiawatha won’t even have to raise a paddle. The beaver trio reappear, and from the rear end of the canoe, dip their tails in the water, one to serve as rudder, two to serve as oars, slowly but majestically propelling Hiawatha homeward, who stands proudly with arms folded at the helm of the canoe, while his animal fans “watch him as a friend departing”. The narrator adds, “And the beaver called him, brother.” And, brother, that’s enough for a first installment.

• “Little Hiawatha” is on Internet Archive.

NEXT WEEK: We’ll get busy with more beavers from the ‘30’s and ‘40’s.

Now, where were we? Ah, yes……

After a six-week hiatus into the world of bullfighting, we return to the universe of cartoons attempting to keep up with popular trends, fads and crazes, or update its characters from their past antiquated ways or personalities unbefitting popular activities into conforming members of society. We re-commence with a few last items from the 60’s, then move into more modern territory from Disney’s move into daytime television-animation and theatrical work post-Roger Rabbit.

Beatnik Boom/Call Out the Kids (Total Television, King Leonardo and His Short Subjects, circa 1960-61) is a typical two-part tale from the “King and Odie” segments of the show. All seems peaceful in Bongo Congo, with the king’s subjects happy, and industrious in the kingdom’s sole manufacturing enterprise of mass-producing bongo drums, with factory operations humming. This is bad news to resident villain Biggy Rat, who currently finds no ideas for fast moneymaking or promoting his own and his partner Itchy Brother’s rise to power. Itchy, the king’s disreputable sibling, is by nature a confirmed beatnik, and Biggy’s announcement that the two of them are out of money, and may actually have to go to work to eat, receives the same shock-wave of response as if you mentioned the word “work” to Maynard G. Krebbs. Itchy points out that he’s just not the working type, and prefers to spend his day sitting around playing the bongos and spouting beat poetry. In fact, Itchy calls himself the pied piper of poetry. A light goes on (not visualized on screen) inside Biggy’s brain. If the people of the kingdom could be convinced to see life in Itchy’s way, they’d have no use for that lunkhead Leonardo as their ruler, and Itchy could rise to power. So, a speechmaking campaign is set into motion. Itchy pours on the poetry, while Biggy promotes a lifestyle of all play and no work. The idea proves attractive to the Congo’s working class, and soon Itchy is indeed a pied piper to his followers, who abandon factory life and royal occupations in droves to take up bongo playing and poetry writing.

Leonardo becomes painfully aware of the problem when he finds no palace guards within the castle, forcing him to awkwardly open his own throne room doors, and almost wrench his wrist in the process. Royal aide Odie O-Cologne informs him of the bad news of Itchy’s beatnik campaign, and the mass walkout or workers from all occupations. Leonardo calls it the most unheard of thing he’s ever heard of, and ponders the unthinkable thoughts of the financial ruin of the kingdom, and a future of having no one to open doors for him. He and Odie attempt to keep the bongo factory running by trying to operate its assembly-line themselves, but the effort is an utter failure, resulting in both of them being stuffed inside the framework of a newly-minted set of bongos.

Now Biggy rallies the population for the final step – a march on the palace to demand an election, allowing them to cast their votes for Itchy as king. Leonardo observes democratic principles, and agrees to hold the election, nervously waving to his subjects in the belief that they would of course vote for him. But Odie can see where opinion polls are headed, and, despite talking Leonardo into running his own speech-making campaign in attempt to convince the public that work is necessary to the kingdom’s survival, Leonardo is booed resoundingly by the masses of nuevo-beatniks, and final poll results seem to indicate that no one will vote for Leonardo save himself and true-blue Odie.

However, there is one group of subjects left who retain a soft-spot for Leonardo – even though they are disenfranchised from the right to vote themselves. The kids of the kingdom remain loyal, button-wearing members of the King Leonardo fan club. They alone have the wisdom to realize that, if their parents don’t work, no one will be bringing in any money. And if there’s no money, then no toys! This is a lifestyle that cannot be stood for, and the kids resolve to commence their own emergency campaign to keep Leonardo on the throne. But how to convince their lazy parents to vote for him? The solution becomes an exercise in “monkey see, monkey do” logic. Hiding their fan club buttons to conceal their true allegiances, the kids present a unified transformation within the households of their parents – each doing their best impression of following in the footsteps of the example of their parents, and becoming beatniks too! Little girls won’t pick up their toys, because, like, Daddy-o, that would mean work. Boys won’t deliver to their fathers his favorite pipe. The kids start reciting hip poetry ansd banging out beats on bongos all day, giving their parents no aural peace. So, when election day rolls round, every disgruntled parent in the kingdom votes unanimously for Leonardo. The king wins by a landslide, while Biggy and Itchy’s campaign racks up only two favorable votes – their own. The kids reveal their efforts to Leonardo, who praises them publicly for their loyal support. The factory and palace return to normal industrious operation, while Biggy and Itchy trudge home in disgrace, carrying a few leftovers of their campaign banners and signs. We are left to wonder what will be their next nefarious scheme – until next time.

---

Alice In Wonderland, or What’s a Nice Kid Like You Doing In a Place Like This? (Hanna-Barbera, 5/30/66 – Alex Lovy, dir.), also deserves honorable mention for riding upon the beatnik craze. Although its portrayal of the Cheshire Cat as a goateed, beret-wearing hipster (voiced by Sammy Davis Jr.) is not quite as blatant as several other depictions of beatniks, the cat’s cool lingo comes very close to dialog suitable for Bob Clampett’s Wild Man of Wildsville. As the cat’s smile first appears, Alice remarks that she can’t “see” him. He responds, “Well, I ain’t that sure I flip over you, either.” Alice informs him that she’s not sure she understands him. “That’s all right, little square baby. Not many people dig what I put down.” The cat is not quite up on his Lewis Carroll, surprised when Alice calls him a Cheshire Cat. When Alice informs him that in the book, Carroll’s Alice met a Cheshire Cat”, he rearks “Well, bully for her. I bet that gave her an ‘A’ with the in-crowd.” The Cat declares that he’s really from Jersey City, four generations. Davis then goes on to perform the catchy title number, which was the hit of the hour-long special, and received release as a 45 RPM single on HBR records by Scatman Crothers, and also inclusion in a storyteller album. The film’s script was provided by Bill Dana (Jose Jimenez), and music composed by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams (“Bye Bye Birdie”), which score earned the special an Emmy nomination.

---

The title Scrooge’s Last Adventure (Disney, Ducktales, 11/17/90) may suggest that this episode was intended to be the wrap-up finale to the original series (although ultimately, a two-part episode, “The Golden Goose”, intended as something of a sequel to the theatrical “Treasure of the Lost Lamp”, aired last). It all starts when a round of Frisbee playing inside the mansion by the nephews wrecks Scrooge’s grandfather’s clock. The nephews take the broken pieces to a clockmaker known as Dr. Quackenshpiel. The clockmaker sees the repair job as hopeless, and at first refuses to even try. Desperate, the boys resort to their standard “Plan B” – throw a mass tantrum on the floor. The clockmaker relents, and promises to try his best. Meanwhile, Scrooge has been out for the day, taking his annual physical checkup – at a free clinic. “A penny scrounged is a penny earned” is Scrooge’s motto when it comes to medical care. Speaking of scrounging, Scrooge thinks he is having a happy day, thanks to a new attachment Gyro Gearloose has installed upon Scrooge’s walking cane – a magnetized tip that allows him to pick up any stray coin found on the street without bending. (A good trick, considering that no U.S. currency is currently made of metal attracted by magnetism – of course, if Scrooge is collecting only wartime steel pennies…) But a telephone call comes in from the “doctor”, informing Scrooge that the “old ticker” has given out, and at most can only run for a few more days. Of course, it is the clockmaker – but Scrooge thinks it is the results of his physical. “What can I do?”, asks a distraught Scrooge. “You could sell me the spare parts”, responds the clockmaker.

Scrooge visits his money bin, accompanied by his “bean counter” Fenton Crackshell (aka Gizmoduck, though he has no opportunity in this episode to revert to his heroic alter-ego). Scrooge worries, knowing that his fortune will be left to the kids, but plagued by the thought of how it can be effectively guarded from the Beagle Boys when he is no longer around. Fenton talks Scrooge into the world of computerized on-line banking to manage his financial affairs and monetary transactions. This is something new and foreign to Scrooge’s way of thinking. (Indeed, one could imagine Scrooge as feeling more comfortable having his accounting performed by scriveners with quill pens.) But, for the sake of the security of his nephews, he agrees to have the money bin drained and deposited in an online account – after one last swim through it for old times sake. The operation takes every truck in the county, but is accomplished. Fenton takes Scrooge to his computer console, and opens up a site where he begins to demonstrate how Scrooge’s money can be shifted from account to account and from investment to investment. Suddenly, upon another push of a button, the screen turns to static, and Fenton begins to perspire profusely – more that Mrs. Beakly at a disco. A one-in-a billion glitch has occurred, and all record of Scrooge’s money has disappeared. Fenton jiggles the keys, slams the monitor, but nothing changes. Scrooge refuses to be wiped out by technology and die a pauper. He and Fenton consult Gyro for a solution. In a bend of scientific possibility closely mirroring Disney’s “Tron” series, Gyro proposes the radical and risky idea of going into the computer to find the source of the problem – converted into electronic impulses and uploaded from a floppy disc. (Boy, Gyro’s floppies must have a lot more memory capacity than the ones I used to use on old systems.) Fenton begs to go along to make up for his disastrous ideas, but Scrooge refuses to subject him to the risks – until Fenton resorts to the nephews’ “Plan B”, and also throws a crying tantrum on the floor. Thus begins a trek into the electronic universe, as Gyro drops both of them into a digital world, propelled by a strange conveyance he refers to as a “hard drive”, a device steered by Fenton juggling cutouts of geometric shapes upon a magnetic dashboard like Colorforms. Gyro tells them to look for the glitch hiding out in a bad sector, and a black area of computer space punctuated by synthetic lightning flashes looks about as bad as Scrooge has ever seen.

While they are steering a course toward the sector, they are unaware that Gyro has taken a quick break from the screen to grab himself a sandwich, and the nephews have entered Scrooge’s office in his absence, carrying a video game cartridge which Scrooge has previously allowed them to play on his computer. Upon inserting the game, the scenery around Scrooge and Fenton changes abruptly – to a point-of-view inside the pill-filled maze of an ersatz Pac-Man game. However, Pac is nowhere to be found. Instead, Fenton and Scrooge are the targets, and the ghosts are replaced by one huge creature that somewhat resembles a monstrous whale – whom, upon sighting it, Fenton dubs “Moby Glitch”. The chase is on, and Gyro returns to find what the boys have done, the boys not understanding why images of Scrooge and Fenton are appearing in their game. Gyro informs the boys that the images are real, but the boys can see that Fenton and Scrooge have become cornered at one end of the maze. Having no way to steer them into a route of escape, one of the nephews does what he always does when about to lose a video game – pull the plug. The screen goes blank, and Gyro panics that the two voyagers may be lost forever. But inside the system, Fenton and Scrooge somehow re-materialize on board the hard drive, with the maze and all boundaries to their travel disintegrated. As Gyro reconnects the computer’s power and frantically searches the system for them, he somehow determines that the voyagers and the glitch have found a means of escaping the system through the phone modem, and into the telephone wires leading to the mansion. Gyro describes it as trying to “reach out and touch someone” – an old telephone company slogan.

A return to the viewpoint of our digital heroes finds them pursuing the glitch within a telephone cable, which looks more like a never-ending canal tunnel on the inside. The hard drive has taken substantial damage, and Fenton’s geometrical maneuvering isn’t accomplishing much with all gears dropping off except reverse. The conveyance finally falls apart, and the glitch turns to battle them. Fenton, upon Scrooge’s orders, puts up a fight against the beast, but is swallowed whole by it. Scrooge sees to be next – but the voice of Gyro reverberates through the cable, as he attempts to contact them through the telephone in Scrooge’s office. Gyro informs Scrooge that something magnetic might disrupt the glitch – and Scrooge remembers the new tip of his walking cane. Scrooge thus allows the beast to swallow him, then points the tip of his cane at him from the inside. BLAMMO! The beast disintegrates, and Fenton and Scrooge are saved. Not only that, but a sea of dollar signs emits from where the glitch had been – the digital dollars the beast had swallowed. Gyro reverses his electrical impulse program, re-routing the end result to a monitor within Scrooge’s money bin. In a miracle which could only happen in a cartoon, Scrooge, Fenton, and the entire former contents of the money bin burst out of the monitor to full 3-dimensional life, and everything is restored to what it was before. All except Scrooge, who reveals to the boys that he isn’t back for long, and relates to them the bad news he was given from the “doctor”. The boys quickly realize what “doctor” he is talking about, and a confession is made about their busting the clock. Scrooge is not so much mad about the clock, but at having risked his life and his fortune all for no good reason – and breaks into a Donald Duck-like quacking tantrum on the floor. One of the nephews remarks to the others that he didn’t know their uncle knew about “Plan B”.

---

It might also be said that Pixar’s Toy Story (11/22/95) constitutes a tale of getting with the times. Classic TV Western cowboy doll Woody comes face-to-face with the future, when Christmas brings the household of his boy, Andy, the top-flight superstar toy of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command. Buzz is not aware of the true meaning for his existence – to be a child’s plaything – and has the notion in his head that he is the real deal – a genuine Space Ranger, even equipped with the power to fly. His winged space-suit does not display genuine aerodynamics, and despite Buzz’s impressive demonstration of diving into the air and bouncing gracefully off various objects in the playroom, Woody calls his bluff by insisting that Buzz can’t fly – he is only “falling, with style.” Woody further repeatedly confronts Buzz with the reality check, “You are a toy!”, merely leaving Buzz with the prevailing impression that Woody isn’t well. When Buzz becomes Andy’s new favorite, even receiving a marker-pen inscription of Andy’s name that used to be reserved for the sole of Woody’s boot, Woody seems to secretly want nothing more than the ouster of the psycho space ranger from the playroom. An accidental mishap causes Buzz to fall out the window – and circumstances make it appear to the rest of the toys in the playroom that Woody pushed him. The toys gang up upon the innocent, if not entirely unpleased, Woody, and Woody is forced to exit the house also, determined to embark on a mission to rescue Buzz and clear his own name. The now-iconic tale thus weaves its way through many exciting misadventures, including a visit to the ever-popular “Pizza Planet” outer-space themed kiddie restaurant (a not-so-subtle send-up of Chuck-E-Cheese’s), and the chamber of horrors that is the room of next-door-neighbor boy, Sid the Toy Destroyer. In the course of it, Buzz learns from an on-the-air TV advertisement that he is one of thousands of dolls of his type, and that a disclaimer in the ad notes that he cannot really fly. Woody softens toward him, and reassures him that the role of a toy is equally important to any old space ranger, boosting Buzz’s shattered morale, and making him determined to get home to their boy, Andy, to serve their proper purpose. Of course, Sid is defeated (Buzz even leaning how to use his “falling with style” to the mutual advantage of himself and Sid’s other captive toys), and Buzz and Woody return to the playroom triumphantly, with a new-found respect and comradery toward one another. Maybe past and present heroes can co-exist, after all.

---

An Extremely Goofy Movie (2/29/00, direct to video), noted by one of our bloggers, receives honorable mention, though perhaps not precisely fitting the theme of this article series in its primarily-remembered content, as Goofy’s extended musical performance as a surprise whiz at disco dancing is not a transformation aimed at getting with the times, but a throwback to Goofy being himself, to impress a college librarian who is from his era and hooked on the same fads from the past as Goofy is. Perhaps the film’s main plotline more closely matches-up with our theme. Max is off to college with P.J., leaving Goofy with the feeling of an empty nest. Goofy’s mind wanders thinking of Max while doing his work at a toy factory, resulting in an assembly-line disaster that loses him his job. Finding no new jobs of sufficient stature available without a college degree, and Goof being one year short of education to obtain same, Goofy enrolls in the same college as Max and P.J., and tries to fit in with student society and hijinks. Of course, Goofy gets mixed up in the boys’ Extreme Sports competition against a rival fraternity, and has to deal with the realization that his son thinks he is ruining everything, but an ultimate reconciliation results when the chips are down. Meanwhile, Goofy finds new love in the form of the librarian, also mired in love of the past era that Goofy finds his comfort zone. Goofy and Max bring home the gold in the competition, and Goof receives his diploma – only to perplex Max as to what next year will bring, when Goof’s new sheepskin qualifies him for a good job right on campus next year. Another sidelight of the film, unexplained as to how she happens to exist unchanged by modern times, is the setting of a coffee house which is a favorite campus haunt, operated by a black-outfitted and bereted female proprietor who is 100% beatnik and a dean of cool poetry. P.J. finds budding romance with her, and begins to expound verse of a similar nature that even the girl can dig the most. Go fig, ya dig?

---

Disney’s Mickey Mouse Works marked the studio’s first full-scale revival of its cast of classic theatrical characters from the golden age of short subjects. While many episodes presented the characters in classic-style story situations which could have as easily fit into the time periods of the 40’s and ‘50’s, some would pit the characters against new and more modern settings and predicaments which did not yet exist in their glory days, attempting to keep the characters fresh and up-to-date. Of course, this didn’t mean that their personalities naturally meshed with their contemporary challenges, and culture shock could often contribute to the comedy of their attempts to face uncharted waters.

Computer.don (Disney, Mickey Mouse Works, 4/15/00) – Donald Duck is a dweeb. Don’t take my word for it – it’s everybody’s opinion – except for Donald himself. His houseboat is full of antiquated and obsolete objects that serve the functions of everyday necessities. His lighting is provided by a kerosene lamp. His wall clock is a sundial. His refrigerator is a 1930’s ice box. (Even iceman Goofy, who seems to have Donald as the last customer left on his list, remarks that Donald must be the only one on Earth to still have one of these.) And Donald does his math calculations on an abacus, which he thinks of as his computer. Daisy Duck, on the other hand, is with the modern trends, and owns a cell phone, computer, fax, and has just gotten e-mail (all cutting-edge when this cartoon was made). She calls up Donald (on his rotary phone), and asks him to sent her an email and a picture on the computer. “You do have a computer?”, she asks in afterthought, her tone indicating that, unfortunately, she can predict the answer. Finding Donald to be as backwards as ever, she demands that he purchase a computer, or she’ll look for a new, modern boyfriend – instead of a dweeb. Donald has visions running through his head of Daisy romancing a flashy-metal duck android, and so, against all his basic instincts, vows to purchase a computer. Of course, the computer store won’t take phone orders without punching in digits – something impossible on Donald’s rotary phone – so he is forced to march to the store and manually lug the heavy box of components home.

As Donald pops the top of the packed crate open, a speaker on a pole pops out of the packing materials, speaking to him to congratulate him on his purchase, and asking him to speak his name into a microphone for voice recognition. As clearly as his natural speech pattern will allow, our hero states into the microphone “Donald”. The computer misinterprets the name as “Duo”. Off to a great start. Now for the unpacking. Various drives (including a floppy drive consisting of a soggy wilting pizza, and a zap drive which zaps Donald electrically into charred blackness), plus a keyboard, circuit board, surfboard, and ironing board, and a mouse (Mickey in a crate, complaining about not belonging in this picture). Some assembly required. After scanning through instruction charts, dozens of manuals, glossaries, etc., the speaker finally informs the baffled duck that if he still can’t find the proper plug-in, his model requires a mail-away for additional instructions not included with the set. The frustrated fowl tosses the whole contents into the trash can, until another call from Daisy, accompanied by phantom batting of flirtatious eyelashes, puts Donald back on track again. Donald inverts the trash can and dumps the contents back out, which rebound off the floor, and miraculously bounce into place on Donald’s desk, attached and fully assembled. “Now, that’s more like it”, says the surprised duck.

The computer screen says Welcome, but a first push of a keyboard button initiates a start-up sequence. The screen images change from spinning clock hands to flipping calendar pages to barely-crawling progress bars, with mottos flashing on the screen such as “Patience is a virtue”. (This sequence is quite similar to the endless roll of instructions, arrows and directional hands seen as Goofy winds his camera film to photo 1 in the classic Disney theatrical, “Hold That Pose”.) Dawn breaks the next day before startup is completed. Daisy phones again, complaining that she didn’t receive Donald’s email. “I’m working on it”, shouts the exasperated duck.

Donald searches an old high-school yearbook for a photo of himself to send to Daisy. He encounters an atrocious one of himself in an Afro-feather-do, and is sure that’s not the one to send. But the computer scanner makes the decision for him, choosing that moment to suck all the pages out of the yearbook into its rollers. Donald engages in a tug-of-war with the machine over the last page – and is dragged into the scanner himself. What follows may be the first rendering of the duck in CGI, as he appears three-dimensionally on the screen of the computer monitor, and is pursued through a maze of icons by the selector arrow, which seems to have a determined goal of spearing Donald in the rear end, changing the color of his image with every hit. At one point, a drop-down selection menu appears for the pointer to choose from, with options including Smash Duck, Erase Duck, Pinch Duck, Punch Duck, Chase Duck, Pound Duck, Crush Duck, Flip Duck, Flop Duck, Annoy Duck, and Stomp Duck. Does it really make a difference which one of these options is selected? Donald hides out in the computer trash bin, but is selected from within by the arrow, which drag-clicks him over to the printer icon. Back in the real world, Donald rolls off the presses flat as a pancake, but pops back to his normal form, exhausted. Donald again tries to dump all the components into the trash can, but Daisy walks in, pleased that she received his email. How, thinks Donald, as Daisy presses the keyboard, revealing on the monitor that the machine self-sent Donald’s awful photo to Daisy. Daisy has sat up a web-site (appropriate for someone with webbed feet) displaying Donald’s image, which has already received a million hits. “What a dweeb”, remarks Daisy at the photo, but then throws her arms around Donald and kisses him, adding, “…but you’re my dweeb.” Donald gets woozy from the kiss, just as the computer speaker pops up again, to add “And you’re my dweeb, too – Duo!” Donald faints from exhaustion and frustration, for the iris out.

---

How To Be a Gentleman (Mickey Mouse Works, Goofy, 12/16/00) – Goofy faces the same dilemma addressed on multiple occasions by Fred Flintstone – how to gain membership in the local Country Club? Perhaps the Goof is even a more unlikely candidate for membership than the cave man. The Goof declares, “I’m country”, pulling out a Stetson hat to wear, “And I carry a club, too.” His entrance with both items gets him swiftly booted through the closed wooden door. But the ever-present narrator will give it a go to try and shape this refugee from the farm into a polished gentleman.

First, the attire. Goofy’s outfit disappears as if it were the flat raiments of a paper doll, and just as swiftly, a tuxedo takes its place. Goof turns away from the camera, revealing himself still visible in shorts on the backside of the paper cutout, and remarks, “Must be half-price.” Diction lessons have him reciting tongue twisters (presented with a bouncing ball over printed letters, confusing to Goofy as the words are not facing him, so he turns the words around backwards on the screen, then winds up bouncing atop the moving ball). He also practices greetings to a queen – lousing up the words with the classic spoonerism, “Queer old Dean”, and getting “crowned” by the queen’s scepter. His eating habits are to devour everything. Even when told not to use his hands, he still finishes everything in front of him – even devouring the table and the metal candelabra centerpiece (plenty of iron). A lesson in poise has Goofy challenging the narrator to “Do your worst”, resulting in him being smacked by an angry lady’s handbag, bitten by a dog, hit by a falling safe, speared by a knight in armor, run over by an express train, swamped by a tidal wave, and blown up by a cartoon bomb. He remains cool as a cucumber – though he falls apart into segments. He is finally ready for society – excepting forgetting to put on his pants as he re-enters the club – and again gets tossed out on his ear. The nrrator can’t believe he would need to remind Goofy about the trousers, and gives up on the whole idea, remarking, “What was I thinking? You’re Goofy!” Irritated no end, Goofy pulls out his wooden club again, and in POV shot from the narrator’s vantage point, Goofy approaches the camera, and lands three shattering blows upon whoever is behind it. The camera and narrator collapse sideways to the ground, as Goof walks away from our vantage point, while the narrator moans, “Now, that’s what I call a gentleman’s club.”

NEXT WEEK: Another go-round with modern trends.

It appear that this year, yet another Pixar film may join the ranks of eligibility for inclusion in this article series. Toy Story 5 has chosen to revive the franchise which most thought finished with the last picture, and its trailer suggests that the revival may not be merely a forced idea to cash in on some new bucks, but based on a legitimate and contemporary concept unexplored by the series, which many a parent has had to face with their real-life offspring. How do the three-dimensional playthings of old deal with the advent of the computer age, when smart pads and hand-held devices take the place of real-life gameplay and draw the kids into the colorful, flashing and immersing 2D world as opposed to creative play and use of the imagination in place of the frenetic action on the screen? I know of several households who wish they had an easy answer to this question, and I’m sure there are millions of others like them. “I’m losing her”, states Jessie the cowgirl in one of the trailer’s scenes, and I swear I’ve heard the same words from the parents. How Woody, Buzz, and the others will wage war against the “Lily Pad” that begins the conflict remains to be disclosed – and we can only hope the writers have thought of a solution as ingeniously creative as the franchise’s first venture, which might present some level of answer and guidance to the real world parents and kids watching so as to spark discussion, and perhaps reach to the inner child within both the little ones and the big ones alike to develop a mutual understanding that playtime should be more than spoon-fed images off a screen, but something that can, between the needed relaxation, reach and develop both the mind and imaginative soul of the player as well.

---

The wires need to be attached. The plastic bubble in which the package of cables is contained refuses to bust open – not even under hammer blows – until a stray drop of Goofy’s perspiration somehow dissolves it, spewing wires everywhere. They all have color-coded connectors – on the back of the set, facing the wall. Goofy is forced to cut a gaping hole in the wall with a power saw, then another to walk through to drag the cables outside to connect them. Anything that’s left sticking out when he puts the wall panel back in place is cut off with the same power saw. A diagram depicts the proper placement of the multitude of sound speakers, guaranteed to produce eventual deafness, especially by means of the sub-woofer, whose tone cracks our camera lens. Goofy suspends, glues, props up, and otherwise places speakers everywhere, knocking away the contents of a fireplace mantel (including a framed portrait of Walt Disney), dropping a speaker into a goldfish bowl, and stuffing another into the mounted head of a moose. When completed, Goofy is hanging upside down from the chandelier, dangling from the speaker cords. But, for Pete’s sake, says the narrator, it’s time for the big game! Goofy can hardly tell, as he’s yet to set any of the timers on the various devices, which all flash 12:00 like an old VCR. He races for a remote – but has no idea which one to push out of a table-load of such controls for the various equipment. As his arms wave frantically, trying to activate everything all at once, the narrator shouts, “WAIT! You DID purchase a universal remote?” Goofy, with one remote stuffed in his mouth, mumbles, “Uh huh.” Under a dome of glass (resembling the one housing the magic rose in “Beauty and the Beast”) rests the magical device, with one simple large button bearing yellow and black caution stripes like an industrial panic button. With a flourish and a flush of anticipation, Goofy presses it. The whole house explodes! Goof and his easy chair are rocketed into the sky, then land with a thud in a dust cloud, along with what appears to be the screen of the TV set. As the dust clears, Goof’s eyes widen with the grandeur and clarity of the image he is seeing. The entire offensive line of the football team is charging straight at the screen and the Goof – but things are a bit more realistic than Goofy bargained for, as he and the empty frame of the TV screen have actually landed on the football field itself. The players rush through the empty screen frame, picking up Goofy and his chair, and toss him around as the defensive line meets them in collision from the opposite direction. Goofy winds up in the middle of a dog pile of players, with the football stuck in his mouth, and a referee throwing a penalty flag across his face. Goofy spits out the football, with one eye blackened, but smiles, closing with the observation to the audience, “It’s almost like bein’ there!”

Delivery day! That is, any time between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Goofy waits at the window of his home, anxiously waving a pennant and a foam “we’re #1″ oversized hand. He waits – and waits – and waits – falling asleep until dawn of the next day, when the van arrives, shaking the whole house. The vibrations straighten a painting on the wall of the leaning tower of Pisa, which Goofy corrects to its proper leaning angle. Delivery is made with the movers’ customary precision – as they use a derrick to lift the whole house off its foundation, push the giant packing crates into the living room area with a bulldozer, then drop the house back into place. Goofy opens the top of the largest crate, and an exterior view of the home shows an explosion from all windows and doors of packing peanuts. Goof is swept out into the yard atop them, all stuck to his person by static electricity. He sticks a finger into his mouth and blows hard, propelling the peanuts away from the air emitting from his ears – only to have them stick right back upon him again as soon as he runs out of air.

The Goof travels to a high-tech wonderland – the local mega-store “Shiny Stuff” (bearing a surprisingly close resemblance to the average “Best Buy” outlet, right down to the sign’s color). Goof is instructed while floating on an imaginary cloud to pick up a few “essentials” – the DVD, the CD, the VHS, the LMNOP(????), and various others until he carries a tower of components. And don’t forget the batteries – they’re not included. This final weight brings Goof crashing down to Earth, but the components land in a convenient shopping basket. Now Goof begins passing flat-screen TV sets of various sizes, getting more excited as the screens grow larger. He finally finds himself facing a screen that seems the width and height of the whole department. Embracing the screen, Goofy affectionately whispers, “I LOVE you.”

An impressive encounter with the world of modern technology is the late Disney theatrical short, How to Hook Up Your Home Theater (12/21/07), starring Goofy, in a well-animated follow-up to his classic “How To” shorts of the past. Beginning with credits copying the traditional sunburst and burlap main titles of old, and the 1950’s Goofy theme and portions of the march from How To Play Football reorchestrated, we are invited by the narrator to witness the age-old tradition of “watching the big game”. Our first scenes are depicted in full color and widescreen live from the football stadium, with cheering squad members in lettered sweaters mistakenly spelling out “Go Meat” instead of “Go Team” until they get their standing placement rearranged. But then we see the game as Goofy is seeing it from his living room – on a portable black-and-white set with six-inch screen, using rabbit-ear antennae with makeshift repairs including the addition of a coat hanger, a pie tin (with one slice of pie still on it), and a partially crushed soda can empty. A fly lands on the screen, and a disgruntled Goofy calls out, “Down in front”. Then, the reception goes bad. As Goofy struggles to shake the miniature set in his bare hands, he happens to glance out the living room window, to witness two moving men carrying into the house next door a humongous packing crate from the van of a home theater system store. Goofy’s eyes turn into miniature footballs, as he envisions what it would be like to own one of these technological marvels. The narrator describes the experience as like being right on the field, and in Goofy’s daydream, he is in the stadium, carrying the ball while sitting in his easy chair, while the team propels him across the goal line for a touchdown. That’s settled – Goofy must have one of these babies.

Mickey Mouse Works would become House of Mouse, newly frameworked within the walls of Mickey’s swank night club in downtown Toontown for toons only. Individual cartoons elements, however, would still maintain the classic six to seven minute framework. One of these was How To Be Groovy, Cool, and Fly (House of Mouse, Goofy, 1/27/01), which presents a veritable Goofy fashion show, transcending us through all manner of male fashion trends from the British Invasion of the 60’s on through the new millennium. It begins with Goofy is his usual attire, as the narrator declares him out-of-date, and looking like his Mama dressed him. For perhaps the only time in the Goofy universe, we actually get a visit from Goofy’s Mama (an overweight likeness of himself in a dress, with a possible June Foray voice similar to Ma Beagle), who finishes the job by stating, “Don’t forget your hat. Hyulk!” The narrator magically removes all of Goofy’s uncool garments, reducing him to his underwear, then re-garbs him in the trend-setting styles of several generations. Goofy ranges from drum player in a rock band with Beatle wig, to hippie, to laid-back Afro, to disco fever (accompanied by Donald doing the Disco Duck), to the sci-fi look (entering in an outfit and hairdo that look like Star Wars’ Princess Leia, then cutting a wire holding up a spotlight above his head with a swing of his light saber, dropping the spotlight framing onto his head, in which he breathes heavily as if in the mask of Darth Vader). A running gag has ecstatic girls mob the “cool” Goofy while in various guises, tearing at his clothes like rock groupies, leaving the Goof in underwear again. When one style requires the added gear of a swinging sports car, the girls mob him again, not only taking his clothes, but the tires, hood, and doors of the car as well. Finally, we reach the contemporary current era. Goofy appears again, back in his old standard outfit. The narrator mutters “No, no”, believing that Goofy didn’t get the message of the whole cartoon. To his and our surprise, Mickey and Donald pass through the shot – wearing outfits identical to Goofy’s! And so is everyone else. The narrator is forced to admit that in the world of fashion, everything old is new, and congratulates Goofy on being in perfect style – as the usual mob of girls enter, all dressed in Goofy outfits, and reduce the Goof to underwear again.

---

A few more this week from Hanna-Barbera, then more bullfighting action from UPA, Terrytoons, the Disney Afternoon, and even from Japan.

Smurf Me No Flowers (The Smurfs, 11/27/82). Lazy Smurf, true to his name, loves to spend the day performing no work, and snoozing away. Oddly, he’s experiencing a problem he’s never faced before – inability to doze off, no matter what position, and no matter where he tries to sleep. Experimenting with new sleeping locales in the underbrush of Smurfette’s garden, inside Baker Smurf’s cupboards, and even down the village well, is driving the other Smurf’s crazy with fright at discovering his wide-awake eyes in the darkness. Brainy Smurf suggests Lazy see Papa Smurf for some sort of magical cure. But even Papa Smurf claims to have nothing for Lazy in his bag of tricks. The best cure he knows for sleeplessness is good old fashioned exercise. Exercise? Not a permissible word in Lazy’s vocabulary. Lazy leaves Papa Smurf’s home with a feeling of hopelessness, just as Vanity Smurf bursts in, panicking at the condition of a withering plant in a pot, and hoping that the wrinkles in the plant’s leaves aren’t catching. Papa tells him to leave the plant with him to see if there’s anything he can do. Meanwhile, Lazy breaks the news to Brainy outside that Papa had no magical solution. Brainy is unconvinced that these words could have come from Papa, and advances to Papa’s door to speak to their leader himself. But before entering the doorway, he overhears the voice of Papa Smurf, remarking “If only he’d come to me sooner. It looks like this is the end. I’d say two more days, at the most.” Of course, he is talking to himself about the plant. Brainy, however, assumes the worst – that Lazy is not long for this Smurf.

Brainy spreads news of the tragedy to everyone except Lazy and Papa Smurf. The Smurfs plan to make Lazy’s last days as happy as possible, starting by throwing him a going-away party – hopefully without letting him know he is going away. All hope for secrecy dies quickly, when a Smurf’s ode to Lazy causes him and others to break down in tears, and Clumsy Smurf blurts out the bad news, amplified by Brainy repeating similar phrases in trying to shut him up. Lazy gets it, and his first instinct is to retreat into solitude. His continuing inability to sleep results in a change of plans. He resolves to use his last two days wisely – by doing great things he was always too tired to do. Ride roaring rapids. Conquer the highest mountain. And tame a fierce wild beast. The other Smurfs tag along in hopes of dissuading him, or at least keeping his numbered days from dwindling in number prematurely. Lazy accomplishes the first two tasks, while his friends take the lumps in a wrecked canoe and caught in a rolling snowball. As for the beast, Lazy selects a menacing-looking bull in a cow pasture. The Smurfs get an idea to prevent another disaster, and divert Lazy for a few moments with the suggestion that he needs a few more slices of Baker’s cake to strengthen himself before taking on his foe. In the meanwhile, the Smurfs perform a switcheroo, doctoring and dolling up a cow to serve as the bull’s substitute. Lazy returns, carrying a large red autumn leaf to serve as a cape. He gets some slow responsive action by waving it at the cow, and the cow passes in plodding, non-threatening manner, while Smurfs seated on the cowpasture fence shout “Ole”. Lazy takes bows between passes to his public. The noise of the event is heard by Papa Smurf, who has remained for the day inside his home, tending to the sick plant, and achieving wonders that seem to ensure the plant’s survival. Carrying the plant along to deliver to Vanity, Papa finds the village deserted, and follows the sounds of the cheers to the cowpasture. Of course, the misunderstanding is quickly cleared up, to everyone’s surprise – particularly Lazy, who stammers, “Then what am I battling this fierce beast for?” Lazy turns to run, but the other Smurfs laugh and tell him of the substitution they made. However, a snort of hot breath above their heads tells them the danger isn’t over – the real bull has returned. The Smurfs scatter, every Smurf for themself, as the bull charges, but is stopped by a smack of his head on the pasture fence. By the time they reach the village, Lazy is found – fast asleep. Papa remarks that he told him some good exercise would cure his problem. However, exercise has also been a sure cure for everyone else’s ability to doze, too, and Papa finds the village’s entire population exhausted in the square and snoring everywhere. Papa smiles, and turns to Vanity’s plant, remarking, “Well, little friend, it looks like you and I eat alone tonight.”

---

Just Rambling Along (from “The Tom and Jerry Kids Show”, 10/31/92) – Mice have large families. (For example, witness, all those cousins of Herman the Mouse we knew for years at Famous.) We’ve been introduced to Jerry the Mouse’s cousins and uncles since 1951. His family further expanded in the Tom and Jerry Kids Show with the introduction of Slowpoke Antonio – a character who seemed to descend (or steal) in equal parts from Jerry’s Uncle Pecos (“Pecos Pest”), and Speedy Gonzales’s cousin Slowpoke Rodriguez (“Mexicali Shmoes”/“Mexican Boarders”). What, cross-pollination between the products of two rival studios? Next thing you know, some genealogist will find a direct bloodline link between Jerry and Pixie and Dixie!

Slowpoke differed primarily from his namesake at Warner Brothers by speaking in a Western twang, singing in off-key country yodeling style, and being an expert in fancy lariat work in the rodeo. His connection to Uncle Pecos became painfully evident in his first appearance in the series, where he completely lifts Pecos’s reach-out-of-the-TV ending to hogtie Tom. This time, Slowpoke is given a starring cartoon of his own, and for reasons unknown, has traveled to sunny Spain, believing there is a rodeo playing locally in which he wants to enter the bulldogging events. Of course, he erroneously enters the local bull ring through the matadors’ entrance. Just before reaching the ring, he encounters a Senorita and her Mamacita mouse in a box seat located within a flower pot. The Senorita asks if he is the matador who will fight the bull. Slowpoke claims he doesn’t know what this “matador” stuff is (a writing inconsistency, as, at a later point of the film, he utters verbal challenges of “Ole” and “Toro”, and adds “That’s matador talk”), but boasts that he can throw any bull in this here parts. The snorting breath of a bull’s muzzle suddenly blasts at him, as the bull has overheard the insulting claims of the little “turista”, and denies that he can be thrown. Slowpoke puts a stop to the “rude interruption”, by plugging the bull’s nostrils with two corks, and stating that he doesn’t like being in a draft. As Slowpoke enters the ring, the bull gallops toward him at full speed. Slowpoke grabs onto the bull’s nose ring, and attempts to stop him (though in fact being pushed several times across the arena), claiming this ain’t no way to start a rodeo. Slowpoke pulls out his lariat, and with a great time of only a couple of seconds, has the bull on his back and hogtied at the hooves. Slowpoke tells the cantankerous bovine to get back to his pen and not come out until it’s his turn.

The bull makes an ungraceful exit bound in rope, but somehow breaks loose and re-emerges, ready for another charge. Slowpoke is butted into the air, landing on the bull’s back. This suits Slowpoke fine, as he always loves the bucking bronco event. He performs a wild ride, staying upon the bull bareback. Then, gag material begins to get highly derivative of several past cartoons. One gag has Slowpoke opening the bull’s mouth, to play his teeth like a piano keyboard (Tex Avery’s “Bad Luck Blackie”). Slowpoke produces a branding iron, and, as the bull hides behind a wooden barrier, brands him right through the wood (derived from Pixie and Dixie’s “Cousin Tex”). A tug on a triple-looped lariat around the bull turns the bull into a link of sausages (“Popalong Popeye”). Slowpoke finally adapts to toreador cape, and plants an anvil behind it (“Bully For Bugs”, derivative of “The Grey-Hounded Hare”). And the bull can’t stand Slowpoke’s singing (“El Kabong Strikes Again”). Writers (or shall we call them “researchers”?) must have been really hoping the viewing kids had never seen other cartoons before to hope to get away with this many gag thefts unnoticed. Yet, in fairness, the animation is of reasonably high quality, commensurate with the obviously larger budgets H-B was able to obtain for this show, pacing is energetic and more in tune with the classic theatrical days, and, if you can ignore the fact that you’ve seen almost all of it before, it doesn’t play badly. Slowpoke ends the film serenading the Senorita, who acknowledges that she thinks he’s a great bullfighter – if only she could say the same for his singing.

• No online prints available of “Just Rambling Along”. If you find one, let us know.

---

A late entry nominally-billed as Hanna-Barbera product by Cartoon Network was Johnny Bravo’s Did You See a Bull Run By Here? (7/28/97). It’s a bit of a weak finish to the H-B bullfighting legacy, without much of a plotline. While at the Pamplona running of the bulls trying to pick up Senoritas, Johnny winds up in the way, has his shirt snagged by a charging bull, and is dragged into the bull ring. He still tries to put the make upon a shapely American girl in the stands, but someone hands him a cape, saying he is going to need it standing in the ring. Johnny doesn’t know what it’s for, and throws it over his shoulder, playing cavalier and spouting poetry to the lady in improvised Shakespeare fashion. He is tapped on the shoulder by the hoof of the bull, who says its nothing personal, and agrees that violence isn’t the answer, yet knows the rules. Johnny’s got the cape, so they gotta fight. Johnny gets butted into the air three different times (once as himself, once playing matador, and once attacking the bull with kung fu moves. All his flights into the air result in crashing into the dust below, leaving three identical craters stretched end to end at arms-length. Johnny says it’s getting personal. The bull meanwhile lounges between rounds on a lawn chair with a martini, gets a manicure, and flirts with the American girl, trying to tell her a funny joke. Someone passes the bull a phone in the middle of his flirtation. “Talk to me”, he grunts. A voice says, “Look behind you.” It is Johnny, wearing an oversize red boxing glove. With one punch, he K.O.’s the bull. The American girl leaps into the ring, checking on the bull’s condition, and tells Johnny, “Well, I hope you’re happy.” It seems losing bulls in these parts are eaten by the crowd, and their hooves turned into ash trays. As the folks in the stands raise their knives and forks, and the dazed bull sings a chorus of “Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey”, Johnny provides a distraction, by simply pointing to the sky and stating, “Look up there.” While the crowd looks, the girl drives into the arena with a convertible, and she, Johnny and the bull drive away, leaving the crowd asking whether they should order Chinese. The girl turns out to be a Hollywood producer, and signs up the bull for a movie contract, but only on the bull’s condition that Johnny also be signed as his comedy partner. Johnny ends the cartoon in a successful career as the bull’s stooge, remarking to the camera that a guy’s gotta make a living.

• A flipped version of “Did You See a Bull Run By Here?” is on a block of Johnny Bravo cartoons on Dailymotion, beginning at 1:14:23.

---

Turning back the clock again to the 1950’s, UPA’s The Boing Boing Show included a bullfighting episode entitled The Matador and the Troubadour (circa 1956?). Only a foreign-language print without subtitles is currently available online, so I can only give details beyond the visuals from memory of a prior screening recorded on VHS which I cannot readily lay hands upon. It tells a simple tale of a village where the local matador reigns supreme in the eyes of the villagers – and especially, the ladies – in popularity, while a small, lonely troubadour strums his guitar alone in the streets, virtually unnoticed (except by a rather plain and homely village girl, who is the only one charmed by his plaintiff ballads). The troubadour believes he has all the moves and grace to match the matador, and indeed is shown in a side-by-side performance behind the matador’s back, matching his every move in miniature. Thus, the troubadour begins training in secret to learn all the passes of the matador, with the local girl assisting by charging at him with a set of bull horns attached to the head of a wheelbarrow. The film attempts to be slightly educational, naming in Spanish several of the passes he perfects, but ending with something that sounds like “El Paseo Ridiculoso” – a move that gets the Troubadour completely wrapped up from head to toe within his own cape.

The day finally comes when the Troubadour presents himself for a tryout at the bull ring. The Matador, in attendance at one side of the arena, accompanied by a beautiful Senorita, scoffs at the amateur upstart, as does his girl. The bull they release is so mean, he wears a patch over one eye like a pirate. The Troubadour makes a gallant try, but repeatedly gets mowed down by the bull. Even the bull starts to take pity on him as he lays in the dust of the arena, propping him up with his muzzle so that the Troubadour can continue the fight. Finally, the Troubadour repeats his “Paseo Ridiculoso”, swishing his cape repeatedly from one side of the bull to the other, and winds the bull up in fabric, using the cape to hogtie him upside down as if in a rodeo. Cheers go up from the crowd. The matador in the stands utters a half-hearted “Ole”, but is surprised when his Senorita abandons him, and appears in the ring, offering her hand to the Troubadour for a kiss. The Troubadour is about to deliver the kiss, but then has second thoughts. If this girl will so easily dump the matador, would she not someday possibly do the same to him? Is she worth it? The Troubadour concludes, no – and so, without delivering the kiss, releases her hand, bows to her respectfully, and exits the arena. Where does he go? Back into the village, to sit next to the plain and homely girl, who smiles, offers him his old guitar which she has saved, and faithfully sits quietly with him, to listen entranced to his melodies. True beauty runs farther within than skin deep.

• A German-language print of “The Matador and the Troubadour”, at least showing-off the visuals and the music, can be found on Youtube titled “Zu Gast bei Paulchens Trickverwandten – Der kleine Troubadour” on the channel of Joey Bridgehouse at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu2wnezvjSM

---

A whole article has been devoted by the columns of Dr. Toon on this site to the story and history of Toei Animation’s feature-length Saiyuuki, or Alakazam the Great (8/14/60) (as known to American audiences), and its checkered editing and translation in attempt to make its material palatable to the U.S. market. I thus won’t go into its sometimes unfathomable plot about a magical monkey king, his fall from grace by challenging the gods, and his lengthy pilgrimage with a ragtag band of friends to achieve humility. However, it is odd that it has been forgotten by the readership here, as its climactic sequence develops into a full-blown bullfight with an evil bull-demon who resorts to his roots, transforming into a humongous and pure-animal version of the bovine beast for a savage showdown with Alakazam. Alakazam himself produces a red cape, and adds something no other animated depictions of the sport have included – the decorated banderillas, spear-like poles, used to puncture the bull’s shoulder muscles and weaken him. To make things a little more magical, the battle occurs in mid-air, both characters defying gravity (Alakazam doing so by taking up his matador positions while standing atop a floating cloud, while the bull needs no cloud to gallop airborne at will), with both of them hovering over a volcanic lava pit. The bull action is rather traditional to the moves of the ring, with graceful passes, and multiple spears placed into the bull’s back. (It’s hard to tell if the animation shows primarily red paper streamers upon the spears, or if there is some suggestion of bloodletting from the wounds.) It seems unclear what is the fatal blow or cause that finally sends the bull tumbling from the sky into the lava pit. Strangely, one of Alakazam’s companions, a large pig in a kimono who provides most of the comic relief, is in possession of a magic fan which can freeze things in its path. He chooses at this moment to wave the fan to stop the lava flow, freezing the lava and the mountain peak in ice. So we may never really know if the bull demon burned to a crisp in the volcanic molten rock, or merely was placed into a deep freeze.

The full feature of “Alakazam the Great” is on You Tube. Below is an 11-minute highlight reel including the bullfight:

NEXT WEEK: We’ll wrap a cape around this subject, with some more Disney, and contributions from WB, The Simpsons, Dreamworks, and a feature.

• A perfect print of “When Mice Were Men” is on You Tube.

Now Gadget can complete her project – a mechanical toreador! Mounted on a wheeled base, the device also features flip-down anchoring boards with metal spikes at the ends, to allow the machine to hold its ground when needed. Its waist consists of a large coiled spring, giving it flexibility during the passes, and a broom handle out of the torso serves to hold out a red tablecloth as a torero’s cape. Everything is operated from several stations within the machine, by pulleys, ropes, and levers. The first charge brought on by waving the cape repeats the old standby gag of positioning the cape in front of a large boulder. The bull is dazed, but not down. Pass number two relies upon the spring-waist, tossing the bull backwards on the rebound, but having almost an equally-jarring effect upon the Rangers within. Plans A and B having not worked quite as Gadget hoped, she asks the others to stall for time, while she works out the coordinates for a plan C with a slide rule. The robot toreador and the rangers take a bit of a beating in the meanwhile, but manage to regain a standing position, while the bull rubs his horns together to sharpen them, ready to finish the job. Planting one anchor of the toreador in the ground, and leaning just so to one side, Gadget induces a side pass that spins the toreador device around at the waist by its mainspring, catching the bull with it into a spiral, then reversing the force of the wound-up spring, to launch the bull upwards into the bell tower of the mission, where he becomes solidly wedged inside to tower’s huge bell. The rangers leave him there, getting the bull wagon rolling downhill toward the village, to arrive just in time to crash, breaking open the wagon pen lock to release the other bulls in time to save the fiesta. El Emenopio (whom Dale, who never can get the name right, refers to as “El Lemonpie-o”) stumbles back into town after having somehow gotten free of the tower, but is so groggy, Monty is able to knock him to the ground with just a flick of one finger upon his nose. The mice clamor around Monty, and carry El Monte Grande in a victory parade upon their shoulders. Dale grumbles at Monty taking all the credit, noting that the rest of them did as much as he did. But a small child in her mother’s arms extends Dale a kiss on the cheek, thanking “El Dale Grande” for saving the day, bringing a quick end to Dale’s complaining, as he blushes and responds bashfully, “Gosh, it was nothin’.”

Chip, Gadget, and Zipper console Monty, and assure him that, with their unified help, they can better the odds against the villain. But there’s still the matter of Dale. Dale is still outside, thinking the bull is paying possum and just trying to mess up his show of heroism. Dale tries to lasso the bull and drag him off with a rope, but still can’t budge him. Chip emerges, trying to get Dale to follow them inside, and insisting that Dale can’t do the job all by himself. The two chipmunks get into one of their usual verbal debates, while the bull comes to. It is not long before they are both cornered against a wall. Gadget meanwhile has been engaging in her own specialty – trying to construct a mechanical contraption out of the debris in the storage shed, with Monty’s help. They discover upon looking outside that their help may be too little and too late to save their chipmunk friends. But one team member is neither too little nor too late. Little Zipper the fly hits upon an idea, and zips straight into one of the bull’s ears. The bull becomes entirely distracted, pawing at his ear and trying to hit his head on the side with the opposite hoof to get the proverbial bee out of his bonnet. The diversion does the trick, and Chip and Dale join the others inside the shed as Zipper also flies through the crack in the door, leaving the gang in temporary safety.

The mice’s present plight has resulted from the unexpected return of El Emenopio, days before the festival, making no attempt to attack of interfere with the humans, but singling out the mice for destruction and punishment. A phase two of the bull’s plans is quickly revealed, as the time arrives for the bulls to run – only to leave the populace gazing upon an empty street. The bulls have disappeared! The Rescue Rangers rise to the occasion to conduct investigation, Monterey Jack hesitantly bringing up the rear, as if none-too-anxious to get involved in the situation. The trail of inquiry leads to the corrals of a hacienda where the bulls would usually be maintained – but none to be found. Only fresh wagon tracks, leading several miles away to the gates of an empty mission – and hoofprints pulling it, of humongous size. Monty can tell in an instant that only one animal could have made those prints – El Emenopio. Sure enough, when they enter the mission yard, the missing bulls are immediately spotted in plain sight, locked in a wagon bed, and who should be awaiting their arrival but Monty’s old adversary. El Emenopio snorts his challenge, stating that he knew destroying the mice’s homes and stealing the bulls would bring Monty back – so he can now take sweet revenge. Instead of answering the challenge with bravado, Monty, knowing well that Dale has been itching to get into the action, relinquishes responsibility to Dale and offers him the chance to be the hero. Dale advances on the bull, who gives him virtually no notice, his eyes still glued on Monty. Dale tries to grab the bull’s tail to throw him like in the flashback, then grabs upon his horn in attempt to bulldog him – all with no effect nor recognition from the bull. Seeing that the bull remains unhampered, Monty directs a full-speed retreat of the remaining rangers through a crack in the door of an old building storing a small pile of long-neglected tools and debris, including an old broom, splintered wood, springs, and other bric-a-brac. The bull crashes his head into the wooden door, temporarily knocking himself cold. Explanations are in order from Monty, who finally fills in all but Dale on the details of the past. What the villagers thought they saw several years ago was at a distance. In reality, Monty had just been wandering along the road next to the wall overlooking the bay, after having scouted up one of his favorite pieces of smelly cheese. Upon catching sight of El Emenopio trashing the town, Monty had turned to run – smacking right into the wagon of a mouse clothing vendor. In rolling through the merchandise, Monty had accidentally come up with the toreador cap and suit, and with the red cape dangling on his tail. The bull charged the red cape, and crashed into the wall as in the legend. But instead of throwing the bull into the fishing trawler, El Emenopio’s downfall came from standing up upon reviving, and slipping by placing one hoof upon the squishy wad of cheese Monty had dropped on the pavement during his own tumble. So the legend had been born – from mis-reporting of what had occurred – and Monty was the only one who knew he was in fact no match for the bull’s ferocity.

Upon arrival at the village in the Ranger Plane, the rangers are surprised to see nothing out of the ordinary among the town’s human population, who are busy gathering and decorating the place for the village’s biggest annual festival – the running of the bulls. Upon turning into a smaller back alley, a different sight awaits them. The small pottery, crates, and other objects that the local mice use as their homes have been well trampled everywhere. The rodent residents come out of hiding among the rubble, and shout praise that “El Monte Grande” has returned to answer their call. The other rangers are genuinely surprised and impressed at the renown of Monty – but the usual braggadocio of the largest ranger seems to have disappeared from him, and only the locals will reveal the story of how Monty became so “Grande”. In a flashback sequence told by them, we learn that several years back, during a prior running of the bulls, the fiercest bull in all Spain, El Emenopio, went without an invitation. The slighted bovine stormed into town despite the lack of welcome, and began tearing up the place, frightening away both the others bulls and the humans in his determined effort to bring a halt to the festival. According to the legend, only one stood his ground against the invader. None other than Monty, wearing mouse-sized toreador hat, yellow suit, and flashing red cape. A wave of the cape, and the bull is lured into smashing face-first into a rock wall bordering the bay. Monty is then shown grabbing the bull by the tail, swinging him around in the air in the manner of Mighty Mouse in “Throwing the Bull”, and tossing the bull into the fish-filled tank of a trawler heading out to sea. As the scene returns to the present, and Dale expresses hero-worship of Monty’s feats, Monte remains tight-lipped and exhibiting a visible degree of embarrassment, and remarks that there’s a good deal of luck involved in any heroic endeavor.

When Mice Were Men (Disney, Chip ‘n’ Dale’s Rescue Rangers, 11/17/89), presents a typical high-quality script for its extended half-hour length. Monterey Jack is usually the first one to tell (many times over) of his tales of past exploits as a daring world-wide adventurer – and Dale the first one to provide an audience as an avid listener. But there’s one episode from Monterey’s past as to which he’s been entirely hush-hush – even though it earned him the reputation of a local hero. The incident cones to light when Monterey receives a letter from Trampleonia, Spain, desperately seeking his help. Though they are told nothing of the details by the letter (or by Monterey), the other rangers volunteer to accompany Monty as a team to the colorful Spanish village to investigate. Dale in particular is eager to team up with Monty, hoping for a chance to share in the glory of participating in a fearless rescue.

---

Deputy remains clinging to the matador’s waist, informing him that bullfighting is un-legal in this country, and that he is under arrest. The matador jabs Deputy in the gut with his elbow, causing Deputy to lose his grip and fall. Deputy lands hard on the diving board, and is sprung back up again, passing the matador, and snagging away his cape in the process. Now with no parachute, the matador falls into the drink. He utters what seem to be curse words at Deputy in Spanish, while Deputy, now floating down himself with the cape, retorts back, “Well, the same to you, fella!” Deputy lands on the ground under the cape, and the matador leaps upon him, pounding viciously upon the cape to deliver Deputy a hidden beating. The bull reacts with shock at the sight of seeing someone beating up on his friend, and begins to snort and paw the ground. Muskie remarks, “I thought you were afraid to fight, Mr. Bull.” The bovine remarks, “Oh, no. I am not cheeken. I simply did not wish to fight – – until NOW!” The bull charges, knocking the matador into a tree so hard, the trunk is nearly snapped in half, and the matador sports a black eye. But the matador is pleased. “So, you have decided to fight”, and holds out his cape in traditional manner, shouting “Toro, Toro.” The bull charges again, and the matador makes a sweeping move and reversal of direction to let the bull pass. “Surprise”, says the bull, who, instead of passing, has put on the brakes, and is standing directly behind the matador’s rear end. POW! Deputy covers his eyes – almost, stating “I can’t bear to look – Well, maybe a little.” The bull returns, carrying the battered bullfighter on one horn, speared through his trousers seat. “You want a news flash? I have just discovered I like this bullfighting, Senor Deputy.” “No, no!”, shouts the matador, darting away in retreat, leaving a patch of his pants on the bull’s horn. “Come back, you cheeken bullfighter”, shouts the bull, as they both disappear in the direction of Mexico. Vincent asks whether Deputy thinks they’ll make it back to their own country. “Si si, Vince. They’ll make it, I theeeenk. That’s foreign talk.”

Muskie and Vincent usher the bull into the watermelon patch for hiding. The matador soon joins them, telling the “chicken” to come out, wherever he is. Deputy follows, but is knocked back by the matador tossing a watermelon at him from his sword tip. The bull sees merit in this strategy, and launches two watermelons at the matador from his horns. Muskie and Vincent lead the bull off in search of a better hiding place, with the bull thanking them, “Muchas gracias”. Vincent doesn’t have the hang of the language yet, and responds, “Oh, yeah, we’ll get ya’ much grass, too.” They hide together in the waters of the creek, in close proximity to a diving board. The matador steps out on the board to look in the water, just as Deputy catches him by the waist. Both Deputy and the matador bounce off of the board, with the matador landing seat first – on the bull’s submerged horns. Springing high into the air, Deputy and the matador begin to sail slowly back to earth, with the matador’s cape billowing out like a parachute to suspend them. (Is this where Tennessee Tuxedo later got the idea in his opening credits?) The bull comments “Ees fun for everyone here, si?” Muskie responds, “Yeah, I see.”

Chicken Bull (3/30/63) is a fairly-short late season episode of The Deputy Dawg Show from Terrytoons, but packs plenty of action and gags into its running time of only 4:06. Muskie awakens from slumber with Deputy and Van Gopher at their creek fishing hole, to observe a sight the likes of which the South has never seen – a bull in a small sombrero, floating to shore while rowing with the aid of an inner tube. The bull claims to have been paddling for nineteen days, and states he is seeking political asylum. “Nobody by that name around here”, responds Deputy. Clarifying that he merely wishes to stay in this country, the bull is told by Deputy he can stay as long as he wants to. But it seems the bull will stay hidden in a tree stump, as a matador appears in pursuit of the bull, addressing Deputy at sword-point with inquiry as to the bull’s whereabouts. Deputy demands that he remove that pig-sticker from his chest – please – and finds out that the charge against the bull is running away from the bull ring. The matador refers to him as a “chicken bull”, causing the bull to give away his position with the response, “I am not chicken. I just do not weesh to fight.” The matador sticks his sword point into a hole in the stump, forcing the bull into the open, while Deputy hops onto the end of the matador’s cape to prevent his pursuit. “He doesn’t have to fight unless he wants to”, says Deputy. “That’s what you theenk, gringo”, says the matador, pulling the cape out from under Deputy’s feet for a backwards flip of the lawman.

---

No, this is not a comprehensive history of images in motion on the animated screen. It instead is a look at the subject of animated characters uprooted from their surroundings, and facing the dilemma of relocation by choice or under adverse circumstances. Many a character avoided these consequences by having some hero burst in in the nick of time, to foil a traditional moustached fiend’s vile efforts to foreclose the mortgage. We’ll disregard these, and concentrate on the not-so-lucky, faced with packing up the content of the old homestead and having them carted away. Also, we’ll share focus with the other regular participants in such transient events – the “professional” moving man, who, at least in cartoons, is often responsible for more damage than if the property owners hadn’t bothered to invest in protective packaging for their heirlooms at all. I will not necessarily look at every instance where a character has taken on a new life in a new town or home, but concentrate primarily on the ones where the process of moving itself shares a primary role in the story development. Also, I’ll save a few sidelights for instances where it is not the characters themselves taking the trip, but some massive object newly acquired or among their belongings getting the ride – such as the proverbial favorite, piano moving.

I have found it odd in my research that I have scarcely encountered any trace of stories about moving in silent animated cartoons. Perhaps the topic is merely lurking below the surface, playing only brief roles in story development that didn’t reveal themselves in the titles of the pictures, so as to be easily overlooked. If any of you know of silent cartoons other than the two films listed below with sequences for movers, moving vans, or relocations to strange surroundings, your input will be appreciated. In the meanwhile, one film in which not a single cel or hand-drawing is utilized is truly a standout, falling into the category of stop-motion. It is Emile Cohl’s “Le Mobilier Fidele” (aka “The Automatic Moving Company”) (1910). There seems some great confusion over the date and director of this film, as Cohl’s name would seem well established in film history, yet about half of the internet data sources credit direction to one Romeo Bosetti, of whose background I am unaware. The same percentage of sources also peg the film as from 1912 as opposed to 1910. Who knows who is right, but let’s concentrate on the film. An upstairs three-room vacant apartment needs furnishing. Yet, only a single human being appears on screen, a postman, delivering a flier by mail to the residence’s mail slot in the opening shot. In a scene whose precise meaning is blocked to us by either writing in French or bad handwriting, the letter sails of its own power to a writing desk, opens itself, and apparently announces the availability of the services of the Automatic Moving Company within its text. A pen and what appears to be a ledger move in response without the aid of human hands, either approving an order or endorsing a check.

Instantly, without the order or check even traveling to the company head office, a moving van is dispatched – with no driver. The gates of the company lot open to allow the van’s departure, also without human aid. In delightful stop motion, the van arrives at the address of the abode, its rear doors unlatch, and dollies, packing baskets, and large items of furniture begin to unload themselves in a magical parade of household items and bric-a-brac. Into the house, up the stairs, and into the respective master bedroom, parlor, and kitchen skitter the makings of a home, moving into position to find their appropriate spots to make the home appear comfortable and cozy. The labor involved in smoothly transitioning all these objects simultaneously into appropriate positions, including heavy china cabinet, stove, bedstead, etc., must have been a task which would have driven any Bekins man crazy. It is evident that portions of the footage were filmed backwards, making it easier for the final room to assume proper orientation by merely moving out objects from a finished room piece by piece. Yet, the effect is still wonderful and eye-catching. What’s more, the director(s) find the time to make the exercise more than merely mechanical, injecting into the proceedings a few moments of clever humor from the inanimate cast. A small end table which enters the bedroom can’t seem to find its appropriate spot within the room’s layout, and moves around as if in search of something. It attempts to exit the room, but gets briefly hung up when it mistakes the door of a wardrobe closet for the room’s doorway. Finally finding its way out, the end table encounters the furnishings setting themselves up in the parlor. It circles a central table, on which sits a small tiffany lamp. The lamp notices its old friend, and shimmies over to the edge of the table, intercepting the end table on the next go-round. It moves onto the surface of the end table, and the end table now moves as if satisfied, realizing “That’s what I was looking for.” It proceeds back to the bedroom, and finally takes its proper place against the wall near the head of the bed.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, dishes are unpacking themselves one by one from one of the moving baskets, sliding across the kitchen table to stack up into one neat pile. When the contents are emptied, the moving baskets begin to file out of the room – all but one mischievous small basket, which hides under a table. A larger basket, apparently in charge of operations, slides back into the room and pokes around, seeking the missing receptacle. It reacts in pantomime as if it has spotted the playful prankster, and loosens from its middle a strand of rope threaded through loops in the basket side for fastening it shut. Throwing the loose end of the rope like a lasso, the big basket loops the rope through a similar wicker loop in the front of the smaller basket, the rope twisting to knot fast around the wicker. Then, the bigger basket gives a tug, dragging the playful small one out of the room. All the baskets from the various rooms similarly loop rope ends together to form a single-file chain, much like a column of tethered mountain-climbers, and head for the stairs to make their exit from the house. But before reaching the bottom of the stars, they quickly shift into reverse, to allow a last forgotten item of furnishing to make its hefty entrance up the stairs – an upright piano. Then, all the baskets file out of the house, clamber into the back of the van, the van doors close, and everyone goes on their merry way to the next job, for a sudden finish to the film. All this in a mere 3 minutes and 47 seconds (though, in all likelihood, projection speed is wrong for the silent days, and the original running time was more like five minutes). Wonderous!

---

Max Fleischer presents the only other silent tale of moving I’ve so far found – and it’s a gem chock full of creative sight gags – Ko Ko Packs Up (Out of the Inkwell, 10/17/25). Max has decided to move the cartoon studio to a new undesignated location, and the live moving men are backing up their van to the front door. Ko Ko, peering out from under the stopper of his inkwell, sees Max wrapping up in paper bundles various art supplies from his desk, and tossing them into large packing barrels. He hollers for Max, apparently calling for him to complete drawing him, as he is only a head and shoulders as presently inside the bottle. But Max is too busy to oblige him, and (in missing intertitles) seems to merely inform him that they are in the process of moving. A cuckoo bird (animated, but in a real clock), emerges on the hour, but does not utter the traditional “cuckoo”, instead stating in words that appear on the screen, “Good-bye, Ko Ko.” This makes Ko Ko sad and sentimental, and he begins crying bitterly. His tears emerge from his eyes as ink, and the droplets begin to pile up in big and little stacks. The large stack transforms into the shape of Ko Ko’s lower torso and clown suit, allowing the upper half of Ko Ko in the bottle to jump on top and complete his form, while the smaller tear stack transforms into the outlines of Fitz. And so, our cast is assembled.

Seeing the moving men busy lifting the heavy loaded barrels one by one onto the truck, Ko Ko suggests to Fitz that maybe they’d better get busy and pack up their belongings too. So, they move into their world of cartoon drawing boards, and begin to ready for moving everything in sight. Ko Ko begins by detaching a pot-bellied stove from the wall, and wrapping it up in paper. (Uncertain if the stove is in operation, as the gag is missed of having the paper wrapping burn up from the stove’s heat.) Fitz heads straight to the ice box, and stashes in a packing box his private collection of meat bones therefrom. Ko Ko advances to a wall with four window panes, and removes the whole window frameworks from the wall as if they were merely the flat drawings on paper which they are, leaving the wall with no window holes when he is through. Max himself gets into the comedy act in his real-life world, plucking two live goldfish from the water of their bowl, and wrapping each up in paper in the manner of a fish monger – then also wrapping in its own paper the entire bowl, still full of water, and tossing the bundle into a barrel without signs of a visible leak. Back on the drawing pad, Fitz spots a small staircase leading to an exterior doorway. Ignoring any structural integrity the steps should have, Firs rolls up the stairs platform by platform into a rectangular block, wraps and tosses the block into a barrel. In another room, Ko Ko eyes a parakeet in a cage. He first pulls out the bird’s perch from under his feet, leaving him standing on nothing while Ko Ko wraps it. Then the squawking bird gets the paper-wrap treatment. Finally, before wrapping the cage, Ko Ko guzzles down for his own enjoyment the bird’s two receptacles of drinking water. Fitz finds a loaded bookshelf, and piles four shelves of books from it into a towering column. Then, he picks up the whole column and balances it on his shoulder as if the books were glued together, carrying it to a spot beside an empty barrel. The books become unglued as suddenly as they were previously magnetized, and Fitz merely climbs atop the topmost book, kicking with his feet to separately kick each book one-by-one into the barrel. Ko Ko spots the kitchen sink, and yanks it from the wall to wrap. The act releases a torrent of water from two busted pipes behind the fixture, and a stream of water upon the floor. Koko scratches his head to figure what to do, then again plays upon the flatness of objects in a cartoon, merely reaching to the edge of the frame, and rolling up the outlines of the water stream and gushing pipes into a scroll of flat paper, and tossing the scroll into a barrel.

Fitz now begins posting signs to advise the utility companies of the firm’s relocation. The first reads: “Notice to Gas Co. We’ve moved away. Please shut off the bills and send us the meters.” Another states: “Electric Co. Please shut off current. The service is shocking.” And one to the Telephone Co. states, “For out new address, please call ‘Information’.” Ko Ko continues wrapping up whole rooms in the wall-to-wall carpet as a humongous bundle, while Fitz sets upon the arduous task of individually wrapping each lump of coal in the furnace coal bin. Fitz ventures next to an outside background, where he uproots a water well to deposit in a barrel, then lifts the hole left in the ground from the paper as a precursor of Robert McKimson’s portable holes and tosses it in too. He then yanks down the sun from the sky, and scrolls up all remaining outlines from the background into another scroll of paper, leaving the scenics entirely empty save for the barrel. Ko Ko has meanwhile ventured outside his paper dimension, and in a nice combination of live action and animation, is seen completing the wrapping of a live meowing cat in packing paper. Fitz makes sure he’ll have something to eat, by coaxing a cartoon mouse out of a mousehole, then wrapping him up too. Finally, Ko Ko runs to a real-life vacuum cleaner in a corner, grabbing up the hose and carrying it to Max’s desk. He cuts a hole in the middle of Max’s drawing table, threads the vacuum hose through the hole, then installs his own inkwell as a vacuum nozzle on the hose’s end. He turns on the power. All the remaining contents on the desk, as well as the furniture in the studio, begin to spiral in the suction of air, and disappear into the inkwell nozzle. The pull is so strong, the two moving men, laden with more heavy barrels, are sucked backwards into the room, and miraculously compress to be sucked down the vacuum hose also. Then, of course, Max himself receives the same treatment. Finally, none are left but Ko Ko, who is also pulled off his feet, whirled around in the air several times, and disappears down the inkwell, with the inkwell stopper being last to be sucked into place, sealing off the adventure.

---

It is possible that Oswald Rabbit was the first cartoon animal to attempt to move a piano – though few living people can verify this, due to the extreme rarity of the short, Nutty Notes (Lantz/Universal, 12/9/29). Tommy Stathes seems to be the only one who has turned up a print, but has only publicly exhibited it in a one-time theatrical setting on the East Coast to my knowledge, letting only a little over a minute of the film become available online as a sample clip. The poster art and a few brief shots suggest Oswald’s task of delivering a piano from a music store, though little is known as to how he does it. If Tommy is reading, perhaps he might be kind enough to provide some form of plot synopsis with a few clues as to the precise moving gags – or maybe any avid fan who might have sat in on his special screening.

Here’s a clip from the film:

---

Mickey Mouse seems to be next in accepting the task of piano moving, though in fact he is delivering an entire shipment of various musical instruments by horse (or possibly mule) and buggy, in The Delivery Boy (Disney/Columbia, 6/6/31 – Burt Gillett, dir.). The film perhaps qualifies only for an honorable mention, as the actual moving task has practically nothing to do with the meager plot. Mickey just happens by, riding through the countryside with his load, when he spots Minnie washing out her laundry with an old-fashioned washboard and pail. Mickey hides out in a pair of bloomers on her clothesline to get close to her. Minnie, upon discovering him, pulls a stitch on the bloomers, dumping Mickey into the washtub. They’re still playful friends, however, and break into an extended song and dance rendition of “In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree”. Mickey carelessly pretends a beehive hanging from a tree is a punching bag, giving the hive several rhythmic jabs and a final knockout punch, sending it flying – right onto the rear end of the hitched mule. The mule kicks and bucks, scattering the load of musical instruments all over the farmyard. Mickey and Minnie duet on the piano, while other animals of the farm take up the other instruments, to perform another extended instrumental arrangement of John Phillip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever”. Pluto, who was an additional passenger of the wagon, meanwhile wanders into a construction site adjoining the farm, playfully fetching a lit stick of dynamite tossed by foreman Pete at a blasting site. Pete and a fellow worker refuse to accept from Pluto the retrieved “stick”, instead jumping for safety into a barrel of tar. Pluto thus brings the stick to Mickey and Minnie, who are too busy with the music to notice what the stick is. Pluto begins chewing on the stick like a bone while the fuse burns shorter and shorter. Pluto becomes distracted when his fleas, who have more intelligence than he does, recognize the danger and leap off their host’s back, abandoning the proverbial sinking ship. Pluto curiously follows the fleas out of frame, and out of danger. But the stick is still within immediate proximity of Mickey, Minnie, the piano, and the mule. BLAM!! Mickey and the piano stool land back o the ground relatively unscathed, but the mule has lost his hair, and stands behind the remains of the piano (now reduced to the keyboard and hammers but no strings) with his bony ribs visible as protrusions from his bare skin. Mickey merely lines up the piano hammers with the mule’s ribs, and finishes playing the finale of the march thereon, while Minnie comes down with a tambourine stuck upon her rear end, and smacks it rhythmically to beat out march time to close the number.

---

Bimbo’s Express (Fleischer/Paramount, Talkartoon (Betty Boop), 8/22/31 – Dave Fleischer, dir., no animator credits on surviving TV prints), is fairly weak as Betty’s cartoons go on gag material, and has no particular plot except for engaging the characters in moving Betty’s furniture. Bimbo runs the express company, with a horse-drawn van and two partners including a heavy hippopotamus and a scrawny alley cat. Bimbo makes a unique personal approach to Betty’s front door, somehow extending his legs and jacking up his own torso about five steps in height to match the height of the door, then scaling the steps leading to the door, retracting the length of his legs for each step so that his head remains at the same height throughout the climb. Betty is busy with some personal grooming, sitting in her nightgown in an easy chair with legs raised, trying to cut her toenails with a scissor. Bimbo knocks, announcing it’s the movers. She states she can’t come to the door right now because she’s in her nightie, and Bimbo replies, “All right, I’ll wait ‘till you take it off.” (Any wonder why the censors would later target this series?) When Bimbo enters (though Betty by now is wearing her full dress and garter), love is in his eyes, and each eyeball tracks an image of Betty in its reflection – slowly from head to toe. We’re over halfway through the cartoon, and not a single piece of furniture has yet been touched. The moving process for the most part lacks in the inventiveness of prop gags present in the previous Ko Ko epic. Bimbo carries a tall Grecian-style sculpture of a shapely woman toward the exit door, paying no attention to the dimension of his carried article and instead making more flirtations with Betty, so that the statue has to duck to avoid having its head snapped off in the doorway. The cat gets hung up on twice-repeating a slide down the staircase banister while carrying a canary cage – the second slide requested by the caged bird, who shouts “More! More!” The horse moves Betty’s stove into the van while still lit, frying an egg in a pan atop it as he goes. A briefly running gag has Bimbo dropping items out a window after yelling “Okay” to the hippo below. Each time, a crash is heard before the hippo responds that he’s got it, making one wonder about the unseen condition of the furniture. Bimbo carries away a bathtub, with an unknown dog bather still in it. A staircase is wrenched out of the wall and carried away by one of the movers (a gag later remembered at Terrytoons, to be seen again in a later chapter of this series). Everything is packed into or on top of the van, and the rig moves off, with the hippo sleeping up top in Betty’s bed, and the cat rocking in a rocking chair. Bimbo asks Betty where they’re going to, and Betty responds “Around the corner” – making the whole proceedings moot, as she could have walked her items to their destination! It is also revealed in song in the final shot that Betty only moved to dodge her rent.

---

Krazy Kat next accomplishes what Oswald Rabbt might have done in his film, taking moving to new heights in Piano Mover (Charles Mintz/Columbia, 1/4/32 – Ben Harrison/Manny Gould, dir.). Krazy and a small dog assistant (who rides inside the piano) transport an upright model to the site of a mile-tall apartment building by horse-drawn wagon. Krazy’s wagon includes an interesting tail-gate, which folds down to form the shape of steps, allowing the piano itself to come to life and descend the few steps to the ground in an effeminate walk. The dog is small, but removes his shirt to expose bulging muscles to accomplish the task. He threads one end of a rope into a knot around the piano, then forms the rope’s other end into a coil, upon which he jumps as if the rope coil were made of spring metal. Upon jumping off the rope, the compressed coil springs up into the air, traveling twenty stories up, and makes a precise loop to thread itself through a pulley attached to the roof, its end falling back down to the ground. The dog sets himself to pull the rope, while Krazy hops atop the piano to ride it to the top. Unfortunately, as the dog pulls, a sidewalk elevator panel descends below his feet, causing Krazy to be hauled into the air more rapidly than he expected. The fast-rising piano begins to shift its weight in the rope loop, and Krazy desperately struggles to maintain his footing as the piano tips first one way, then another. Several spectacular shots appear throughout the film from overhead view looking down upon Krazy and the suspended piano, with vehicular traffic proceeding through the busy intersections many stories below. Krazy loses his footing, grabbing onto the end key of the piano keyboard with his hands. The keyboard as a unit is yanked nearly off its wooden mounting, then wondrously retracts as if held on by springs, pulling Krazy back up to its level.

Krazy spies a window ledge, seemingly within reach. He cautiously steps across the piano top, planting one foot on the ledge. Suddenly, the piano and rope slide away from him at an angle, causing his legs to engage in an impossible split between piano and ledge. His outmost leg extends halfway across the street, and a playful anthropomorphic tower clock on a building across the way uses its clock hands to grab the piano, and pull it still further away from the apartment building, extending Krazy’s legs to the limit. When the clock can’t quite bring the piano over to his side of the street, it lets go, causing the piano to swing back, and smash Krazy like a pancake against the wall of the apartment building. Krazy recovers, now finding himself hanging by his hands from the window ledge. The window is closed above him, and he desperately knocks on the window glass, hoping someone will let him inside. In one of the film’s best gags (definitely pre-code), a feminine hand opens the window partially, reaching outside to offer Krazy her apartment key! Krazy shakes his head in bewilderment, but nevertheless makes a lunge to grasp the extended arm – and misses. He tumbles down several stories, before spotting two straps hanging out a window from under a pulled windowshade. He grabs for the straps and hangs on tight. They elastically stretch, then retract to draw Krazy up to the new windowsill, as the shade goes up to reveal a female pig, wearing a corset to which the straps are attached. The embarrassed pig smacks Krazy in the jaw, launching him skyward again, then tries to pull down the windowshade, but only adds to her embarrassment by yanking the shade off its mounting entirely.

Krazy finally finds himself in a position of temporary safety, landing in a belly-flop atop a window-washer’s scaffold, on the same floor level as where the suspended piano still hangs. Out of a window immediately above pops Kitty, who remarks, “Ooh, my piano!”, and steps out on the scaffolding, taking a position at its edge to begin playing the instrument while it remains still hanging from the rope and pulley. As it seemed most every studio’s major characters had to do at one point or another in their 1930’s films, Kitty breaks into an extended musical number, of “That’s My Weakness Now”, eventually drawing Krazy into her moment of musical madness, for a vigorous dancing session upon the building ledge. The mood becomes infectious enough for the two that they pay no attention to where they are going, and dance right off the building at the corner. Kitty manages to grasp upon the edge of the ledge with her hands, while Krazy clings to her lace panties, to Kitty’s displeasure. The dog, who all this time has been holding on to the rope below, finds his massive muscles softening to putty from the strain, and extends his neck all the way to the 20th story to yell “Hey!” to Krazy, reminding him he has a job to do, and that the dog’s strength is giving out. Krazy thus gives a jerk upon his own tail like the string pull of a windowshade, and he and Kitty roll up like a retracting shade into a cylinder, regaining the ledge and rolling across its length, back to the other end where the piano still hangs. Whether by the dog’s pulling or by elastic force when the two cats land atop the piano, the instrument and rope shoot skyward once again. Irrepressible Kitty thinks the ride is all a fun game, and begins rocking the piano between her side and Krazy’s like a see-saw. Another overhead shot adds to the impression of visual vertigo by photographically blurring the perspective background behind the characters and spiraling the drawing, giving an interesting effect. Above them, a small bird sits in a nest upon another ledge corner of the building. Spying the twisting rope moving close to him, he becomes convinced that the strands are a tasty treat, and begins eating them away one-by-one. Krazy and Kitty scream below for him to stop, but their pleas are ignored, as the bird snaps the last strand. Another spiral blur follows the cats and the piano down in their dizzying fall. The piano becomes speared upon the top end of a telephone pole, and its descent rate is slowed somewhat by the impact of breaking off each of the step rungs protruding from the pole on the way down. The piano still maintains enough speed to crash through the pavement into a rectangular hole – but it appears that the hole may have already been the existing panel of another street elevator, because the piano rises back to street level from the hole, with the modification that both the instrument and the two cats now rise and fall in compression and expansion, as if built like the expandable bellows of an accordion, for the iris out.

---

Annie Moved Away (Lantz/Universal, Oswald Rabbit, 5/28/34 – Bill Nolan, dir.) – This one’s plot definitely centers around the subject of moving – but with not a moving man or truck in sight. Annie travels light, getting everything she needs into a small suitcase. Annie is the sweetheart and fiancé of Oswald, and Oswald believes he has everything planned for the big day. Phoning Annie from a drug store pay phone, Oswald declares he has a shiny new roadster, a honeymoon cottage, and the marriage license all at the ready – all he needs now is her. Annie is plenty eager, and agrees to be ready immediately for Ozzie to pick her up. But true love never runs smooth in a cartoon, and a standard model silk-hatted and moustached villain, cad, and rival has overheard it all from outside the phone booth. He hurries out of the store ahead of Oswald, hopping upon a motor scooter that has a bad case of recurring backfires, spraying soot over anyone in its wake, including Ozzie’s anthropomorphic roadster and a stray dog who likes to chase tires. Turning up at Annie’s residence, the roguish ruffian hastily scribbles down on paper a note, reading “This handsome gentleman will fetch you to me. Oswald.” He presents the note to Annie at her door, and out heroine is taken in by the ruse – and taken away atop the handlebars of the villain’s scooter, traveling bag in hand. The neighbors have all witnessed the hasty departure, which quickly becomes the subject of local gossip, as they know nothing of the villain’s fraudulent note. Oswald finally arrives, and makes inquiries for Annie. Convinced that she has dumped Oswald for a more handsome and wealthier man, all the neighbors break into an extended production number, set to a current pop tune most typically associated with Guy Lombardo, “Annie Doesn’t Live Here Aymore”, but with updated, custom lyrics. Several folks of various ethnic or socio-economic stereotype participate in breaking the bad news to Oswald that Annie has vacated for good, and that he has very little chance of ever finding her again – including a Jewish housewife, a bowery tough guy, an English cockney, a black mother and her three offspring in Southern drawl, and an old crone village gossip.

Meanwhile, miles down the road, Annie sits on a bench beneath a tree alongside the villain, waiting for an Oswald who seems destined never to show up. When she inquires of the villain where Oswald can be, the vile opportunist makes his move. “Aw, forget that mug. Give daddy a kiss…” He grasps Annie up in his clutches, and steals several kisses, as she screams Oswald’s name, hoping for help. Of course, Ozzie and his roadster come sadly trudging down the road in the nick of time. The villain grabs Annie and again hops on his scooter. But who else should turn up further down the road but the dog who was left covered in soot by the villain in the earlier sequences. He turns to the audience, and remarks, “Ah, revenge!” Grabbing up the root of a large tree, he physically drags the entire tree into the middle of the road, causing the villain’s scooter to crash into it. The villain lies prone on his belly in the road, while Annie is thrown from the motorbike, right into the waiting Oswald’s arms. Meanwhile, the damaged bike bounces around in the road, sputtering and backfiring twice as badly as before. The dog sees a chance for further sweet revenge, and pulls upon the belt of the villain’s trousers, opening up the rear end of his pants just wide enough to admit the motor scooter as it bounces from the reverberations of its own backfires. The villain thus finds his pants loaded with more than he can handle, and disappears down the road, being bounced all over the countryside by the belching black smoke emitting from the bike in his trousers.

Oswald produces the marriage license, and, in a reuse of half the finale sequence from Oswald’s earlier cartoon “Five and Dime”, is married at the local church to Annie, and arrives with her at the honeymoon cottage, all without missing a beat of their strutting step. They are greeted at the gate by Doc Stork, who suggests that he can bring “a little gift for you”. Oswald tells him they’re sorry, but the house is only big enough for two. “Well, you should have told me that before”, Doc remarks before leaving – as it turns out, his work has already been done, and Oswald and Annie are greeted by 16 junior bunnies, just inside the cottage door. That’s the end, if ever there was one.

---

Moving Day (Disney/UA, Mickey Mouse, 6/2/36 – Ben Sharpsteen, dir.) – It’s the first of the month, and the wall calendar in Mickey’s and Donald’s rented home indicates that the rent is six months overdue. Mickey and Donald have worn a circular path into the carpet from pacing the floor and wondering what to do about it. A violent knocking at the door (shaking down all the wall fixtures) heralds the arrival of the Sheriff (Pete), armed with a Notice of Dispossession, authorizing him to sell all of Mickey’s and Donand’s furniture to collect the arrearages. Pete is at his most brutal, socking Mickey in the jaw through the door peephole to gain entry, and also physically abusing Donald, lighting a match by striking its tip against the underside of his bill, then lighting his cigar and tossing the still-burning match down Donald’s throat as if he were an ash tray.

Goofy, in this instance cast as a mere friend of the mouse and duck rather than their roommate, pulls up to the rear of the house to make a delivery of ice with his old stake-bed truck. Pete meanwhile busies himself out front, hammering up signs to advertise the Sheriff’s Sale, driving the nails in the wall with punches from his bare hands. “We gotta move”, Mickey and Donald declare to Goofy, informing him of the Sheriff’s presence. Without a word of question, Goofy pitches in to help the boys in their last ditch effort to avoid the consequences. Mickey is next seen in a brief shot, attempting to pack all of his and Donald’s clothing into an old steamer trunk, but having it pop open from being too overstuffed. As was altogether too common the case in the “trio” shorts of the series, Mickey is from this point on nearly entirely written out of the script, with all action and gags handed over to Goofy and Donald. Goofy engages in an extended epic contest to determine who is the most intelligent – one live Goof, or one inanimate upright piano, which refuses to stay on the truck, and keeps rolling back into the house. Goofy catches on that the instrument only likes to roll home when he isn’t looking, so plays games with it by positioning his hat just at the windowsill to make it appear he is watching the piano’s moves. He can’t resist finally appearing at the doorway while his hat remains at the window, to give the piano a razzberry. The piano retaliates by slamming into him in the doorway, thrusting him into the kitchen and right through the refrigerator door. Unphased, the Goof is found inside the refrigerator, happily eating fresh watermelon.

Donald, meanwhile, faces his own troubles, first with a plumber’s helper stuck to his tail, then switching it for a goldfish bowl, while the plunger becomes stuck to his head. His efforts to free himself climax in tying a rope around the bowl, with the other end of the rope fastened to a doorknob, and running with all his might. The bowl pops off, but Donald’s beak gets stuck in a gas jet, which inflates him like a balloon. He pops out of the gas pipe, jetting around the room in deflation, and knocks over everything Mickey and Goofy are trying to carry out of the house, causing general destruction and chaos. Pete overhears the commotion from outside and barges in again. “Busting up my furniture!” he roars. But Donald displays an unusual streak of cleverness, remembering what Pete did to him before. As if to pacify Pete’s anger, Donald raises his head high, exposing the underside of his beak, in an invitation for Pete to strike a match again. However, the wily duck is well aware that gas is still escaping from the gas jet – so when Pete lights up, “KER-BLAMM!!!!!” The camera’s view is entirely masked in explosions and white smoke, and when our vision clears, Goofy has his ice truck in motion, catching every item of Mickey and Donald’s belongings flying from the wreckage into the bed of the truck, along with Donald and Mickey too. Clever Donald looks back at the house with a grin, to view the whole structure blasted away except for the skeleton of the interior plumbing, with Pete stranded in an upstairs bathtub and the shower water nearly drowning him. Donald laughs uproariously – until the last item of the household belongings lands upon him – the plunger, again stuck to his rear end. Donald whirls around in a fit of temper like a dog chasing its own tail, for the iris out.

NEXT: We’ll keep things moving into the later ‘30’s – I promise!

A final installment of cartoons looking toward the new ways of present times, or bringing backwards characters of the past up to speed. We’ll deal with a couple of features, a Garfield special, a recent Mickey Mouse, and a lot of up-to-date action from the Looney Tunes gang.

Garfield Gets a Life (Film Roman, 5/8/91), a half-hour prime-time special, could more appropriately be called “Jon Gets a Life”, dealing with the boredom that is Jon’s existence, and its contagious effect upon Garfield as well. The most exciting thing Jon seems to do is organize his sock drawer – two of them – by size, color, materials, blends, and all neatly tucked-in. When not occupied with socks, Jon counts ceiling tiles while flat on his back – and Garfield takes to doing the same thing, as they compare counts between the ceilings in the bedroom and living room. Garfield (perhaps for lack of anything better to do) tries to break Jon out of his rut, remembering an old copy on Jon’s bookshelf of “How To Make Friends and Fool the Rest”. Jon spots a chapter on getting dates, and attempts to follow it to the letter. Efforts to pick up girls in the park, at the beach, in the laundromat and at the video store fail miserably. Jon almost has accidental luck at a singles club (Club Ticky Tacky), as, while badly reading aloud from his book just for practice the line, “Hey there, would you like to dance with me?”, an equally-bored girl at the bar overhears him, and half-heartedly responds, “Sure, why not?” “YES!!”, shouts Jon, escorting her onto the floor. But Jon quickly loses her, by throwing her into a couple of forceful spins that spiral her right off the dance floor, then breaking into his own solo elaborate disco number (predicting Goofy’s in An Extremely Goofy Movie). Patrons of the club momentarily stare at the display, but, as the number reaches its close, the house lights go up, and Jon stands alone in an empty club, with total silence except for Jon’s last footfalls. Nevertheless, Jon strikes a closing Jon Travolta-style pose, only to hear from the rafters the voice of the D.J, yelling, “Hey, jerk. Disco is DEAD!” “What?? When??”, reacts Jon, and trudges away with Garfield, complaining how you learn a new dance, and 14 years later, they change it. “Go figure” responds Garfield in characteristic underplay.

A television ad by a dweebish-looking guy for his school, Lorenzo’s School For the Personality Impaired, intrigues Garfield and Jon – especially when mentioning such characteristics of the average students he helps as counting ceiling tiles and thinking disco is still in. Jon and Garfield arrive at Lorenzo’s meager institution (a run-down building complete with broken and partially-boarded windows and cracking plaster). They know they’re in the right place when they find every student in attendance looking up to count the ceiling tiles. Lorenzo dispenses rather meaningless advice, such as extend a hand to the one next to you and say, “Hi, my name is so-and-so”. Most of the students quote him verbatim, never including in the sentence their own name. Another suggestion is to make people believe you can speak a foreign language, by only sounding like you do. He thus utters French-sounding gibberish meaning nothing, then teaches Canadian by merely adding the syllable, “eh?” every few sentences.

Jon’s handshake extension during the class causes him to make the acquaintance of a moderately pretty girl, who is as unsure of herself as Jon is, and certain that she is blowing making a good first impression. Jon and the girl find themselves equally matched in awkwardness and shyness, and begin to open up to each other about it, being themselves – and really hit things off. Garfield is both amazed and puzzled that this is possible, having never thought Jon to have the potential for striking up any serious relationship. The two decide they’ve had enough education for one day, and step out for a bite to eat, then spend the entire evening on Jon’s porch, getting to know each other – and all the time being themselves, without following any of their professor’s advice. Things get personal for Garfield when he overhears Jon, carried away in conversation with the girl, refer to him merely as “his cat”. “Yesterday, I had a name”, Garfield complains to himself, seeing his best buddy and confidant relationship with Jon slipping away. Garfield lapses into a dream of what will happen if Jon marries, a toddler arrives, and the abuse he will endure as the toddler grabs at him and chomps upon his tail. He marches outside, seizing Jon by the collar and trying to shake some sense into him. The girl, taking her first notice of Garfield, reaches out to pet him behind the ear. “She’s trying to get to you by getting to me”. Garfield warns in thought and pantomime – but a few scratches in just the right places, and even Garfield finds himself being won over, resting in her lap as she scratches his back above his tail. However, the girl has pushed her luck, and an old nemesis of hers arises – an allergic sneezing fit when she is around cats. The two humans are heartbroken at this development, but Jon stays faithful to Garfield, giving his pet a hug. Garfield remarks at the value of having seniority. The two humans realize they can’t be a serious part of each other’s lives, but promise to see each other from time to time. Garfield still wants to ensure that things will stay this way, by promising to himself that their meetings will be chaperoned – riding along with the couple as Jon drives her home, not inside the car, but stuck to the rear window by suction cups on his feet and hands, just like so many plush Garfield ornaments decorated real-life car windows of the period.

• “Garfield Gets a Life” is on Dailymotion

---

My Generation G…G…Gap (Looney Tunes (unreleased, direct to video), Porky Pig, 3/31/04 – Dan Povenmire, dir.) – Hard to say if this one should have ever been produced. It was scrapped for theatrical release when box office on Looney Tunes: Back in Action failed to reach expectations (undeservedly). And it is definitely a departure for Porky, perhaps more jarring than Goofy’s 1950’s transformation to the “everyman”. Somehow, Porky is married? With a hip teenage daughter? (Where did Petunia fit into all of this, as she is never seen nor mentioned in the film.) Porky drives his daughter to her first rock concert, waiting outside the arena at a local coffee shop – where he sees a news story on TV about how out-of-control the concert tour has gotten at its previous venues, and sees a live shot from inside the area of his daughter wildly riding on the shoulders of a burly hunk. Porky spit-takes, and races for the arena, convinced that the performance is unsuitable for the likes of his young girl. A bulky gate attendant with a build reminiscent of construction worker Hercules from Bugs Bunny’s “Homeless Hare” refuses Porky entrance without a ticket, and even the influence of a talking Abe Lincoln on a five-dollar bill Porky offers the guard fails to impress him. Porky scolds Lincoln: “Y-y-you didn’t even try.” Yet, a couple of shapely girls get past the guard just on their good looks without any pass. Porky tries the same thing in drag, but just gets socked in the mush. Porky resorts to hiring a helicopter to lower him to the arena roof – however, the pilot is still giving him instructions when Porky jumps – and has not yet attached Porky’s safety cable. Porky falls through some high-tension wires, then crashes through the arena roof – in three dissected sections.

Inside, Porky lands inside an open guitar case next to the stage. The performance in progress has a rocker using guitars to smash everything on the stage – and Porky is the next “instrument” wielded. Bruised and battered, he is discovered by the guard. Running backstage, Porky ducks into wardrobe, and emerges wearing rocker’s garb, a mohawk wig, eye makeup resembling a member of Kiss, and two-foot tall platform shoes. Thinking he has spotted his daughter waiting around a dressing room backstage, Porky mistakenly demands that the young lady come home with him. She turns to reveal that she is a total stranger – and the other girls in the line would like to be taken home as well. Porky finds himself in the traditional predicament of all rockers – pursuit by an over-stimulated mob of women. He runs right into the guard, who fails to recognize him, and informs him that he should be on stage. Porky is deposited in the spotlight, while an almost stone-quiet audience tries to guess who he is. Porky tries to back away, but jostles a tall speaker, upon which someone has carelessly left a paper cup full of water. The water lands on a transformer, producing a short circuit, which makes its way up the cord of the microphone next to which Porky is standing. ZAP!! SIZZLE!! Porky engages in the most electrifying series of screams ever presented on stage, while a drummer in the back-up group behind him provides accompanying rhythmic beats. The whole stage blows up, and Porky is revealed next-to-naked. His daughter wails from the audience, “Daddy, how could you…” But the incident provides Porky with a new career, depicted in a mock TV commercial for a mail-away record album featuring 22 or so rock hits of other artists performed by a stuttering pig. As the list of hyphenated song titles scrolls across the screen, we fade out on Porky singing “B-b-b-bad to the bone.”

---

Rabid Rider (Warner, Road Runner (CGI), 12/17/10 – Matthew O’Callaghan, dir.) – A late theatrical short, produced in CGI. Wile E. Coyote is rarely one to be intimidated by new advances in technology. But for once, a new innovation has him perplexed – mostly, as to what to do with it. Wile E. eagerly unpacks the crate of the Acme Hyper-Sonic Transport, and dons his protective safety crash helmet before mounting up. As Road Runner passes the boulder behind which he hides, Wile E. rolls into view – at a relative snail pace and in jerking and tenuous motion and direction, atop a self-balancing platform! The device makes sudden stops causing the coyote’s belly to jam into the handlebars, topples forward to smash his face into the ground and then rights itself again, rolls him face-first into a boulder, then shifts into reverse uncontrollably, taking Wile E. Past the camera, only to be knocked back into view as he is hit from behind by an oncoming truck. As Wile E. lies prone upon the pavement, his fingers nervously drumming, the conveyance rights itself and wheels its way up to his side, letting out a beeping signal to indicate that it is ready to go again.

Wile E. knows this thing needs more speed. Standing atop it, he attempts to lasso the Road Runner passing around the neck, hoping to be towed like a chariot. His toss misses, but catches the next best thing – the air-fin of a passing sports car. Wile E. is off to the races, but has to do some fancy pulling of the “reins” to swerve and avoid being hit by oncoming traffic in the other direction. He finds himself rolling faster than the car he is tethered to, and facing the reflective rear of the back of a tanker truck between himself and the bird. Wile E. manages to fight the balancing instincts of his conveyance, leaning backwards to do a “limbo” pass under the truck’s axles. Now in front of the truck and still proceeding at a good clip, he lets go of the rope, and extends his arms in attempt to reach the Road Runner’s neck. But, the road reaches one of those inevitable T-intersections at the edge of a cliff, and Wile E. and the platform fall into the canyon below. They do not hit the ground, but come to rest straddling a pair of power wires, with the platform mid-way between two poles. Wile E. shimmies over to join his platform, but their combined weight bends the poles together at the top until their transformers touch. ZOWIE! A well-fried coyote and his platform shoot up into the air, striking into the bottom of a rock ledge overhanging above, then roll down the cliff face, Wile E. giving us a look as if to say, “Not again.” He and the platform roll past the Road Runner below, and come to rest in an intersection between a road and a train track. The platform’s wheels are sandwiched in the track bed between the rails and the cross-ties, and the machine rocks back and forth in its confined space helplessly, as Wile E. sees the approach of a train’s headlight. The coyote wisely hops off the track and his vehicle to avoid the train, only to get hit by a crossing truck. As the shadow of the train passes the flattened Wile E. in the roadway, the platform somehow emerges from the incident unscathed, and beeps again to signal that it is charged and ready for more.

Wile E. has had enough of this troublesome contraption. Swinging it around himself several times, he hurls it off a cliff. The vehicle lands on a rock ledge, balanced on a fulcrum like a teeter-totter, with a massive boulder positioned on the other end. The boulder is propelled into the air, and lands mere feet behind the sulking coyote walking on a road. Wile E. is barely phased in his bad mood by the near-miss, but his bad luck isn’t over. A large delivery truck swerves to avoid collision with the boulder, and its trailer payload is thrown over the rock, landing again mere inches behind the fleeing coyote, and covering him in a cloud of dust as he falls to the ground. As the dust clears, a chorus of electronic beeps announces the rise from the ground, one by one, of an armada of self-balancing platforms carried by the truck, who line up on each side of the roadway like an advance guard for a royal procession. Who speeds down the middle of the rows, plowing over Wile E. in the process, but the Road Runner, aboard one of the platforms himself, uttering his “Beep beep” and riding off into the sunset, passing a canyon wall on which the words ‘That’s all, folks!” appear.

---

Arthur Christmas (Aardman/Columbia/Sony, 11/23/11) attempts to bring the magical realm of Santa Claus into the modern hi-tech era. It also debunks a myth as to the everlasting nature of the man with the red suit and the white beard, who seems to have lived a good many lifetimes past the average human. There really wasn’t just one Santa, but several. In fact, the title has been passed down in the family for generations, the role of successor handed off twenty times since St. Nicholas to the most eligible of the clan, whenever one of those in charge reaches a stage of being past his prime.

The current Santa has already flown 70 missions. However, there’s been a lot of change to keep up with the demands of supplying toys to the entire world’s children in one night. No longer is the mission approached in the likes of a wooden sleigh. Instead, Santa’s vessel looks more like something out of Star Trek – the S-1, a giant, hovering behemoth of a space platform, complete with an underside of camouflaging cloaking panels to make it indistinguishable from the night sky as it moves into position to cover entire major cities. On a signal, an armada of elves drop on lines from the ship onto every rooftop, secure the area, and mass-unload the toys from panels in the bottom of the ship. Finding every which-way to enter into premises (one team is shown delivering presents to the president’s children in the White House by power-sawing a hole around a ceiling decoration of the Presidential seal), the elves scan sleeping children with a digital scanner that determines their percentage rating of naughty vs. nice before okaying the release of gifts from a supply chute. (One elf takes pity on a child who receives a borderline rating on the scanner, turning the device upon himself to register a more favorable rating and release the gifts.)

All is going well, and is monitored at a massive mission control base carved into the ice below the North Pole, until a child almost awakens to see the current Santa (who, more or less as a figurehead, delivers a few select toys personally). An emergency protocol is initiated to get Santa out of the touchy situation, and in the melee, a bicycle intended for a little girl falls from the ship and rests somewhere below undelivered. At mission control, two offspring of the current Santa become aware of the situation: one Steve, the elder brother and presumed next-in-line for the Santa title, currently in charge of mission control, and the younger Arthur, who has no dreams or realistic hopes of ever becoming Santa, and is a soft-spoken, sentimental type in charge of answering the letters to Santa. Arthur is distraught at the thought of the little girl who wrote for the bicycle facing complete disappointment on Christmas day when her bike doesn’t arrive, while Steve, more concerned for his own self-image and obtaining the family’s prestigious title of Santa the 21st, is not about to have it laid upon himself as being the first to allow the family’s perfect record of gift-giving to be spoiled. Steve talks his befuddled and confused Dad into classifying a one-in-a billion misdelivery as an acceptable margin of error, and Dad and Steve refuse Arthur’s request to send the S-1 out again to make the botched delivery. But Arthur will not rest until he sees that bike delivered – even if no one else will help him.

Arthur finds an unlikely source of assistance in the form of his cantankerous, headstrong, and a bit off-his-rocker Granddaddy, who was Santa before Arthur’s dad. Granddaddy claims he has a way to get Arthur to his destination to deliver the gift, and reveals out of hiding away in an ice cave something he’s been saving that no one else seems to know about – the original wooden sleigh previously used in his own heyday and by generations of Santas before him. Powered by magic dust distributed upon a team of reindeer, the “relic” can still make a top speed of 45,000 miles per hour, and maneuver under the hands of one trained in the reins to spin on a dime, streak through the skies like a comet, and fly to the moon and back if necessary (Granddaddy does so for Arthur, just for show). He remembers the good old days when the Clauses were the only humans who knew how to fly, and thinks of the present Santa (his own son) as a wimp who’d barely be able to control one of these babies. The Sleigh, in honor of the holiday, has been affectionately named “Evie”. Arthur experiences a white-knuckling but fascinating ride without the benefit of seat belts, and grows to have an equal admiration with Gramps for the ways of old, as Gramps shows him tricks like making a snowman out of cloud formations. But, a storyline we must have to support a feature-length CGI film, and a mishap places Gramps out of the driver’s seat and Arthur left holding the reins. Arthur does a good deal of globetrotting, arriving at the wrong destinations, losing the reindeer, and ultimately having the sleigh destroyed, while back at mission control, Dad and Steve finally get wind of Arthur’s secret mission, and embark on their own mission to rescue Arthur. Ultimately, all four surviving males of the Santa clan converge on the same location to try to right the wrong at the crack of dawn, but it is Arthur who, with his large heart (Steve in the course of the action discovering that he just doesn’t have a natural knack for getting along with children), receives the honor of placing the present under the tree. At Arthur’s suggestion, all of them hide behind a door, to witness the glee of the little girl when her present is opened. Dad remarks that in his 70 years, he’s always been too busy to see such an event firsthand – and realizes he should have made the time for it all this while. Even Steve is touched, and, with his blessing, allows Dad to pass the honor of the Santa title to – Arthur. By the next year, Arthur is at the helm of the S-1, but with a few changes. Its name has been changed to “Evie” in honor of the magic sleigh. And its power source is now the hooves of five thousand reindeer!

---

Tokyo Go (Disney, Mickey Mouse Cartoons (TV), 7/12/13 – Paul Rudish, dir.) – Another of Mickey’s frequent international episodes from this series, this time set in Japan, providing plenty of opportunity for imaginative and colorful background art. Mickey plays a typical Japanese commuter, facing the day-to-day hustle and bustle of trying to get to work from the congested urban setting of a busy railway station, and facing the current rage of commuter technology, the bullet train. He purchases a ticket for the blue line, then attempts to follow the colored lines on the station floor to his train’s departure zone. Unfortunately, the blue line on the floor intersects at right angles to a red line, and a mob of pedestrian cross-traffic sweeps up Mickey, pressing him onward toward the red train instead of the blue one. As bad or worse than New York subways, Mickey is tightly crammed into the train doorway by a station guard, so that when the doors closed, Mickey is plastered between the door’s glass windows and someone’s butt. Mickey pops out of the collar of the passenger’s coat to get a breath of the meager air supply inside the car as the train takes off, with enough inertia around a curve to send shock waves to the street below, piling four cars one on top of the other. Mickey looks around, seeing the blue train out the windows running at equal speed on another track – then also sees a sign at the end of his car reading in both English and Japanese, “Exit”. Mickey slips his way through people’s pantlegs, briefcases, and collars, attempting to make his way to the exit door through the sardine-can of humanity. His pants are punctured by the spiked heels of a gang of punk teens, but he manages to pass over them by swinging from the hand-holder handles in the ceiling of the car like Tarzan. But one passenger is unavoidable – a Sumo, whose girth blocks the whole car. Mickey has to peel off his trousers, revealing a Sumo’s pant-bandana underneath. The Sumo meets his challenge, also peeling down to the same bandana, and the two circle one another for combat. They both charge one another – but Mickey ducks at the last second between the Sumo’s legs. The behemoth crashes into the remaining passengers at the end of the car, both knocking himself out and clearing a path so that Mickey can escape through the exit.

Now, how to reach the proper train? The blue line is still speeding on a parallel track, but the speed of the trains makes any attempt to cross to the other seem impossible. Mickey is nearly blown away merely climbing onto the roof of the red train, and plays a dangerous game of dodging oncoming low signs and signals which protrude over the train roof as it passes them. Mickey shimmies every which way to miss being hit, and at one point even has to temporarily detach his ears to avoid disaster. More barriers in the form of poles or walls pass between him and the blue train to prevent a safe crossing. Finally, the blue track veers away, descending at an angle to a lower level, where its track passes under a bridge of the red line to cross at a right angle. Mickey’s last chance. In slow motion like a Japanese anime film, Mickey takes a daring leap from the bridge, passing a flock of ducks on the way down, and miraculously lands successfully upon the blue train’s roof. (How could he not be swept off or bounce given the blue train’s equal speed? But this is, after all, a cartoon.) In a matter of moments, the blue train screeches to a halt at its destination, and Mickey hurries from the local rail platform to a small park with a miniature red barn, entering the structure and flipping over a door sign in the window to read “Open”, then punching a time clock which finds him right on time. His job? The engineer of a Tokyo Disney duplicate of the “Casey Jr.” circus train ride known from Fantasyland in the States. Mickey displays a contented preference for the leisurely pace of this mode of travel, breathing a relaxed sigh as he circles the course with a load of happy children in tow.

---

World Wide Wabbit (Warner, Wabbit (Bugs Bunny), 9/22/15) – Yosemite Sam’s been in prison for 20 years, but finally tunnels his way out into the big city and freedom. “I’m free, I’m free…I’m broke”, he observes from his empty pants pockets. Conveniently, he has come up just outside the doors of a bank – the easy answer to his cash problems. He observes he has no firepower, but, setting up a running gag for the film, realizes that his pointing fingers pack as much ability to shoot up his surroundings as a pair of pistols. Thus, he marches into the bank, telling everyone to reach for the skies. The modern bank, however, is something absolutely new to him – no tellers, vault, or long lines, just Bugs at an ATM machine. So how do you hold the place up? Bugs tries to explain to him that everything’s gone digital – lots of ones and zeroes. Sam states he wants lots of bills with ones on them – followed by a lot of zeroes. Bugs continues that there’s nothing here to give, as its all on the Internet. “Okay – Hand over the Internet!!”, screams Sam. “Oh, boy”, mutters Bugs, realizing he’s dealing with a hopeless boob. Bugs again begins by informing Sam that the Internet isn’t something you just had over, and is hard to explain. He asks Sam to imagine a big delivery tube. “A big tube – got it!”. jumps Sam to conclusions, then checks outside for a kid’s drinking straw, an inner tube floating at a pool party, and even a girl’s tube top. “Eh, no”, cautions Bugs before he can touch it. Sam finally spots the biggest tube he’s ever seen, and runs into a subway tunnel, to be quickly run down by a train.

Bugs explains again that “tube” was merely a metaphor, and that digital information is in the cloud. Of course, Sam commandeers a hot air balloon to reach it, and Bugs makes sure he promptly falls out of its basket. Sam orders Bugs at trigger-finger point to take him to the Internet. Bugs leads him through a dark ventilation shaft, into a room where a game of turning on and off a pull-string light switch results in an unexplained change of locale and/or costumes with every pull of the switch (including lion’s dens, train tunnels, and even a gold room to which Sam just can’t return by turning the switch on and off again). Enough shenanigans, declares Sam, shooting away the pull string with a shot from his finger. Bugs finally tells him that the Internet is directly above them. Sam climbs a stepladder and saws a hole in the ceiling, then climbs up. “I’m on the Internet”, he shouts with jubilation – until he looks at his surroundings, and discovers he’s made his way right back into his jail cell, with a mob of police standing ready to capture him. As the sounds of police brutality echo from the hole above Bugs, Bugs climbs the stepladder himself, sticking a cell phone with camera up through the hole, and declaring “You’re on the Internet now, Doc.” As the live video records, the groggy voice of Sam is heard to say from the beating, “I’m up to a million hits already.”

---

Hareplane Mode (Warner, Wabbit (Bugs Bunny), 10/15/15) – Bugs is crossing the street, when Yosemite Sam careens down the road, texting while driving. The result is inevitable, with Sam’s car a wreck, and Bugs thrown onto the sidewalk. Sam has no concern for the victim he just collided with – only for his Smart phone, which bounced out of his convertible onto the pavement. Sam blames the rabbit for carelessly walking into the road when he could see Sam was texting, and threatens to sue when he notices a hairline crack in the screen of the phone. “I’m gonna sue the pants off ya”, he shouts, until Bugs points out he’s not wearing any pants – and also points to a billboard, advertising a new model phone available today. “Ya done me a favor”, Sam acknowledges in making him need a new phone, and Sam approaches the line in front of the “Phone Home” store, shoving all others to one side to be first in line. Who should be behind the counter in the store but Bugs, disguised as a typical teenage sales clerk, ready to seek revenge on this menace to society. “Gimme, gimme, gimme”, insists Sam, while Bugs deluges him in paperwork to sign and other red tape. Bugs demonstrates new security features, like a self-defense mode available at the push of a button, causing a gorilla fist to emerge from the phone screen and sock Sam in the jaw. Bugs sets a ringtone to a setting marked “Lion attack”. It goes off, emitting the sounds of a purring kitten. “That don’t sound like no lion attack”, complains Sam – until it signals a real lion to maul him. Bugs suggests switching to vibrator mode, but Sam insists it be nice and strong so he doesn’t miss any calls. Bugs sets the vibrator to “Apocalypse”. At a board meeting, an incoming call vibrates Sam right out of a skyscraper window to a 40-story drop. His mere leaning against a tree and a building when on the ground during phone rings brings down on his head a bee hive and a grand piano.

Sam returns to the store, demanding to return the phone. Bugs states be can’t understand why Sam is having issues – “That never happens with modern technology.” Bugs convinces Sam to keep the phone or be faced with the shame of using an older model, and resets Sam’s vibration lower. But Bugs isn’t through. That evening, he calls Sam, impersonating someone informing Sam that he’s won a grand sweepstakes prize, but interrupting the conversation with voice impressions of static, as if the signal is breaking up. Sam tries desperately to keep the connection going, first moving the phone all around the room for a stronger signal, then outside, then into the desert, and next the mountains. He finally re-establishes the call, shouting “Hello, hello…”, and brings down upon himself an avalanche. Then, the previous ring tone gets reactivated, and Sam is mauled by lions again. A bedraggled Sam returns to the store, again demanding a refund. Bugs pretends to be willing, but holds up the phone, dripping from melted snow from the avalanche, and states that he can’t take the phone back due to water damage. Sam insists that there’s no damage and he can prove the thing is working right, but everything he presses activates the gorilla punch, until he finally knocks himself out. Removing his disguise, Bugs remarks that this new model still had a few “Bugs” in it, then turns to the audience as if another customer, closing as he did in “Rabbit of Seville”: “Next!”

---

More than I can write about comfortably with my DVD temporarily mislaid and out of reach is Disney’s Ralph Breaks the Internet (11/21/18). A complicated tale finds Wreck-It Ralph and child racer Vanellope von Schweetz, two characters from old arcade games, in a dilemma when Vanellope’s video game, “Sugar Rush”, is rendered on the blink by Ralph’s helpful meddling in attempting to liven up the game for Vanellope by building her a new digital road. The steering wheel of the game becomes broken, and is only available as a vintage part at high cost in the resale market on the Internet. To keep the game from being scrapped by the arcade owner, Ralph and Vanellope travel through a Wi-Fi router to the world of the internet, structured like a magical city, in search of the replacement wheel and enough digital bucks to buy it. The mission, however, becomes rather unnecessary, as Vanellope discovers the existence of an online urban street racing game where everything is wild and unpredictable instead of the repetitive and tame race courses she has been used to, and decides she’d like to stay. Ralph feels his trust and friendship have been betrayed, and his own insecurity is built upon by a villainous character who creates clone duplicates of Ralph, merging into a colossal mega-monster. Ralph ultimately conquers the monster by conquering his own insecurities, realizing Vanellope is wise enough to make her own decisions, and he and the little girl part company as friends, staying in touch long-distance via video/email.

The film is also remembered for a memorable, if self-promoting, incident where Vanellope, who is considered a princess in her Sugar Rush game, encounters a Disney website, and meets all the famous princesses of past Disney classics, rendered in CGI. There are some funny bits, like Cinderella defending herself from the intruder by breaking one of her glass slippers and wielding the broken half like a bottle in a barroom. There is even a crossover from Pixar’s “Brave” of Princess Merida, who speaks in a heavy Scottish dialect which the others admit no one can understand, as one princess adds, “She’s from the other studio.” By the end of the sequence, Vanellope has all the princesses thinking like her, and each wearing similar knit casual shirts like Vanellope instead of their usual gowns. I remember seeing a complete set of dolls from the sequence in the special shirts for sale at a Disney store for a high but not exorbitant price based upon the sheer number of dolls in the set. It was tempting but out of my reach, and I wonder how many people managed to acquire it (the only copy I have noticed intact on line selling for $179 bucks – not a bad rate of investment return).

---

Virtual Mortality (Warner, Looney Tunes Cartoons (Bugs Bunny), 11/25/21 – David Gemmill, dir.) – After all these years, Elmer is determined as ever to know the feeling of victory – of finally catching that wascally wabbit. His latest efforts have him axe-swinging over Bugs’ rabbit hole (his latest cartons don’t allow him to use a shotgun – but is axe-swinging any less violent?). Between swings, Bugs asks if he’ll ever give up. Not until he’s felt victory – just once. An idea hatches in Bugs’ head, appearing in the form of a light bulb – but a swing of the axe fractures the bulb’s glass. Nevertheless, the idea remains in Bugs’s noggin, and he runs with it. He and Elmer could go on like this all day, with Elmer accomplishing nothing. Or, Elmer could achieve the feeling of victory – right now. “I’m wistening…”, says a skeptical Elmer. Bugs reminds Elmer that they are now living a modern era of technological marvels, and demonstrates what he means by disappearing into his rabbit hole to tinker loudly with some tools within. Bugs emerges from the hole carrying an old football helmet, fastened to which are a set of yellow safety goggles, and a snorkel. Elmer asks what it is, and Bugs displays it as a virtual reality helmet. With this, Elmer can experience the virtual reality of capturing him – something that in all likelihood will never occur in the real world. Still not sure what to believe, Elmer is at least willing to try the device on. Bugs “activates the simulation function”, by clunking Elmer a resounding blow on the back of the helmet with a hammer. As Elmer’s blurred vision comes into focus through the goggles, he can’t believe the clarity and detail he sees – of course, of the real forest before him. But Bugs reminds him he is viewing a virtual world that “ain’t real”. To prove the point, he hands Elmer a lit “virtual bomb”. “Wow! It wooks so dangewous!” marvels Elmer. Elmer asides to the audience that if this was real, he’d be freaking out about now. But since it’s virtual, he can be fearless. KA-BOOM! Now Elmer marvels at how real the virtual pain feels.

Bugs giggles to himself at how good a setup that was, and too bad its over so soon. But the rabbit hasn’t counted on Elmer’s recuperative powers, and in a few moments, Elmer has him tied up in rope, thinking he has “virtually caught” the wabbit, and now gets to virtually cook him and find out how good he virtually tastes. As Bugs is twirled on a spit over an open fire, he realizes things are being carried a bit too far. So, in his usual manner, he bluffs, convincing Elmer to not settle for such a small prey in this virtual world, but to go for an even bigger “virtual rabbit” – like the one over there. Slipping out of his bonds, he points out a grizzly bear eating honey from a hive, with his back facing Elmer. Zipping around behind the honey tree, Bugs extends one hand out to simulate, with two fingers, long ears protruding from the bear’s head. Elmer takes the bait, and approaches the bear, grabbing his fur and ordering him to come along quietly. When the beast doesn’t respond, Elmer kicks him. “I’m talking to you”, Elmer shouts, then reminds the beast that this is virtual reality, and Elmer’s in charge. The bear comes face to face with Elmer and snarls. Elmer again marvels at how vicious-looking these virtual wabbits are. Soon, he is experiencing that remarkable virtual pain again.

Elmer walks wobbly over to Bugs, stating that he thinks he’s had enough of the virtual world. But Bugs convinces him not to be a quitter, and to experience what it would be like to virtually conquer his biggest fears. What are the things that frighten Elmer most in the world. He answers, fear of heights, and his mother. Bugs hands Elmer a “virtual” cel phone, calling up Mom, and Elmer, again reminded that this “ain’t real”, tells off his Mom in no uncertain terms, that he’s through having her pick out clothes for him at the store, and also through eating his vegetables – so gets “virtually” cut out of Mama’s will. “Congratulations” says Bugs, shaking Elmer’s hand in close-up, for conquering both his fears. Elmer is confused, as he hasn’t conquered his fear of heights. “Ya could’a fooled me, Doc”, says Bugs, noting how well Elmer has taken to virtual sky diving. The camera pulls back, showing both of them somehow in the middle of a free-fall. But only Bugs is wearing a parachute. Elmer slams into the ground, while Bugs uses his chute to make a graceful landing. Bugs finally asks for an opinion whether Elmer enjoys better virtual reality, or hunting in genuine reality. “Neither”, responds Elmer matter-of-factly. “I prefer metaphysical reality.” Elmer assumes a lotus position, floats upwards a few feet off the ground, and makes a departure from the cartoon through a worm hole. A puzzled Bugs looks at the audience, and closes with the observation, “Huh, I’m more existential myself, but different strokes for different folks.”

This series of articles will no doubt need supplementation as time goes on, and new trends, fads, music styles, or other changes roll around worthy of satire and comedy. Any ideas as to something worthy and modern that hasn’t made the medium of animation yet? You could have the inspiration for the LOL classic of tomorrow. Share your suggestions – – or better yet, get cracking on your own animated productions!

This week, we’ll attempt a wrap-up of the subject of beavers for this article series. As mentioned in the first installment of these articles, a previous dissertation on the subject had appeared in the pages of Cartoon Brew, which, with regard to many more recent productions, is probably as comprehensive as I would be without conducting considerable intensive research into unfamiliar territory for the remote chance of an unannounced beaver turning up here or there. I will therefore not attempt to cover post-2000 beavers in comprehensive fashion, and restrict my final discussion to generally-earlier appearances or a few that I feel are noteworthy of more detailed discussion, as a suitable closing of this subject. Of course, any of you wishing to address any favorites or surprise guest appearances which I or Cartoon Brew have overlooked, are as always welcome to add your comments and reviews below.

Boomer Beaver (Hanna Barbera, Spike and Tyke (from “Tom and Jerry Kids”), 9/27/92) – By this point in their careers, Spike and Tyke had become a mere knock-off of Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy – the characters who were originally intended to be a knock-off of Spike and Tyke! Tyke has grown from a yapping puppy to a reasonably intelligent speaking son, delivering lines in Augie Doggie’s exact voice – even lifting standard Augie catch-phrases such as the over-acted “Oh, the shame of it!” Spike is still pretty much what he’s always been – an over-protective father with a Jimmy Durante-style voice – but then, so was Doggie Daddy. So, if you’re not watching the visuals, this might as well be a new installment of the Augie Doggie cartoons.

This episode develops a few laughs, but drives home an eco-friendly message too obviously, busting the humor bubble and giving us an ending that falls flat. Spike has decided to build the two of them a hideaway log cabin in the woods. Trouble is, he’s left nothing behind to hide away in. To obtain building materials for his cozy cottage, Spike has chopped down and denuded acres of the forest, with no replanting. Tyke, reading from a volume entitled “Save Our Earth”, warns that cutting without planned replanting will cause the soil to wash away, and leave the animals homeless.

Unusually callous Spike respond that the animals can simply pick up and move somewhere else. One who isn’t about to abide by such logic is a certain Boomer Beaver, who swims along the river, selecting just this spot as the perfect place to build his new dam. But what happened to his expected overflowing and ample lumber supply? Not a tree, nowhere. Only that confounded log cabin interloping on his building territory. Boomer knocks on the door, calling Spike selfish, and demanding the lumber back, or there’ll be trouble. When Spike tells him to go somewhere and build a home out of concrete blocks, he soon finds a circle being cut in the wooden floor under his feet, and disappears into a hole in the cellar, while Boomer makes off with a first log from the side of the house. Much of ther film becomes more or less a reworking of Andy Panda’s “Nutty Pine Cabin”, with the beaver taking away lumber and hardware piece by piece, including the theft of a door and a flattening of Spike against a tree within the doorway, very similar to Andy Panda’s gag. One piece of borrowing from classic comedy of old is at least inspired. The beaver gnaws away at the outline of one entire side wall of the two-story cabin, while Spike stands in front of it outside. The wall begins to topple – replicating the classic shot filmed by Buster Keaton for “Steamboat Bill Jr.”, as the wall smashes down flat upon the ground, Spike avoiding being crushed by luckily standing precisely within the confines of a small spot matching the parameters of the frame of an open window in the falling wall. “Whew, that was close”, exclaims Spike.

But here, there is a topper – as the beaver, from the exposed floor of the second story above, wheels forward a grand piano, and shoves it off the floor’s edge, slam upon Spike. The beaver then gathers up the remaining wall logs all at once for one trip to the river, then the logs providing the cabin’s interior framework and floors, and all the interior wooden furnishings, for a second trip. Spike stands in the middle of the empty foundation, and jeers at the beaver, “Ya forgot the roof.” Regrettably, he is standing right under it, as it hovers in defiance of the law of gravity in mid-air. Law must always be upheld – but not what is lacking in structural grounding, and the roof logs all smash down upon Spike. The bulldog knows when he’s licked, and permits the Beaver to take everything to the river, where his dam is finally completed, using several components that are still in the form of Spike’s furniture. The beaver announces no hard feelings, and reveals two youngsters of his own for which the dam will provide a home. Spike, being a family man himself, acknowledges the importance of providing a roof over one’s offspring’s head, and sentimentally (and preachily) vows not to be so selfish again. (One problem with this ending. Neither Spike nor Boomer give any indication of intending to spend further time planting new trees – so what do Boomer and the other forest animals do when new lumber is needed for next season? These cartoon conservationists need to lean to practice rather than just preach.)

• “Boomer Beaver” can be viewed on ok.ru.

---

Trail Mix-Up (Disney/Amblin, Roger Rabbit and Baby Herman, 3/12/93). Mother, Roger, and Herman are roughing it in the great outdoors of Yellowstain National Park. Mother goes hunting, and warns Roger that if he commits any more slip-ups in caring for Herman, rabbit season opens today. There are as usual nice little extras in the animation, with Roger briefly rolling one ear atop his head to resemble a Davy Crockett pioneer hat, and attempting to start a fire using a violin bow to rub against the sticks. Jessica makes her cameo as a seductive forest ranger, who, despite her reminder that “Only you can prevent forest fires”, generates enough internal heat in Roger to cause him to rub the sticks at super speed, burning his firewood and himself to a crisp. Herman is on the move again, first exploring a beehive in a tall tree, then closely following a deadpan beaver who bores through massive tree trunks in under one second. Herman follows so close, he is under tree trunks 90% eaten away as they start to collapse – but it is Roger as usual who gets clobbered with them. Roger lands in a lake, and to his surprise is pursued by a shark fin. The fin is merely propelled by a pole hooked to an underwater tricycle, ridden by Droopy, who comments to us, “Gets ‘em every time.” The beaver leads Herman into major peril in a mammoth sawmill, in a sequence with wonderful dimensionality as Roger faces chomping high-speed sawblades wide enough to fill the entire wide-ratio screen. Everyone winds up on a wild log flume ride into the river, where a fishing bear is picked up as an additional passenger in water-ski fashion. Everyone heads for the waterfall, then somehow are sprung out of one peril into another, with the cast plugged into Old Predictable Geyser. The geyser erupts on cue, but with more force than natural due to the plugging. The camera pulls back to show the Maroon Cartoon sound stage, as the eruption blasts the cast right through the studio roof. All fly non-stop through the air from Hollywood to South Dakota, where they crash “head-on” with the sculptures of Mount Rushmore (which all react in shock takes before being obliterated). Out of the dust and rubble march our cast, battered and bruised with some in bandages, and Roger (wearing only shorts) carrying a tattered American flag, resembling the marchers of the famous image of the Spirit of ‘76. Herman (who is entirely nude, having lost his diaper and covering his private places with his hands), resorts to his mature toon voice, and chews out Roger. “You star-spangled bonehead! You ruined a National monument.” “P-p-please!”, responds Roger, “Don’t get bent out of shape. It’s not like it’s the end of the world.” Roger plants the flag in the ground and salutes it. Only he planted it a little too deeply. The camera zooms back into outer space, where we see the entire Earth puncture like a balloon, and zip around through the cosmos at near-lightspeed as it deflates, the scream of Roger heard as he passes the credits scroll.

---

Oregon Astray (Disney, Timon and Pumbaa, 9/9/96) – A peaceful morning finds Timon relaxing on his back in the middle of a forest glen, when he is abruptly crushed under the weight of a massive falling tree. Pumbaa enters the scene, looking for Timon, and shouting how happy he is, that he just learned how to cut down a tree just like a busy beaver. Timon squeezes his way out from under the weighty limber, and pumps one arm with the other to manipulate his spine back into full extension in the manner of an automotive jack. He asks why Pumbaa should be so happy at leaning how to cut a tree like a busy beaver. Because (GASP!) Pumbaa has changed his philosophy! – from Hakuna Mutata to Makuta Hamaka – meaning, “Work Hard”. This change has been brought about by his chance meeting with one Boss Beaver, who has not only brought about his change in thinking, but advised Pumbaa of job openings for dam construction – for which Pumbaa has not only signed himself up, but Timon too. Timon’s eyes bulge out and begin to spin. WORK??? No beatnik could be repulsed by the word more. Tmon is introduced to Boss Beaver, who wears a construction hard hat and shouts commands at him in a military manner, insisting on protocol of being properly addressed as Boss Beaver, because he’s a beaver, and also the boss. Timon futilely attempts to convince Pumbaa to see the error of his ways, but the warthog is still determined to give it a go – so Timon reluctantly agrees to tolerate this nonsense for just one day, to show Pumbaa just what a bummer work can be.

The two spend a grueling day with saws and axes, also having to wear fake beaver teeth tucked into their upper lips to adhere to company dress code. Pumbaa tugs at one end of a two-handled saw, while Timon gets whammed against the tree trunk repeatedly on the opposite handle. Multiple trees are felled on Timon’s head – even when he substitutes a dummy made from a flour sack in his place, the tree still manages to fall right upon him for a direct hit. At nearly the end of the day, Timon can only suggest they take an extended lunch break, and never come back. Surprisingly, Pumbaa finds himself having a change of heart, realizing that work feels like – work. The two are about to depart, when Boss Beaver shows up, gruffly informing them in the same tone as one of his usual orders that they can’t leave – without these. He hands them each a crisp dollar bill. This is something new to Timon – so that’s what people work all day for. Holding money gives him the feeling of power – and power means the ability to make more money. Dollar signs light up in Timon’s eyes, and the instinct of greed kicks in, as he imagines more money, more power, and the ability to become the meerkat mogul of the world. Timon falls under the spell of the “Work Hard” ethic, while Pumbaa can only cast a glance at the camera denoting his own inner thoughts of “This can’t be good.”

By the next morning, Timon has beaten everybody to the work site, single-handedly cutting down all the lumber they will need for the dam, and stacking and organizing the logs into neat piles according to size. Boss Beaver is so impressed with his industriousness, that he presents Timon with a golden hard hat, denoting his promotion to supervisor – over Pumbaa. Now Timon acquires a desk job, kicking back in a swivel chair and keeping numeric tally on logs transported to the stream with a chalkboard and adding machine, while Pumbaa strains with the task of manually carrying, pulling, and shoving all the lumber to the dam site. When the logging is through, Pumbaa (remembering to properly address his buddy as “Boss Timon”) asks if Timon will be home in time for dinner. Timon complains that time is money, and he has piles of construction permits to work through and duplicate in triplicate – but begrudgingly promises to be there. Night time finds Timon still working on paperwork in a supervisor’s office converted from a rest room, when Boss Beaver wheels in a wheelbarrow of further paperwork to go through to process invitations to influential people for the dam’s unveiling ceremony. Timon meekly brings up his promise to be home in time for dinner, but Boss Beaver screams his opinion that work always comes before promises. And besides that, Pumbaa isn’t important, as the dam is already completed, meaning that Pumbaa’s services are no longer needed – thus, he’s fired – something which is a supervisor’s duty to communicate to the laborer. Hours after dinnertime, Timon finally shows up at Pumbaa’s dinner table, to find the insect dish Pumbaa has prepared is so cold, the insects are skating across the surface of it in the bowl. Timon hastily jabbers that it was so nice of Timon to keep his meal so piping cold – and incidentally, you’re fired. Pumbaa’s eyes pop, then glower at Timon, who states that they can still be friends despite their separation in socio-economic status. “No we can’t”, declares Pumbaa, and puts Timon to the decision – he must choose which philosophy to follow.

The next morning, the unveiling ceremony takes place. Timon stands beside Boss Beaver at the podium, while Pumbaa stays away. The beaver boasts at the quality of the dam which “I built’” – taking all the credit for himself before the crowd. Timon meekly attempts to correct his boss’s slip of speech, reminding him off-mike that it was he and Pumbaa who built it. The beaver barks in Timon’s face that that’s the way things work in work – the Boss gets all the credit. And by the way, you’re fired, too! Timon is left open-mouthed, at a loss for what to do next, as the beaver pulls a rope to part a massive curtain, revealing the dam to view, hundreds of feet above the crowd. When the curtains have parted, the Boss feels a few drops of moisture fall upon his face, and looks up. The construction looks a bit rag-tag, logs seeming to criss-cross one another in unexpected ways, and small bursts of water are seeping through its seams. A large bulge rapidly develops in its middle, and in a flash, the logs fall apart and give way, revealing a towering wall of water, which stands there in briefly-delayed reaction, then envelops the camera and the crowd. As the scene is lost in the deluge, our view cuts to a side bank, where Timon and Boss Beaver are washed ashore. Pumbaa arrives to see what has transpired, happy to see the unexpected outcome. Boss Beaver seizes Timon, chewing him out in booming tones for producing such a poor job of construction. “Oh, no”, reminds Timon, recalling that the Beaver took all the credit for the work – meaning he will also get all the blame, and never be hired to construct a dam again. The beaver gasps at the thought, realizing that Timon is right, and begs him for help, declaring he can’t go on without work. Timon has the perfect solution. The final scenes find Timon and Pumbaa relaxing in lounge chairs back in their jungle home, resigned to their familiar “Hakuna Mutata” philosophy, but with someone new on the scene – the beaver, dressed in butler’s attire, playing the part of dignified manservant to serve them lemonades with little toothpick umbrellas. (One wonders, since dollar bills were something so new to Timon, what’s he using to pay the beaver’s salary?) Timon reminds the Beaver to follow the protocol of addressing him as Timon Hakuna Mutata – because his name’s Timon, and he believes in Hakuna Mutata.

• “Oregon Astray” is on Dailymotion

---

Leave It To Beavers (Warner, Pinky and the Brain (Primetime), 9/8/97) – In a relatively short installment, Pinky plays the Guinea pig for Brain’s experiments with evolution, attempting to speed up the process by taping Pinky to the screen of a cathode ray tube of a TV set, and bombarding the luminous dial of a wristwatch strapped around his waist with the tube’s rays to evolve Pinky quickly. The process has no outward visible effect upon Pinky’s anatomy, but blasts Punky backwards into a beaver cage in Acme Labs, where the mouse finds he has the power to communicate in beaver language every time Brain presses the on button of the TV remote. Using this inter-species communication to his advantage, Brain negotiates through Pinky with the beaver to see if he can gain the beaver’s assistance in a plan to take over the world, by systematically damming up rivers and demanding control of cities to release the water. The beaver has strange demands for himself and his clan of beavers back home before consenting to assist – they all want bubble gum. “Deal”, says Brain with a handshake. But things aren’t that simple. The labor needed for the dam requires beavers of more than one clan – and the other clans want shiny things, and are also envious of mankind’s big shoes, demanding multiple pairs of them. Cross-clan negotiation finally gets a dam constructed, into which the beavers have creatively interwoven the shiny things and gumballs. Brain sets sail in one of the big shoes as a boat, calling out his demands through a small megaphone for the little town downstream to acquiesce to him or be flooded. But the old-timers of the rural town inform him that after the big flood of decades ago, the town built a large storm drain system, such that flooding is a useless idle threat as far as they’re concerned. Brain returns to the dam site, intent on negotiating with the beavers again to jam the storm drains. But the remote seems to be nowhere to be found, until Brain spies it – integrated into the construction of the dam. Brain tugs hard at it to get it loose – and ruptures the dam in the process, flooding Pinky and Brain back to the steps of the doorway of Acme Labs. Brain decides evolution as it is works fast enough, and some species, such as the beavers, just weren’t cut out to join in a sophisticated world-controlling society. The remote is busted in the flooding, and Pinky remains talking is unintelligible beaver chatter, as he poses a question to Brain. The same question as usual, only spoken in beaver talk, with Brain responding as usual, “The same thing we do every night, Pinky – try to take over the world.” The episode closes with the Animaniacs’ chorus singing the closing line of Pinky and the Brain’s theme song – but in beaver chatter.

• “Leave It To Beavers” is on Dailymotion.

---

Yukon Yutz (Cartoon Network, Johnny Bravo, 1/14/00) – While on a vacation in Canada (Mamma wants the free health care to have her earlobes reduced), Johnny is up to his usual womanizing, trying to pick up a female mountie. She (as all women in the Bravo universe) is as usual unimpressed with the self-centered hunk, not only telling him she is too busy seeking out a criminal mastermind named Dirty Pierre, but also suggesting that Johnny roam around aimlessly in the deep woods for about four hours, and she’ll catch up with him. Johnny takes the bait, and soon finds himself hopelessly lost in the backwoods. Wondering if he can live off the land, Johnny begins gnawing at the bark of a tree like a forest animal. His actions are not welcomed by a beaver, who gestures in pantomime sufficient for even Bravo to understand that he feels Bravo is muscling in on his territory. He signals for Bravo to beat it, but Johnny isn’t intimidated. “You and what army?” Johnny asks will make him leave. With a whistle to the underbrush, the beaver soon reveals his back-up squad – dozens of other beavers. At a signal, Johnny is mobbed by the flat-tailed rodents, and hustled off to meet their leader – none other than Slimy Pierre.

Pierre, a typical French-Canadian woodsman of the basic variety of Blacque Jacque Shellaque, has Bravo tied to a log by the beavers, who (without much backstory as to how it came to be) follow Pierre’s every command. He reveals briefly a master plan to bring Canada to its knees, by having his beaver army dam up every river in Canada, cutting off water supply. (Where’d he learn of Pinky and Brain’s master plan?) Bravo is left on a conveyor belt in a sawmill, his log headed for the traditional buzzsaw splitting. Unable to break his bonds in time to escape, Johnny manages to shift one hand into his pocket for his tube of iron-strength hair gel, and sprays a dab of it from the tube onto the top of his pompadour. The gel sets, and proves so strong, it mutilates the iron teeth of the buzzsaw, bringing it to a stop. Johnny struggles, rolling the whole log off the conveyor belt and on top of himself, flattening him, but setting him free. Meanwhile, Pierre has just completed the last dam, and stands atop it triumphantly, until Johnny shows up at the foot of the dam, accompanied by the beaver he first encountered. Then Johnny reveals more beavers, and more beavers, until the whole beaver army faces off against Pierre, taking Johnny’s side. Pierre asks how he was able to win the beavers’ loyalty. Johnny explains that he’s promised them all a relocation to America, where beavers can roam free, summer lasts for more than one week a year, and you can get real bacon – not that stuff they eat up here, which is ham, for crying out loud! Johnny really doesn’t end up needing the beavers’ help, as his curiosity notices a small leafy twig sticking out from the center of the dam, and he plucks it – causing the whole structure to burst, and Johnny and Pierre (flattened like a pancake against his belly) to ride the wave swell into town. After the flood water passes, Johnny turns over (in fact, peels off) Pierre to the female mountie. The mountie, however, is right on top of her police business, with a list of charges to also raise against Johnny, including attempting to illegally transport all of Canada’s beavers over the border, defacing protected trees by gnawing, and destroying half the town in the flood. Johnny winds up on a prison rock pile, calling for water (which is thrown from a pail into his face). He ends the film by addressing the camera: “Sacre bleu!”

• No print is available online for “Yukon Yutz”.

---

To Beaver Or Not to Beaver (Atomic Cartoons, Timberwolf, circa 2001) – One of 13 episodes produced in flash animation for the Warner Brothers’ website, starring Chuck Jones’s last creation, Thomas Timberwolf. Thomas might in some ways be considered a distant relation to fellow wolf Hokey, though lacking in the latter’s chronic instincts of larceny. Thomas shares in common with Hokey a broad vocabulary and an ability to con others with his fancy turns of speech. He does not follow the mold of being a Phil Silvers mimic, but has his own drawlier, homespun backwoods style and pacing that makes his speech-making even more convincing, even when he has a definite ulterior motive in mind. Most importantly of all, however, Thomas has an ever-present problem. When around tall trees (which seem to be everywhere in the woods), Thomas’s animal instincts compel him to let out with a shout of “Timber!” This is a habit Thomas tries desperately to restrain – for, as if a personal curse, the yell infallibly brings a tree crashing down – right on top of Thomas’s head.

The subject episode here discussed plays both upon Thomas’s habitual weakness, and his cunning efforts to be rid of the curse once and for all through chicanery. It opens in the same manner as Bugs Bunny’s “Wet Hare”, as a morning shower under a waterfall is abruptly cut short by a cessation of the flow of water. Surveying the dry river bed, Thomas quips to the audience. “Good thing the regatta was last week.” A shout of “Heads up. Comin’ through. Move it or lose it, buddy” interrupts the peaceful forest ambience, as a beaver carries a large log single-handed atop his back at a good clip, right behind Thomas, then tosses the lumber upon a partially-completed dam upstream. “‘Scuse me, sir, but under what authority do you have the right to…’ begins Thomas, only to be buried in a pile of sawdust as the beaver passes in the opposite direction and fells a new tree. As the beaver lugs the new log to the worksite, Thomas pauses in thought, then develops a crafty grin. “Hello, epiphany, goodbye, lumps”, he remarks under his breath to the camera.

We next see Thomas consulting with the beaver in the middle of a small glen surrounded by tall trees. The beaver asks if this discussion will take long, pointing out that he is, as we know, busy as a beaver. Thomas points out that the resources of the forest are free to all its residents, and that the trees around them are there for the taking. “And what do I need more trees for?”. asks the beaver. Thomas asks him to forgive his own observation, but suggests that the small dam the beaver has constructed is hardly worthy of someone of his fine skills and talents, and encourages him to broaden his horizons, express his creative abilities, and strive for the bigger picture – and the bigger dam. The beaver, at first satisfied with things as they are, is sweet-talked into new visions of his destiny, and stands stiffly at attention as if a military man about to embark on a mission. “Revel in your creation, rise to the occasion, and never forget, Rome was not built in one day!”, instructs Thomas. As the beaver dashes off to perform his task, Thomas again quips to the audience, ‘It wasn’t built out of logs, either – but he needn’t know everything.”

A new fade in, and the old dam has about doubled in size. Thomas remains unimpressed, questioning whether the beaver is really up to the task at hand. The beaver nervously insists he is, and Thomas points him toward a new hillside of trees, suggesting that a few more such logs may do the trick. The beaver again marches off to his work, as Thomas again remarks behind his back, “Eager, when mixed with gullible, makes stupid.” Another fade, and the dam has tripled in size, the beaver panting from his efforts, and the hillside cut to mere stumps. “Now don’t get me wrong – it’s a fine job – so far…” begins Thomas. “But you must realize. All that separates you from fame and immortality is, a few more trees.” The exhausted beaver shifts into gear as if to march off to duty once again, but falls into a stoop-shouldered, sluggish gait, as he leaves to seek out any last straggler logs he can get his teeth into.

A final fade in, and a monster stack of lumber blocks up the whole river bed up to the canyon walls. A sweep around the valley countryside reveals all signs of leafy greenery vanished, the entire terrain dotted with only cut stumps. A sight out of Thomas’s wildest dreams. The beaver is so pooped he can no longer stand, and lays on his belly panting on the ground. “In the annals of beaverdom, your name shall be forever emblazoned. Mister Hoover would be proud”, over-emotes Thomas. “I c-c-couldn’t (pant) have done it (pant) without (pant) you”, states the labored voice of the beaver. “The pleasure – or, more precisely, the lack of displeasure – is entirely mine”, cordially responds Thomas, then asks the beaver to observe, putting his master plan into action. Long and loud, Thomas lets out with a hearty yell of “TIMBER!!!” The beaver looks all around, then comments, “Nothing happened.” “Ex-ACTLY!!”, states Thomas, with the epitome of a self-satisfied grin. A pause – then a rumble from above, and a few drops of water. Thomas’s irises shrink in size, and he timidly looks upwards, in a pose that might befit Wile E. Coyote. The dam trembles, spurts water, then explodes, sweeping Thomas over the falls, refilling the river, then dropping a single log onto Thomas’s head like a pile driver, driving him well into the deep mud of the central river bed. As the log falls away, a frazzled Thomas rises waist-deep in the water, looks around him at what has happened, then responds in utter surprise, “Well, I’ll be da—”, never getting to finish the sentence, as the remainder of the dam’s logs smash down upon him, followed by the beaver sitting atop them, who shrugs his shoulders at the camera, for the iris out.

---

We’ll close this article with a few notes about the only animated series to place beavers in the starring roles: The Angry Beavers (Nickelodeon, 1997-2003). This successful series really had very little to do with the actual behavior and attributes of beavers. Although its stars were furry, and lived inside a wooden beaver den within a river, it seemed as though the connections to beaver life ended there. The series was really about modern life, and the complex relationship and rivalry between two brothers: one (Norbert) confident, suave, and somewhat the braggart, with an odd speech pattern of being able to regularly mispronounce words in a manner suggesting mock-French-Canadian or Cajun – the elder who almost always knew how to keep his cool – until riled to the limit by his brother. The younger bro (Daggett) was a combination of confusion, slowness to grasp situations combined with over-excitement, immature interests and impulses, and a healthy dose of neurosis, and often a sucker for manipulation. The dynamic was winning, and, irrespective of whether or not you remembered they were beavers, the character appeal stole the show.

One of the few episodes to allow the beavers to utilize their natural talents was A Dam Too Far (8/30/97), in which the pair, in satire of classic war films depicting military operations, are recruited by the government as experts to dam a pair of merging rivers whose waters are threatening to flood the land. They are air-dropped into rugged territory by parachute (Daggett opening his upside down, crashing through a tree trunk), and begin their respective campaigns. Norbert has drawn the assignment of damming the “Big Happy”, larger and calmer of the two rivers, and in no time has confidently completed a massive structure resembling the most modern of hydroelectric dams, complete with lights and generators, declaring his own job done and departing for a side excursion to get a package of cocktail wieners. Daggett is left alone to dam the smaller tributary – the “Little Meanie” – only to find that the river has a mind of its own, and in anthropomorphic fashion destroys and upsets Daggett’s work at every turn. Log piles dumped in the river are tossed back up on shore – sometimes on Daggett’s head. Daggett cuts down a monstrously-tall tree, lugging it upright single-handedly and attempting to drop it into the river. The river bed below his feet is dry! Then the waters all converge upon him by surprise, float him downstream, then manage to toss him and the tree like a rocket projectile into a cliff face, bringing down a boulder upon him with the sound effect of a bowling ball making a strike. Norbert returns, to find Daggett screaming that the river is crazy. Disbelieving Daggett’s stories of the river acting against him, Norbert, to show his brother how wrong he is, deliberately taunts the river’s waters, swishing his rear end at it, “spanking” the water with his paw, then stomping around in it. Daggett warns that the river isn’t going to like this, while Norbert continues to call the river just H20 – fish fluid. To even Norbert’s shock, the water of the river rises as a towering wall, charging right at them. Norbert stands his ground, calmly searching in his mind for a word he can’t quite put his finger on. Daggett contemplates whether the word could be “run”, and Norbert responds, “That’s it!”. Both beavers flee from the river’s oncoming torrent, until they find their path blocked by the edge of a cliff dropping off into a deep canyon. Norbert as usual is the one to get the situation in hand, remembering something he saw on a TV show about “almost interesting” phenomenon, about a river that seemed to turn its course because of being afraid of heights. He and Norbert position themselves looking down into the canyon, remarking at how nothing could survive a fall into such depths. The river water looms over them, then extends just beyond the cliff edge, getting a peek into the canyon below. The water rears back in a trembling cringe, turns an about-face, and rapidly slinks away. The beavers are hailed as heroes and make the evening TV news. However, a knock at the hatchway door of their den reveals the wave of the Little Meanie appearing again, coiling its water to grab Daggett and drag him away for spiteful revenge, while Norbert calmly remains on the sofa, eating his cocktail wienies.

• No print seems to be available of “A Dam Too Far”.

I can think of no better way to close this installment than to also call attention to the unfinished and unaired finale episode of the Angry Beavers, “Bye Bye Beavers”, in which the beavers try to cope with the trauma of learning that their series has been cancelled. While the script was okayed in production through both the storyboarding and sound-recording stage, the plug was finally pulled upon it by Nickelodeon management at the very last minute before animation got under way. The reasons appear to include that the network, though it should have been well aware of the episode’s messages at the initial storyboard stage, found the self-effacing and cartoon-conscious, fourth-wall breaking hijinks to be taking too many jabs at network policies, and the general industry practices of re-running old cartoons to death without passing-on never-ending revenues to the series’ creators. Also, the worry that such an episode could only air once in logical context, without itself making clear to the viewer that anything they subsequently would see was a repeat. (Actually, the blow might have been softened by the episode’s surprise ending, in which the beavers yell to the camera, “April Fool!”. Setting a similar scenario up as just a dream in the final episode of “The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries” allowed the episode “This Is The End” to reach final production and the airwaves without complaint.) Fortunately, the voice track for this lost milestone was saved, and a determined fandom, working like a busy beaver, has finally succeeded in producing an expertly-handled animatic set to the original track, embedded below, which is probably about as close to the creators’ original vision as we will ever get to see. With lines like “Wake up and smell the Korean ink and paint, man!”, open referral to the use of flashback clips as “a cheat”, and deliberate lapses where the characters mistakenly refer to each other by the first names of their respective voice actors, the project is definitely one that deserves to be seen – or in any event, at least heard.

NOTE: I will be on hiatus next week to attend screenings at the UCLA Festival of Preservation – and to regroup in selecting a next topic for discussion. See you again in two weeks.

Our survey of the animated appearances of beavers wends its way into the last half of the 1930’s and through the beginnings of WWII. Animation has generally shown a marked improvement over the dog-yipping fuzzballs that populated early Disney efforts. Some studios spotlight the beaver as the center of storylines, while others present him in isolated spot gags among menageries of other animals. Some prominent directors try their hand at the critter, including Frank Tashlin, Sid Marcus, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Rudolf Ising, and Alex Lovy

Porky’s Building (Warner, Porky Pig, 6/19/37 – Frank Tash[lin], dir.) is a fun 1930’s style animal romp – even if Porky doesn’t seem to be entirely the center of the cartoon’s activity. It begins with a rarely seen Foreward: “Any similarity of characters or happenings in this picture to actual people or events is definitely intended – If you think we’re going to sit around for days thinking up new ideas, you’re pixilated!” Porky, and a canine known as Dirty Diggs, are the town’s only construction contractors, and fierce rivals. They are each asked to submit a bid on building the town’s new City Hall according to pre-approved plans. (The plans guarantee the structure to be a politician’s paradise, with hot air outlets.) The two construction whizzes seat themselves at opposite desks in the office of commissioner Sandy C. Ment, and begin number-crunching to make the lowest bid (with a few attempts to sneak views of the other’s paper over the shoulder). Facing each other nose to nose, they hand in their bids simultaneously. According to the Commissioner, the bid amounts are identical! (However, Diggs’s paper actually displays a comma where a decimal point should be before the digits for pennies – so, shouldn’t Porky have won in the first place?) How to settle the matter? Of course – a competition. Each one tries to build a building. First one completed gets paid. (Such a deal! So the loser eats the $3,000,000.02 in construction costs? And who gets the second uncompleted building?)

Construction commences on adjoining lots, at the firing of a starter’s gun. Porky directs an all-species roster of animal workers, while Diggs’s crew seems to consist entirely of humanized dogs. Things begin pretty evenly matched. One character on Porky’s team will be familiar to long-time Warner viewers who may never have seen this picture – a meandering little dog better known for his recurring walk-ons in “Porky the Fireman”, with a signature walking tune. Here, he follows an electrical wire from a stash of dynamite ready to blast, over to the plunger detonator. A crowd of spectators huddles around him. He orders them back, telling them to “Stand back, folks, ya bother me.” But they keep pushing back in to the same proximity before the plunger can be pushed. Finally, the dog abandons the detonator, and travels over to the wire’s other end, pretending to inspect the explosives. The people follow him, huddling around the dynamite. The dog slips through the crowd between someone’s legs, returns to the plunger, and pushes it down, exploding away the intrusive crowd. A hod carrier scales the side of an erected girder with plumber’s helpers tied to his shoes. Dirty Diggs begins to engage in dirty tricks, and tosses a brick at him. The worker falls to the ground, but the two plungers continue scaling the girder on their own to the top. We finally get some beaver activity, as two beavers from Porky’s crew mix respective vats of sand and water with their tails, then flip scoops of their ingredients into a large container fastened between the humps of a camel. The camel shakes the concoction with movements of his humps as if mixing a drink, then pours out the completed cement into the inverted shells of a continuous line of turtles. They deliver the cement to a dispenser for aerial delivery by pelicans. Diggs plays dirty again, sending up a fish tied to the string of a toy balloon. The pelican takes the bait, spilling his cement load onto Porky below.

Throughout the cartoon, a running gag is provided by a small rabbit among Porky’s workers, anxious for an assignment. Whatever task goes wrong, he shows up wearing a t-shirt reading “Hod Carrier”, “Cement Worker”, or the like, asking to be sent in as if a bench player on the football squad. Porky repeatedly tells him “N-n-n-No!” But things become desperate, when mid-project, Diggs informs his entire crew that they can go home, as he doesn’t need them here anymore. From out of a warehouse, Diggs rolls out his secret weapon – a giant automatic brick-laying machine, which shoots bricks on a belt like machine gun bullets. Porky shouts. “You c-c-can’t do that”. Diggs replies, “Well, I’m doing it, aren’t I?” In a matter of a few seconds, Diggs has bricks laid to the 77th floor. “Woe is me”, moans Porky. But the rabbit again enters on cue, rapidly changing shirts from mere “Brick Layer” up to “Super-Colossal Brick Layer”. Porky finally gives the little guy a chance. It turns out that, using a combination of his arms and his ears, the rabbit can work just as fast as the machine, and the race is now neck and neck. Diggs struggles with the gearshift of his machine, trying to shift from “Super Speed” to “Gosh Darn Fast”. Instead, he kicks the machine into reverse. Bricks are miraculously sucked away from his structure, back into the machine, which explodes. Porky’s City Hall is completed first, and Porky allows the rabbit to upstage his own bows to the crowd at the top of the tower, by holding the rabbit high above him in one hand, as the rabbit clasps his ear-tips together in a wave of victory.

---

Max Fleischer would include the beaver in a “give him the works” setup in the Color Classic, Little Lamby (Paramount, 12/31/37 – Dave Fleischer, dir., Dave Tendlar/William Sturm, anim.). A traveling fox has a regular regimen planned for obtaining his meals when he visits strange places. Approaching the village of Animalville (population: 201), he views the community’s residents from a hillside through a spyglass. Many species and their offspring are viewed, including a beaver who has found a new use for his tail, having one end of a rubber band tied to it, and the other end ties to a ball, providing a natural game of paddleball. But the fox’s attention is drawn to a grazing baby lamb (one who predicts the later Thumper the Rabbit in not liking greens, only finding grass to be palatable when she (or he?) sprinkles sugar on it). The Fox predicts the results of his own plan, and rubs out the last digit of the population sign at the edge of town, drawing in as its replacement the reduced population tally of 200.

The fox posts a notice in the public square, announcing a Baby Contest, with big prize to the prettiest and healthiest baby (must be kind and tender). All the village takes notice, including a parent beaver carrying his youngster along, riding upon his tail. Soon, everyone is gussying-up their offspring as the logical choice for the prize, while the fox dons a fake beard and constructs a judge’s stand. The entrants parade past him in review, yet there is no sign of the beavers either in the preparation or in the contest. In fact, the beavers do not appear to have even entered, as they are not represented on a cross-off list the fox carries of rejects for his main course, ruling out squirrel on toast, roast duck, and fried rabbit. The lamb finally arrives, and is happily inspected by the fox for its plumpness. “The winner – and, my dinner!” shouts the fox, casting away his fake beard, dropping through the judge’s stand by way of a trap door, and exiting in a hurry upon a hidden motorcycle concealed beneath the stand, with the baby lamb clasped firmly under his arm.

The fox heads for his lair, zooming inside and slamming the door, with a sign hung on it reading “Gone to lunch”. The citizens of the village angrily pound upon his locked door, only to hear the fox inside holler “Scram!” Many means are employed by the animals to gain entry. A rabbit takes hold of the beaver like a power saw, and attempts with him to cut through the trunk base of the large tree stump that is the fox’s home. The fox sticks his head out of a knothole, and smacks the rabbit and beaver with a small club, knocking them out. Two birds fly with their claws clamped onto the handles of a twin-handled saw, flying back and forth in attempt to saw into the trunk from above. The fox, seeing the blade edge protruding into his wall, grabs a sledge hammer, and socks the blade in three places, bending the saw teeth in opposite directions to wedge the saw tight in the tree bark. Only the persistent efforts of a billy goat, holding onto the forward end of a battering ram, and the rest of the community carrying the log (plus a whole jar of headache pills for the goat’s aching noggin) finally bust down the front door. The lamb is rescued in the nick of time from the stove top, where she has been doused with sneeze-inducing pepper and perspires profusely from the stove’s anthropomorphic wood-eating flames. The fox is caught on the end of the battering ram, smacked into the opposite wall, then his arms and legs tied around a center pole support in his living room. A teeter-board is inserted under the fox’s rear, and the animals take turns jumping on one end of the board, launching the fox’s head into the ceiling over and over again. As the fox sits in a daze and with a lump on his head, the baby lamb sprinkles some of the pepper onto the fox’s nose, causing him to get his own case of the sneezes. “Gesundheit”, states the baby, for the iris out.

---

The House That Jack Built (Screen Gems/Columbia, Color Rhapsody, 4/14/39 – Sid Marcus, dir.) seems to have the distinction of featuring the first beaver character to have a name. The studio isn’t taking any chances as to the audience missing the point that Jack the Beaver is industrious – dressing him in the same worker’s hat and coveralls as Practical Pig, and even giving him a modification of the same voice (provided once again by Pinto Colvig, who also voies an ostrich featured in the story). Jack carries a box of tools and an armload of lumber through the forest to a vacant lot site. On the way, he is accosted by a bear panhandler. “Can you spare a dime for a cup of coffee?”, the bear asks in the standard sympathy ruse. Jack answers with a response I wish I’d turned on some panhandler, guaranteed to kerflummox their true intentions. “I haven’t got a dime…but here’s a cup of coffee.” The bear stares bewildered at the steaming cup handed to him as Jack continues on, and barely has the presence of mind to sip down the brew before tossing the cup away and continuing to pursue Jack. “What’cha doin’?”, asks the bear, seeing jack using a shovel to break ground. “Building a house”, replies Jack. The lazy bear immediately plops himself on his back onto the ground, and proposes. “Build one around me, buddy. I’m sick of the outdoors.” Jack gets as steamed as his coffee, and smacks the bear across the tummy with his shovel, forcing him to retreat a distance behind a tree. Jack begins to lecture in song about his work ethic, as Practical Pig was also prone to do, in a talk-sung number entitled, “You Don’t Get Nothin Doin’ Nothin’”. Bu the time the song is through, we have cross-dissolved our way to the home’s completion. (Being a beaver, Jack prefers lumber to Practical’s bricks.) The bear turns up right on cue, complementing how beautiful the house is, and proposing to an equally-shiftless ostrich pal of his that they should have a house warming. Jack immediately senses trouble, but can’t keep the two buttinskies from forcing their way through the front door, then locking Jack out behind them.

The two intruders are just natural-born troublemakers. The bear leaps into a bed with rollable casters on its poles, and rides the bed into the kitchen, where it stops in a corner directly in front of the refrigerator door, allowing the bear to feast on breakfast in bed. The ostrich isn’t so picky, and does what all cartoon ostriches do – swallow anything and everything in sight. Jack finally finds a point of entry into the house, and immediately rushes for the phone, attempting in a low whisper to phone the police. “Gimme that phone”, snaps the voice of the bear, as he yanks it away from Jack, and tosses it to the ostrich, who proceeds to swallow everything but the handset. Jack is still determined to get his call through, and pokes his finger into the ostrich’s belly to rotary-dial on the apparatus within him. Unfortunately, every time the call is connected, the ostrich hiccups, disconnecting the call. Finally, the bear again takes the matter out of Jack’s hands, grabbing the handset and yanking the rest of the phone out of the ostrich’s belly by the cord. As the ostrich keeps Jack busy in a tussle, the bear, out of pure spite, uses the phone to call the Termite Wrecking Company – a professional all-insect wrecking crew, and requests their services at the newly-built abode. Knowing the fate of Jack’s home is sealed, the bear and ostrich finally allow themselves to be chased out, mockingly bidding a neighborly goodbye as they depart. “Good riddance”, says Jack, settling down at his breakfast table. But…what table? It disappears in about one second flat – as does the chair. The termites have arrived. Within about a minute, the entire place has collapsed to the ground around Jack, and the bear and ostrich laugh uproariously outside at the show. Their laughter is abruptly silenced, as Jack produces from nowhere a shotgun. (Too bad he couldn’t have laid hands on this before.) Before long, the bear and ostrich are marched back to the lot at gunpoint, and work begins on a replacement home – that is, work performed solely by the meddlesome intruders, with Jack sitting by as supervising foreman, shotgun at the ready to dissuade any attempt at slacking off. The bear and ostrich close the film with a reprise of Jack’s song of industry – to be sung by them whether they like it or not.

Wish we had original credits for these. There’s been some mysteries as to whether credits got mixed at some point between the work of Sid Marcus and that of fellow director Art Davis at the studio. While multiple sources list this film as Marcus’s, there are a few artifacts that might suggest Davis’s presence. A few signature present-time dissolves occur between shots in the termite office, which was a camera style Davis was associated with in several Scrappys and even in later life in his Looney Tunes. And an appearance by a recognizable worm who had appeared in two Davis Scrappys, “The Early Bird” and “A Worm’s-Eye View”, in the last shot as Jack eats an apple for lunch. Could this be another instance of director miscrediting?

---

Cross-Country Detours (Warner, Merrie Melodies, 3/16/40 – Fred (Tex) Avery, dir.) – One of the best of Avery’s many spot-gag travelogue spoofs for the studio, featuring a variety of different types of gags. It is perhaps most remembered for its strip-tease rotoscope sequence of a lizard “shedding its skin” (even though this phenomenon of nature only occurs with snakes). Or for its split-screen imagery of something for the adults and something for the kiddies – a gila monster for the grown-ups, and a little girl reciting nursery rhymes for the tots. However, the little girl proves the more ferocious of the two, out-roaring the gila monster, causing him to run away in a panic. Beavers, however, are spotlighted in one sequence, constructing a dam. Before our very eyes, they built from concrete and mortar the mammoth Hoover Dam – then the best known and most modern hydroelectric dam in the nation. Avery would remember to use the structure as a prop again when he migrated to MGM, having his giant cat and mouse scramble over the top of it in King Size Canary.

---

Snowtime for Comedy (Warner, Merrie Melodies, 8/30/41 – Charles M. (Chuck) Jones, dir.) – Jones’s “two curious puppies” are in another of their battles for a bone – this time set against the icy backdrops of a frozen winter. Both dogs and the bone take a slide down a massive ski-jump, the bone in the lead. The little pup overshoots it, sliding out onto the banks of a not-yet frozen lake. He breaks off a small floe of ice from the banks before reaching the water, then sails out into the middle of the lake, helplessly trapped aboard the small floating chunk of ice. The larger dog also overshoots the bone, but avoids falling into the lake, negotiating a course adjustment in his slide that bowls him right into a small beaver dam just constructed (with the accompanying sounds of a bowling ball scoring a strike on a full lane of pins). The dog is next seen, still sliding, but with the dam’s logs piled atop him in the shape of an Indian teepee. Eventually, he sheds the lumber, only to slide into a snowbank, then collide below the snow surface into the trunk of a half-covered tree.

When the large dog next emerges, he is dazed and woozy, but spots the bone where he passed it, displayed in his POV blurred vision. He carefully tries to creep up upon the bone, but is blown backwards by an icy wind, again colliding with the half-buried tree. Again he attempts to advance, building up speed to fight the wind. He slides directly over the bone, but is unable to clamp his teeth together fast enough to grab it as he passes. What lies ahead? A new dam the beaver has constructed. CRASH! The end result of the collision leaves the sliding dog looking as if he is residing in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

So what of puppy number 1? His ice floe has been severing into segments below him, again and again, until he is left standing with all four paws piled one-atop-another on one paw-sized fragment of ice. He just manages to hop off before it submerges, onto the icy bank, but is now pursued by a crack he has caused in the ice. The crack chases him right into the latest dam constructed by the beaver, with the typical results, and the lumber assuming the shape of a wooden steamboat surrounding the dog. The little pup is chased into the same snowbank previously occupied by pup #2, crashes into the same tree trunk, then the ice crack splits the entire tree up the middle. When the little pup emerges from the snow, he finally spies the resting place of the bone, and leaps for it. The bone squirts out from between his paws, propelled high into the air. The pup gives chase, and of course crashes into a beaver dam again (this time with no shape shifting gag for the lumber). The bone lands atop the seat of a chair lift leading high into the mountains, and the pup follows on a second chair. At the pinnacle, the bone is deposited by the seat as it turns for the return trip down the mountain, and the pup, leaping upon it, slides with the bone down a steep slope. Tumbling and gathering up snow in a giant snowball, the pup and bone are transformed into a gigantic snow sculpture of – a pup and bone! This mammoth mutt descends on pup number two – and on yet another beaver dam. The beaver isn’t going to stick around close with this monster apparition sliding right toward him, and flees to the highest hillside vantage point he can find, then turns to see the aftermath of the snow-dog’s collision with his construction project. Instead of destroying the new construction, the snow joins with it, emerging as another perfect snow replica of Hoover Dam! Carl Stalling appropriately underscores this finale gag with the notes of Ella Firzgerald’s recent hit, “Keep Cool, Fool.”

---

The Bear and the Beavers (MGM, Barney Bear, 3/28/42 – Rudolf Ising, dir.) – This picture is frameworked as if taking place within the illustrations of a children’s storybook, much in the same manner as Disney would later framework “Winnie the Pooh”, but without some of the page-turning and type-moving gimmicks. We are told by its pages that Barney (still apparently a nameless bear at the time of release) has gotten tired of living in cold, damp caves and old hollow trees, so has adopted human homebuilding style, constructing himself a sturdy log cabin with massive stone fireplace and chimney (a sign outside names the cabin the “Snuggly-Wuggly”). Barney sits in a plush easy chair padded with multiple pillows, dressed in a warm robe, loading logs into his fireplace only inches-distanced from his reach, and basking in the warmth and comfort. Life might be ideal, but one day he runs out of firewood. He enters the forest, wearing scarf and hat, and armed with an axe and a large box for his wood. We don’t know how Barney got his original supply of big and little logs to build his cabin and stoke his fires, but all indications are that Barney cannot claim the title of an experienced woodsman. He wrestles with an axe head with a talent for coming loose from its handle. It first causes Barney to swing at the tree with no blade, sending a wave of vibrations through his arms and up his entire torso upon impact. Replacing the blade on the handle, Barney swings again, flipping the axe head loose into the air, where it twirls like a Frisbee, and returns for circling passes at Barney’s face again and again like a boomerang. After repeatedly ducking out of its way, Barney stands erect, and extends out his arm with the axe handle, timing things perfectly to catch the whirling blade back upon the handle on the next pass. He finally gets a swing at the tall pine which has been his target. But now the tree gets the vibration shivers just as Barney experienced before, shaking down an avalanche of snow nestled in the tree’s upper branches, right on Barney.

All this while, Barney experiences slow-burn frustration at viewing the ease with which a pair of happy beavers addresses the same task nearby, efficiently alternating axe-swings to chop a tree just as tall into log-sized sections, then piling the perfectly-sized wood onto a small sled for hauling back to their home. When Barney emerges from under the snowbank emptied upon him by the tree, he first drums his fingers as the passing beavers tip their cap in friendly manner to him, and wonders what to do next – then hits upon a revelation. That nice, tidy wood pile on the beavers’ sled! What if…well, you read into Barney’s mind, as he just happens to stroll along whistling, along the same path as the beavers follow, then pitches his unneeded axe into the bushes. Barney ducks into a bush, then cautiously pokes his head through to see what the beavers are up to. What he views is more than he could have hoped for. The beavers have entered the busy little community of Beaverville, where everyone seems to be busy sawing and cutting away at lumber. But in this instance, they are not collecting it for any designated project such as a dam or den construction. Instead, all the collected wood is being stockpiled in one warehouse structure, bearing a sign reading, “Beaverville community woodpile.” This is all the information Barney needs, and his face pulls back into hiding, with a nefarious grin on his face, ready to wait his chance for action.

That night, Barney returns to what will be the scene of – the crime, armed with boxes galore. Displayed as still illustrations within the book pages, Barney “borrows” some wood. The next page displays him loaded – for bear, so to speak, adding the words, “Quite a bit.” The next page shows the beavers’ warehouse, empty, with the additional words, “In fact, all of it.” The theft of the century. However, Barney is as inept in covering his traces as he is as a woodsman. An elderly beaver with a walking cane, who acts as night watchman for the community, passes the warehouse on his rounds – and does a delayed double-take upon discovering the place laid “bear”. He races to a square in the center of the village, and rings a triangle to sound a community alarm, rousing all the other beavers from their dens, in a scene likely inspired by the “Giant on the beach” alarm sounded by Gabby in Fleischer’s “Gulliver’s Travels.” It’s not hard to find the path of the culprit, as the watchman points the community’s eyes to a long trail of huge bear pawprints left in the fallen snow. The trail ends obviously at the doorstep of Barney’s cabin. Inside Barney now basks in the heat of a monster blaze in the fireplace, stoked by a lumber pile at his sides reaching all the way to the ceiling. What’s more, embers and plumes of smoke pour out the chimney top, almost as visible as a rocket’s exhaust, making it elementary to determine from outside where the community woodpile is currently located.

A slow-marching mob (also possibly inspired by “Gulliver’s Travels”) forms from Beaverville, following the tracks to Barney’s door. The parade is led by the equivalent of a beaver “Spirit of ‘76″ fife and drum corps, and by the watchman carrying a yellow lantern (again matching Fleischer’s Gabby) and beckoning the community to follow with a wave of his cane. Everyone seems to be armed with wood-cutting devices, sleds for hauling, and ropes (one of them noticeably fashioned into the familiar form of a hangman’s noose). A beaver at the end of the procession signals the end of the parade with a red-colored lantern dragged along on his tail (possibly a nod to Dopey marching along at night in Snow White’s “Heigh-Ho” sequence). Everyone amasses outside Barney’s home, and the watchman signals with his cane for all to be silent. He peeks in the window of the cabin to get the layout of the room and a view of his opponent, then, when Barney begins to doze off, beckons again with the cane for everyone to advance. Beavers move in from all directions, taking up positions in squads in the cellar, upon the roof, and one beaver slipping into the cabin through some undisclosed entryway, taking up a stance upon a structural cross-beam over Barney’s head. The watchman gets an okay signal from each positioned beaver or squad. Barney meanwhile has heard some rustling, but is still too happily groggy to care about the unexplained disturbance, and settles into relaxed pose again. When all is ready, the watchman chooses the proper moment to blow a shrill note upon a small whistle, as the starting signal for all hell to break loose. The whistle rouses Barney from slumberland, causing him the leap high into the air, directly under the beaver on the rafter – who is carrying a large wooden mallet, with which he conks Barney soundly on the head. As Barney tries to collect his dizzied thoughts, the souds of friction upon wood fill his head from everywhere. Axes chop in random rhythms on the roof and walls. Elsewhere on the structure, hefty buck teeth gnaw their way through log sections. Below the floorboards, sawblades emerge through, carving out whole sections of the floor below Barney’s feet.

Barney is utterly Mesmerized by the flurry of activity, the din of the chopping, and the vibrations of the entire structure, and cannot gather his thought processes to formulate a counter-attack. He instead casts a look at the camera, expressing to us his utter helplessness to address this unexpected onslaught. Then a shout of “Timber” is heard from above the roof. The support beams of the cabin begin to crack and splinter, and within a few seconds, the entire structure collapses upon Barney’s head. Our image blacks out – much as it probably did to Barney, and we fade in to a reprise of the beaver parade, but now heading back home. The fife and drum team passes, then the watchman beckoning the others with his cane. Then the rest – but with a major change. Each beaver is completely loaded down with limber to tote home, forming a line that seems to extend all the way to horizon. At the end of the procession is one of the two beavers whom Barney originally met, carrying the last of the lumber in Barney’s own “wood box’ crate, and again politely tipping his cap to Barney as a good-bye. We see Barney, lying in a heap before the stones of his now empty fireplace, fingers again nervously dropping in frustration, as the camera pulls back, revealing nothing to be left of Barney’s home except the stone fireplace structure, portions of a window-frame with now-shattered glass, and the hanging remnants of the battered “Snuggly-Wuggly” sign outside. The beavers have recovered their own wood, and Barney’s logs as interest for the loan! In a scene excised for years on television release prints, the storybook closes, with the words “The End” on the back cover, while white letters dissolve in across the shot, providing the only dated reference to when the film was released – a standard motto which appeared on most MGM features and shorts from this season, reading “America needs your money. Buy defense bonds and stamps every pay day.”

For reasons I have never understood, some reviewers have criticized this film for slow and deliberate pacing. I have never seen such fault with it, and consider it one of my favorites in the Barney series. If anything, it follows in the same meticulous attention to detail that was the fascination of the tying-the-giant-up sequences of “Gulliver’s Travels”, which as mentioned above, appears to be its obvious inspiration in several respects. The detail of the animation on massed group shots is amazing, the facial expressions and personality animation on the characters is superb, and the backgrounds are picturesque and lush. Everything about the film speaks lavishness, and I have always classed this as among the closest efforts of the studio to matching the best of Disney and Fleischer feature output. View this as if part of an extended feature work without the need to rush through its material and ideas, and I think you’ll see my point.

---

Nutty Pine Cabin (Lantz/Universal, Andy Panda, 6/1/42 – Alex Lovy, dir.) – Another fun romp, that I remember fondly from early screenings on the Kelloggs’ Woody show as a child. Rustic woodland cabins must have been a part of the American dream in 1942, because Andy Panda has the same home-building fever as Barney Bear. Andy’s chosen material, however, is plywood instead of logs. Though his carpentry supplies include a tape measure, he could use some practice in measuring board length, as the first act of the cartoon displays his battle to hammer in place one board in the cabin’s side wall that is too long. It either pops out at the top, bends upwards at the bottom, or springs outward as a bulge in the middle. When Andy finally manages to hold it in place, its top edge raises the roof just slightly, allowing all the other wall boards to fall out of place, then the roof to collapse upon him for lack of structural support.

Meanwhile, a community of beavers works busily on a dam construction project. One beaver’s neck demonstrates great dexterity. After he has chewed 95% of the way through the trunk of a tree, he backs up a few steps, and allows another beaver to pump on his tail, causing his neck to elevate like an automotive jack to topple the tree above him. A stuttering beaver does an impression of Porky Pig, yelling “T-t-t-t-t….(POW falls the tree upon him)…TIMBER!!” The smallest beaver of the clan is getting nowhere gnawing at a giant tree assigned to him, when he spots Andy sawing away at more boards. Turning on his cutest charm, the little one assumes a begging position and a smile, thumping his tail to get Andy’s attention. Andy passes him a small sample of the lumber as “beaver board”, and thinks he’s done his good deed for the day. But the beavers are opportunists. Rather than waste their efforts on manual labor, the minute the small one shows off his prize and where he got it, all the beavers want Andy’s boards over their own home cuttings. And so, the tables are turned on the Barney Bear scenario, with the beavers becoming the thieves instead of the victims.

The first beaver Andy spots is the same little one he already met. “Want some more wood?”, Andy asks. The beaver quickly nods, and scurries away with another small piece, but only as a cover for the activities of his relatives, who emerge from the side of the house to make hasty exits, not only carrying Andy’s boards, but pails and hardware as well. The last in the line is stopped by Andy stepping on his tail, while the forward motion of the beaver’s feet digs him into a trench in the ground. The embarrassed thief replaces the box of wood he is carrying where he found it, and attempts to back away, stumbling into Andy’s paint supplies, and transforming himself into a Technicolor rainbow. The little beaver is next spotted swiping a mallet, which of course he returns the hard way when Andy demands, “Give it to me.” Andy begins chasing the little one around and around the cabin, Andy becoming a speed blur that transforms into multiple-exposure running images of himself clear around the cabin. When he comes to a stop, all his multiple images catch up with him, colliding themselves back into his person with wooden-sounding clunks. The little beaver descends from the roof with the aid of Andy’s roll-out tape measure, then paddles the panda on the head with his tail, causing Andy’s eyes to bounce in their sockets. Just as Andy is about to toss something at him, the panda is mown down by two other beavers, carting off one of Andy’s finished doors. Andy switches targets, and pursues the door-robbers, who position the door directly in front of a tree trunk. They swing the door open at the last second, and Andy hits the trunk at full speed, penetrating his silhouette through not only this trunk, but those of a dozen other trees in a row behind it.

Andy’s reached his limit, and in scenes often unkindly cut for television broadcasts, resorts to a shotgun, firing pot shots at the beavers. (A similar fate often befell another Lovy episode of Andy from the same season, “Good-bye, Mr. Moth”, where excising of the rifle shots rendered the cartoon’s ending absolutely unfathomable.) The beavers go into a huddle, and devise a new strategy to win the war. They converge upon one of the largest forest giants, with teeth bared, making short work of its trunk. The mighty forest monarch falls, in close proximity to Andy’s cabin, generating shock waves that launch the cabin into the sky. The cabin, with Andy along for the ride, comes to rest skewered atop the uppermost branches of another nearly equally tall tree. Now, the beavers converge again to gnaw the trunk base away to only a pinpoint. One beaver spits against the upper section of the tree to choose the direction of its fall. Good expectorating! With precision, the second tree collapses across the river, jamming Andy’s cabin right into the center gap in the existing dam construction, effectively sealing off the water and completing the project. A defeated Andy slowly raises his head from the chimney, only to be tail-whacked in the head again by the little beaver, who is hiding inside his hat. Andy’s closing expression seems a precise match to Barney Bear’s – a picture of exasperation, silently communicating the phrase, “Why me?”

---

All Out For ‘V’ (Terrytoons/Fox, 8/7/42 – Mannie Davis, dir.) – An assortment of spot gags, as those in the animal community learn of the pronouncement of war declared from a newspaper extra. Among the first to react to the news are a population of beavers, who attack en masse a grove of trees in the wood, gnawing them within seconds into a bursting cloud of raining logs, which neatly stack into cabins in the newly-formed clearing, providing headquarters space for the War Production Office. The beavers later fell a tree with a shout of “Timber!”, while a woodpecker hammers a large tack into the sawed-off end of the log, a “caterpillar” tractor lassos the nail and tows the whole trunk away, and a team of termites uses their devouring power to cut the log into wooden boards. In a year when every studio got an automatic chance for an Oscar nomination, this film was under vote for the award – not that it had a chance of winning against Donald Duck’s “Der Fuehrer’s Face.”

NEXT TIME: Our buck-toothed friends remain “dammed” if they do, and “dammed” if they don’t.

Walter Lantz, Terrytoons, Famous, and Warner Brothers all contribute entries today to the saga of the beaver’s development in the animated cartoon, today sticking to theatrical short subjects. Let’s “cut” right to the chase, sink our teeth into the subject, and see what the audiences of the ‘40’s, ‘50’s, and early ‘60’s “saw”.

Scrappy Birthday (Lantz/UA, Andy Panda, 2/11/49 – Dick Lundy, dir.) – The final of only two theatrical appearances for Buck Beaver, and also the swan song for Andy Panda as a star as well. A pity, as by this time, Andy had never looked so good. His flexibility of movement and character posing were at this point in his career sterling and flawless, and, when given the right plot material, such as here and in “The Playful Pelican”, Andy could be said to have finally achieved the ability to rival Mickey Mouse. Indeed, the concept of rivaling such icon seems to be prime in the minds of the studio in this production, as it also introduces to the screen a spirited girlfriend for Andy, Miranda Panda, who can easily be paralleled as the Minnie to Mickey or the Daisy to Donald. Given the right push by the creators, this duo might have gone places. But, alas, it was not in the cards. The United Artists’ distribution deal was about to run out, Lantz would lose the services of Dick Lundy, and himself wind up without contractual commitments save for commercial films for almost a year and a half. When the studio regrouped in 1951, no one seemed to feel comfortable about picking up the reins for the Panda’s productions. Paul J. Smith was handed a storyboard for “The Dog Who Cried Wolf” in 1953, boarded as a comeback script for Andy and his dog Dizzy. But Smith, while retaining Dizzy, crossed Andy out of the production, replacing his part with that of a generic farmer, and releasing the film as a one-shot instead of as part of any regular series. Andy would thus have only three more chances to appear on the screen for Lantz, as a bit player. He shared the screen with a redesigned Oswald Rabbit in an odd pairing for an early 1950’s theatrical automotive commercial (voice I believe provided by Dick Beals). He and Miranda Panda (in her only other screen appearance) walk into a barn dance (actually, about three Andys and three Mirandas, in a repeated cycle of animation) in “The Woody Woodpecker Polka”. And he makes a brief speaking appearance (voiced in Daws Butler’s Augie Doggie/Elroy Jetson voice) in the special television all-star episode, “Spook-a-Nanny” for the Woody Woodpecker show. He has since appeared on TV as one of several passengers in Woody’s car in a new opening credits sequence for a syndicated package of the Lantz cartoons in the late ‘90’s or early 2000’s, and in 2018 made some sporadic appearances in new Woody episodes, though his personality has become so un-Andy-like and his animation so poor that they really don’t count.

It’s Miranda’s birthday. Andy arrives at her door, graciously presenting her with candy and flowers. But this is what he does for her on every birthday, and Miranda is bored with it. Why can’t he get her something different – something that all girls (at least of that era) want – a fur coat? Andy nearly keels over at the thought, proclaiming that he can’t afford a fur coat. Well, as far as Miranda is concerned, this means “You can’t afford a girlfriend, either.” She leaves Andy at the doorstep, stuffing the floral bouquet in his mouth, and smashing the candy box over his head. Enter the enterprising Buck Beaver, who can’t help just having overhead the squabble, and as usual has an instant solution – if the price is right. He jumps to the self-serving conclusion that Miranda will adore a fox fur – and just happens to have a run-down foxhound (Dizzy) for sale, at not one, not two, but a cost of five dollars. Andy becomes a dog owner without ever being able to utter a peep in protest.

If you’re going to hunt fox, you might as well look the part. Andy thus joins the local fox hunting club, and appears in red coat and hat and with hunting horn. Dizzy caddies his rifles in a golf bag, as Andy tries to sound a blast on the horn to commence the hunt. The horn seems to be plugged up with something, and it takes several blows before Andy is able to dislodge what’s inside – the fox himself, curled up for a siesta. The fox ducks into the trunk of a hollow and leafless tree. Andy inserts the end of his horn into the hole at the trunk base and attempts to blow the fox out with one prolonged blow. The force of his lung power propels out of the tree’s limbs a full covering of leafy green foliage, and this year’s entire crop of apples – all of which fall upon Andy. When Andy pops his head out of the apple pile, one fruit remains upon his head – causing the fox to perform a William Tell shot upon it with bow and arrow.

The fox eventually resorts to subterfuge, entering another tree trunk as a fox, but emerging with the appearance of – a skunk! Andy investigates the tree hole, and finds inside a paintbrush, and a can of Special Skunk Paint manufactured by the Stinko Paint Company. Andy thus continues the chase, and after some gags in which the fox uses Dizzy as a living vacuum cleaner, the fox disappears into another stump, a sign outside declaring it to be the home of J. Primrose Skunk. When what appears to be the same “skunk” emerges again, Andy presumes it to be the still-painted fox, and charges after the creature, engaging in a battle with him in a whirlwind of action. Unseen by Andy, now emerging from the doorway of the stump comes the fox, with all paint removed, and wearing a clothespin on his nose! Back at the whirlwind, and without viewing the violence it takes to create it, Andy calls for a fur box from Dizzy, and packages up a ready-made fur coat, complete with black and white stripes. He presents the box to Miranda, surprising her completely. Without looking, she has Andy slip the garment on her – then wrinkles her nose several times at the odd smell. A scream of realization has her dart back into the house, tossing away the fur, and tossing every available object in her kitchen at Andy to give him the clear message that his presence isn’t wanted. The last object to his Andy is a frying pan – then J. Primrose Skunk appears, wearing a barrel and suspenders to cover his person. Primrose recovers his fur, zippers himself into it, then concludes the cartoon by smacking Andy another blow on the head with the frying pan, leaving a head-lump from Andy’s brow bulging from the metal bottom of the skillet.

---

Woodman, Spare That Tree (Terrytoons/Fox, 12/28/50 – Eddie Donnelly, dir.) – A fairly weak outing with little in the way of plot material, that seems to exist only for the sole purpose of meeting annual production commitments. It is the kind of early-Silly Symphony knock-off that might have passed muster at some studios in the 1930’s – but in 1950? Spring is dawning, taking the form of a whirlwind sprite descending from the heavens, to thaw out the forest trees from the ice and snow, melt the river, and wake up the various creatures of the forest with their new offspring. One of the first families to be awakened is the beavers, where the tail of one adult serves as the blanket for three baby beavers. The sprite thaws out the river around their den, allowing all to dive in for a swim. All others in the forest are awakened, and a pageant and concert in honor of the season begins, including a mama and papa tree and a small new baby tree swaying to the music. Enter a burly lumberjack, looking for an easy mark for his axe. He singles out the baby tree, and prepares for a backswing to land the first chop. The animals, and even the elements, come to the rescue, in another of those “give him the works” scenarios. Daddy beaver is among the first to run interference to keep the axe blow from landing, spanking on the lumberjack’s rear end with his tail. A bird lands upon the axe handle, and pecks away at the wood, until the axe head falls off. Lack of a basic tool won’t stop the woodsman, who plants a lit stick of dynamite at the base of the little tree’s roots, despite the drill-shaped stinging formation of a swarm of mosquitoes. A centipede divides in sections, each segment separately ringing a string of bluebells as an alarm call to the Spring sprite. Hearing the ringing, the sprite zooms into the sky, getting behind a small cloud and giving it a strong push into another cloud, creating a rainfall and lightning storm. The rain puts out the dynamite fuse in the nick of time, while the lightning blasts reduce the lumberjack to his red flannel underwear, and chase him out of the forest. In a shot obviously intended to mimic the finale scenes of Disney’s “Flowers and Trees”, a ring of flowers dance around the little tree, for the fade out.

---

Beaver Trouble (Terrytoons/Fox, 9/2/51 – Connie Rasinski, dir.) – The opening art card and design for the dog in this picture make the film look like it will star Dimwit. But in fact, the dog must be his distant relation, as he does not talk – only howl and bark. Two beavers are busy constructing a den, with no particular standout gag in their opening action. Much as the beavers in Andy Panda’s “Nutty Pine Cabin”, they spot a log cabin under construction, and decide its wood is just what they need for their project. The site, however, is being guarded by a watchdog, whose doghouse is itself a miniature of the larger cabin in progress. The two beavers take hold of a large log, and begin casually skipping back toward their den with it, each supporting one end of the log as they skip side by side. The dog catches sight of them, but, not wanting to be a total bully, tries to scare them rather than chomp them, following at close range behind the beavers and barking angrily. When they fail to take the hint, the dog chomps upon the open-stretch of log between their shoulders, attempting to yank the wood away. Instead, the dog’s false teeth remain embedded in the wood, and are pulled out of the dog’s jaws as the beavers continue skipping forward without missing a beat. Now the dog makes himself even more visible, jumping ahead of the beavers, and running back and forth in front of them while barking. The beavers still ignore his woofs, and back him up with the log until the dog reaches the riverbank. Then SPLASH, as the dog falls in the river, while the beavers merrily toss the log over his head and onto their den in the center of the river.

Somehow, the dog will get the beavers’ attention – or perhaps die trying. Scrambling back to the construction site ahead of the beavers, the dog seats himself on the top log of a pyramid-shaped pile of cut logs, positioned as guardian of the woodpile and holding a small uncarved stick as a weapon to threaten intruders. The beavers still could care less about his presence, and reach directly into the center of the lumber pile, pulling out the central log upon which the pile is supported. The whole pile falls apart, and the remaining logs roll down a hill, taking the dog with them, who crashes with the lumber into an uncut tree. By the time the dog turns around, he views his doghouse – with its structure two-thirds dismantled, as one of the beavers walks off with a piece of its lumber. He stops the beaver’s progress by stepping on its tail. The second beaver comes to his friend’s rescue, calling the dog a bully and advising him to pick on someone his own size, then whacks the dog’s foot with his tail. The tricky twosome dash inside a hollow tree, but the dog lights and inserts a stick of dynamite in after them. From a hole in the tree above, one beaver spots the dog’s booby-trap, and turns the tables by sawing off the top half of the tree from within, with his teeth. The upper section of tree falls, knocking the dog inside the hollow lower half. As the dog gets jammed within the trunk, the beavers pop out the top of the lower tree half and escape, followed by the dog’s head emerging, with the lit stick of dynamite atop it. BOOM!! The hollow stump is blasted free of its roots, but remains an imprisonment for the dog’s arms, causing him to stumble about while wearing the trunk, in a mock-Charlie Chaplin walk. In a rare instance of political incorrectness, the two beavers join forces, entwining their tails to create the makeshift rotor blade of a helicopter, then spin them together to lift the dog out of the stump, and drop him down the chimney of the log cabin. The dog falls through a soot-filled fireplace, and upsets a dog dish with bone in the living room before it. When the dust clears, the bone is tied in the dog’s hair, and the dog appears in blackface as a canine African warrior.

The beavers return to the doghouse, pulling out its structural support corner-logs one by one. The dog rushes in to replace each post with the bracing of his own paws – but when post number four is removed, the dog is literally left without a leg to stand on, and the roof collapses upon him. At this point, this film (which has already been a bit pokey in its timing) more or less runs out of plot ideas. The dog throws a lasso around the beavers, then marches them to a place to do them in with a shotgun. But, as often happens to many an animated character (such as Donald Duck in “Donald’s Penguin”, or Fox in “A-Hunting We Won’t Go”), one look at those sympathetic eyes and fuzzy faces, and the dog doesn’t have the nerve to pull the trigger. Dropping the gun and shedding a few tears, the dog slowly trods back to the site of his doghouse – now nothing more than a pile of loose roof logs – and settles down to shiver as the first winter snow begins to fall. The beavers realize that the dog has no home, so do the charitable thing – invite the dog to their own cozy den to spend the winter. To make him one of the family, the beavers tie a tennis racquet to the dog’s tail, and insert a pair of wood chips to protrude from the dog’s upper lip, providing him with the dentures and tail of a beaver. They all end the film hopping off together into the distance toward the comfortable den, for the fade out.

---

The Redwood Sap (Lantz/Universal, Woody Woodpecker, 10/1/51 – Walter Lantz, dir.) – Woody lives in an apartment in the hollow trunk of a tree, amidst a bustling community of ants, squirrels, and beavers. While all the other critters work busily in preparation for the oncoming winter season, Woody reclines in bed, enjoying some reading material suitably appropriate to his character – a volume entitled, “Work, and How to Avoid It”, by Hans Doolittle. The only thing that will interrupt Woody from his R&R is the chiming of his patented meal wristwatch, so frequently seen through his early 1950’s episode, ringing an alarm bell when its hands (shaped like a knife and fork) point to pictures of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and tea. Where does Woody get his meals? From his neighbors, of course. Zipping out his front door, he raids the contents of Dagwood-style sandwiches from the beavers, swallowing all the sliced goodies in one gulp. As the ants carry a full cob of corn, Woody sprinkles salt on the kernels, then pops them all of the cob into his own mouth by heating them with a blow torch. As the squirrel struggles to roll a towering stack of walnuts into a hole in the tree above Woody’s apartment, Woody appears on the branch above him, devouring each nut as it reaches the level of the hole. In fact, he keeps on chewing when the squirrel’s head also reaches branch level, and almost swallows the angry squirrel’s head. Woody then sails back into his apartment, floating into a reclining position on the bed with stomach bloated from his heavy meal. Woody looks up at a sampler-style sign on the wall, bearing his motto: “Why worry about tomorrow? It will be gone the day after.”

This routine continues until the first light sprinkling of snow begins to hit the woods. The beavers disappear underwater into their den, where they sit in a parlor full of food watching TV. The ants clamber into their underground burrow, enjoying card games amidst tunnels lined with walls of corn kernels. The squirrel admires his storeroom, lined with alternating columns of walnuts and tin cans, with signs reading, “soup to nuts to soup to nuts to soup to…” All other birds in the woods pack their bags for fall migration, and one takes the time to knock on Woody’s door to suggest that he join them. But Woody is as usual too lazy to fly, envisioning only the negative sides of any suggested destination (hurricanes in Florida, and smog in sunny Hollywood). Settling down to sleep again, Woody awakens next morning, when the snow has grown to a depth of three or four feet everywhere. As his watch chimes, Woody prepares to zoom out the door – only to be buried in an avalanche of snow from the doorway. He clambers out of the ice, which has formed into the shape of an igloo inside his door, and seeks another way out through a window. Another column of ice slides in through the opening, extends over Woody’s head, then clunks him. The mercury in a wall thermometer drops to bottom, turns blue, and icicles form around the bottom of the glass barrel of the instrument, while a miniature snowstorm occurs within the glass. Woody looks down at himself, and discovers his torso is encased in an ice block – which he quickly pecks away with his beak. He opens his empty cupboard, and meets his old pal Starvation squarely in the face.

Woody’s had enough of his indoor confinement, and bores his way through the snow in his doorway, popping up outside. But where are his food sources? All holed up in their snuggly dens. All Woody can do is swallow his pride (if he ever had any), and show up at their doorsteps to beg for food. But his “pals” have been mooched from many times too often, and are out for revenge. The ants present Woody with a corn cob – cob only, devoid of corn, smacked over his head. The squirrel provides Woody with nuts – of the metal variety that fit a screw. The beavers are the most merciless, presenting Woody with a yummy-looking cake, complete with candle. However, its insides consist of ice cubes from the refrigerator, with a layer of frosting consisting of snow scooped up from outside the beaver den. Woody swallows the “cake” whole – then turns blue all over, as a cutaway view inside his stomach reveals it is so cold, even the fire on the candle goes out. Woody spends the entire winter frozen inside an ice block outside his home.

When spring thaw comes, the local animals emerge from their homes and exchange greetings, and the migrating birds return. The bird seen earlier is the first to notice Woody, whose ice block has not yet melted. The animals put their heads together to finally rescue the trapped nuisance, by tilting the block over so that Woody’s rear is facing one side, then attacking the ice with the heat of Woody’s own blow torch. The bird revives, and zooms out of the ice through a hole he bursts through from the side opposite the torch, pausing to look at his now-sizzled tail feathers. Before Woody can even think about any lesson to be learned, his alarm watch goes off again. Reflexively, Woody returns to all the mooching activities he had utilized in the previous year, filling himself with the last stored food from each of his neighbors – and it is obvious as the cartoon ends that Woody, as usual, hasn’t learned anything, and will go on being – Woody.

• “The Redwood Sap” is viewable on Archive.org.

---

Dick Lundy moved on to greener pastures – and possibly greener dollar bills – at MGM, producing in the Barney Bear series Busybody Bear (12/20/52). Good neighbor week has been declared in the morning papers, and Barney is determined to get into the spirit of helping his neighbor, who just happens to be Buck Beaver (no, not the Lantz character Lundy had left behind), just erecting signs announcing a beaver dam under construction. Another sign warns of falling trees, with the added note, “Watch your konk, neighbor”. Barney pays no heed of it as he approaches the site, and gets beaned by three different trees of varying sizes as they are felled by Buck. As Buck goes for the next one, Barney pushes him aside, pulling out his own axe to show the beaver just how it’s done. The beaver tries to yank the axe handle away, but Barney insistently gets in his chop – felling the tree upon himself before he can finish yelling “Timber”.

The beaver is next seen flinging mud upon logs with his tail to secure them into the dam. Barney tries doing the same thing with a shovel, them gets clever, inserting the shovel handle under the belt of his trousers, to operate it like a giant beaver tail. The beaver begins to get frustrated with Barney’s intrusions, and bends the shovel handle to whack Barney in the rear and up a sandy bank, where the entire front side of Barney becomes smoothly sandblasted. Next, the beaver begins cutting a log into segments with his teeth, but can’t make progress upon a stubborn outgrowth in the middle. Barney borrows an idea from Chuck Jones’s “The Eager Beaver”, placing Buck atop a block of ice until his teeth chatter, then uses him as a power saw to cut the tree, leaving Buck’s buck teeth loosely swaying from his upper lip.

Buck moves on to using a two-handled saw on another section of a log, though he is operating it single-handedly from one side. Barney climbs atop the log and grabs the other handle. He makes cutting progress, but bashes Buck repeatedly into a tree stump on Buck’s end of the saw. Buck retaliates, by sliding the whole log until one end overhangs the drop-off of a cliff. As Barney saws through, he and his end of the log fall into the canyon. Barney wisely lets the log end fall away, and removes his trousers, allowing them to billow out in the wind and float him down as a parachute, suspended from the suspender straps. Buck isn’t going to let him have a graceful landing, and pushes the other end of the log over the cliff. Barney lands lightly on one toe – then is crushed into a pancake by the falling log.

Buck finally gets the final log in place atop the project, then changes his signage from “under construction” to “completed”. However, as he turns around, he finds to his dismay the sight of Barney, adding a new log to the pile. Buck pushes the log away, and clears off the mud base with his tail, then finally speaks up to Barney. He tells the bear in no uncertain terms to mind his own business, and that the project is completed and just right the way it is. “I only want a little one”, he protests. Barney stubbornly insists that what he really needs is a great big one, which the bear intends to supply. To keep the complaining beaver from interfering, Barney ties him to a tree stump, then sets about his own appointed task. Scaling a hilly slope on one side of the valley, Barney chops two thirds of the way through the trunk of every tree. At the top of the hill, he yells, “Timber”, and pushes at the topmost trunk. Like a line of dominoes, one tree’s fall fells another, and another, until all the trees on the hillside are keeling over. Barney zooms back to the dam, and flings layer upon layer of mud with his shovel atop each log as it lands on the dam. Within seconds, he has constructed a dam rising nearly to the top of the valley walls. He releases the beaver, pats him on the head, and returns to his own cabin. Within moments, the beaver’s feet are being immersed in water – as the new dam is holding back all the water in the river, flooding the entire valley. Barney receives a knock on his front door. When he opens it, the beaver enters, emerging out of a wall of water, which blasts into Barney’s home in delayed reaction, thrusting the bear out the chimney top and into the flooded valley. Underwater in the bedroom, the beaver takes occupancy of Barney’s bed, pulling the covers over himself to rest up from the exhausting day, while Barney looks in from the submerged bedroom window, drumming his fingers on the windowsill in frustration, for the iris out.

You will note in the course of the cartoon that Scott Bradley was not one to miss appropriate opportunity for re-use of his own musical compositions. The main theme from Barney’s The Bear and the Beavers score receives healthy repetition here, underscoring many of the beaver’s activities.

---

By the Old Mill Scream (Famous/Paramount, Casper, 7/3/53 – Seymour Kneitel, dir.) – A by-the numbers Casper script. Casper flops out at a ghost town amateur night performance in an abandoned Opry House, the spooks not appreciating his vocal rendition of his own theme song. Casper goes out into the world to make friends again. His travels take him to a beaver dam, where the smallest beaver, Little Shorttail, makes a similar flop trying to help with dam construction. Reason why? His tail is only a fraction of the size of those of the others, and only big enough to carry a tiny wad of mud for packing the logs together – in fact, just enough mud to accidentally flip into the foreman’s eyes. While the beaver cries by himself off in a corner, Casper shows up to offer any assistance in the construction. The other beavers depart in totem-pole formation. Casper finds Shorttail, the only one not afraid of him, and learns of his problem. He attempts to build confidence in Shorttail, telling him his tail is probably strong enough to carry a log – but invisibly lifting the log himself as Shorttail walks along. The dam springs a small leak, the water running right through the palms of Casper’s ghostly hands. Shorttail again can’t carry enough mud to plug the hole, leaving Casper to do it himself, piling the mud onto the beaver’s tail just as he returns to the dam, so as to allow Shorttail to claim the credit for the repair. As Shorttail goes for more wood, we get a late cameo appearance by Wolfie, who is hunting beavers with the aid of a plumber’s helper tied to a rope. He corners Shorttail in a hollow tree, and uses his plunger’s suction to pull Shorttail out of the tree’s hole. Casper shows up, scaring Wolfie out of his clothing, his outfit running away faster than himself. Shorttail shows up again at the dam along with Casper, the beaver clan now accepting Casper as their hero. Now Shorttail can carry and fling all the mud he wants for the dam – because Casper has installed a large frying pan tied to his own tail, as a prosthetic substitute.

---

Unnatural History (Warner, 11/14/59 – Abe Levitow, dir.) is one of a few late returns to the Tex Avery spot gag cartoon style of the 1940’s, featuring random gag sequences involving various species of wild and domesticated animals or insects. Some of its most memorable highlights include the act of Cal the Chameleon, who can instantly match any color background inserted behind him – but draws the line at plaid, bawling in a tantrum, “I can’t do it!”. And a talking dog act, which strikes out at the booking agency when everything he says sounds like a dog bark, including his naming of “Ruth” as the greatest baseball player. As he and his owner are thrown out, the dog confides to his owner, “Maybe I shoulda said, Di Maggio”?” One of its last gags includes a beaver, repeating Chuck Jones’ gag from “The Eager Beaver” of actually “damming” a river, when the center of his dam construction falls apart from the water flow. He of course angrily shouts audible but unintelligible swear words at the water.

• “Unnatural History” is in a good print at DailyMotion.

---

Beavers again get a mention – but no appearance onscreen, in Bugs Bunny’s Wet Hare (Warner, 1/20/62 – Robert McKimson, dir.). Bugs is taking his morning shower under a river waterfall, doing his best vocal impression of Al Jolson singing “April Showers”. Suddenly, the flow of water runs dry. Bugs knows he paid his water bill – then remembers what happens every year. Those pesky beavers upstream must be building a dam again. Bugs is about to investigate, then goes through a series of over-dramatic speculations, as to what might happen if it’s not the beavers, and the water has just dried up. He envisions his carrots shriveling, himself dying of thirst, and begins to gasp for water. Then just as suddenly, he changes mood entirely to his usual casual cool, remarking, “Nah, it’s gotta be them pesky beavers”.

Both of Bugs’s theories are wrong. At the top of the waterfall stands Blaque Jacque Shellaque (McKmson’s answer to Yosemite Sam, in a return appearance following his debut in “Bonanza Bunny”), who has just completed constructing a dam out of stray stones. He chuckles to himself that he fees just like a “pesky little beaver”. Bugs arrives at the top, learning from Jacque of his intention to keep the river water for himself, based on riparian rights consisting of a loaded pistol for anyone who defies him. Bugs claims to have no protest, but speculates as to how secure the dam is. What if one stone here or there were to fall out of place. He gets Jacque to remove a central stone, as a demonstration of “What could happen?” POW!! The whole thing falls apart, the water sweeping Jacque away.

Bugs returns to his bathing, but the water dries up again (a shot we will see several times too often in this film, instead of varying things up by reanimating the angle or the flow of water differently each time the event recurs). Shellaque has built a stronger dam. A shark fin appears in the water, which Jacque thinks to be a trick, as there are no sharks in a trout stream. Apparently, however, Bugs has farmed this one in specially, leaving Jacque atop the dam, trying to bat off the shark and calling for help. Bugs comes charging to the rescue, floating on a log, but deliberately slams it right through the dam stones. “This is being saved?” shouts Jacque, once again falling into the water.

Another shower, another dam. Much larger, with neat squared-off stone wedges. Jacque wonders if the rabbit will try to blow up the dam. A small raft carrying a single stick of dynamite floats up to the dam wall. Jacque scoops it up in a net, then attempts to run with it off the dam. It blows up in his face, leaving him staggering, while a much larger raft holding crates full of dynamite floats in. BLAM!!

Jacque is through fooling around. He climbs down into the valley, and blasts with a shotgun at the location behind the waterfall from which he hears singing, until the voice is silenced. Of course, Bugs is really off to one side of the river, tending his carrot patch, and the voice heard was nothing but a gramophone and record he placed behind the falls. Back at the top of the waterfall, Jacque has now constructed his masterpiece – a dam of solid metal and rivets (hopefully rust-proof). But instead of attacking the dam, Bugs changes tactics – rendering Jacque’s dam useless, by building another dam of rocks further upstream. “Sacre bleu”, utters Jacque at the insane determination of this rabbit. With a cannon, Jacque approaches Bugs’s dam, and blasts it away. But yet another dam stands behind it. Another cannon shot – and another dam upstream is revealed. Bugs continues to lure Jacque further and further upstream, blasting away dam after dam, until Jacque comes face to face with the towering edifice of the all-concrete Grand Cooler Dam. Reflexively, he loads his cannon, and blasts once again. The cannon ball merely bounces off the concrete structure, ricocheting back to catch Jacque in the belly, and knocks him into the waiting entrance doors of a police paddy wagon, which rolls him away to make the arrest for an assault upon public property. From the top of the dam, Bugs mutters that Jacque is not fooling him. “He’ll be back – like, in about 20 years.” Though a late entry in the series that could have had better animation and tighter timing in places, this one did have some clever ideas, and remains reasonably memorable.

• “Wet Hare” is on Facebook or on Toontales.

NEXT WEEK: Some feature work, and some television outings, next time.

Today, we cover nearly 30 years of television in one fell swoop. Beavers didn’t make a shattering impact upon the small screen in general during this period, their participation in the medium being sporadic at best. One memorable feature project would also debut at the outset of this chronology, which is probably the best remembered of all of today’s entries. Other contributions include possibly their only appearances in claymation and stop-motion, a television ad campaign, and items from Jay Ward, King Features, Hanna-Barbera, and Film Roman.

One of the better-remembered of cartoon beavers was a well-animated and notably-voiced member of the species, nameless on the screen but among studio records affectionately known as Mr. Busy, who appeared as a featured co-star in a popular sequence from Disney’s Lady and the Tramp (6/22/55). He becomes the unlikely answer to an otherwise unsolvable dilemma for Lady, starting when Aunt Sarah, believing that Lady has attacked her pet Siamese cats Si and Am (although the whole thing is a frame up by the felines), takes Lady to a pet shop and has her fitted with a “good, strong muzzle”. Poor Lady can’t tolerate the cruel device, and reflexively runs from the shop, the muzzle and its trailing leash still fastened around her head. She immediately encounters more difficulty when the leash snags loose objects that clank loudly behind her upon the pavement, calling attention to herself, and the unwanted following of a pack of menacing stray dogs from the bad part of town. But Lady has an ally who also knows these dark streets like the back of his paw – the devil-may-care Tramp, another stray who knows how to handle any tough mutt that crosses his path. Hearing Lady’s plight, Tramp follows the progress of the chase, then doubles back by way of a shortcut to come up on the back side of a fence, just as Lady reaches the fence from the opposite side, finding her path blocked and herself cornered. With a mighty leap, Tramp vaults over the fence, landing directly between Lady and her vicious pursuers, and in canine fashion, snarls his most intimidating snarl at the pack, ready to take on three at one time to save the fair damsel. A violent battle of tooth and claw follows, some of its action denoted artistically through clashing shadows against the fence. When the rough stuff subsides, it is the three toughs who have turned tail and run, and a panting but defiant Tramp stands victorious.

But there’s still the problem of this confounded contraption strapped to Lady’s face. It’s beyond Tramp’s abilities to know how to remove it – but he thinks he knows of a place where they likely can find someone who can – the municipal Zoo. Going through the place from A to Z, Tramp quickly rules out the apes for assistance: “Too closely related to humans.” Alligators might perform the task, but there’s just too much teeth to dodge at the same time. “If anybody ever need a muzzle, it’s him.” Suddenly, a call of “Timber!” is heard, as a large tree falls around Tramp, narrowly missing direct impact from its branches. The cause is Mr. Busy, a zoo beaver constructing a dam within his own habitat. (Kind of advanced for most zoos. I don’t recall seeing any other where there is enough stream and lumber for a beaver to do the same kind of natural thing it does in the wild.) Well, “B” is the next letter of the alphabet (though in correct alphabetical order, Tramp should have checked out the bears first). So Tramp tries to get the toothy-fellow’s attention. “This will only take a second of your time”, proposes Tramp. But the beaver sees things from a different viewpoint. “Do you realize every second, seventy centimeters of water is wasted over that spillway?” (The beaver, voiced by Stan Freberg, is the first rodent of Disney’s to display a pronounced whistling lisp upon uttering “S” sounds, due to his buck teeth – allowing Freberg to have his fun with the read of this “S”-loaded line, much as “R”s provided audio-fuel for the dialogue of Elmer Fudd. Disney would remember this comical “speech impediment”, allowing it to be later inherited by Gopher for the production of “Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree”.) So the beaver is to busy to be bothered, insisting that the felled tree has got to be moved for use on the dam. “T’ain’t the cuttin’ takes the time – It’s the dog-gone hauling”, he complains. This gives the observant and prone-to-con-games Tramp an instant idea. What the beaver needs is “the new, improved, patented handy-dandy never-fail little giant log puller!” In delayed reaction, the beaver’s attention is finally aroused. “Did you say log puller?”

Tramp, instantly adapting to the role of a super salesman, draws Lady into the scheme, calling upon the beaver to observe the product, “modeled by the lovely little Lady”. He also prompts the slow-to-understand Lady to go along with the gag, giving her instructions in hawker’s spiel, “Turn around, sister, and show the customer the merchandise.” Then, the irresistible hook: “And it cuts log hauling time sixty-six percent!” Now the beaver can’t wait to see how it works. Tramp simply slips a loop of the leash around a tree limb, and indicates it is now ready to haul off. The beaver now asks to slip it on for size – but is stumped when he encounters the leather straps holding the device in place on Lady’s head. “How d’ya get the consarned thing off, Sonny?” asks the beaver. Simple. Place the strap between your teeth, and bite hard. One chomp, and Lady is free. Now Tramp is ready to depart, but the beaver still wants to talk business. “I’ll have to make certain it’s satisfactory before we settle on a price.” To the beaver’s surprise, Tramp has no interest in being mercenary – and tells him he can keep it. “I can?” reacts the beaver in surprise. Even more surprising is Lady’s response. Some of Tramp’s tactics are finally rubbing off upon her, and in spite of her ladylike ways, she chimes in, “Uh huh. It’s a free sample!” Tramp shoots her a glance with a beaming smile across his face, recognizing that this new kid to the shell game has got possibilities and potential. The beaver begins to thank the two – but never finishes his sentence, as one tug on the leash sends the fallen tree rolling down the slope of a hill, dragging the beaver along by the leash end. Down and down the lumber rolls, splashing into the stream and dunking the beaver, then floating slowly in the water to lodge directly within the last remaining hole in the dam, stopping the flow of water. Lady and Tramp watch from the hill crest, wondering what the reaction of their hapless patsy will be to this development. The beaver’s head rises from below the water, then turns to see his dam completed. He glances back at the dogs, and with a stream of water gushing from between his front teeth, joyfully remarks, “Say, it works swell!”

---

Likely the earliest animated beaver to be created for television was Bucky Beaver, the spokes-critter for Ipana Toothpaste (which sponsor, nearly two decades after its abandonment of the full-length theatrical commercial film, “Boy Meets Dog” at Walter Lantz, finally found its niche in animation spots). Produced by Walt Disney’s commercial animation division in conjunction with the run of “The Mickey Mouse Club”, these spots were particularly aimed at the kiddies, and featured the familiar voice of Jimmie Dodd, master of ceremonies of the Mouseketeers, as both narrator and in speeded-up form as the voice of Bucky. Dodd is definitely not among the ranks of fine animation voice actors, and hams up his role considerably. What’s more, despite changing for every commercial the locale and Bucky’s occupation, the spots suffer from what might be called the “Casper” syndrome – they are all the same, written in the same formula pattern, and never with any zingy or surprise punchlines. Bucky sings his signature jingle (composed no-doubt by Dodd), “Brusha, Brusha, Brusha”, and points as his bright-and-shiny buck teeth. A villainous human called Decay Germ appears, and threatens menacing cavities. A fight ensues, with Germ seeming to get the upper hand over Bucky. But Bucky pulls out an oversized tube of Ipana Toothpaste. Without even being brushed or sprayed with the stuff, and before Bucky can even remove cap from tube, Germ withdraws with the shout, “Oh, no, not Ipana!”, and ends up in whatever trap or immobilization Bucky wants for him. Bucky sings his jingle again, and the commercial ends. A string of three such commercials is presented below. It is unlikely you will want to see any more of them on the same day.

---

Tree Trouble (aka “Eager Beavers”) (Gumby, 10/26/56 – Art Clokey, dir.) – With the help of an excavation machine fresh out of the box from Tonka toys, Gumby and Pokey follow a treasure map they have stumbled across into the deep woods, in search of the third tree on the riverbank, indicated on the map to conceal an undisclosed treasure buried below. Their big digger soon begins chomping at the base of the tree, and lifts the whole trunk onto its conveyor belt – disturbing the slumber of Mr. Wise Owl in the branches above. “Who [or is it “Hoo”?] ever gave you permission to tear up my tree?”, the owl asks. Gumby is forced to admit, “Nobody”, and Pokey blurts out their following of the map to find treasure. “What is this forest coming to?” the owl mutters, and declares that what these two need is a good fable. He begins to relate the tale with a moral of Benjamin Beaver and his two cousins, Flory and Zeb. One day, the three decide to build a dam, with Ben drawing up the plans and acting as head engineer, while his cousins handle the manual labor of cutting the logs, positioning them in the dam, and tamping them down firmly with their tails. The owl asks if they obtained permission from anyone downstream for the project, but Ben tells him not to be such a fuddy-duddy. “I’m a beaver, and I know how to build this sort of thing.” The logs thus keep coming, as the project nears completion.

Downstream, Gumby (who just happens to show up as a player in the owl’s narrative) is hiking through the woods, and encounters a racoon “washing out a few things” from a limb of his tree home overlooking the river, and a rabbit in a nearby hole just to one side of the riverbed. Gumby asks if he can go swimming, and the racoon invites him to enjoy himself. But when Gumby enters the river, he notices something strange, just as the racoon asks his opinion of the stream. How come the water is disappearing? Within a few seconds, the water drops to below Gumby’s indented ankles, and the riverbed becomes bone dry. The racoon goes into a panic, wondering how he is ever going to keep up with his washing. Of course, it is no mystery to us why this strange phenomenon is occurring – Ben’s dam has just been completed. However, Ben’s design should have called for more mud to fasten the logs together securely. A swell builds up in the river, and the force of the water’s wave blasts through the center of the dam, sending a flash flood winding as a torrent downstream. “Wow-ee!”, utters a shocked Ben, his hat spinning around atop his head as he watches the disaster. The rabbit’s hole is flooded out. The racoon’s tree is swept away in the water, ending up toppled upon the opposite riverbank. And confused Gumby can only remark that this is the craziest river he’s ever seen. Spotting a rustic hand-carved rowboat also washed up on the banks by the flood, Gumby and the two dispossessed animals decide to row upstream to see what the cause of the chaos was. But before they get too far, the water level begins to fall once again, and dwindles to zero, leaving their boat beached in the mud, as its bow encounters the new cause – Ben and the boys have gone ahead and built another dam, to make things as good as new for themselves all over again.

Before Gumby and his two animal friends can raise a protest, another voice comes to their rescue. Ben’s father has come out looking for the three beavers. Asking what that thing is in the river, he is informed by the boys that it’s the dam they just built. Papa knows his ethics, and scolds them that they had no right to do such a thing without obtaining the other animals’ permission, and orders them to tear the thing down immediately, and be home in time for supper, or there’ll be a spanking for the three of them. So the fable closes, as the owl observes that the beaver boys were just a little too eager – eager beavers, you might say. Gumby and Pokey see the point of the story, and admit they got too eager themselves. “But what’s this about buried treasure?”, asks the owl. Pokey shows him the map, then notices that the tree trunk has not been replaced precisely in its original position, revealing a hollow area at its base. Pokey trots over to investigate its contents, but after a pause, dejectedly informs Gumby, “Nuts! It’s just a lot of walnuts!” From nowhere, a squirrel appears, angrily announcing, “It may be just nuts to you, but it’s MY treasure! Now go away!” Gumby and the owl begin to laugh, Gumby closing with the remark, “I guess the joke’s on us, Pokey.”

---

The Frogs and the Beaver (Jay Ward, Aesop and Son (from “Rocky and his Friends”) – date unknown) – You might call this one sort of a latter-day remake of Columbia’s “The House That Jack Built”. Aesop (Charlie Ruggles) spins a tale to go with his latest moral, “Honesty Is the Best Policy” – a moral prompted by his witnessing of the horrendous act of a baseball player “stealing” second base. An industrious beaver has built a stone and mortar resort house on the banks of a river. Two shiftless frogs (Romeo and Julius) decide they are tired of beavers always having it easy, while frogs have to settle for life on a lily pad, and conspire to take over the beaver’s home. With a can of the beaver’s yellow paint, Romeo splatters Julius with spots, then carries Julius inside, claiming Julius is a victim of frog pox. When Julius pretends to go into fits, the beaver, fearing Julius may be contagious, runs away, abandoning the house. The two frogs are as destructive home residents as the Columbia film’s uninvited house guests, and reduce the house to a shambles within a week. Meanwhile, at another spot on the river, the beaver has hastily constructed a new abode made of wood. With their present place in ruins, the frogs opt for comfortable rustic living, with a new plan. The beaver is observed smoking a pipe, so Julius poses as forest ranger Smokey the Frog, stomping upon and busting the pipe, then stomping upon the beaver when he discovers the beaver also carries a book of matches. The beaver again runs off, and in three days the frogs have reduced the cabin to another wreck.

Three days is all the beaver needs to build a Spanish-style hacienda of dried mud. The frogs show up right on cue, but before they can spring plan number 3, the beaver stomps out his own pipe, displays a coat of painted frog pox he has applied to himself under his shirt, and announces that he can no longer be intimidated. In fact, there is no further reason for intimidation – as he has not built this house for himself, but for the frogs! The frogs are shocked, but not so much that they don’t immediately take occupancy – which is just what the beaver has been waiting for. As a rainstorm moves in, the frogs discover that a structure made of dried mud can quickly change to one made of wet mud when not weatherproofed, causing the whole home to sag and slide off the banks into the river. The frogs are swept away with it in the current, and never seen again. Aesop Jr. has his own idea of a closing moral – Grime does not pay. Aesop chooses to stick to his own line, and carries off to the ball park a gift-wrapped base pad to replace the one stolen last week. Junior wonders what will happen if there is another game played, and someone steals home.

---

Beaver or Not (Rembrandt Films/King Features, Popeye, circa 1960 – Gene Deitch, dir.) – As frequently happened in the rushed production schedule and with the low budgets allocated to the King Features Popeyes, this episode is loaded with technical flaws. Poor animation (Popeye’s mouth painted on separate cels from his head, resulting in his speaking often giving the impression that his lips have been surgically disconnected from his jaw line), missed sound-effect cues (Popeye remarking that there must be a saw mill in the area, though we’ve heard no audible buzzing), overlapping tracks (obliterating some dialogue with music or effects), and even a credits sequence where, for possibly the only time in the series, the shots are spliced together in reverse order, revealing the title of the cartoon before the director or producer credits. Plotwise, it bears a resemblance to the later Bugs Bunny “Wet Hare”, while borrowing an ending from Andy Panda’s “Nutty Pine Cabin”.

Popeye is on vacation (or is that shore leave?) in backwoods country, paddling a canoe to a small dock at one end of a path leading up to his mountain cabin. The first thing he wants to do is take a swim. (Honestly, being a sailor, shouldn’t getting drenched in water be classified as something of a busman’s holiday?) He runs up to his cabin to change into bathing trunks (though continuing to wear his sailor hat), then runs down again to perform a cannonball dive into the river. In the short time that he has been away from the stream, he quickly learns that there ain’t no stream no more, diving face first into a muddy but empty river bottom. The sound of laughter, at the speed of the voices of Alvin and the Chipmunks, is heard from further upstream. Two beavers have just completed work upon a dam blocking up the river water, and are laughing themselves silly observing Popeye.

Popeye addresses the beavers, telling them they’ve had their fun, but this dam had got to go, as it is ruining Popeye’s vacation. Popeye begins tugging at a central log. Before he can dislodge it, one beaver chews through the log’s middle, detaching Popeye’s end of the wood. Popeye stumbles backwards, getting another dip in the mud. He makes another attempt to yank logs away, but the beavers add to their stack by felling a new tree, right upon Popeye’s head. Popeye tries a two-handled saw across the dam’s middle, but the beavers swim underwater on their side, grab the other handle, and hold it fast. Popeye’s end of the saw bunches up, then propels him backwards with the force of a coiled spring. Popeye falls with his head inside a hollow tree stump, disturbing an owl roosting within. Popeye turns to dynamite. The beavers are able to yank out the stick just in time, launching it upon one of the beaver’s tails back at Popeye. Popeye shoots into the air, then crashes through the bottom of his beached canoe on the way down. There’s only one thing to be done, and Popeye is going to do it. Eat spinach

Returning to the dam, he picks up the top log with the beavers still upon it, and tosses them off to one side. He is then able to lift the whole dam out of the river as a unit, allowing the river water to rush back into place, and Popeye’s swim to finally commence. On the banks, the beavers find themselves sitting on the ground, in close proximity to Popeye’s food knapsack from the canoe, and the empty spinach can. “What happened?” asks beaver #1. “He ate some of this stuff – and WOW!”, responds beaver #2, pointing to the can. Investigating the knapsack, another can is discovered – so the beavers decide to try it out themselves, one using his teeth as a can opener to get at the contents. They both chow down, and suddenly, one of the beavers is able to pick up the log upon his feet and juggle it, remarking at how that “stuff” makes you strong. Popeye spots the display of strength, and knows he’s in for trouble.

The beavers race up the hill toward Popeye’s cabin, and both of them gnaw at the largest tree adjacent to the cabin, until 90% of its base in eaten away, aimed to tip right upon Popeye’s residence. Popeye sees the disaster in the making, and zooms up the hill, taking his place in the notch carved by the beavers to keep the tree from falling. But this is just what the beavers wanted to keep Popeye occupied. They position themselves under the porch of Popeye’s cabin, and gnaw away the supporting pillars. The house slides down the hillside, landing with a thud tight in the river bed, creating a new ready-made dam just as Andy Panda’s beavers did. Popeye runs down the hill to survey the irreparable damage. (In a continuity inconsistency that seems more calculated to save on animation budget rather than to be a mere error, the tree Popeye has been supporting does not fall.) The beavers emerge out of the water on their side of the new “dam”, and invite Popeye to “Come on in. This is fun.” Popeye decides when you can’t beat them, join them, and ends the film by challenging the beavers to a swimming race to reach the opposite shore.

---

The Ballad of Smokey the Bear (Rankin-Bass, 11/24/66 – Larry Roemer, dir.), seems to be among the least-remembered, Rankin-Bass projects, despite following upon the heels of the success of “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and using the same script writer and musical composer. Its primary problems seem to boil down to a lead character with minimal personality traits, and a more somber mood for its storyline. It would receive no return network screenings, and would take decades before receiving any occasional airing as a one-shot rerun on some small local station.

The film creates a new origin story for our hero, failing to follow any of the reputed reality of a ranger allegedly rescuing the cub from a fire and giving him his name and identity. It takes quite a bit of time to get to the point, following him as a young cub, exploring his first honey tree and first dose of bee stings, flirting with a girl cub named Delilah, and accidentally battering a beaver dam at her persuasion. The beavers (Joe, and his southern-accented wife Bea) display a bit of personality inconsistency in the course of the production. Bea begins the film more interested in picking berries than in Joe’s preoccupation of constructing a dam. Joe declares that she might be the first lazy beaver in history (if we don’t count the one who co-starred with Mighty Mouse). Along come Smokey and Delilah, with Delilah insisting she wants to go swimming. When Smokey is hesitant, Delilah pushes him in, then jumps in herself. The wave resulting from their splashing breaks off half the dam, sending it drifting downstream. The angry beavers (years before the series of the same name) pitch wood and rocks at the bears until they leave. Bea attempts to console Joe with the thought that they can start rebuilding tomorrow. But Joe reminds her of what they learned in beaver school – never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. Suddenly, Bea seems to become reformed, and begins actively assisting Joe in resuming construction, by gathering raw materials and passing them to him as he busily attaches them to the remaining half of the dam.

Dallying in returning to his cave, Smokey (not yet named, by the way), smells the unfamiliar scent of smoke, and sees the animals of the community running for cover. He is caught in a raging forest fire alone, and remembers his mother’s warnings to climb a tree when danger threatens. When his larger brother (voiced by James Cagney) searches the woods for him, he is forced to duck under rocks while the blaze passes, then emerges to find the trees charred and leafless, with one holding the singed but still very much alive Smokey clinging to its topmost limbs. Smokey (named by his brother for the smell left in his fur) is in shock, will at first not talk, and has to be carried home by his brother – only to find that Mom also went out looking for Smokey, and was lost in the conflagration. (Shades of Bambi!)

The mood of the tale thus remains definitely dark, with Smokey growing to young bearhood while keeping largely to himself, and only exchanging minimal words with his brother alone. One day, a new menace stomps into the forest – an escaped zoo gorilla, who stupidly leaves a path of destruction in his wake. The beaver dam is one of his first targets for senseless battering, leaving the beavers to discover the center third of their dam smashed and scattered within the river. Others also lose their homes or get brutally shoved around by the beast. The animals follow the beast’s tracks to locate him. Joe Beaver is reluctant to join the searching party, fearsome of what he might encounter and making excuses to work on the dam first and search tomorrow. Bea, who again seems to have seen the light, throws Joe’s own words back at him about not putting off things until tomorrow, in perhaps the best song of the show, a lively number delivered in her Southern twang entitled “Don’t Wait”. (It should be noted that by this point in the show, the presence of each of the songs seems almost an intrusion upon the story-telling, clashing notably with the otherwise serious mood of the plot, and feeling like they could only belong in an entirely-different light-hearted musical comedy. This is perhaps another key factor in why this special didn’t capture audiences.)

The beavers are featured in one more sequence, in which, after the ape is tracked to a deserted hunter’s cabin (where he recklessly dumps waste into the stream and even dabbles in smoking, presenting the danger of setting the regrown forest ablaze again), each of the animals of the forest are invited at a group protest meeting to work on their own ideas to capture the ape, in the hopes that if one idea fails, another will work. Of course, not only do many fail, but others cross-up each other. The beavers gnaw a large tree’s trunk to the near snapping point, then set out a smelly dead fish as bait, tied to one of the branches. Their hope is that the ape will pull at the rope to which the fish is tied, tugging the tree down atop himself. The ape, however, is repulsed by the smell of the fish (though Joe believed the smell would either make him hungry or resemble his own scent so much, he’d think it was a visiting relative), and leans against the tree trunk instead of pulling at it. The tree falls upon the dam, smashing it again. Ultimately, when everyone’s plans fail, loner Smokey becomes convinced in his worries over the possible fate of the trees to take matters into his own hands, and batters down the door and front wall of the cabin. The collapse of the structure sets off a fire from the fireplace wood within, and traps the gorilla under fallen logs of the roof. Smokey forms a bucket brigade from the other animals, succeeds in having the fire doused, and uses a spade found in the cabin’s rubble to bury and stamp out the final embers. He also frees the gorilla from his log imprisonment, and becomes friends with him without a spoken word, coaxing the ape to walk with him paw in paw, and be led back to the zoo. Upon learning of his heroic battling of the beast and the fire, the Forest Service sends him his signature hat and shovel, and appoints him chief animal ranger of the forest. And thus, the legend is forged.

---

Hanna-Barbera’s Wacky Races included one of the rare beavers to score a regular berth in a TV series – Sawtooth, a beaver in a yellow racing helmet, who served as assistant to driver Rufus Ruffcut, a burly lumberjack who piloted The Buzzwagon (#10), a makeshift hot rod constructed of lumber and an ample supply of sawblades. Unfortunately, Sawtooth possessed negligible personality and almost as minimal screen time, serving more as a riding mascot rather than an assistant (just as Blubber Bear did in the competing Arkansas Chugabug) and having no dialog script. Most of the time he would just facially react if he was lucky. Once in a blue moon, he would get to do something, like industriously hammer back together loose boards on the Buzzwagon (accidentally hammering a nail into Rufus’s rear end), or gnawing Rufus a custom-made baseball bat out of a whole tree (lifting a gag from “Baseball Bugs”). He and Rufus did not “make the cut” for the Wacky Races reboot of 2017.

---

After what seems to be a long hiatus for the species, we get Garfield in the Rough (Film Roman, 10/26/84). This may not be an ideal Garfield special. Perhaps a few too many tunes. Perhaps overly-dramatic in places. But it was trying for something a little different – and still manages to deliver a goodly share of laughs and memorable verbal zingers. It begins in Wizard of Oz fashion, with black-and-white imagery, and a disclaimer not to adjust your TV set, as all the color has temporarily gone out of Garfield’s life. That goes for Jon too, who is so bored, he collapses on his face at the breakfast table. With his face still plastered on the tabletop, he mumbles that maybe it’s time they take a vacation. Garfield brightens, pulls up the windowshade, and the world turns to color once again. But where? Garfield fantasizes about jaunts to a tropical island, or maybe Mexico – each dream featuring a beautiful feline native or Senorita to woo. Then Jon drops the bombshell – they’re going camping. Not bad – if you’re in the mood for tolerating the insects, the dampness, the poor food, lack of a litter box – which Garfield definitely isn’t.

Garfield wants to pack half the house for the trip, including the TV set and a 200 mile extension cord. Jon leaves it all behind. The Arbuckle caravan of Jon, Garfield, and Odie arrives at the park grounds of Lake Wobegon. A ranger at the gate asks, “Is this your cat?’, then responds to Jon’s affirmative, “My condolences.” Garfield claws at the ranger from out the car window. Jon asks if there are any bears, and is informed that the park’s most ferocious animal is a beaver with a bad disposition. Our trio set up camp, with a waterproof tent guaranteed to sleep 3 – however, it looked much larger in the photo, and is barely large enough for Jon alone to shimmy into, as tight a fit as toothpaste in a tube. To make matters worse, our heroes hear an announcement on the radio of the escape from the zoo of a vicious black panther – scaring the life out of Garfield, but not Jon, who jumps to the conclusion that the panther has to be miles from here. Unaware, or course, that the beast is lurking in the shadows, eyeing them with its glowing yellow eyes.

Overnight, the food supply Jon has packed for a week’s rationing disappears. Garfield has declared it his midnight snack – except for the eggs, which dirty old egg-sucking dog Odie beat him to. Garfield dashes into the woods to lay low until Jon’s wrath dies down. He is finally struck with a begrudging admiration of the beauty of nature in the wild, but then remembers that wild things also live in the forest, and begins to imagine himself as next target for being eaten. Thus, when he chances to encounter a harmless rabbit, Garfield shrieks, flops on the ground, and begs for his life. A beaver walks up from the other direction. “What do you make of it, Dicky?”, asks the rabbit to the beaver. “Beats me, Billy”, responds the beaver. “Maybe he’s gotten into some fermented jujubeans or somethin’.” Garfield finally figures out, with some embarrassment, that these supposed-hostile animals are herbivores, and brushes himself off, declaring that you can’t be too careful in the wild. The rabbit suggests he’s been watching too many jungle pictures. But Garfield mentions the report about the panther – which sends both of his forest friends ducking for cover behind a log at his very mention. The beaver is the only one who’s seen it, just for a moment, as it turned its yellow eyes upon him while he was in the stream – and stared right through his soul. Now a rustling in the brush is heard. Garfield prepares to face the beast in a unifed front with his new friends – until he looks back to find they have deserted him and vanished. Garfield jumps into a hollow stump, and feels a tongue making contact with his fur. But panthers don’t lick. It is only Odie, slurping him through a knothole. Garfield tells Odie they’ve got to go back to camp and warn Jon.

Jon is still in camper’s euphoria, and fails to heed Garfield’s desperate efforts to tug him away, back to the car. Suddenly, with slow stealth, the panther makes its move from out of the brush, closing in with deliberate paces. Jon shouts to his pets to scatter. Garfield scrambles to climb up a tree. Jon ducks into his miniature tent, but the panther tears apart the canvas with one slash of its paw. Jon runs, gathering up Odie, and races for the car, locking the door. But he can’t leave without Garfield. The panther appears at the window, first clawing at the glass, then attacking it with powerful swipes of his paw, finally breaking through. The panther reaches a paw inside, slicing away a large portion of Jon’s shirt. Garfield watches in horror from the limb above – then, something snaps inside him. Garfield’s teeth clench in a jagged snarl. His claws emerge. And he leaps down upon the back of the big cat. The panther jumps around with an unwanted passenger clinging fast to his back, but finally succeeds in throwing Garfield like a bucking bronco. Garfield lies on his back, pinned against a rock face, as the panther’s attention switches to him, and he slowly moves in for the kill. At that moment, a shot rings out. The rangers have tracked the beast, scoring a direct hit upon him with a tranquilizer dart. The panther seems to collapse, inches short of his target – then opens his eyes again, placing his mighty paw atop Garfield’s chest – only to fade again, and pass out in a deep sleep. Garfield turns to the camera, and comments, “Nice touch.” The rangers are happy to find everyone is okay, and remark that it was a good thing they didn’t show up a second later. Garfield, in his silent pantomime and unheard dialog, attempts to boast to blow up out of proportion his own unexpected instinctive heroism, claiming that he simply would have turned on his inner ferocity to finish off the beast. “When the tough get going, the going gets tough…” Well, something like that, as Garfield spends the whole trip home trying to work out the correct words to the phrase.

• “Garfield in the Rough” is on Dailymotion.

NEXT TIME: We should be able to find material to “chew” upon for at least one more week.

And so we come down to the Moment of Truth – a final look at the animated world of bullfighting. Disney, Warner, Film Roman, and Dreamworks all contribute short chapters from recent decades – plus, extended coverage of a notable feature film with a heavy emphasis on the bullfighting angle.

The Pain In Spain (Disney, Timon and Pumbaa, 11/3/95) – In their worldly travels that set the theme for their television series, our heroes wind up in España. A billboard in the countryside advertises an upcoming bullfight in the big city featuring El Toro – a bull so mean, the sign includes a scoreboard to keep track of the number of matadors he has gored. Timon gets into a bragging mode, boasting of what he could do if he were to face Toro himself. To demonstrate, Timon dives into their traveling suitcase and comes up dressed in a matador suit. He asks Pumbaa to use those useless tusks and charge at him. Pumbaa does one better, having just happened to pack in the suitcase for just such an occasion a bull costume to wear. Timon asks Pumbaa to go way back before starting his charge – so far back, that Pumbaa disappears beyond the horizon, and has to call Timon from a pay phone to ask if this is far enough. Pumbaa takes a few paces backwards to rev up his feet motors – and repeats the mistake of Ferdinand, backing into the sharp needles of a cactus. As with his Disney bull predecessor, Pumbaa charges with such force as to mow Timon down, and repeatedly trample him about six or seven times on repeated passes. (Timon sees miniature bull horns circling around his head, like so many tweeting bords.) Also as with Ferdinand, Pumbaa’s moves are observed by two bullfighting scouts, who capture and cart Pumbaa away as the new attraction for the bull ring – news that is not taken well by El Toro, who is given the heave-ho from his employment as nothing but a has-been, and swears revenge.

Timon learns where Pumbaa has been taken, by the heavens giving him “a sign” – in the form of a new billboard poster plastered right over him, announcing Pumbaa’s debut. “A brave bull?”, remarks Timon, making a bad joke despite his lack of an audience, that Pumbaa is really nothing but a “cow-ward”. Timon trails Pumbaa to the bull ring, and sneaks past the guards of the bull’s dressing room by being launched by the blades of a ceiling fan through an open transom window. Reunited with Pumbaa, Timon asks why he didn’t just take off the costume and explain he’s a warthog? Pumbaa cries, “The zipper’s stuck!” The only unguarded door of the room leads straight into the arena, posing a definite problem. A sign inside the door reads, “Wash hands before goring”, and a bowl of water and red cloth towels are provided in the room for such purpose. Timon picks up a towel, and states he’s got an idea. Pumbaa asks if his idea is to use the towel as a cape, perform an act for the crowd as bull and matador, then make their escape while the crowd is cheering. Timon sarcastically responds to Pumbaa’s stealing of his thunder, “No”, and that his idea was to locate a fairy to sprinkle pixie dust on the towel so that they could fly away upon it into the heavens. Pumbaa states he thinks that idea is a little far-fetched, and that his own idea of what Timon was thinking sounds better. Timon can only give a look of “Why me?” disgust to the camera.

Timon makes a flamboyant entrance into the ring in matador suit, and entertains the crowd with bad stand-up comedy lines about bulls while Pumbaa prepares for his own entrance. But Pumbaa’s entrance will be delayed – by the return of El Toro, who has “beefed” himself up for the event with a crash body-building course to prove he is still the champion. He attempts to dispose of Pumbaa by flushing him down a toilet, then appears in the ring. Timon isn’t quite sure what hit him, and thinks his pal is overacting – until Pumbaa escapes the plumbing and charges in to try to save his friend. Timon goes through the usual delayed reaction at finding himself in the ring with two bulls, and then Timon’s question, “If you’re Pumbaa, then what Pumbaa is THAT Pumbaa?”. The answer is obvious. Our heroes find themselves cornered, and Toro charges from a long distance, allowing for him to engage in transportation changes every time the camera cuts away to view him – from drag racer to diesel truck to streamlined train to Nasa rocket. Pumbaa finally convinces Timon to fight, reminding him of his boasts and that “You’re the brave one.” Timon asks just how he should do it – perform a flamenco dance? This is precisely what he ultimately does, bamboozling the bull similarly to Bugs Bunny’s impromptu dancing in “Bully for Bugs”, while planting snapping mousetraps on his nostrils, smashing clanging cymbals upon his snout, and having Pumbaa blast him in the face with the sour notes of a tuba. Timon backs the bull away from him, using a plunger to prod him instead of a sword, while Pumbaa rolls a cannon up behind the bull, Timon using the plunger end to stuff the bull inside. The cannon is fired, and the toilet plumbing is pushed into the ring, allowing the bull to land in the same predicament in which he had placed Pumbaa. The film quickly comes to a close as our heroes bow before the crowd and are strewn with flowers, Pumbaa shouting, “Ole”.

---

Bull Running on Empty (Warner, The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, 11/11/95) is sadly perhaps one of the weakest episodes of this series I have encountered. Made in an early season when one episode spanned the entire half-hour, it provides us with material that would have felt labored in running length even had it been cut to 10 to 12 minutes. Tweety and Hector seem to be given virtually nothing to do (although Tweety inexplicably comes up with a pair of thermal binoculars to give Granny to ultimately locate the stolen item), and Sylvester performs only two functions: mimic for one sequence his “scaredy cat” behavior from the classic cartoon of the same name in observing and keeping out of harms’ way the rest of the gang from the systematic destruction of Granny’s hotel room by saws appearing in the floorboards – and spending the entire remainder of the cartoon running from the bulls of Pamplona. (Sylvester complains, “I’ve heard of a running gag, but this is ridiculous.”) The “mystery”, when unraveled, makes no sense (and not in a funny cartoony way – just isn’t thought out in any manner). A museum artifact known as the Pamplona Periscope is missing, stolen from a hole cut or gnawed through the wooden base of its display case, leading to a crawl space in which only rats seem to reside. A caretaker of the bull ring seems to have had his apartment ransacked, and the ring is left locked, leaving the bulls running in the annual festival with no destination to run to (and free to endlessly pursue Sylvester). Attempts are made to keep Granny out of the way, by sawing her entire hotel room out of the building, then later locking her in the Pamplona public library. All of this boils down to the revealing of a supposedly old (and smelly) adversary of Granny’s – a crook living in the sewers called the Spanish Mole, who has used trained rats to commit theft of the Periscope and his other dirty work. A mere butt from Sylvester’s pack of bulls brings him to justice. It seems that he had disguised himself as the town’s bull ring caretaker for years, living under their noses (yet no one seems to have previously noticed his smell). And just when it seems Granny will reveal the Mole’s master plan to the populace, posing to them the questions why he waited until now to pull his crime, and why he locked the bull ring, Granny performs the ultimate cop-out to reveal how little the writers have thought this through, remarking, “Beats the heck out of me. I was hoping you’d fill me in.” For the quick half-smile this line delivers, it hardly justifies the existence of this episode.

Very few gags instill any life into this lame venture. One decent laugh is the museum curator’s telephone call from a restroom phone to “The World’s Greatest Detective”, a caricature of Sam Spade who is too busy playing tiddly winks with pennies to respond to the call for help. So instead, the curator takes note of graffiti on the restroom tile, one providing a telephone number and reading, “For a good detective, call Granny.” Granny somehow arrives in Spain via a second-hand rocket car, which jets them there in record time, but continues to sputter with knocks and pings after the ignition key is turned off, Granny remarking that it’ll stop – eventually. Of course, upon escaping from Granny’s runaway hotel room, Sylvester winds up with a red blanket, and an alarm clock ready to go off, waking the bulls from exhausted slumber for another day of chasing Sylvester. The bulls ultimately charge through the locked door of the bull ring in seeking out Sylvester, and Tweety and Hector provide Sylvester with a red jogging suit, ensuring that the running will continue round and round the arena ad infinitum.

• An angled print of “Bull Running on Empty” is on Dailymotion

---

Critters (Warner, Batman, 9/18/98) – One Enoch Brown (affectionately, “Farmer Brown”), an old-timer of country stock who looks and talks like he stepped out of “American Gothic”, but is in reality a highly-skilled biochemist, puts on a presentation with his attractive young country daughter (whom Bullock later refers to as “Elly Mae” for her resemblance to Donna Douglas of The Beverly Hillbillies) at an agricultural expo. Brown presents his solution to world hunger – growth hormones, which have produced a cattle specimen of proportions worthy to provide a meal to King Kong. The bovine is startled by flash photography in the same manner as the legendary ape, and breaks loose, with Commissioner Gordon and Bruce Wayne present in the front row. Bruce finds the creature chasing him, and pulls down a large red theater curtain, which drapes over the beast’s eyes like a cape, causing him to crash into the wall and stun himself, while Brown administers a sedative to leave him dreaming of green pastures. Gordon praises Bruce for his quick thinking, but Bruce covers for his uncharacteristic bravery, informing the Commissioner that he only pulled down the curtain to try to escape through the window.

Brown receives an injunction to cease his experiments and remove all live specimens from Gotham. Brown protests that this will mean financial ruin, but the judge responds, “You should have thought of that before you started creating these monsters.” Brown exits the courtroom, muttering, “I’ll give them monsters.” Before long, the city receives a “trial run” of giant aphids (or are they some form of mantis?), genetically altered to be immune to insecticide, but self-destructing to provide a warning. Then, a massed attack of Pterodactyl-like giant chickens, and a rampaging cow and bull bigger than the previous prototype. Batgirl and Robin, on prowl patrol in the batmobile, find themselves in the middle of the stampede. “Holy cow”, utters Robin, as Batgirl responds, “You had to say it.” Batgirl leads the cow into a construction yard, then lassos its legs with a batarang and rope, tripping it into a vat of cement mix. The bull of course invades a china shop, but is lured out by Robin waving his cape in matador fashion and shouting “Hey, Ferdinand.” The bull gives chase, as Robin leaps through the plate glass of a building window, and the bull tries to do the same, getting his head caught within the concrete framing. Batgirl assists, commandeering a garbage truck and driving it up against the bull’s hindquarters to prevent it from extricating itself. Robin looks out upon the scene from an upstairs window, and can’t resist the remark, “That’s a lot of bull.”

Of course, Brown is behind it all, operating from a new secret island lair outside the city limits. He demands a payoff of 50 million in unmarked bills, or the bugs come back for good. Batman and the Commissioner pull a switch, with most of the bills consisting of blank paper, and one of Batman’s homing devices concealed on the stack. The showdown at the island lair contains no further bullfighting, but attempts to place the bat-trio and Bullock in a silo which is really a rocket for launching into Gotham the hive of mutant bugs. Batman not only tricks one of the insects into ripping open the rocket door so as to allow for an escape of the heroes, but aims the armored car in which the money drop-off was made on a collision course with the rocket doorway before liftoff, sabotaging its flight and killing-off the bugs in the explosion. Brown and his daughter are arrested for an anticipated prison term of 10 to 20, with Bullock offering them the encouraging word that maybe he can find them a nice prison farm.

• Batman’s “Critters” is on DailyMotion

---

Pokey Mom (Film Roman, The Simpsons, 1/14/01) is one of two Simpsons episodes to include bullfighting. The setup for this one is both brief and odd. While driving hope from an apron festival, Homer spots a sign advertising a prison rodeo at a local penitentiary. The Simpsons attend the event in a front row of the grandstands, watching various inmates get thrown violently in the events. Among them is a prisoner who gets thrown and wedged into the fence on another side of the arena by a bucking bull. Marge wonders where the rodeo clowns are to keep the bull away from the helpless prisoner. They are still in the dressing rooms, fussing over their clown makeup. So Marge flails her arms wildly, trying to attract the bull’s attention away from the inmate. The waving has no effect. Homer calmly informs Marge that to get a bull’s attention, you need to wave something red at them. So, he picks up Lisa in her red dress, and dangles her precariously over the railing, waving her as a ready target for the bull’s wrath. But Homer isn’t a cruel parent, and pulls Lisa back to her seat as the bull’s charge toward them begins. Now, Homer says, all they need to do is wave something in calming blue at the beast to quiet him down. Homer reaches for Bart, but is aghast to find that Bart is not wearing a blue shirt. This is hardly a surprise, as Bart, who always wears red, points out, “Dad, I don’t even OWN a blue shirt.” The bull continues unabated, smashing into the grandstand, knocking Homer over the railing, then head-butting Homer halfway across the prison yard into the side of a guard tower. Unaware of what caused the impact vibration, the guard above responds reflexively, launching a volley of tear gas bombs into the stands, and dispersing the crowd.

The remainder of the show diverts entirely from the subject of bullfighting, splitting into two separate stories. Marge attempts to rehabilitate a prisoner she discovers has natural artistic talent, while Homer attempts to rehabilitate a battered back resulting from the accident. He is referred to a chiropractor who provide only temporary relief, and wants Homer to return for multiple weekly visits over the next three years. Homer discovers a better solution by accidentally falling backwards over the side of a tipped trash can – which instantly sets his vertebrae into proper position. Seeing possibilities in this easy cure, Homer opens his own chiropractic practice, without a license, administering the same treatment to every one of his patients, with miracle results. That is, until two mysterious men express an interest in buying into Homer’s idea, but turn out to be rival chiropractors, who destroy his trash can.

• The best I can find on “Pokey Mom” is a time-compressed vertical set of clips with audio and superimposed narration, on Youtube. Or you can watch it on Disney+.

---

Million Dollar Abie (4/2/06) is another roundabout script that seems to throw together several short and disparate ideas to fill out a half-hour timeslot. Homer sets his mind to spearheading a campaign to bring the NFL’s latest expansion team to Springfield. The campaign works as if by a miracle, and a new stadium is built, the whole town painted in the jersey colors of the soon-to-be Springfield Meltdowns, and all the streets renamed for various football terms and phrases. This renaming disorients the NFL commissioner in finding directions to the stadium to publicly sign the contract, his old road map only showing the street’s old names. He stops at the Simpsons’ house to phone for directions, finding Grandpa Abe to be the only one home who did not go to the stadium. Grandpa becomes mistakenly convinced that the stranger is a hoodlum intending to rob the house and prey on the elderly – so knocks the commissioner out with a blow from a golf club, and keeps him tied and gagged in a chair until late in the evening, when everyone at the stadium has given up waiting and gone home. The family arrives to discover Abe’s blunder, and release the commissioner, only to hear him swear that he will never return to this crazy town – and neither will the expansion team.

Abe is treated as an outcast by the town for losing the franchise. Another resident of the retirement home suggests he visit a physician specializing in assisted suicides, to put himself out of his misery, as well as satisfy the urges of the town to kill him. Grandpa ultimately consents to death by a suicide computer (looking much like a giant smart phone) to cut off his vital systems. Things do not go according to plan, as the police break in for a raid two minutes before Abe is to expire, announcing that the assisted suicide law has been repealed. The doctor swears, “I’ll kill you” – that is, once the repealing law is itself repealed. Grandpa revives in an emptied room, and thinks he’s dead. He wanders around in a hospital gown, ignoring busy crosstown traffic and taking other risks, believing he has nothing to fear. However, he spots the Simpson family in a restaurant, and thinks Homer or Bart went berserk and killed them all in a murder spree. They inform him that he is not really dead, and are shocked to find that he nearly suicided. But Abe declares he’s through with thoughts of suicide, observing that these few moments when he felt there was nothing to fear were the happiest moments of his life. He resolves to spend the rest of his life in such fearless manner. So, when a town meeting is called to figure out what to do with the empty football stadium, and the proposal is raised to turn it into a bullfighting arena, Abe volunteers to be the town’s first matador.

Abe trains in the backyard, using as a bull Bart on a bicycle with a set of horns strapped to the bicycle basket. Abe is too fast for Bart, but Homer is not, and nearly gets speared in the rear while bending over, then turns around to walk right into the horn points, catching him painfully at a key spot between the lower limbs. Lisa, as usual, is completely opposed to the idea – not so much for Grandpa’s safety, but because of the pointless slaughter of helpless bulls. She serenades her pleas for an end to the plan outside the stadium, self-accompanied on Spanish guitar, while the townsfolk merely admire her as cute but ignore altogether her message. Grandpa makes his debut in full matador garb, performs multiple “Veronica” cape passes, and tires the bull out, who lays on the dirt prone and exhausted, while Grandpa, with only momentary hesitancy, follows the crowd’s verdict of “thumbs down” to the bull, and with only the bloodletting kept offscreen, finishes the beast. That night, Grandpa stands admiring himself in the mirror, while Lisa enters, asking him how he could do it. Grandpa explains that for the first time in his life, people were cheering him for what he did, driving him to follow through. Lisa remarks, “I was cheering for you all the time, Grandpa – till now.” As she exits, Grandpa contemplates how she always knows what to say to get to him. At the next bullfight, Grandpa’s performance remains the same as the debut, with the bull again falling to the dirt in exhaustion. But this time, when Grandpa pulls his sword, he tosses it away across the arena, leaving it sticking in the arena fence, then walks to the corrida gates, opening both the main exit and the door holding back all the remaining bulls. Springfield experiences its first-ever running of the bulls, as they stampede down Main Street and everywhere they can find anything red or anyone engaged in selling meat. Only Abe and Lisa rise above the situation, in lawn chairs suspended in mid-air by helium-filled toy balloons. Lisa congratulates Grandpa on turning over a new leaf – but Grandpa’s woes may not be over yet, as two bulls rise into the sky on either side, also suspended by balloons. “Uh oh” moans Grandpa, for an abrupt cut to credits.

There is also a brief “couch gag” bit, with horned couches charging the family like a running of the bulls, from Season 25, episode 16.

---

What Goes Around (Dreamworks, The Penguins of Madagascar, 9/19/09) – The Penguins leave the zoo on a secret mission to replace the dolly of a little girl (which they have accidentally caused to be lost down a sewer grating at the zoo). Rico just happens to possess an identical doll as one of his private treasures, and is sweet-talked by Skipper into sacrificing it to prevent the thought of the never-ending weepy-eyes of the little girl. But once the mission is accomplished and the substitute doll left for the little girl to find, the problem remains of returning home cross-town to the zoo – particularly when a psychotic male animal control officer with high-tech capture van spots them on the street, and declaring them strays, says “They’re mine.” (This character may be said to predict the equally determined French female officer who would later appear in Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted.)

Throughout the episode, Rico feels dejected that his own dolly was sacrificed to make the girl happy. Private keeps reassuring him that good deeds don’t go unrewarded, and that what goes around, comes around. Yet, the penguins’ luck seems to keep going from bad to worse as the control officer remains hot on their trail. The penguins seem finally cornered, with the van blocking their path to the zoo. The officer wise-cracks that he knows why penguins are from the antarctic – they can’t take the heat. This angers Rico, who coughs up, from his never-ending belly full of useful objects and supplies, a bullfighter’s hat and red cape. He waves the cape before the van, taunting its driver to advance. The van charges Rico at full speed, but the penguin nimbly dodges, again and again, creating a needed diversion. Meanwhile, the other penguins swing down on ropes as the van passes, each of them armed with a monkey wrench. When the van pauses briefly at the end of each charge, the penguins use their wrenches to loosen bolts in the hubs of the van’s wheels. By its final charge, the van’s wheels fall off, capsizing the vehicle on its side. Rico mutters one word of clear dialog: “Ole!”

While the remainder of the film features no bullfighting, a final stand by the control officer at the zoo gates leads the penguins to notice he is standing just under a pipe connected to the zoo’s sewer line, prompting Rico to spit out a tool large enough to sever the pipe, in hopes of deluging the officer with the pipe’s foul contents. Yet nothing comes out as the pipe is cut. The officer lassos the birds, and calls the office to arrange for a nice tight-fitting cage for the four of them. Then, a rumbling and whistling is heard by Skipper. Looking up, the pipe is vibrating in threatening fashion, and Kowalski realizes something has been blocking the pipe, and it’s gonna blow. Out shoots, with the speed of a bullet, the lost dolly of the little girl, right in the officer’s face. As the doll bounces back, landing at the feet of Rico, the long-anticipated sewer water spews all over the helpless control officer, placing him out of commission. The penguins are able to return to headquarters safely, while the animal control officer is dragged away for causing seven blocks of destruction in his wake, and his remarks about wild penguins treated as the frantic ravings of a lunatic. And Rico hugs his new dolly in replacement of the one he gave up, proving that the universe eventually catches up in providing the return good luck for a deed well done.

• “What Goes Around” can be found, with last shot clipped, at DailyMotion.

---

There have been two fairly recent features built on The Day of the Dead. I am not truly into the ins and outs of such cultural mythos, nor can say that I quite understand it. (For example, both films carry a message that to be forgotten by the living is to bring an end to your afterlife. A sentimental idea, but does this mean that no one’s afterlife extends beyond the next generation or so who knew them personally? Or do passed-down stories count as being “remembered”? Furthermore, Pixar’s “Coco” places importance upon having a photograph. So what happened to souls before the invention of the camera? Honestly, these films’ explanations get as mixed-up as details of the life and origins of Santa Claus.) Yet, despite Pixar’s higher budget and more sophisticated technical know-how, I am surprised to say I give the edge in a comparison-test of the two projects to The Book of Life (Fox/Reel FX Animation, 10/17/14). Perhaps it could be said that the simpler visual style of this film has a certain UPA-ish attraction for stylistic and innovative design, making excellent use of color and Mexican art-inspired imagery in both costume and set design. The fashioning of nearly all of its characters as portrayed by wooden puppets from a chest of museum artifacts, together with the transformation of these deliberately-blocky designs into stylized skeletal versions as they visit the realms of the dead, is also quite creative and surprisingly well-executed, not looking cheap despite being an obvious money-saver in computer modeling. Plus, its storyline plays, and homages, more to themes traditional to Mexican cinema than the Pixar film did, and gives us characters who, even if bordering upon traditional stereotypical roles, tweak the stereotypes enough with updated attitudes and humor, and play the roles with enough emotion and soul, to make them more engaging and memorable than the Pixar cast. And, there are enough laughs and plot twists to maintain viewer interest throughout its length, with no real lags (something I found not always true of “Coco”). The effort, while not rising to the level of blockbuster in box office, was financially and artistically viable, doubling its original investment, and earning positive reviews and a Golden Globe nomination. If memory determines the length of afterlife, we can only hope that those who have seen it will keep this film alive considerably long after Coco has fallen to the dust of the forgotten.

The storyline follows a tale related by a shapely museum curator in an exhibit of Mexican cultural artifacts, penned into the Book of Life, an ever-changing magical volume containing the life stories of every soul, of a legendary wager between La Muerte, a skeletal but alluring female spirit who presides over the festive land of the remembered, and her erstwhile paramour, Xibalba, ruler of the deeper and danker land of the forgotten, where those not remembered go to crumble into dust. (Xibalba may be said to be the only character directly derivative from another studio’s work – but perhaps this is a good thing, as he is almost a “dead” ringer for the entertaining Hades from Disney’s “Hercules”). Xibalba wants out of his present job, and wants to swap realms with La Muerte. He apparently got stuck with his job by losing a previous wager, and, knowing La Muerte’s weakness for a good bet, offers another one. Two random child youths (Juaquin and Manolo) are observed on Earth, both sweet upon the same Senorita (Maria). Each of the gambling spirits chooses a boy as their champion, with the bet to see which one will marry Maria. If Xibalba’s boy (Juaquin) wins, realms are swapped between the spirits. If La Muerte’s Manolo wins, Xibalba agrees to stop meddling in human life forever (his only enjoyable pastime). Of course, Xibalba isn’t above cheating.

Juaquin aspires to be a soldier and hero like his military ancestors and living father, while Manolo is a gentler kind, torn between his love of playing soulful guitar and his family’s (the Sanchezes) generations-old legacy of being champions (and becoming quickly deceased) in the bull ring. Manolo is fine at learning the moves of the cape – but when to comes to the sword, sees no justification as to why the bull must be killed. Papa and Grandma Sanchez insist upon the old ways, and will show no regret for the conduct of generations of Sanchezes in slaying El Toro in the ring, living by a family motto – “a Sanchez never apologizes.” Maria, an intelligent and spirited girl, likes them both, but seems to show a bit of a edge toward Manolo, who holds more of the key to touching her heart than the brave but slightly self-centered Juaquin and his attempts to impress her with boisterousness and bravado. Even Xibalba soon sees this edge quickly, and decides to even the score, by somehow obtaining custody of a glowing green medal possessing magical protective powers for its possessor, either lost or stolen from a dreaded Mexican bandit cheiftan named El Chakal, and slipping it to Juaquin in a trade while wearing a human disguise. Thus, Juaquin’s success in the future battles he will face is assured.

Time passes, and the three youths grow to maturity, with Maria returning to the village after an extended tutelage in Spain, a natural and self-assured beauty. Juaquin has carved out an impressive military career for himself, with a chest decorated in medals of bravery (though keeping concealed within his uniform the “lucky” green medal obtained long ago). Manolo has been garbed as a matador, but still plays the guitar he had received as a going-away gift from Maria, with a carved inscription on the side telling him to always play from the heart. It is the day of Manolo’s first public bullfight. But, despite his elders’ insistence that he use the sword in the ring as intended, Manolo cannot bring himself to finish the bull, angering the crowd and disgracing the Sanchez name. Only Maria remains behind as the arena empties, the only one appreciating that he stood his moral ground, and listens in the shadows as he consoles himself with a plaintiff soliloquy on guitar. On the opposite battlefront, Juaquin surprises her with an engagement ring and a proposal, but lets slip enough verbal hints that his idea of an ideal married life is for the woman to devote herself solely to pleasing her husband, that Maria realizes he has retained the worst aspects of his self-centered nature. Though her father tries to give consent to Juaquin in advance of her own word, aimed more personally at keeping Juaquin around the village to protect against the bandit attacks of El Chakal, Maria will not give Juaquin an answer, though not locking him out of her life entirely with a no, hoping for the sake of their old friendship that maybe someday he’ll wise up and change his ways.

Though utterly disappointed in his son’s performance in the bull ring, Manolo’s father, hearing of Juaquin’s inability to obtain an immediate yes from Maria, convinces Manolo to at least act like a Sanchez by fighting to win the favor of his lady love. Manolo thus serenades at Maria’s window, and asks her to meet him secretly at dawn at a scenic vista on the outskirts of town. Overhearing this and other developments of the day in the shadows is Xibalba, checking in on his bet. He senses disaster if the romantic meeting takes place, and (in what could be said to be another borrowing of a story element from a Disney feature, this time “Aladdin”), transforms a snake-shaped walking staff into a living venomous reptile, to “take care of things”. As dawn breaks and finds the prospective lovers bonding, the snake does its work, biting Maria on the leg before Manolo can defend her. Maria is carried lifeless in Manolo’s arms to her father, and Manolo is blamed for once again not rising to the occasion as a man should have. Manolo remains on the spot, pouring out his emotions in a solo song to the skies at wishing to follow Maria. Who should appear in the same human disguise as before but Xibalba, who asks if he really, from the heart, wants to follow her to the land of the dead. Manolo answers yes, and Xibalba responds, “Done”. The snake reappears, biting Manolo twice.

We are transported with Manolo to the happy land of the remembered, where every day is fiesta – but especially today, being the Day of the Dead. A skeletal but recognizable Manolo is united with the entire deceased family line of the Sanchezes, most of whom perished in the ring, but still brag of their exploits. They are disappointed in Manolo, but not in a hard-handed way, and generally accept him, together with the loving arms of Manolo’s deceased Mama, who seems to be the one from which he inherited his soulful heart. But where is Maria? No one seems to know or have seen her. Suggestion is made to see La Muerte about it – but who instead is discovered to be sitting in her throne but Xibalba! Xibalba reveals the stakes of his bet, and declares that La Muerte is now down in permanent exile within the land of the forgotten. Manolo demands to know how Xibalba could have won the bet with Maria dead. Xibalba reveals that his snake requires two bites to make death permanent – only one bite has the “Snow White” effect of a sleeping death, revivable by a love’s first kiss. And Juaquin placed a kiss upon the lifeless form of Maria, bringing her back to life! Although Maria does not truly return the love of Juaquin’s kiss, upon learning of the death of Manolo, she has given her consent to Juaquin to please her father and the town and provide them with a protector against the bandits. So, Xibalba has claimed a win of the bet early, and La Muerte, unknowing of Xibalba’s cheating, has lived up to her side of the bargain. Manolo thus embarks on an unprecedented trek to the land of the forgotten, never survived (or perhaps we should say, accomplished) by any former mortal’s soul from the land of the remembered before his or her time. After facing several harrowing challenges, including a labyrinth with three rolling boulders of the Indiana Jones variety of crushing weight, Manolo is deemed pure of heart and worthy enough to gain entrance past the underworld’s gatekeeper spirit. La Muerte is tipped off, and she and Xibalba do a good job of spitting fire with words and tearing hair between themselves, until Manolo reminds them that this is getting him nowhere in trying to set things right for himself and Maria. The need to return to Earth becomes even more magnified when word reaches them that back at the village, a battle has taken place between Juaquin and some of El Chakal’s men, who have discovered in the battle Juaquin’s possession of the glowing green medal. Chakal has sworn death to the whole village in effort to retrieve the amulet – in which event the Sanchez clan would lose all remembrance among the living (but what about the spectators who knew of their fame in the bull ring?), and descend to the crumbling ranks of the forgotten. Manolo asks to be sent back to Earth, which both La Muerte and Xibalba at first declare out of the question. However, realizing their gambling spirit from their tales of deception, Manolo proposes a wager of his own – that he will face any challenge Xibalba can think up in return for the chance to go back. (It is not entirely clear what would be the penalty if he loses, that he would not already face when his village forgets him.) Xibalba thus zaps into existence a ghostly bull ring, with the Sanchez spirits and other skeletons in attendance, and poses the challenge to Manolo – to fight the spirits of every bull the Sanchez clan slaughtered over the years, all at once. Manolo knows this is likely to be more than he ever thought to bargain for – but with a ring of fire encircling him within the arena, he has little choice but to lift cape and sword, and face the onslaught.

The skeletal bull spirits are released. (It is quite unclear how one is supposed to finish a bull who is already dead – but we can only presume that the sword provided is somehow capable of accomplishing the task in traditional fashion.) Manolo performs not without natural fear, but nevertheless handsomely, in accomplishing pass after pass with his capework as bulls charge him every second from one direction or another. Seeing Manolo doing well, Xibalba ups the odds his own way, by amassing all the bull spirits into one giant, monster bovine towering several stories above Manolo. Manolo continues to perform amazing passes and capework, finally succeeding in causing the bull to crash into an arena wall, temporarily stunned and out cold. The Sanchezes (now including the soul of Manolo’s father, who has just arrived in the underworld by falling as one of the first victims to El Chakal and his bandits above) shout for Manolo to finish the beast. Manolo’s sword, as well as his guitar, have fallen into the dirt in the center of the arena during the battle. As Manolo reaches for the sword, his own reflection in the blade tells him once again that this is simply not his way – and instead, he reaches for the guitar. No, he does not sing off-key like El Kabong. Instead, he composes on the spot a sincere melody from the heart, admitting to all the amassed bull spirits that his family was wrong to have uselessly spilled their blood in the arena, and seeking within their heart forgiveness, through his own heartfelt apology. The bull is disbelieving at first, and butts Manolo and the guitar halfway across the arena. But Manolo still does not fight, and picks up the guitar to resume the apology. The beast charges again until he is nose to nose with Manolo – but hears the song’s words, stops short of collision, and allows Manolo to gently touch the bull’s face with one hand. The bull spirits become pacified, and the massed bull evaporates into what appear to be a flurry of wind-swept autumn leaves, the last one falling to rest in the palm of Manolo’s hand, having the shape of the outline of a heart. Manolo has won the challenge, yet stayed true to his ideals. The spirit of Manolo’s father repeats the old adage to him that “ A Sanchez never apologizes – until now.” A reconciliation occurs between father and son, and Manolo receives the right to return to Earth.

I won’t cover all the details of the final battle, which get a little tricky and leaves the subject of bullfighting. Suffice it to say that Juaquin loses his protective medal to the bandit, exposing that his courage was based on artificial help. Maria stands alone to rally the remaining townsfolk against what seem hopeless odds – but Manolo returns to everyone’s amazement, and stands up to Chakal, stating that he will fight. Chakal laughs uproariously, “You and what army?” An army does indeed arrive – the entire Sanchez clan reincarnated (La Muerte and Xibalba appearing and explaining that this being the Day of the Dead, they have some creative leeway). A battle royal takes place, with Manolo stealing away the magic green medal, which changes hands several times, fortunately being in Manolo’s hands when he and the bandit fall in a fatal blow to the bandit, but from which Manolo miraculously survives. Manolo tosses the amulet to Xibalba, to ensure it will not again fall into mortal hands. Manolo marries Maria, but the bride’s bouquet is caught by Juaquin, giving sign that he won’t be far behind to the alter among the local women. Even a reconciliation takes place between the formerly-bickering La Muerte and Xibalba, as the finale shot reveals that the museum guide telling the tale has really been La Muerte in disguise all the time, and Xibalba takes her in a final romantic embrace for the fade out.

---

Al Rojo Vivo (translation: “Red Hot”) (Disney, Mickey Mouse Cartoons (TV), 3/27/15 – Dave Wasson, dir.) – A Mickey episode with dialog entirely in Spanish, set in Pamplona, Spain for another running of the bulls. Mickey and Minnie watch on the sidelines, dressed in special white outfits of local design for the occasion – that is, until the wide – er, rear – of Pete looms in front of them to block their view. When Mickey politely asks that Pete step aside, all he receives is a kick in the gut from Pete’s peg leg, landing him in a barrel, and rolling him out into the middle of the street, where he receives a good trampling by a wave of bulls and the members of the crowd running ahead of them. Minnie is hung helplessly by her skirt upon a lamppost, while Pete tries to steal kisses from her. Mickey is peeved, and turns red from head to toe – not a good thing when you are in the middle of a bull run. One of the bulls who has passed him looks over his shoulder, stops, and his eyes turn as red as the color of Mickey’s anatomy. Minnie shouts a warning to Mickey, and the mouse turns white again – this time from fright. The color change is not soon enough to stop the advance of the raging bull, and Mickey flees for his life through the crowd, who parts a wide path for Mickey and the bull to pass.

Mickey ducks behind a parked van. However, its color is “Rojo!” (red). The bull’s horns emerge, right through the vehicle’s side. Mickey seeks refuge behind a flower cart – also full of “rojo” flowers. More destruction. Wherever Mickey runs, his surroundings seem to provide such objects as a red motor scooter, a red guitar, etc., and finally a whole neighborhood where almost everything seems to be red. Mickey spots one place in the neighborhood not red – a white door – so performs a transformation act, pulling off his black ears and blending into the scenery in camouflage fashion, while the over-stimulated bull tears up everything else in sight. The bull finally departs, and Mickey returns to his old, casual whistling self. But not for long, as it seems that part of the local festivities include a block-wide food fight – with red tomatoes! Mickey is plastered from head to toe with the dripping redness. The bull returns on cue, chasing Mickey through what seems a tidal wave of tomato juice resulting from the fight. He looks down at himself, to also remark with shock, “Rojo!”, as he too is now dripping red everywhere. Before the bull can ponder the question whether he should charge upon himself, who should backtrack to catch up with him but the herd of other bulls. Mickey and the first bull now race side by side, fleeing from the stampede of angry bovines behind them. Finally, Mickey decides he’s had enough, slams on the brakes, and holds up a cautionary hand to the “red bull” beside him to pause for a moment. Pulling out a large red handkerchief from his pocket, Mickey quickly wipes off the tomato goo from his own person, and then from the bull, restoring them to natural colors. The confused bulls behind them skid to a halt, realizing they have nothing more to charge at. Mickey grabs up all of their tails, and gives the herd a few small judo flips to show them who’s boss, then provides the herd with a new target, tossing the tomato-soaked handkerchief onto Pete. Riding atop the head of the lead bull, Mickey order a charge, and the herd knocks Pete for a loop that sails him entirely out of a long shot of the city skyline. Mickey accepts the applause and cheers of the crowd, and releases Minnie, who plants a kiss on his cheek. The bulls all stand behind them, cheering Mickey as their temporary friend. Mickey begins to blush from the kiss, which might be bad enough as the color red begins to flush through his cheeks. But even worse, the pants of his white outfit fall down, revealing that he is wearing his traditional red pants underneath! A scream from Mickey at knowing what’s to come, and a quick cut to credits.

Adios for now, amigos!

So, what kind of mischief “wood” our beaver friends be up to today? Plenty. Their roles range from devilish troublemaker to street-wise con man to patriotic American hero! Every studio of the day seems to get into the act as we continue our way through the 1940’s. Some place the creature center stage, while others leave him a notable guest or walk-on. One film even tries to develop a beaver as an identifiable recurring character – though his cinema career would only span a grand total of two episodes.

Song of Victory (Screen Gems/Columbia, Color Rhapsody, 9/4/42 – Frank Tashlin, supervision/Bob Wickersham, dir.), presents another instance of beavers being thrown in with other forest creatures for a “give them the works” finale. A typical wartime scenario has the peaceful forest taken over by the terrible trio of Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito look-alikes, cast in the respective species of a vulture, gorilla, and hyena. (Only the hyena seems an original concept, the other species having been used by other studios.) An intertitle announces that any similarities between these three and certain dictators, “either living or dead (we hope) is purely intentional.” Beavers appear briefly in an opening panorama shot, as usual constructing a dam. The forest axis move in from the dark recesses of the woods, survey the situation, then set-up a public speaking engagement for the vulture atop a high rock, with the gorilla and hyena slapping around various animals to herd them into the public square, the gorilla parting branches of foliage above the vulture to allow a beam of sunlight to shine down upon him as if a divine sign that he is the animals’ salvation, and the gorilla and hyena again slapping around anyone who does not applaud and heil. Soon, the animals find themselves paying tribute to the new regime, marching in long lines to provide food offerings to the trio’s fast-growing personal stockpile. A chipmunk relinquishes a bag of nuts, but notices one nut fall to the ground. Kicking the nut quickly behind his back with one toe, he reaches backwards, and grabs the nut, stuffing it in his cheek to avoid detection. But his act of treason is spotted by the vulture, who tries to squeeze the nut out of his mouth, but instead causes the chipmunk to swallow it. Infuriated, the vulture leads his pack in a shadow-show of violence to make an example of the traitor, seen as silhouettes on the wall as the chipmunk is slapped, pounded and stomped upon, then thrown out into the snow unconscious, while the trio laughs savagely. The animals pick up the prone figure of the chipmunk, and exchange looks as if to register the unanimous message, “We have had enough.”

While most Axis spoofs treat the subject in broad humor and satiric ridicule, this cartoon does have the distinction of treating its material, despite a few moments of comic silliness, with more somber, serious overtones – not to the level of heaviness of Disney’s “Education For Death”, but at least approaching some of the darker moments of the later Halas and Bachelor’s “Animal Farm”. It emphasizes deep blues and blacks in its color selection and background work, artistically setting the appropriate mood for tyranny and revenge. (It would be nice to see the full impact of the visuals in a properly-restored print; however, due to its dated period storyline, it was bypassed for inclusion in Columbia’s “Totally Tooned In” television package, and to my knowledge has also not yet shown up on MeTV.) In its climactic finale, the film also finds inventive and psychological means of incorporating again and again visual “V” formations and the opening note pattern of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony into animal calls and sound effects, setting up a mysterious and foreboding mood for the cowering dictators as if the world is closing in upon them in their solitary fortress – a mood of perhaps more disabling impact upon them than what could be accomplished by the animals’ mere actions alone. The reveling of the trio within their hollow-tree headquarters, as they feast on their ill-gotten gains, is rudely interrupted by pecking upon the front door, following the four-note pattern of Beethoven. When the vulture opens the door to look around, he finds no one, but rears back at a huge V pecked into the wood of the front door. From the trunks of the evening-darkened trees and crests of nearby snow-covered hills and knolls rises an increasing upswell of calls in the repeated pattern of the “dot dot dot dash” of the Beethoven composition, including deep hoots of an owl, chirps from an isolated songbird, croaks of frogs in a pond, and slaps of beavers’ tails sounding upon a large hollow log aimed as if a megaphone projecting toward the fortress. The vulture’s mind begins to play tricks upon him, as he steps backwards, then realizes his own talons seem to be creating a trail of V’s facing him in the snow. He retreats back into the tree and shuts out the interior light, allowing himself and his cronies to gaze out a window into the mysterious night, as a formation of fireflies approaches the window, lighting up the trio’s entire view with a luminous V, and causing them to cringe backwards in apprehension. Crickets chirp the four note strain again, while a V formation of rabbits’ heads pops out of a snowbank, their ears also giving the appearance of another series of V’s.

The animals now break from the psychological games, and get seriously busy, taking up strategic positions, while sending forward an advance guard of skunks, who infiltrate the tree fortress through small holes in the trunk above the dictators. Screams are heard from within, and the animal axis emerges from the fortress as if driven out by a gas bomb. Another V appears in silhouette upon the snow before them, formed by the shadows of a flock of geese flying overhead. The dictators turn about face, only to come up against a V of glowing pairs of eyeballs perched in the limbs of a tree – a flock of owls, who attack, swiping their claws at the villains’ faces. The dictators attempt to flee across the river, using the beaver dam as a bridge. But the beavers are a step ahead of them, swimming in the river to float away the center section of the dam, dumping the nefarious trio into the drink. Artillery is broken out, as bees are launched from a beehive pressed into a hollow log as an improvised machine gun, and porcupine quills are fired from such critter’s back. The geese bombard with eggs, while smaller birds in similar V formation swoop to peck at the vulture’s head. The beavers act again, now chopping down trees along the path of the villains’ retreat, narrowly missing direct hits upon their craniums. The trio finally reach the edge of a cliff and a suicide drop-off into a canyon. Their return from the edge is blocked off by the animals, who, although on the surface appearing to be their usual, fuzzy selves, are now enough of a intimidation to the trio to send yellow streaks up their backs. Who should advance upon them out of the crowd but the now-recovered chipmunk, who strikes a steadfast pose, and squeaks loudly with tongue protruding at them in defiance. The psyched-out triumvirate is so spooked by this time, that this harmless act sends them rearing back in panic, stepping right off the cliff. We see them fall, but never see on camera their fate. All we are greeted with is the peace of a new morning dawning before the animals eyes, as the sky lights up in sunbeams formed between gaps in the dissipating clouds – the beams, of course, taking the shape of a heavenly “V”.

---

Screwball Squirrel (MGM, 4/1/44 – Tex Avery, dir.) may mark the first instance in which a beaver participates in a cartoon by name-reference only, making no actual appearance on camera. An ultra-cute and realistically-proportioned gray squirrel, intentionally designed to mimic the Disney-inspired animation style of the Harman-Ising eras of MGM production, if not recent Disney productions such as Bambi, skips merrily through the woods, picking up stray nuts he finds on the ground to deposit in a little basket. His foraging is abruptly halted by a furry red foot stepping upon the next nut in line and covering it. The gray squirrel looks up and delivers a friendly “Hello” to the red stranger – a bulb-nosed, buck-toothed, oversize red squirrel at least a head taller than the gray one, with big feet, an oversized tail, and Bugs Bunny gloves on his hands. “Hello”, responds the stranger with a snorting sniffle punctuating his sentence. Our red friend, soon to be known as “Screwy” instead of “Screwball” by the time of his next appearance, asks with only minimal interest what kind of a cartoon this is going to be anyway. Little gray replies, in a falsetto voice so sickly sweet the very hearing of it can give you cavities, that he plays the lead in the picture – Sammy Squirrel – and the cartoon is all about him and his furry friends of the forest (emphasizing the cuddliness of the situation by wrapping himself up in his own fuzzy tail as he describes the scenario). Screwy, a street-smart wise guy crossing Bugs Bunny’s bravado and fearlessness with Daffy Duck’s insanity and penchant for troublemaking, responds as any sophisticate of the cinema would. “Oh, brother! Not that, not THAT!!” These words may have echoed the sentiments of Avery himself at being recently initiated to a studio mired at the time in films of classy but definitely derivative Disney-esque style – and perhaps those of many veteran animators around him, who craved a new direction for displaying their talents in comedy. Avery had never aspired in his many years of production to fit the Disney mold, and, though artistically experienced through long gradual development to be capable of turning out drawings of Disney quality in character, smoothness and expression (perhaps his most Disney-like project being Warner’s “I’d Love To Take Orders From You”, a script which he may have had unloaded upon him just to fill production quota), far preferred to pack his films with rapid-fire and surprising humor, manic expression and tempo, and was determined to break MGM out of a rut to compete on an equal pairing with his old bosses at Warner Brothers.

Thus, his use of realistic and ornate forest animation in the opening shots of this film is convincing and clearly evokes the old styles – but appears purely for the purpose of satire, allowing his new character to have shock value and hit the audience right between the eyes. Certainly the recent efforts of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera had blazed the way before Tex for a parting with the old and an improvement of personality and timing, but Tom and Jerry were still developing their comedy chops when Avery blew into the lot, and Avery’s new style had definite influence upon the cat and mouse’s direction from the time of Avery’s arrival. What is surprising is that by the time of Screwy’s debut, the MGM executives were willing to let go public the sentiment of dissent with the old regime expressed by the squirrel in this cartoon – an unusual degree of self-awareness and letting the audience in on a not-so-private joke that what had been considered by management to be top-of-the-line entertainment in the late 1930’s was no longer viable for the hep, up to date audiences of the wartime 40’s looking for laughs of the quick and belly-variety for instant gratification and escapism. Perhaps this concept would not have worked out had Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising still at this time maintained a role of control over studio productions, as it might have been viewed as a personal affront to their tastes. But their last productions had screened the previous season, leaving the field wide open for Avery’s commentary, as long as the likes of Fred Quimby and/or other executives followed their normal policy of looking the other way, so long as the cartoons made money. Thus, Avery got away with declaring an absolute schism between the new MGM and almost a decade of past filmmaking, allowing Screwy to be the standard-bearer in declaring the new direction in which the animation units would now be headed.

While Screwy is remarking to the audience in his first-ever breaking of the fourth wall, the gray squirrel is rambling in vivid description about the cast of his cartoon, naming names of all the other equally-adorable but devoid of personality characters who will be his co-stars. Names include Freddy Frog, Wallace Woodchuck, Buster Badger, Horace Hedgehog, Scott Skunk (any intentional relation to Scott Bradley?), Dorothy Duck, and a surprise reference to Barney Bear (who, being a real character of the studio, seems a bit shocking for inclusion. However, Barney had just lost his principal director, Rudolf Ising, and perhaps Avery was unaware that his series was soon to be revived, under the new direction of George Gordon, so thought it fair to pronounce him as washed-up too). Two additional names are included in the gray squirrel’s cast, but their first names are almost obliterated by the speaking of Screwy over the top of them – perhaps a “Benny” Beaver, and a Monkey of inaudible first name. Screwy settles this abominable situation by leading the little blabbing ball of furry boredom behind a tree, then launching an unseen attack upon him, with all the flashing stars, resounding thumps, and sound effects of crashing glassware characteristic of a cartoon fight emitting from each side of the tree trunk. Only Screwy emerges back into camera view, dusting off his gloved hands while the soft sounds are heard of a lone bugler playing taps for the one he left behind the tree. “You wouldn’t have liked the story anyway”, says Screwy matter-of-factly to the theater audience. Over 80 years after its initial presentation, the candor of this sequence and its message to the industry is still jaw-dropping and truly ground-breaking, sure to have the same impact on any new viewer as it must have had upon the theater audience those many years ago.

---

Old Sequoia (Disney/RKO, Donald Duck, 12/21/45 – Jack King, dir.) – Chip and Dale were not yet a part of the Donald Duck universe, though they had already appeared in the Pluto short, “Private Pluto”. Thinking along similar lines, Jack King’s unit decided to create a pair of mischievous beavers as one-shot foils for Donald – even using some leftover sped-up voice tracks from the chipmunks’ previous appearance as part of the beavers’ dialogue. To set up their meeting, Donald is cast as a forest ranger, stationed in a high tower looking out over the forest. The beavers are forest residents, with no sign of a dam or den under construction, but simply seeming to have a personal hobby of cutting down every tree they encounter – just for kicks. They are currently laying waste to a row of trees extending back as far as the camera can see – and at the forward end of their line of progress stands the monarch of the forest, a giant redwood named Old Sequoia – so old, a brass plaque affixed to the trunk can’t even state the tree’s age, leaving it as a question mark. A chief ranger (voiced by Billy (Black Pete) Bletcher) telephones Donald’s station, first reprimanding him for not answering the phone immediately when called (he had been asleep, his chair resting against a loose railing that almost pitched him into a mile-high fall into a canyon), then informing him that too many trees have been lost in his district. “If Old Sequoia goes,…YOU GO!!!” Donald scopes out the forest action through an extra-long telescope, and spots the beavers just one tree away from beginning their dirty work upon Old Sequoia. Grabbing a double-barreled shotgun, Donald soon arrives in a zip to the scene. He steps on one of the beaver’s tails, stopping his forward progress. The beaver flips him off of his tail, into the trunk of the present tree he has been gnawing at. “Timber!”, he shouts. Donald knocks the first tree down, collapsing upon its trunk. His shotgun goes flying, discharging a shot as it hits a rock, which blasts backwards to fell another tree – right on Donald’s head. Donald’s face turns the usual beet red, and a like-colored head lump emerges through the opposite side of the tree trunk atop him.

The two beavers now take note of what is next in line, and marvel at Old Sequoia’s towering height. “Well, what are we waiting for?”, says one to the other. They begin gnawing. Donald, however, trains both shotgun barrels upon them. But before he can fire a shot, the phone rings at the ranger station high up on the hill. Remembering the chief ranger’s orders to answer immediately, Donald drops everything, and zips at supersonic speed to answer the call. The ranger asks if Donald’s is watching Old Sequoia, and Donald responds, “Yes, sir.” “Well, what are you doing at this phone?!!!” snarls the ranger, contradicting his own order, and sending him back to do his duty guarding the tree.

Donald returns to the woods, to find the tree seemingly in one piece, with no further sign of the intruders. He begins pacing a patrol in front of the tree with his shotgun, only to have his marching interrupted by somewhat distant sounds resembling those of a buzzsaw in a cavern. Listening closely to one of the roots of the tree, Donald discovers the sounds to be coming from within, and guesses who is causing it. “Looks like an inside job”, he squawks. From knotholes everywhere in the trunk, streams of sawdust begin to emerge. Donald, like the beaver in Disney’s 1931 Silly Symphony, begins to play the role of the boy at the dike, hopelessly trying to plug each of the points of sawdust exit. He even tries to scoop sawdust back into the tree, but one of the beavers inside flips it out again with his tail, covering Donald in wood dust, making him resemble a child’s yellow rubber duckie. Donald zips out of frame and returns with a unique piece of heavy-duty construction equipment, vacuuming up sawdust into a giant tube, then spraying it back into the tree through one of the knotholes. Though the dust should match the tree’s original volume, it somehow distributes unevenly, causing two large chunks of the trunk to explode off the tree. Inside, the beavers are revealed, having hollowed out everything of the tree’s middle save a stick in the center, its diameter no wider than a pencil, on which the weight of the entire tree balances. Donald rushes in to add himself as an extra brace, attempting to keep the tree standing. The beavers make Donald’s life more difficult by simultaneously thumping their tails on the ground to create a shock wave. The central stick begins to bend to near snapping point, and the beavers, sensing victory, curl the tail of one beaver into a megaphone shape, allowing the other beaver to holler through it, “TIMBER!” This is actually the last we see of the beavers in the film – though Donald’s troubles are not over. As the tree tips more and more precariously, Donald takes a chance, zips out of the spot he is standing, and returns with about a dozen or more sticks, which he jams into the gap between the upper and lower tree portions in a circular perimeter, attempting to evenly distribute bracing for the tree. He then carries back the two exploded sections of the tree bark, replacing them into position on both sides (although the section with the plaque is at first inserted upside down).

“You’re okay now, Old Sequoia”, says Donald, patting the tree. Yeah, sure. That meager bracing isn’t going to hold all that weight for long, and the two sections of bark become compressed and bulge, ready to pop again. Donald tries to hold them back, when the ranger station phone rings again. The sound waves from the ringing seem the only thing holding the bark walls of the tree in place as they reverberate off the wood, and Donald again risks following orders to answer the call. When he arrives at the station, the ranger asks “How’s Old Sequoia coming?” Now, no phone ringing is providing support for the bark, and Donald stares from his station platform at the upper branches of the giant tree falling straight toward the station. “She’s coming fine”, reports Donald, referring to the tree’s traveling progress. As the trunk of the arbor passes the station in a near miss, a protruding branch reaches out as if a giant hand, making sure that the station also comes along, and yanking the structure right off of its support poles. The tree, and the station house, wind up at the bottom of the river. The phone rings again, and a water-soaked voice howls from the receiver, “YOU’RE FIRED!!!!!!” Donald breaks into his usual squawks of temper, though sounding a bit blubbery underwater, as the bubbles from his breath escape through the closing iris out.

• “Old Sequoia” is on Dailymotion.

---

The Poet and Peasant (Lantz/Universal, Andy Panda, 3/18/46 – Dick Lundy, dir.), while not yet billed as a “Musical Miniature”, set the template for that soon-to-be Lantz series of episodes scored to classical music. It was in essence a return to the setting of Mickey Mouse’s “The Band Concert”, or perhaps could be paralleled to “Rhapsody in Rivets”, “Concerto In B Flat Minor”, or take your pick of classically-scored concert cartoons of the past. The maestro is Andy Panda, in what is billed as his “farewell performance (we hope).” Andy uncharacteristically appears in a flowing red wig to appear “longhair” like Stokowski, and wears a “dickey” across his chest to also give a cultured appearance. The setting for his performance (an open barnyard) unfortunately gives the event an appearance of anything but polish – as the maestro makes his entrance from a subterranean stage elevator built into a farmyard water pump. Musical spot gags run rampant, including such ideas as Andy’s dickey getting stuck on a nail, and his tugs to snap it loose changing the rhythm of the performance to mild Dixieland. A horse uses a bouncing pumpkin atop an inverted washpail as a tympani, until the pumpkin bounces too hard, spewing its innards all over him. A dancing bird lands on Andy’s baton, then, as Andy shakes the baton to try to get the bird off, transforms into two birds, three birds, four birds, and five birds. A repeat of the shaking reverses the process, back to four birds, three, two,…and then a single cat, who has eaten the bird. The cartoon receives mention here for a stray gag including a flute-tooting beaver, positioned in front of a seated fat pig. The beaver performs double-duty, also serving as a percussionist, by rhythmically whacking the belly of the pig with his tail to produce bass drum sounds. Two ballerina ducks provide a chase finish to the short, as one is summarily devoured behind a haystack by a fox, who takes her place in dancing line to get at the other ballerina. Once the chasing is through, Andy has been bowled over on the podium several times, and the duck has somehow turned the tables, now wearing a fox hunting outfit and blowing a small curved fox-horn, riding the fox off ino the sunset as her trusty steed. Andy receives a final bash in the head from the cat seen earlier on his baton, and ends the concert unconscious against the podium. Nominated for an Academy Award.

---

The Eager Beaver (Warner, 7/13/46 – Charles M. (Chuck) Jones, dir.) – Here’s one that has to rank as one of the top beaver stories of all time. It definitely owes its inspiration to Disney’s “The Busy Beavers”, and could almost be considered a modernization of the same tale. While this could easily have resulted, in the wrong hands, in an ultra-cutesy cartoon of the type Avery sought to bury, Jones by this time was fine-tuning his timing, pacing, and choice of gag material, plus mastering his artistic abilities at expressive posing and facial nuances – thus allowing the film to display an up-to-date newness and a sense of that cutting edge house style that became the mark of the mid-1940’s and on.

We open upon a clan of busy beavers (busy, that is, when the camera is looking, although they at first are caught fast asleep by the narrator, who has to verbally nudge them awake to save their reputation). The narrator talks of the beavers’ primary occupation to “dam the river”. The beavers misunderstand the narration, and begin casting unheard but literally visualized “Blankety Blank”s at the water, then are overcome with embarrassment when the narrator reprimands them, “Not that way!”. They begin the actual task at hand, with a string of fast-timed gags. One beaver seats another upon a block of ice, until his teeth start to chatter. When his jaws are good and active, he is carried to a tree to devour a troth in the trunk like a power-saw. “TIMBER!” yells the first beaver, as a trio of eggs is toppled out of a nest in the tree branches above. The eggs hatch, each bird well prepared for the situation, wearing a parachute. However, the third of the youngsters has the same stuttering problem (and voice) as Porky Pig, and can’t utter the word “Geronimo” preliminary to pulling the ripcord. Amidst an endless verbal stream of “G-g-g-g-g-”s, he crash lands on the ground, then disgustedly gets out “Geronimo!”, to have the parachute open on delayed basis, and drag him out of the shot. A log is cleaned of foliage for use in construction by merely inserted a corkscrew in the center of the diameter of the fallen tree, and pulling out the central wood from the bark as if extracting a cork from a champagne bottle. Another beaver solves the problem of an axe which has become dull by popping open a spring-loaded pivoting panel in the side of the axe head, and replacing within a compartment therein a new “double-edged safety blade” – a product even then well-known to the owners of Gillette razors for shaving. We are also introduced to the running gag of the film – and a key plot point – a beaver foreman who suffers from chronic indecision in directing the placement of a key log into the dam from a crane, endlessly giving the crane operator directions that contradict themselves, left, right, up, down, merely shifting the log back and forth in position.

Among this clan lives Eager Beaver, a young newbie anxious to get in on the wood-cutting action, but overlooked by his peers as meddlesome and too puny. Eager still attempts to join the activity. He aims his axe at a first tree, but is blocked from swinging by a prototype Charlie Dog, who at first seems determined to “save that tree”, but really only wants to rescue a bone he has buried under it. Now the path is clear for an axe swing, but Eager is beaten to it by several swings of other beavers’ axes, barely escaping the scene with his own head still on his shoulders. It is the same story wherever he goes – excepting for one “trunk” he successfully chops, only to find it is really a telephone pole, with an irritated lineman seated on top. One of the larger beavers, to get him out of the way of the real work, directs his attention to a humongous tree on a mountain peak, which none of the other beavers seem to be paying attention to, and shouts “WHY DON’T YOU CHOP THAT TREE DOWN??” This is with good reason, for the tree seems unchoppable. Eager’s small axe gets nowhere, not even making a dent. He goes for some heavy ammunition, raiding a dynamite shack and setting off the explosives around the tree trunk. All the blast does is expose an ultra-long root system embedded in the mountain peak – but the tree doesn’t budge an inch.

Back at the dam worksite, the foreman continues to be confused as ever, but a warning is received from a messenger bird, who squawks unintelligibly with vigor. On the screen appears a subtitle – “English Translation: There’s a flood coming. Get moving, stupid!!!!” The beavers shift to double speed, placing logs into the dam from both riverbanks – all except the key log the foreman has been fussing over, which remains hovering above on the crane, while all wait for the foreman to finish his directions. Above on the mountain peak, Eager scratches his head, pondering what to do about his own designated task. A cutaway view of his skull shows motors and gears spinning around in his brain, until a light bulb lights on which appears the word “Idea”. Reaching into his pocket, Eager handily produces a small matchbox, on which is written the words “One termite.” He slides the box open, revealing a ravenous bug that is all teeth. In a split second, the bug has chewed through the massive tree trunk, then yells in a tiny voice “Timber!” The tree topples onto one side of the peak, and is briefly motionless. Eager jumps onto one end of the fallen log, trying to start it sliding down the hill. It suddenly gives way, taking Eager with it for the ride as it plunges off a cliff, toward a deep canyon below. With superhuman effort, Eager takes hold of the trunk, and gives the massive tree a mighty flip in direction, so that he appears to be holding it as one would an umbrella by the pole, and the tree’s limbs extend outward like an umbrella canopy, forming a huge parachute by which Eager is able to gently sail down to safety into the canyon below. Eager’s safety does not last long – as immediately behind him, filling the canyon’s walls, comes the onrush of a solid wall of flood water, towering about 20 stories above his head.

Still carrying the tree, Eager engages in a winding foot race, staying only mere steps ahead of the raging waters behind him. The scene returns to the dam, where the whole beaver community nervously awaits the completion of the foreman’s signals – a wait that it seems will go on interminably. Panning back upstream, the camera picks up Eager, the tree, and the flood waters, as they approach the drop-off point of a high cliff above the beavers’ valley. Eager leaps off the cliff with the tree, with the water close behind. Sailing through the air, Eager again gives the tree a flip in reverse direction, pointing its upmost branches downwards. Now the branches neatly fold like an umbrella closing, and with precision aim, the giant tree falls into the hole intended for the foreman’s key log in the dam. Eager lands atop the inverted trunk, the impact of his landing and additional bounces hammering the tree firmly into place to complete the installation, just as the flood waters hit the dam wall from behind. The structure holds, and the flood waters are halted and corralled. To Eager’s utter surprise, he finds himself carried upon the shoulders of the beavers of the community, hailed as a hero. The only ones not joining the festivities are the foreman and the crane operator, as the foreman offers a few final directions, then at last is satisfied with the log’s position. “Okay, Mac. Let her go!” shouts the foreman – only to have the log dropped directly upon himself, burying him completely in the ground, for the iris out.

• “The Eager Beaver” can be viewed on Dailymotion.

---

Woody the Giant Killer (Lantz/Universal, Woody Woodpecker, 12/15/47 – Dick Lundy, dir.) – Dick Lundy seems to have been the only golden-age animation director who attempted to launch a beaver as a recurring character in theatrical cartoons. The character (who may possibly have pre-dated this film as a creation from Lantz character comic books) is actually not at all beaver-like in behavior or demeanor, but was more of a W.C. Fields-inspired fast-talking sharpie and con man, named Buck Beaver. The name “Buck” appears not to refer to his front teeth, but his ever-present quest to make a fast “buck”. It is unclear what Woody’s occupation or particular reason for being in the location he finds himself is when the cartoon opens, but he refers to himself as a “floater”, suggesting he is a traveling day-laborer. The town he has landed in, however, is completely booked up when it comes to living space, with signs everywhere declaring “No vacancy”, and one that simply says, “No, no no!” As Woody grumbles about the housing shortage while seated on a staircase front step, Buck Beaver arrives and sets up shop with a collapsible peddler’s wagon packed in his traveling suitcase. He calls for Woody’s attention, and, having no idea why Woody is moping, nevertheless claims to have the answer to all his problems. “Okay, wise guy. What’s the answer?”, responds Woody sarcastically. The beaver begins a spiel about his fabulous magic beans, imported directly from the Carri-bean. “I don’t want beans! I want a room!”, bellows Woody, bringing down his fist upon the sales counter of Buck’s wagon, and dislodging a loose board, which smacks Woody in the face, his beak protruding right through it. Undaunted, Buck continues his sales pitch, and provides a demonstration of how, with just a few magic words, these beans produce a beanstalk right before your eyes. He sets up a small pot on the counter, drops in a bean, then utters standard stage-magician incantations. A thin but tall beanstalk emerges almost immediately. What Woody doesn’t see is that the stalk is ready-made, wound around a large wooden spool hidden in the base of the wagon, and being forced up through the pot by means of a foot pedal Buck is operating for the spool. Woody is fascinated enough to forget his room troubles, and shell out a buck for the beans.

Buck disappears from the film after that. Apparently, however, he is more reputable that he appears – or merely didn’t know the source of what he is selling – because when Woody plants the beans, they at first make no response to the magic words, but in delayed reaction produce a stalk worthy of Jack from the storybooks. The beanstalk lifts a riff from Bugs Bunny’s “Jack-Wabbit and the Beanstalk”, equipped with an internal elevator (what Bugs called “modern design”), and zooms Woody up through the tendrils to the cloud world of Giantland – where there is still no vacancy. Woody nevertheless headstrongly barges in to a castle, demanding service. I won’t cover all the details as off-point for this series, but needless to say, Woody baffles and befuddles the giant, finally causing him and the entire castle to fall to Earth, where its stones restructure themselves into the Castle Apartments – with plenty of vacancies. Woody becomes manager, and the giant labors for him as bellboy!

Buck was a licensed property for sporadic appearances in Walter Lantz comic books and coloring books, but would appear in only one further cartoon – to be discussed next week.

---

Lazy Little Beaver (Terrytoons/Fox, Mighty Mouse, 12/26/47 – Eddie Donnelly, dir.) – Narrator/writer Tom Morrison just can’t resist referring to beavers as “the best dam builders in the country.” Random gags open the film, with one beaver impossibly balancing a lengthy log atop his head, as the camera tracks back to a point where we expect to see another beaver carrying the rear – but instead find only a red flag tied to the end of the log to signal an overhanging load. A small beaver appears to have gnawed the wide trunk of a tree down to a center-point of a mere inch in diameter, and still stands within the hole, looking as if the tree will imminently smash down upon him with crushing weight. “I hope this little fellow knows what he’s doing”, remarks Morrison. But indeed he does, as the beaver merely snaps away the center stub, lifting the entirety of what is above him onto his shoulders. As he jumps down to the ground, it is revealed that there is no towering tree above him at all, as the tree had already been previously cut, and what the beaver is carrying is only a flat wheel of wood about two inches thick! But off to one side of an assembly line cutting and floating logs to the dam, we are introduced to another small beaver – the laziest in the forest, who slowly bounces a rubber ball off his tail in paddleball fashion (borrowing the gag from Fleischer’s “Little Lamby”), and remarks, “Ho hum, lack a day.” His papa, foreman of the project, cautions him that unless he remains busy and alert, he may wind up in a fur coat – and he won’t be wearing it. His lecture has little effect on Junior, who takes a rest on the end of a two-handled saw, leaving Papa to do all the pushing and pulling on his end. Papa gives him a spanking, administered by Papa’s own tail. Junior decides to run away, but pulls the old Hansel and Gretel trick in case he changes his mind, leaving behind him a trail of bread crumbs to lead back home. The birds eat it all, swallowing the last morsels while hitching a ride on the beaver’s tail. A wicked wolf (voiced by Dayton Allen), hears him crying at being lost, and sets up a portable information booth, playing the part of a guide. He informs the beaver that he saw some bread crumbs just down the road. To his surprise, the beaver finds a trail of crumbs yet uneaten, and begins to follow them. Of course, it is the wolf who is laying them out ahead, creating a path which leads right into his forest furrier shop!

The door of the shop slams and locks immediately upon the beaver’s entering, and the wolf tests the beaver for size, placing down around him a partially-finished fur coat from which one pelt is yet missing. “Perfect fit”, remarks the wolf. Junior runs, making a dive toward a window. The wolf gets there ahead of him, pulling a Heckle and Jeckle move by tugging the window frame to one side of the wall, leaving the beaver to smack his head into solid wood. The wolf places the unconscious youth upon a conveyor belt, leading to robotic arms wielding scissors and a sewing needle, ready to render him into the coat his father talked about. Who should chance to be sailing over the woods in a blimp, with neon lights on the side displaying his name, but Mighty Mouse. (Yes, buy the way, the Goodyear blimp was already in existence even then.) Spotting the trouble through binoculars, Mighty is off to the rescue. The wolf gets a typical pummeling, highlights including socking the wolf while his arms hold a mallet behind his head in the middle of an intended backswing, causing the wolf’s head to repeatedly rebound between the mallet head and Mighty’s fist; a blow that knocks off the wolf’s nose in Tex Avery fashion, sending it independently yipping around on the ground like a wounded dog; a loss of the wolf’s own fur coat that reduces him to his underwear; and a playful sock from Mighty which is more like a flick of a finger, slamming the wolf into a tree trunk and bringing down a bee’s nest upon his head. The beaver is rescued in nick of time from the machinery, and is so happy at being rescued, he becomes the most industrious beaver in the forest, zooming through tree trunks as if Mighty Mouse in flight, seeming to be set on chopping down the entire forest single-handed.

---

The Little Cut Up (Famous/Paramount, Noveltoon, 1/21/49 – I. Sparber, dir.). We open on a tree in the forest, populated by a variety of creatures, including a wise owl, three squirrels who take turns whacking each other on the head to crack nuts to eat, a mama bluebird and her three fledglings, and a Mr. and Mrs. Bunny, the latter of whom is knitting little things – quite a few of them – for an expectant family. Nearby, a community of beavers busies themselves on a nearly-completed dam. Along comes a little boy dressed in clothes suggesting colonial times, and wearing a small white-powdered wig. He is carrying a hatchet, and sings an original number probably penned by Winston Sharples, “Chop Chop Chop”, describing the fun he has chopping down trees at random. Of course, the animal community tree turns out to be in the line of fire, and with a few well-places blows, the child fells it, causing it to land squarely on the beaver dam. (Damn!) The beavers are launched into the air from the impact, and cluster together, attempting to use their combined spinning tails as the blades of a helicopter, but getting their appendages tangled up, landing them back on land with a crash, and resulting in them appearing in bandages and on crutches. The other animals aren’t in much better physical shape, and everyone’s homes and property are a wreck. Wise owl emerges from the stream covered in mud, and shames the boy for the destruction he’s caused. Learning that everyone’s homeless, the child decides to make amends by taking them to his home and building them all new domiciles. At a sumptuous plantation, the boy builds wise owl a colonial-style treetop structure, complete with a rocking chair on the veranda. Mrs. Bluebird gets an equally ornate birdhouse on a pole, with a small fountain alongside for her brood to use as a birdbath. The squirrel’s home has made life easier by the addition of a nut bowl and nutcracker. A larger house serves as a hutch for the rabbits – and they can use the space, as they now have a stroller built for over a dozen babies, with a descending bar over the top that lowers a row of milk bottles when it’s feeding time. As for the beavers, the child puts his hatchet to more constructive use, chopping a sturdy cherry tree to give the beavers a strong lumber supply for their new dam. A colonial gentleman armed with a musket – the boy’s father – hears the tree fall, rushes to the scene, and places blame on the beavers for felling the best cherry tree in Virginia. The boy stands in front of the raised musket barrel to block the shot, and states – – well, you should know the rest, as the boy is of course, the young George Washington.

NEXT: A move into the furry 50’s.

As usual, Hanna-Barbera was always a major contributor to standard cartoon scenarios and settings, tried and true by studios for years, which would find regular reuse in their seemingly-endless stream of production of films for TV. Of course, bullfighting thus became a common fall-back for situation comedy. Previous comments and posts have already addressed Bullfighter Huck, and Yogi Bear’s Big Bad Bully. We thus pick up with the sadly-neglected third member of H-B’s original triumvirate of animal icons, Quick Draw McGraw, who provides two episodes of interest, then proceed ahead into other series with bullfight action overlooked by our readership.

El Kabong Strikes Again (Quick Draw McGraw, 12/21/59, Carlo Vinci, anim.) – Michael Maltese’s follow-up to his sub-franchise-creating classic that gave Quick Draw an alter ego which may have had longer longevity in viewers’ memories than his “real” persona. The continuing legend of the bumbling horse Western cowpoke who vanquishes evil by slipping into a mask and cape, swinging from a rope, and using his trusty “gee-tar” instead of a gun as his weapon of choice, smacking it over the heads of villains with the mighty shout of “KABONG!” (all in a clever lampoon of the long-popular Zorro franchise and then-current television series under production by Disney).

A narrator recites background for the story in rhyming couplets, setting the tale in the Mexican border town of El Pueblo. (There are two recordings of the narration – one for the cartoon track, and one re-recorded by Daws Butler as Quick Draw (with assistance from Baba Looey, his mock Spanish-accented anthropomorphic burro sidekick) for a storyteller Colpix LP otherwise using original dialog and sound-effects tracks from the film (but not the Capitol records needle-drops which provided the music). Some key differences in the record script will be noted below). The town’s hero is El Kabong, who is shown driving out the latest bandit to hold-up the town. But no sooner does one bad guy leave, then another arrives. Both narrations recite, “Then fickle fate inflicted a fiendish fiasco, in the form of the tyrant – the terrible Tabasco!” (The LP version adds a comment between Baba Looey and Quick Draw. Baba: “Was his last name, ‘Sauce’?” Quick Draw: “Who told ya’?” The LP continues with Quick Draw adding a couplet not in the film: “He was so mean, and he was so cruel, he threatened a beautiful Senorita O’Toole.” Baba sound incredulous about this remark. “Was that her name?” Quick Draw responds, “Search me. It rhymes with ‘cruel’, that’s all I know.”) Tabasco threatens the Senorita, “If tomorrow you do not have ten thousand pestardos, you will have to marry me.” Senorita: “You fiend. Haven’t you done enough harm to this town?” Tabasco: “Nooo…There must be something else I can steal.” The girl screams for El Kabong, and Quick Draw, off on the plains with Baba while singing a number in incredibly off-key fashion, hears the call. He shouts, “El Kabong strikes again! – Notice how neatly that works into the title of the picture?”

A quick costume change plays on an old gag from Bugs Bunny’s “Super Rabbit”, as Quick Draw appears mistakenly in a clown outfit instead of the proper cape and mask. Once wardrobe problems are resolved, Tabasco receives his first introduction to Kabong’s “Kabonger” – over the head. “He is dangerous”, Tabasco admits. Even making an escape in a stagecoach provides little protection, as the Kabonger is extended to the moving stagecoach’s window on a telephone extender to strike another blow. But the matter remains that the debt of ten thousand pestardos still needs to be paid, and all Kabong has in his pockets is $1.35 and half a Green Stamp (far insufficient, even with favorable Mexican exchange rates).

By a strange coincidence, Tabasco is also active in promoting bullfights, and a poster on the wall of the plaza offers Tabasco’s prize of ten thousand pestardos to anyone who fight El Gorito, the ferocious bull. “You are going to fight the bull for me?” asks the Senorita. “I am?”, responds Kabong in a tremulous question. “Ah, I knew you would”, sighs the Senorita. Before he knows it, Kabong is being pushed out into the bull ring by Baba before a cheering crowd, protesting that he’s not fighting any bull. “But the bull is bullfighting you”, says Baba, as the bull pen gate bursts open to reveal Kabong’s competitor. Baba wishes Kabong luck, and scatters. Kabong wishes the bull luck, and starts running too. The bull and Kabong perform about three laps around the arena, while Tabasco calls out from the stands, “What kind of bull fighting you call that?” “I’m gonna tire him out first – that’s what kind!” shouts Kabong. The bull pauses to remove one horn from his head, and insert its point in a “Sure Sharp” pencil sharpener mounted on the arena wall. Kabong continues his next lap around the ring, skidding to a stop as he realizes he’s caught up with the bull, who scores a “bull’s eye” on Kabong’s rear-end with the newly-sharpened horn. “Oooh – that’s pointy!” From the sidelines, Baba offers and suggests that “Queek Straw” use his trusty Kabonger. “Why didn’t I think of that”, says Kabong. But instead of smacking the bull over the head with it, Kabong has a different plan. He plays the guitar, singing a repeat performance of his awful song from earlier in the film: “I have not slept in twenty days. I should look an awful sight. But it doesn’t bother me at all – ‘cause I always sleep at night.” This is too much for any bull to handle. Holding his ears, the bull moans, “Oh, no, no, NO!!”, and runs away. But Tabasco makes a quick getaway with the chest full of pestardos. Finally, Kabong makes use of his guitar for its proper purpose, and bashes Tabasco over the head again. Tabasco scoots, leaving the chest behind. The Senorita thanks Kabong, but asks for him to unmask so that she can reward him with a kiss. Quick Draw obliges. One look at that “rugged” face, and the Senorita screams in panic. She runs from the ring, but not before grabbing the money chest and taking it with her, calling out, “Wait, Tabasco! Wait for me!” Baba has the final observation for the curtain line: “I thinn, maybe El Kabong strikes out again, yes, no?”

---

Bull-Leave Me (3/7/60) finds Quick Draw in a new setting – on the pampas in the Argentine. A prize bull, named El Screwballito, has escaped, and a gaucho is in pursuit to re-capture him. The bull features a delightful resonating basso chortle of a laugh, that is reminiscent of the laugh of Tex Avery in such films as “Hamateur Night” and “The Penguin Parade” – a bit of a surprise it doesn’t show up in more H-B films, in place of Don Messick’s ever-present snicker for dogs such as Muttley and Mumbly. A narrator asks the bull why he ran away, and, after a laugh, he responds, “Ees fun!” The gaucho throws a set of bolas at the bull, but the bull acquires from nowhere a baseball bat, and bats the bolas back to the gaucho, tying him firmly up. The gaucho points out how well the name “El Screwballito” thus fits the bull.

Ranchero Don Town (or as Baba puts it, maybe Uptown – what’s the difference?) can’t get any further volunteers from his gauchos to pursue the bull. Enter Quick Draw, anxious to fill the role of hero. In another instant costume change, Quick Draw assumes the garb of a gaucho, but Don Town does not believe his horse-face fills the bill. He gives Quick Draw a pop quiz on the basic terminology of the job. Q: “What’s a gaucho?” A: “One of the Marx Brothers.” Q: “What are the Andes?” A: “The other half of ‘Amos and’.” Q: “What are bolas?” A: “Where you keep a goldfish.” Don Town leans against Quick Draw, weeping, “Oh, no!” Quick Draw consoles him with the un-encouraging words, “Let’s face it. You’re stuck with me.”

A lengthy chase ensues between Quick Draw and El Screwballito over the pampas, most of which makes little direct reference to the sport of bullfighting. One notable gag has the bull appearing to patiently wait for Quick Draw, leaning against a rock and laughing. Quick Draw charges him at full speed toward the camera – then slams his face into what appears to be an invisible barrier, and collapses. The camera pulls back, to reveal a huge pane of invisible glass which the bull has put up between himself and Quick Draw. But ultimately, Quick Draw resorts to the red cape and calls of “Toro” in the traditional matador manner. His plot is a variation of Bugs Bunny’s “The Grey-Hounded Hare” and “Bully For Bugs” gag and similar gags which followed at other studios – having the bull charge, while the cape is held before a solid object, to cause the bull to conk himself on the head. Quick Draw chooses to hold the cape before a mammoth boulder. Unfortunately for him, he underestimates Screwballito’s strength – as the bull charges with such power, he knocks the boulder upwards high into the air – then down upon Quick Draw’s head. What else is there to say, but “Ouch Ouch, Ooch Ouch Ouch!!” The final sequence plays upon an old gag setup first seen in the context of bullfighting in the famous Three Stooges live-action short, “What’s the Matador?” (though the Stooges’ writers likely modified it from the ending of the Donald Duck cartoon, “Sea Scouts”, in which the head-to-head battle was performed between Donald and a shark). Quick Draw equips the hood of a jeep with a huge set of bull horns taken from a longhorn steer, planning to “fight horns with horns”. El Screwballito is caught by surprise, and mutters, “Uh oh”, as he finds himself on the retreat, ahead of the hood of the speeding jeep. The bull comes upon the gates of a pampas corral, which just happen to have a matching set of longhorn horns hanging over the gate. “Ah ha!”, snorts the bull, grabbing the larger horns and tying them onto his own head. Now evenly matched, the bull charges the jeep. The camera quickly swaps between alternating views of the speeding jeep and the speeding bull. – then finally shows us the dust clouds of the ultimate head-on collision. (One will recall similar staging for the ending of Woody Woodpecker’s “The Hollywood Matador”). When the dust clears, Quick Draw and jeep look visibly shaken, but temporarily whole. It doesn’t last long, and crack lines appear throughout the bodies of both Quick Draw and the jeep, as both crumble into powder. The bull engages in his laugh again at this outcome, but suddenly goes rigid, with a cry of “Huh?” Within a few seconds, he too has developed crack marks, and crumbled into powder. Baba as usual delivers the afterthought. “That’s Queek Straw for you. When the chips are down, he goes all to pieces – – but I like him.”

---

George Jetson in a bullfight? Well, of sorts, in Test Pilot (The Jetsons, 12/30/62). Spacely’s research division (consisting of one old timer who’s been at it for 58 years) has developed the indestructible suit, guaranteed to be impervious to all destructive forces, and to protect the wearer as well. Unfortunately, as Spacely stares out the window at the Cogswell Cogs building, relishing the thought that his competitor’s days are numbered with all the sales Spacely will make, an explosion matching the one in which Spacely’s inventor put the final touches on the suit is witnessed inside the Cogswell building. A peek through binoculars reveals that Cogswell’s researchers have produced a matching suit! The only way for Spacely to get the jump on sales is to call out the press, and stage a public demonstration of the suit’s wonders. But one problem quickly presents itself. No one is stupid enough to agree to test-hop the suit – not even the suit’s inventor. Cogswell finds himself in the same boat, and for the moment, the two moguls are stymied and stalemated in their race for success.

Meanwhile, George is reporting for a company physical, at the office of a doctor who just happens to collect ancient human artifacts, including a genuine Egyptian mummy. Via a space-age slingshot gun, George is made to swallow a computerized mini-probe shot down his throat. The probe (in the voice of Mel Blanc, not far removed from his voice for Marvin the Martian) communicates with the doctor on a monitor screen, as it travels through George’s body examining him from the inside. On the way to the brain, the probe overshoots a curve, pops out of George’s ear unnoticed (wouldn’t this at least leave a punctured ear drum?), and winds up inside the ear of the mummy resting on the opposite side of the room. As the probe gives an image of the brain, it displays a darkened maze of cobwebs. The probe states that this is the first time he’s ever been inside a haunted head, and when asked by the doctor for an opinion of the patient’s condition, the probe reveals a small bugle, upon which it blows “Taps”. George is told the end is imminent, and if he has anything he needs to do, do it in a hurry. Assuming his life is ending, George finds the gumption to do something he could never do if he had anything left to live for – tell Spacely off, and quit. After blowing smoke in Spacely’s face and dousing him with water, George seizes him by the collar, stopping him cold before he can utter, “You’re fired”, and making clear Spacely’s threats mean nothing to him anymore. The suit’s inventor sees this display of courage as the answer to their prayer – here is the man brave enough to test the suit. A bidding war for George’s services takes place between Spacely and Cogswell, with Spacely going all out and offering money from his private safe that hasn’t seen the light of day for so long, the picture of George Washington on the bills has to don a pair of sunglasses. With nothing to lose, George accepts Spaceley’s proposition.

The tests begin, with Spacely sparing no expense on publicity. George runs the gamut of hazards – spun underwater tied to a ship’s propeller blade, lying under a ten-ton boulder while it is smashed to pebbles in a compressor, placed in a room with closing walls on all sides, electrically fried with a mammoth dose of voltage, and defying a buzzsaw which is unable to saw him in two. George somehow survives all with no lasting damage. The final test finds George set to be raised to a height of three miles and dropped by parachute, with two anti-missile-missiles targeted to hit him simultaneously during his descent. Just before the lift-off, who should break through the crowd to speak to George but the doctor, with news that it was all a mistake, and that George should live to the ripe old age of 150. But it’s too late to stop the stunt. The missiles launch, and George finds himself in their crosshairs. Grabbing the parachute fabric (though no explanation is offered why George continues to fall slowly with no billowing silk), George waves the fabric with timid cries of “Ole”, to lure the missiles to charge him. The missiles pause in mid-air, and, accompanied by the music of a majestic trumpet as if from the bull ring, paw with their stabilizer fins as if a four-legged bull pawing the dirt before a charge. The first missile advances, and George performs a perfect matador’s pass. The other missile takes up the challenge. George continues his beckoning calls: “Ole – Ole – Oy, Vey!” as the second missile passes. Both missiles loop and turn around, returning simultaneously from both directions. George hastily writes a will, drops it to the ground, and closes with the words, “George Jeston, signing off.” BOOM!! But George descends to the ground, still all in one piece. The suit worked, and Spacely tells George his bonuses and vice-presidency are assured. George would have settled just for finding himself alive. But of course, all is not the bed of roses they planned. Before a banquet to announce George’s promotion, well-intentioned Jane puts the suit in the washer. It falls apart from not being dry-cleaned! Spacely announces he’ll be bankrupted, and George submits a quick resignation, racing to Cogswell Cogs to see if he can find a job. Even Spacely is forced to eat his pride, shouting after George, “Wait! I’ll go with you!”

---

Bully For Atom Ant (1/22/66) – Atom Ant takes a needed vacation South of the border, traveling incognito under a sombrero of human size. While sampling the local cuisine at a taco stand, he hears weeping at the shoreline. A skinny young man is about to toss a large boulder off a pier – with himself tied to it. “Adios, cruel world. I don’t theenk I stay on you anymore.” He and the rock plunge into the briny – but Atom Ant zooms in to pull the spluttering man back onto the shore. He wails that nothing goes right, unaware he has been saved, and thinking the ocean is as dry as the dry land. Atom explains that he has been rescued, but the man sees little point in it, as there is nothing to live for. His senorita has given him the air and will not marry him, because he will not fight El Tornado in the bull ring. Atom asks the man’s name, and he responds, “C. Enchilada” – the “C” standing for “Chicken”. (Perhaps if he’d had a brave brother, his first initial would have been B. for Beef.) But Atom has a plan. The man himself can hardly see Atom – even when he is standing on the man’s nose – so no one in the bull ring will see Atom either. Atom will thus do the real fighting, and all Enchilada has to do is wave a cape around for a sure victory.

Enchilada’s appearance in the ring fails of itself to provide any instant impression on the senorita, who remains haughty and unconvinced that anything has changed with Enchilada. El Tornado makes an impressive entrance, and revs up for his first charge. Atom hides behind the folds of Enchilada’s cape, and when the bull hits, he is knocked back so far by Atom’s fist, he has to creep up on the cape and look underneath it, to resolve his worries that Enchilada placed a solid rock behind it. Tornado charges again, after using the old pencil sharpener gag to sharpen his horns. Enchilada is bent over taking bows to the crowd, and seems an easy target – but Atom lifts Enchilada up by the seat of his pants into mid-air, in the nick of time, leaving Tornado to crash through a wooden barrier. Enchilada remains suspended in air, still waving his cape to entice Toro. Tornado resets his sights, placing a stepladder in the center of the ring, and charging up its steps to reach Enchilada. Atom pulls Enchilada away to one side, leaving the bull racing upwards into thin air past the last ladder rung, then falling to create a crater in the arena dirt. Enchilada, back on the ground, waves his cape to entice the bull again. But the bull dives deeper into the crater he has created, tunnels underground, and pops up with full force under Enchilada’s feet, driving him and Atom as passenger into the air and down, to create a matching crater in the dust of their own. Now the bull takes bows to the crowd. Enchilada asks Atom what they should do now? Atom asks Enchilada to wait just a minute. With speed in excess of the sound barrier, Atom takes a ten-second time out to fly through the air all the way back to his headquarters hole in the ground, do about six lifts of his barbell to build up his strength, and zip back again to Mexico, where he returns the bull’s trick, by tunneling underneath him, then delivering through the dirt the might of his “atomic punch”. The bull rises high in the sky, then his descending shadow looms over Atom. “And here comes the fallout”, remarks out hero, zipping out of the bull’s trajectory. The bull again winds up buried in the dirt, and raises from the dust a white flag hoisted upon his tail, as a sign of surrender. The film closes with Enchilada and the senorita as newlyweds, riding off into the sunset atop the now tame El Tornado, dragging clanking tin cans and a “Just Married” sign upon his tail. Atom closes to the audience with, “And so, they lived happily ever after, I theenk!”

• “Bully For Atom Ant” is on Dailymotion.

---

Unaccounted for are two possible (one likely) episodes from The Abbott and Costello Cartoon Show, with no plot synopsis available, but promising titles. The longshot is Bully Billy, which might as easily refer to some human bully. But Bully For Lou sounds like a sure bet. Anyone know what old retreaded gags they dredged up for either of these?

---

What a difference a decade and mother’s anti-violence groups can make. H-B’s new “The Tom and Jerry Show” was never something I heard Bill or Joe discuss in interviews, but, even if they spoke of it to the press at some point, one has to believe that deep within, there had to be some shame as to the visible shoddiness of production, poor timing, and entirely lackluster plots of virtually the entire show. It was certainly something they kept their own names off of as far as direction credits (though by this time, this was true of all their shows), and some of the TV shorts they would direct themselves in their final years (such as “Wind-Up Wolf” and others) certainly show they personally still had within them a sense of better timing and a glimmer of their old creative spark. Perhaps the biggest sin of this project was its managing to render two characters who had exuded so much personality on screen without need to utter a word entirely persona-less – cardboard cutouts with no more visible character traits than Buster Bear or Marty the Monk (if you don’t know ‘em, look ’em up). And gone was any semblance of the signature scenario of the series – the chase. Now, the two would fit better as members of the Get Along Gang. H-B’s re-licensing of their own creations, just to allow the entire reputation of the series to be dragged down to an all-time low (even Filmation’s later encounter with the characters, though miserably animated, could sometimes generate a small laugh, restored the characters to adversaries, and resumed the chasing), seemed clearly a simple “taking a dive” for the almighty dollar, and an absolute sell-out of the franchise which never should have seen the light of day. I still (I’m sure along with most fans of the characters) cringe whenever one of these items gets replayed, although I seem to be able to at least sit through everyone else’s attempts.

The Bull Fighters (12/6/75) finds Tom and Jerry, for no apparent reason, walking along a road in the Mexican countryside, apparently on their way to Tiajuana. A bull in a pasture works out with barbells for his morning exercise, then plants a sign near the road reading “Shortcut to Tiajuana” to lure Tom and Jerry into his pasture – thus providing the bull with a target for his morning “road work”. The bull charges, but T&J make a quick reversal of directions, and the bull keeps on sliding forward in his attempt to stop, sliding into the water of a pond. The bull flounders in the water, calling for help because he can’t swim. Tom notices a well with an attached wooden bucket, and tosses the bucket at the bull’s horns, spearing one horn into the bucket’s wood. Tom then reels in the line with the well handle, towing the bull to safety. Despite the good deed, Tom and Jerry aren’t going to stick around to see what mood the bull is in, and start running again. The bull hollers for them to come back, and tosses the well bucket so as to land atop them, stopping their retreat. The bull explains that they saved his life, and from now on, they’ll be friends forever. He introduces himself as Toro the Terrible, a fighter in the bull ring, and as a reward for saving his life, gives T&J two free tickets to see him perform at the arena this afternoon.

T&J needn’t have worried about the free passes to the ring, as circumstances have them destined to view the event from a different perspective. As they enter the town, several people, including the owner of the bull ring, flee in terror, as another bull, El Rotteno, has broken loose. T&J find themselves running away once again, as the hooves of El Rotteno come closer and closer. Tom gets tangled up in the clothing rack outside a dressmaker’s shop, and emerges carrying a frilly red dress. As he holds the garment out in front of him to observe it, the bull passes through, reacting to it as if a cape. Tom is unscratched, but the bull is unable to put on the brakes after the pass, slides up the ramp of a truck with a wooden stake bed, and gets his horns jammed in the wood of one of the cross-beams, holding him captive. The arena owner is amazed at Tom’s cape-work, and offers to make him a famous and wealthy matador. Tom shakes his head no at the offer, until he hears that the owner intends to match him in the ring with someone he knows – Toro the Terrible. Remembering the bull’s promise of eternal friendship, Tom accepts the owner’s offer with a friendly handshake. The owner takes T&J to a holding corral outside the arena, giving Tom a chance to study his bovine opponent. This allows Toro, after briefly putting on an act of ferocity for the boss, to reaffirm that the match will be “duck soup”, and giving Tom a set of signals – a twirl of his left horn means Toro will pass on the left, and the opposite if he twirls his right.

Jerry becomes practically a non-participant in this cartoon, appearing in the ring only as an assistant to carry Tom’s capes (we never see a sword, so one can only wonder how any match is supposed to end). Toro is released from the opposite door of the arena, and begins giving his horn-turning signals. Tom pulls a few of the standard cape maneuvers, including the old windowshade roll-up as Toro passes. Tom uses one new move, hanging the cape upon his tail for another pass. Toro looks back to observe that the crowd is loving it – but overshoots the parameters of the arena, sliding through the archway of the matadors’ entrance, and crashing into a wall inside. He is not only temporarily dazed, but comes up with a twisted ankle. The show must go on, declares the arena owner, making a call for a substitute – El Rotteno. The angry substitute quickly recognizes Tom as the wise guy with the red dress, and seeks to even the score. Tom, however, is none the wiser about the substitution, and calmly walks up to the bull, clasping the metal ring hooked in his nose, and raising and lowering it a couple of times as if using a door-knocker. El Rotteno charges, and two old Warner gags are quickly swiped by the writers. First, a pass transforms Tom’s cape into a string of paper dolls (straight out of Daffy Duck’s “Mexican Joyride”). Then, a second cape handed to Tom by Jerry is punctured with a bull-shaped silhouette (from “Bully for Bugs”). Tom smiles through it all, still thinking it’s part of the act (though no explanation is provided as to why Tom is not looking for the twirling horn signals expected from Toro). As for Toro himself, he suddenly appears above Jerry on the sidelines, watching the match from the spectator’s side of the fence. Toro thinks Tom is doing all right for himself – but explains to Jerry about his twisted ankle, and that Tom is really fighting El Rotteno. Jerry, maintaining his inability to speak, quickly scribbles a note of explanation to Tom, runs up Tom’s back, and displays the note before Tom’s eyes. El Rotteno makes another pass, catching the note on his horns, then slashing one horn against another to cut the paper into confetti. Tom runs for one of the picador barriers, climbing it. El Rotteno again slams his horns into wood, but this time exerts his strength, lifting the barrier out of the ground, and carrying Tom along on top of it with him. He then spots Jerry, and starts to chase him too. Atop the bull, Tom grabs the points of the bull’s horns protruding through the barrier, and steers them to the right to change the bull’s direction. El Rotteno is steered through the archway back to the bull enclosure, and the wooden barrier falls into place at the archway, very unconvincingly providing a supposed barrier to the bull’s re-entrance. (It’s not mounted to the wall by anything, so couldn’t El Rotteno merely knock it down?) The film abruptly ends without further development, in a traditional scene of T&J taking bows as sombreros are tossed into the ring. Ho Hum – and this was one of the better installments of the series!

---

How do you turn bullfighting into a competitive team sport, without an awful lot of bloodletting? That’s what “Scooby’s All-Star Laff-a-Lympics” attempted to do in the installment, Spain and the Himalayas (11/5/77), taking a leaf – as well as petals and stem – from Lotte Reiniger’s 1934 shadow-animation version of “Carmen” (discussed in chapter I of this article series), and reversing it. Instead of the bull taking a rose from the lips of Carmen, the objective is to retrieve a rose from the lips of the bull! I don’t particularly know of any professional toreadors who have tried this stunt, nor of any bull who was cooperative enough to keep his teeth clenched throughout the event. So let’s just chalk this up to animators’ poetic license – anything for a gag situation.

Mumbly open the competition for the Really Rottens – as usual, with a plan to cheat. He has with him a sleeping gas bomb, intending to make the bull go nighty-night while he grabs the rose. But the device doesn’t work as intended when tossed, merely bouncing off the bull’s nose without emitting its contents, and rebounds back to Mumbly’s feet where it finally bursts open. Mumbly yawns, falls into a sleepwalk, and walks himself out of the arena in a complete doze. Dynomutt steps out as the representative of the Scooby-Doobies. Hos gimmick: use his bionic leg extensions to obtain an overhead position on the bull, sneaking up from behind to pluck the rose from a position right between the bull’s eyes. The bull, however, spots him on the first attempt, and dodges forward into a run across the arena before Dynomutt can make the grab. With his feet still planted where they started from, Dynomutt attempts to keep up with the bull not by running, but by continuing to extend his telescoping lower limbs. He runs out of extension room, reaching his maximum limit, and is sprung backwards by his mechanical limbs, which land hard upon his feet, compressing him into a short squat stance back where he started. Dynomutt apologizes that he must have strained a transistor, and waddles slowly away. This leaves the surprise contestant chosen to represent the Yogi Yahooeys – Cindy Bear! Commentators Snagglepuss and Mildew Wolf can’t figure how she ever expects to get near enough to the bull to do anything – especially when, instead of a cape, Cindy produces a music stand and sheet music. But Cindy promises that music has charms to soothe the savage beast, and the tune she intends to perform will have the bull dropping the rose right at her feet. The bull begins a charge, and Mildew observes that he doesn’t look like he’s got any ear for music. But Cindy stands her ground, and must have been taking lessons from Quick Draw McGraw (making one wonder why Quick Draw wasn’t chosen as team representative to repeat his performance discussed above, since Quick Draw is also a regular member of the Yogi Yahooeys team), performing a run of high-piercing, off-key contraltos. Her singing has the same effect upon the bull as Quick Draw’s, with the bull stopping just short of impact to plug his ears with his hooves, his jaw dropping open in a “no” position, and the rose landing right at Cindy’s feet as promised. (Odd in retrospect, since Cindy sang quite competently in “Hey, There, It’s Yogi Bear”, and “Yogi’s First Christmas”.) Mildew loses a bet to Snagglepuss that Cindy couldn’t do it, and is required to eat his straw hat, complaining that it’ll spoil his din-din – but please, pass the ketchup.

• “Spain and the Himalayas” is on Dailymotion.

---

There’s plenty of bull in the double-length “All-New Popeye” installment, King of the Rodeo (circa 1979, air date unknown). While the setting is a Western event, traditional bullfighting capework shows up twice in this story, once in each reel. Unusual to a rodeo, the first event is expressly referred to by announcer/judge Wimpy as “bullfighting”. Popeye steps into the arena, producing a cape from under his Stetson hat, and expertly handling the bull’s first pass. As the bull shifts direction to advance upon Popeye again, Popeye wise-cracks, “Reversing the charges, eh?” Of course, Bluto is Popeye’s competition, sitting on the sidelines atop a corral gate. He decides to improve his odds for the competition, by getting at Popeye’s “threads” with the suction of a vacuum cleaner, which steals his cape away. Popeye avoids impact by jumping over the top of the approaching bull, leap-frogging over his oncoming horns. The bull’s momentum carries him forward, and he smashes horns-first into the corral gate Bluto is sitting on. Rearing back, the bull picks up both the gate and Bluto, carrying them back into the arena to pursue Popeye. The ride’s a little rocky, but as long as Bluto is in the event, he chooses to steer the bull by the horns toward Popeye. Popeye remarks, “A bull-cycle built for two”, and runs. But, as the three approach an arena exit with a low overhanging archway, Popeye yells out to Bluto that his mount has no power steering. The bull follows Popeye through the exit, but Bluto and the gate smash into the upper archway, pressing Bluto momentarily flat and dazed, while Popeye, somehow safe, peeps in to laugh with delight at his downfall.

One of the events in the second half of the film is bulldogging. Bluto fouls up Popeye’s attempt to grab the bull by the horns, by placing stretchy rubber tips at the top of each of the bull’s horns while in the corral. Popeye gets a false grip, and is dragged behind by the stretchy rubber. When he finally lands in front of the bull, the bull hogties him, takes his own bows to the crowd, then pulls on the rope to release Popeye like a spinning top. A quick head-butt, and Popeye is driven head-first through a wooden barrier, stuck. Bluto uses a pencil to draw circles upon the seat of Popeye’s pants, providing the bull with a perfect bull’s-eye. Olive tries to intervene, running out into the ring with a red cape of her own, and shouting “Andalay, Andalay.” The bull changes target, sending Olive for a spin of her own as he passes, and spearing her cape upon one of his horns. As the bull reverses direction, Olive and Popeye find themselves cornered on one side of the arena. Popeye meets the challenge, pawing the dirt with one foot and charging the bull, but suddenly transforms the confrontation into a social affair, with the inquiry to the bull, “May I have this dance?” He and the bull break into a round of square dancing, Olive joins in, and the bull even drags in Bluto from the sidelines. Bluto complains that dancing is for sissies, so the bull casually tosses him aside into a watering trough. Finally, however, Popeye decides to have the last laugh, grabbing one of the bull’s front hooves, spinning him around, and landing the bull upside-down on his back, allowing Popeye to rope his feet and win the event.

Brahma Bull riding is the last event. Bluto’s taking no chances on losing this one, having supplied his own mount, in the form of two dumb assistants who wear an old cowhide in impersonation of a bull. Bluto saunters out of the corral atop the two of them, in almost slow motion, but certainly having no trouble staying astride the beast. Wimpy awards him 10 points for a perfect, if somewhat boring, ride. Popeye, however, draws El Diablo, the toughest Brahma in the event. He holds firmly to the rope around the bull’s waist, failing to notice Bluto as he cuts it. Popeye thus finds himself in the ride of his life, fighting desperately to keep his seat. Olive uses a lariat to lasso the bull’s hump, but is merely towed along, her spurs digging a deep trench into the ground, within which Olive becomes stuck. The bull circles around, and now charges at the trapped Olive. Time for Popeye’s “pick-me-up”, this time opening the can by using one of the bull’s horn tips as a can opener. The spinach turns him into a human bulldozer, allowing him to dig Olive out of the ground and deposit her back in the stands to safety, then meet the bull’s charge head on, stopping him cold. The bull turns to an easier target, approaching the fake steed of Bluto, and the two flunkies within ditch their bull costume and run for the exit, revealing Bluto’s fraud. Bluto is disqualified, and Popeye receives the Rodeo crown and trophy. But Bluto never loses gracefully, and seeks revenge by releasing all the remaining bulls in the rodeo at once for a stampede. Popeye grabs up a tall pile of spare boards used for building the bleacher grandstands, and tosses them into the air, forming a corral pen around the cattle. Bluto tosses huge bales of hay at Popeye, but Popeye as quickly tosses them back, stating that once again he as to “bale” Bluto out. Bluto is buried under the hay bales – and who should come charging through them but Popeye’s Brahma bull. Bluto is chased out of the arena and down the road, only one step ahead of the beast’s horns. The final scenes of the film have Popeye and Olive parading before the crowd in victory. Olive observes that Bluto is back in the stands. “Even Bluto’s standing to watch us ride by”, she remarks. “That’s because he can’t sit down”, correctly guesses Popeye, as two large band-aids are observed upon Bluto’s soft and tender pants-seat.

---

Scooby’s Bull Fright (The Scooby and Scrappy Doo Show, 12/6/80) is a short one-reeler, with neither mystery to solve, nor the human players of the Scooby Gang in attendance besides Shaggy – although the Mystery Machine makes an appearance for transportation. Dawn breaks upon two familiar figures sleeping on blankets under large sombreros, with the Mystery Machine seen parked in the background. They are, of course, Scooby and Shaggy, who are awakened by a rooster, who crows, but adds the words, “Hey, Senor”. Shaggy thinks it’s still night – because his hat is pulled down far over his eyes. But a call for breakfast from Scrappy Doo opens both of their eyes, as he tosses them the local idea of breakfast fare – hot tamales. As steam pours out of Scooby’s and Shaggy’s ears, Shaggy manages to gasp an inquiry to Scrappy as to where he got this stuff. “Right up there”, says Scrappy, pointing upwards to a grandstand where a vendor sells them to the seated crowd. Scooby and Shaggy suddenly realize that, in the darkness, they mistakenly camped out in the middle of the bull arena.

Of course, the bull makes an appearance right on cue. Scrappy is in his usual fighting mood, and grabs up a small cape, yelling “Toro, Toro. Right this way, ya big bully.” Scooby runs interference, wearing a Keystone Kop hat, and holding up a traffic sign reading “Stop” in the bull’s face. (Never mind that the sign is red, which should make the bull even madder.) Scooby races off with Scrappy, depositing him in the Mystery Machine, as Shaggy tries to start the ignition. Of course, the engine won’t turn instantly over, providing Scrappy with enough time to emerge from the van’s rear, wearing boxing gloves and challenging the bull to put up his dukes. The bull answers the challenge, abandoning his traditional charge, and also appearing in fighter’s gloves. Before the two can mix it up, Shaggy rings a bell, and Scooby places a stool at one side of the arena, as the two convince the bull that round 1 has just ended, and take the bull over to one corner, pep-talking him with phrases such as “He never laid a glove on ya”. Scooby throws a pail of water in the bull’s face, as our heroes drag Scrappy back behind a picador’s barrier. But Scrappy emerges again, this time decked out in the mask of a hockey goalie, and with his own stick, puck, and net. He challenges the bull to try to score a goal on him. Once again, the bull answers the challenge, appearing with a hockey stick larger than Scrappy himself. But Shaggy and Scoob run interference again, blowing a penalty whistle, accusing the bull of crossing the blue line too soon, and giving him four minutes in a penalty box. The diversion again gives them time to drag Scrappy away.

With the Mystery Machine’s ignition still not cooperating, our heroes attempt to make a getaway, disguised in an old cow hide. As in any bullfight cartoon, the bull is smitten by the fake female, but a kiss from him is more than Scooby in the fake cow head can stand, who reveals himself to spit away the flavor and say “Yuck”. Scrappy somehow winds up inside the head, and still utters verbal challenges to the bull, charging him, and dragging Shaggy and Scooby along in the rear of the costume. Roles become reversed, as the bull picks up a cape, and plays toreador for a pass of the charging Scrappy. Scooby and Shaggy crash into a wall, while Scrappy breaks free of the head, and leaps on the bull’s back, seeking to ride him as if in a rodeo. The bull begins to buck, but Scrappy remains astride him. Shaggy and Scooby duck out of the galloping bull’s way, as Scrappy leans over the top of the bull’s head. “You still wanna play games, eh? Well try this one.” He leans over the bull’s brow, using both front paws to shut the bull’s eyes. “Guess who?”, he says. Unable to see, the bull charges through an arena archway, and a loud crash is heard within. Scooby and Shaggy presume the worst, but Scrappy emerges from the archway unharmed, leading the bull, who is bandaged and in traction. The boys find themselves strewn with roses tossed from the stands, and Scrappy still wants more. “We can’t quit while we’re ahead”, he declares. “That’s what you think”, answers Shaggy, as the Mystery Machine’s engine finally turns over, and the three speed off into the Mexican sunset.

• “Scooby’s Bull Fright” is on Dailymotion

NEXT WEEK: If you can stand it – A few more H-B items, and miscellany from other studios.