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.

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.