Today our sports spotlight shines on a group of cartoons from the early 1950’s. While one of these features a sizable focus on baseball, the others all seem to find ways to sneak the sport in for quicker blackout-style one-gag purposes. Thus, the actual storylines diverge in a broad variety of directions. We’ll see appearances by Porky and Daffy, Droopy, Tom and Jerry, Little Audrey, Goofy, and a number of further at bats for Bugs Bunny. Enough warm-up. Let’s dust off the ol’ plate, and begin.
Before leaving the 1940’s entirely, a request for any available information is in order concerning a film believed to possibly be missing in action. Though never officially listed on Jerry Beck’s early list of titles missing from the Columbia vaults, there has been no sign to date of the late Cinecolor Phantasy installment, Short Snorts on Sports (6/3/48 – Alex Lovy, dir.), It would make sense that such a title might likely include a baseball sequence, but no data seems available as to the cartoon’s content. IMDB credits both Ken Carpenter and Daws Butler with narration, and a Columbia Cartoon Wiki page claims this was Daws’s first cartoon credit (though I have no information to confirm these rumors). One wonders if this gave the studio another chance to retread old animation from Hollywood Picnic, or whether Lovy might have dug into his old bag of tricks and reused any gag from Woody Woodpecker’s The Screwball. If anybody, anywhere, can shed any light about this cartoon, please contribute!
Slightly out of chronological order, missed by last week’s article, is Boobs in the Woods (Warner, Porky Pig and Daffy Duck, 1/28/50 – Robert McKimson, dir.) – An essentially plotless cartoon, needing nothing but to pair up Daffy Duck with Porky Pig, disturbing the swine’s peaceful day of painting and fishing in the country, in order to fill the screen with six-plus minutes of lunacy and mayhem. Daffy doesn’t need provocation, vanity, or greed to provide a motivation – he is in the purest form the “crazy darnfool duck” he was created to be in the 1930’s. He even sings a production number, similar to his “Merry Go Round Broke Down” in Daffy Duck and Egghead, emphasizing his basic insanity. “Oh you can’t bounce a meatball, though try with all your might. Turn on the radio. I want to fly a kite. Good evening Frien-n-n-nds!”
Daffy spends early portions of the film destroying Porky’s painting with claims of property rights, insisting that he doesn’t want various sectors of the landscape painted, and bickering over whether Porky has the sufficient licenses for his activities (down to a license to sell hair tonic to bald eagles in Omaha, Nebraska), Porky finally throws a rock at the “webfoot maniac”. Daffy instantly is wearing a catcher’s mask, talking up the usual rapid-fire chatter to Porky as pitcher, and tosses the stone back to Porky, telling him to tag the runner at second to stop a steal. Porky, in confusion, looks around for a runner – but, too late. The runner is Daffy, who slides between his legs. Suddenly, Daffy is delivering more coach’s chatter to Porky calling him “Di Maggio”, and shouting for him to steal home, as it means the game. “Slide, Di Maggio, SLIDE!!”. he screams. Porky runs at full speed, and breaks into a slide on command – but then turns to the audience while in motion. “Hey! What am I sliding for? I’m not Di Maggio. My name is P-P-P-P-…” He finds himself sliding not for a plate, but into a patch of boggy, shallow marsh, covering him in gooey marsh bottom as he completes the slide. Porky appropriately rephrases his attempt to state his name, into “…M-M-M-Mud.”
Porky begins to pack up, determined to get out before he winds up as crazy as the duck. Daffy still can’t resist further pranks, and rips out the motor from Porky’s car, hiding under the hood. Porky turns the starter key, and hears only bad vocal impersonations of the sounds of a sputtering engine. He takes a small peek under the hood, and spots Daffy in action. Leaping in upon the duck, a fight ensues within the engine chamber – but only Porky emerges, returning to the driver’s seat, and again turning the key. Daffy’s bad vocal impressions are heard again, but this time, Porky pulls upon a button on the dashboard marked “Choke”. We cut to a view within the engine chamber. A mechanical hand reaches out, clutching Daffy by the throat in a stranglehold. Daffy has electrical wires attached to his head, and his feet are placed upon the drive shaft, pedaling the spots where the pistons should e impacting like the propelling of a child’s kiddie-car. The car begins to move. Daffy protests to the audience that Porky has no right to do this to him. A small card emerges on a pole through a slot in the car’s firewall, displaying before Daffy’s eyes another of Porky’s limitless licenses – a permit to use Daffy Duck as motor. Porky closes with an aside to the audience: ‘When we get to California, I’ll have his v-v-valves ground.”
• “Boobs In the Woods” is on Facebook – CLICK HERE!
The Chump Champ (MGM, Droopy, 11/4/50 – Tex Avery, dir.) – The All Ham-erican Sports Carnival is commencing in a huge stadium, to crown a King and Queen of Sports in an athletic challenge that seems to cover all manner of sports, including non-Olympic, spectator and team events. The King of Sports will receive as a reward a kiss from the Queen of Sports. There appear to be only two contestants on the male side – Droopy and Butch (or is he named Spike?), the latter here going under the one-time name of Gorgeous Gorrilawitz. The girls’ side of the event appears to have several contestants, and Butch imagines the shapeliest of these as the one who will give him the kiss as King.
Among the many events is a brief interlude of two-man baseball. Droopy stands at bat, while Gorillawitz pitches. He substitutes a small lit bomb, painted white, for the real baseball, then sails a pitch toward the plate. Droopy socks it for a comebacker, right into Gorillawitz’s glove, where it immediately blasts his head into a charred, swept-back mess.
By the final event, Droopy is making a clean sweep of everything. But in a final track race where contestants are directed to follow the white line, Gorillawitz sets up a fake carbinval booth directly upon the track, posing as Madame Zazu (though sign on his door incorrectly says “Zaza”), handwriting analyst. He (she?) has Droopy sign his name on a piece of paper, partly hidden by another sheet over the top. The hidden portion of the page on which he signs bears the confession, “I cheated in every event.” Gorillawitz shows this to the judge, and steals away Droopy’s crown by disqualification. But there’s still the matter of the kiss ftom the Queen of Sports. A curtain rises to reveal the female champ. The figure is alluring – all the way up to the neck. But the face is that of the ugliest of the entire pack of competitors – a real dog of a dog, with buck teeth and a goofy voice. Her invitation to “Kiss me, my King” sends Gorillawitz screaming for the exits, dropping the crown. Droopy appears, picking up the crown and telling us, “You know what, cheaters never win.” Then, he places the crown on his own head – so oversized, it falls past his entire body to his feet, as the scene irises out.
• “The Chump Champ” can be viewed on the Internet Archive – CLICK HERE!
Cue Ball Cat (MGM, Tom and Jerry, 11/25/50 – William Hanma/Joseph Barbera, dir.) – In the wee small hours, when the pool hall is closed, Tom the cat has the run of the place to himself, honing his skills as a self-taught pool shark and wizard of the trick shot. Too bad he has no company against whom to play for a friendly and lucrative wager. Actually, upon this night, he discovers that he is not quite alone. The table he has selected for this evening’s game happens to be occupied by Jerry, who has set up a small sardine-can bed deep within one of the corner pockets. Jerry is rudely awakened when a 10-ball lands in his lap, bounces him out of bed, and rolls him down the ball chute to a side rack, where he is squashed into an hourglass shape as he is compressed between two balls. Jerry appears upon the table to defend his possessory rights, but Tom clearly has the upper hand – for a time. Tom bowls over Jerry with a column of balls performing multiple-cushion bank shots. He chalks up Jerry’s head and uses him on the end of his pool cue to strike the 8-ball. He lets Jerry try to balance atop a rolling ball like a circus performer, then sets fire to a ball-racking triangle, forcing Jerry to jump through the equivalent of a flaming hoop. But Jerry finally begins to fight back, bending Tom’s cue like a slender sapling, then releasing its end to whack Tom in the head.
Tom begins throwing pool balls at Jerry with a pitcher’s windup, as if in a baseball game. At the opposite end of the table, Jerry lifts another pool cue, holding it from the tapered end and swinging the wide end over his shoulder like a baseball bat. Two balls are batted back to Tom simultaneously, landing in his eye sockets. As Tom opens his eyelids, the numbers upon the two balls appear to be the irises of his different-color eyes. Tom shakes out the balls, and pitches again – but with a wink to the audience. Before Jerry can swing, Tom ducks down behind the table edge, and reappears wearing a fielder’s glove. He raises his arm high to catch Jerry’s hit, but has the ball pierce a hole right through the palm of both hand and glove. In the typical manner of cartoon-physics instant-healing, by the next shot, both Tom’s hand and the glove are whole again, and Tom launches one more determined pitch at Jerry. Jerry swings so hard, he gets a “broken bat” fly into the outfield, his cue stick cracking in two. Tom fades back, back, back, wending his way around three rows of pool tables in attempt to stay ahead of the ball, with glove raised. He reaches the far end of the hall, and finally lays glove upon the ball – but the impact of the collision drives him back, with a crash into a soda pop dispensing machine. The soda is dispensed by this model in bottles, and the malfunctioning machine spits out four bottles onto the floor, followed by a fifth ejection from its insides, accompanied by the sound-effect of a burp. The last item ejected is Tom, with a bottle cap pressed upon his head, and compacted into the shape of a giant bottle.
Battle resumes at the table, with Tom flooding the table’s pockets with water from a fire hose. Jerry is gushed out, but briefly evades capture by tightrope walking with a pool bridge across a scorekeeping wire. Tom sends another column of balls after Jerry, which pursue him from pocket to pocket like an express train. But Jerry whacks Tom on the head to get him to open his mouth, forcing him to swallow all the balls. A bent pool cue with a sharp metal pin attached at its tip is rerouted by Jerry through the table pockets to curve back upon Tom’s rear, causing the cat to leap into the air, then land stuck inside a corner pocket. Jerry closes the film by re-racking for a new game, and launching a shot for a break that sinks all the balls but one into the other five pockets, but rolls the last ball directly toward Tom’s protruding head. Another whack on the cranium applied to Tom with the pool cue, and Tom swallows the final ball, for a perfect run of the table.
• “Cue Ball Cat” is on Facebook – CLICK HERE!
Law and Audrey (Famous/Paramount, Noveltoon (Little Audrey), 5/23/52 – I. Sparber, dir.) – Audrey is playing a two-player game of pitch-and-bat baseball with her puppy Pal on a sidewalk in her neighborhood. Pal is launching pitches by means of a teeterboard, jumping on one end to sail the ball to be hit by Audrey’s bat. Pal is supposed to field, too, catching fly balls with his mouth, but one of Audrey’s hits gets more distance than he can handle, and sails over Pal’s head. It strikes the door of a police phone on the side of a telephone pole, in use by an officer. The door slams on the cop’s head, compressing it into a rectangular box shape. “Who fired that shot? If I get my hands on that wise guy…” snarls the cop. The gentle voice of Audrey is suddenly heard, politely asking for her ball back. It is all the cop can do to hold in his temper, bottling ip his words until his face turns beet red, so as not to vent his anger improperly upon a little girl. Composing himself briefly, he bows and graciously returns the ball to Audrey, but then his temper begins to flare again, and he shouts at her “GO AND PLAY IN THE PARK!!”
Audrey can’t understand why the officer was so angry, as she and Pal enter the park. Audrey tosses the ball into the air for herself, and bats it for Pal to catch. But Pal misses again, and the ball sails right out the park gate, in a collision course with – you know who. The cop zooms into the park with a fury, and pries from one eye Audrey’s baseball, revealing a perfect black eye. “Why don’t you be more CAREFUL??”. shouts the cop again, grabbing Audrey’s bat and tossing it upon the walkway, then tossing down the ball from his eye. This just isn’t the cop’s day, as the ball rebounds off the bat as if receiving another solid hit, and bounces straight into the officer’s other eye – giving him a matched set of shiners. “Baseball’s too dangerous. Play something else!” he orders.
Audrey tries to find something else to do, visiting the animal area in the Park Zoo. She pauses at a water fountain to drink, then uses one finger over the water outlet to direct a stream of water into Pal’s thirsty throat. A tall giraffe in a nearby enclosure smacks his lips at the sight, visibly thirsty too. Audrey changes angle with her finger, directing a drink high in the air to the giraffe. While laughing to herself at what she is doing, she fails to pay attention to her aim, and accidentally misdirects the water stream into the sleeve of the policeman’s uniform, flooding his shirt. Now the cop orders her to get out of the park. Audrey is tired of being bossed around. She reminds the cop that he told her to play in the park in the first place. She states she is a taxpayer (actually, she’d seem a little young for that, unless her Hollywood salary and comic book revenues are being reported). and insists she is staying. Thus begins a chase, which leads to an improbable incident on the park lake. Audrey attempts to flee with Pal in a motorboat, but the boat springs a leak. It sinks to the bottom, but all Audrey has to do is use a bailing pail underwater, and the craft rises again above the surface – in fact, about four feet above the water’s surface when Audrey keeps bailing too long. Miraculously, Audrey doesn’t even have to apply a patch to the leak to keep the boat from just sinking again! Meanwhile, the cop, who has followed in a rowboat, undergoes what appears to be a one-line change of voice. While his other lines seem to be provided by Jackson Beck, a line where he believes “She’s drowning” sounds exactly like Jack Mercer’s later voicing of Rock Bottom for Felix the Cat. The cop dives in the water for a rescue – forgetting he can’t swim himself. As he calls for a rescue, and seems to be going down for the third time, Audrey releases the zoo elephants from their enclosure (convenient that these zoo gates don’t even require a key for a kid to open), and leads them to the lake edge. They all insert their trunks in the water and begin to drink. Before the cop can sputter his last breath, they have drained the lake dry, leaving the officer safe on the sandy bottom.
The grateful officer has a change of heart, and rewards Audrey for her timely rescue, by cordoning off with ropes the four corners of a heavily-trafficked city intersection, leaving the traffic to sit completely blocked and with fuming tempers, thus providing Audrey with her own private baseball park. The honking horns of the surrounding drivers will not phase the cop from accomplishing his good deed/ “Quiet! I’m busy!” he snarls at them, reserving his fiery temper for all but Audrey. Finally, he pitches another ball to her, with a friendly shout of “Come on, Audrey. Hit it a mile.” Audrey socks it – and for a moment, it looks like disaster has struck again, as the ball lands straight upon the cop’s mouth of choppers. Audrey gasps, expecting the cop to revert to his old fierce form again. But it is a case of no harm, no foul – as the cop pulls the ball from his mouth, taking his teeth with it – which are merely a false set of complete dentures. With puckered gums, the cop for once laughs the incident off – and, of course, Audrey laughs too, for the iris out.
Two Bugs Bunny cartoons receive extremely-brief honorable mention for repeat usage of past material. Hare We Go (Warner, 1/6/51 – Robert McKimson, dir.) places Bugs in 1492 Spain, helping Columbus to prove that the world is round – with Porky Pig’s old gag from Kristopher Kolumbus Jr. of pitching a baseball into orbit over one horizon, then catching it on return flight from the opposite horizon, covered in souvenir labels from the lands it has passed through. The remainder of the film has no further baseball references, documenting the Santa Maria’s voyage with Bugs as mascot, and a mutinous crew who believes Bugs is bad luck. It’s Online Here.
His Hare-Raising Tale (Warner, 8/11/51, I. (Friz) Freleng, dir,) is a collection of clips from pre-1947 Warner cartoons, frameworked by Bugs showing them to his nephew Clyde as recollections from a family photo album. An extended clip is featured from Baseball Bugs, claimed to be the 7th game of the World Series against the Boston Argyle Sox. The clip fails to include the payoff catch of the would-be home run on the Umpire State Building. Instead, the clip ends as if Bugs lost the game from said hit. He merely dodges detail to Clyde about what happened next by glossing over the subject – “After I got back from the foreign legion…” – Watch it HERE.
Father’s Day Off (Disney/RKO, Goofy, 3/28/53 – Jack Kinney, dir.) – A classic manic day in the life of suburban father Goofy (by this time properly voiced by Pinto Colvig instead of the “everyman” voices appearing in earlier 1950’s cartoons). It places the Goof in a classic sitcom setting, one which had been well-explored in animation at least as far back as the late 1930’s, in Terrytoons’ “Housewife Herman”, and to a degree in the Captain and the Kids’ “Blue Monday” for MGM – taking over the household chores while Mother’s away. However, Goofy’s approach feels fresh, and the gags, largely original, come fast and furious, such that a comprehensive overview of the film without leaving it to the viewing would probably take up a whole article by itself. Let’s just say that using the word “chaos” to describe the end results of Goofy’s day might be putting it mildly.
Two gags relate to baseball. A clever one has Goofy’s son (referred to as “George”, apparently as a “Junior” to his dad, who is often referred to in the “everyman” films by the formal name of George Geef – what happened tp “Dippy Dawg”?) engages in playing baseball with friends somewhere behind the house. Goofy’s housecleaning is suddenly disturbed by the sound of shattering glass, as Junior enters the house at full run, carrying a baseball glove. He enters a room where a broken window denotes the source of the sound, a baseball lying on the floor below the broken lower window pane. Junior picks up the ball, and tosses it back to the fielders outside, by way of route directly through the upper window pane, smashing it also. In a clever choice of words denoting double-meaning, Junior sums up the play before racing back outside: “That’s TWO out!’ Later, Goofy seeks out the vacuum cleaner, in a bedroom closet which is neatly but completely packed with a forward wall of linens, butting up right to the line of the interior of the closet door. Goofy jams an arm in-between columns of towels, and manages to squirm his way between them, disappearing completely hidden within the closet’s interior. A moment later, Junior comes along, in search of a new baseball bat. He also reaches his arm in between the towels, feeling around until he recognizes the feel of what he seeks. He pulls his arm out, carrying the bat, but finds an electrical cord mixed up and wound around it. Junior unwinds the cord, then, not wanting o leave it just loosely dangling, inserts its plug-end into a nearby wall socket. As Junior departs, the wall of towels and linens bursts apart, as Goofy emerges, now riding upon the back of the electrically-charged vacuum across the room, and crashing into furniture at the room’s other end.
Though not baseball-related, perhaps the most memorable gag of the film is its running gag – something that was “adult” enough that it’s surprising Disney let it through, and that the censors didn’t bat an eye over. When the milkman knocks at the kitchen door to make morning delivery, Goofy opens it to receive a surprise greeting. The milkman, expecting the missus to be the one opening the door, greets Goofy with eyes closed, and a prolonged, smacking kiss on the lips! He then turns and departs, oblivious to the fact he has kissed the wrong spouse. Goofy stands briefly stunned, the pupils of his eyes shrunken in puzzlement. Then, he shrugs the incident off with his own rationale of self-explanation, remarking to himself, “Friendly cuss!” This keeps happening again and again as various delivery persons appear throughout the day. One delivering laundry is already puckered up to receive his kiss, bit gets hit in the face with a flood of water from Junior letting the tub overflow, shrinking the missus’s dress he is returning. Goofy is starting to get the hang of it when he hears a woman’s voice at the back door, and he too puckers up, waiting for the usual in a more attractive setting. Instead, a baby bottle is inserted between his puckered lips by the woman, who wants someone to mind her baby for a while. We have to wonder from all this what kind of a private life Mrs. Goofy is leading, and just how many paramours she is stringing along while Goofy is away at work. Not exactly the standard behavioral pattern for Disney heroines or princesses, and not even common of Disney villainesses, until perhaps comparatively-recent characters such as Ursula or Megara.
• “Father’s Day Off” is on DailyMotion CLICK HERE!
Southern Fried Rabbit (Warner, Bugs Bunny, 5/2/53 – I. (Friz) Freleng, dir.) – Things aren’t looking too good in Bugs’s Northern U.S. home. Weather conditions have turned for the worse, and the farmland countryside looks gray and barren. Carrot health is at an all-time low, puny in size and literally wilting in Bugs’s hand. However, things are very different in Southern climes, as Bugs spots a newspaper headline reading “Record Carrot Crop In Alabama”. This is enough to make Bugs “Alabamy bound”.
Sure ‘nuff, the land just across the Mason-Dixon line is lush with crops and vegetation. Bugs attempts to cross, but, in quote of Stephen Foster, finds his head “bending low”, as a shot grazes his ears. The shooter is Yosemite Sam, dressed in the full uniform of a rebel soldier, and flying a Confederate flag. With pistols blazing, he orders the “Yankee” rabbit to get back on his own side, then realizes he has broken protocol by pursuing the rabbit a few steps over the line. “Gotta burn my boots. They touched Yankee soil.” Waving a white rag, Bugs approaches again for a parlay and explanation of Sam’s odd behavior. Sam was left with orders during the Civil War to hold the Mason-Dixon line – and is still holding it. Even though Bugs tells him the war ended almost 90 years ago, Sam replies “I’m no clockwatcher”, and refuses to let his guard down until relieved by General Lee.
Bugs finds himself resorting to his usual range of disguises, and bag of tricks – in attempt to pass Sam. In a scene edited for years, Bugs resorts to blackface, but gives himself away when Sam asks him to play something peppy on the banjo. Bugs reflexively begins strumming and singing a rendition of “Yankee Doodle”. Bugs also poses as a Confederate General, putting Sam through a close-order marching drill to the edge of a well, then ordering him to “fall in.” Then, Bugs poses as a Southern Belle, in a performance worthy of Scarlett O’Hara. Finally, he appears at the door of the Southern plantation on horseback, with head bandaged as if a wounded Southern warrior. In exhausted tones, he reports to Sam the distressing news that the Yankees are in Chattanooga, then pretends to faint dead away. Hearing this outrageous turn of events, Sam yells “Charge!”, and races over the horizon to offer his services at the battlefront. The scene changes for the final shot of the film to a baseball stadium, where a sign announces an exhibition game between the Yankees and Chattanooga. The camera pans down from the sign to reveal numerous pairs of eyes huddled in the darkness of a dugout doorway, as Sam stands outside it with guns drawn, uttering the challenge: “The first dang Yankee that sets foot outta that dugout gets his HAID blown off!”
• “Southern Fried Rabbit” is on Internet Archive, uncut, CLICK HERE!
Duck, Rabbit, Duck (Warner, Bugs Bunny, 10/3.53 – Charles M. (Chuck) Jones, dir,) The third, wind-up episode to the Jones trilogy of Bugs’s and Daffy’s perennial battle over what season it is and under what conditions they can each be hunted, to fool ever-confused hunter Elmer Fudd. This one is set in the dead of winter, with Elmer dressed in snow gear. Rabbits may still be in season – but what about ducks? In fact, what is a duck still doing here in the ice and snow, instead of flying South as Daffy was frequently forced to do? Certainly if it is still duck season, the hunters aren’t going to have much to shoot at, straggler Daffy being the only available target! The war of words begins, with gags such as Daffy calling Bugs a dirty dog, and Bugs retaliating by calling Daffy a dirty skunk. “I’m a dirty skunk?” Daffy repeats, in tones angered by a wounded reputation – while Bugs holds up a sign to Elmer reading “Dirty Skunk Season.” BLAM goes the gun, and spinning loose goes Daffy’s beak, again and again. Even when Daffy takes Elmer aside, and gets him coached to ignore any more signs, and only listen to him, Bugs thinks one step ahead, disguising himself with a shower cap to cover his ears, and a fake duck bill. Daffy leaps out from his hiding place, instructing Elmer, “Shoot the duck!” Elmer does – the real black one who is standing directly in front of him. Finally, Bugs appears in a new disguise – that of a Game Warden. Elmer, at wits’ end from all the confusion, begs for clarification. “I hope you can help me. I’ve been told I can shoot wabbits and goats and pigeons and mongooses and dirty skunks and ducks. Could you tell me what season it weally is??” “Why, certainly m’boy”, responds Bigs, holding out in his hand Elmer’s new prey. “It’s baseball season.” Elmer’s eyes give a twisted look to the camera, clearly denoting he has lost his sanity entirely. “Here boy, go get it”, yells Bugs, as if commanding a dog, tossing the ball onto the snow. Elmer takes a rifle shot at it, knocking the ball many yards further away onto the next snowbank. Another shot, and another, keep driving the ball farther and farther away, as Elmer relentlessly pursues it. The ball and himself disappear over the horizon. (Thank goodness it wasn’t basketball season or football season, as one shot would have deflated the ball, spoiling the closing gag. Hockey season? Well, maybe a puck would have worked.) Of course, with the hunter gone, Daffy finally admits that it’s really dick season – and takes shot and shell from a bevy of hunters lying in wait for him. What else can Daffy say to Bugs but, “You’re despicable.”
• “Duck, Rabbit, Duck” is on Internet Archive – CLICK HERE!
NEXT WEEK: Warner, Disney, and Terrytoons are among the opening batting lineup.
