As the story goes, Warner Directors Chuck Jones and Writer Michael Maltese were meeting to discuss storylines when Executive Producer Eddie Selzer, a dour and humorless man by all accounts, intruded. “I don’t want any gags about bullfighting, bullfights aren’t funny!” he thundered. Having issued this decree, Selzer walked off. Jones and Maltese grinned at each other and set to work on the 1953 cartoon Bully for Bugs, featuring Warner’s biggest star as a bullfighter.
Did Selzer care that bullfighting has a long history in classic animated cartoons, and every studio of note produced at least one film in the genre? Notable bullfighters included Popeye, Woody Woodpecker, Goofy, Mighty Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Gandy Goose, Droopy, Heckle and Jeckle, Casper, Mutt and Jeff, Tom and Jerry, Oswald the Rabbit, Flip the Frog, Happy Hooligan, and the Pink Panther. Pardon me, Mr. Selzer, but nearly major cartoon star would beg to differ! This two-part study will cover all the films Eddie Selzer would have refused to make.
Let’s begin way back in 1918 with Throwing the Bull, a movie released by Hearst/Vitagraph and directed by Gregory La Cava. The star was Happy Hooligan, created by Frederick Opper. This cartoon may no longer exist, but it may have been the first bullfighting cartoon ever released.
Four years later, in 1922, two other silent stars, Mutt and Jeff, attempt to win a $10,000 prize by defeating a “mad bull.” Jeff manages to do so, but we never see how!
Bull-ero was directed by Frank Moser as a Paul Terry-Toon. This is the first cartoon featuring a gag where medics catch matadors thrown out of the arena on a stretcher. (I will note gags familiar to all bullfighting cartoons as we continue).
1928 saw Oswald the Lucky Rabbit star in the sixth Walter Lantz cartoon, Bull-Oney, after he was appropriated from Disney. This cartoon is lost, but we do know that Walter Lantz and Tom Palmer directed. We also know that it involved a bullfight featuring Oswald.
Disney entered the ring in 1929 with El Terrible Toreador, directed by Walt Disney (who also provided voice work). This early Silly Symphony featured a saucy waitress who caught a tip flipped into her bodice, and oh, yes, a bullfight! The bull, looking much like Clarabelle Cow, gets into a boxing match and then a game of pat-a-cake with the matador. They both do a twee dance together before things get serious, and the matador, in a somewhat discomfiting scene, pulls the bull inside out, ending the fight.
1933 spelled the end of the road for Ub Iwerk’s Flip the Frog, but Flip did manage to star in a bullfight cartoon in his final year. Bulloney was directed by Iwerks for Celebrity Pictures. Matador San Pedro Caramba believes himself to be the best at everything, including romance. Flip wishes he could be the same. When a cute senorita (animated by Shamus Culhane) prefers Flip to San Pedro, he is persuaded by buddies to kidnap Flip and toss him in the bull ring. Bull clobbers matador, and Flip is next up. He ties fircrackers to the bull’s tail to enrage it, and the fight is on. Flip fires the bull from a cannon (!), causing the bull to utter “Damn!” The bull releases an entire herd (we’ll see this in other toons) but Flip runs them into a livestock train. Behind the train is a group of docile cows, btu Flip flees them in terror.
On to 1935 and another Terrytoon directed by Frank Moser, The Bull Fight, starring Puddy the Pup. Puddy serenades a cute señorita on a balcony before they depart for a bullfight, where a bull is seen training for the fight. This is the first cartoon featuring the gag where the bull uses a grindstone to sharpen his horns. He also wears pants and a belt throughout the picture! Also, a first gag: The bull gathers speed with train sound effects. And another: The bull has a cheering section. Puddy ends up in the ring, and the angry matador releases a herd of bulls. Puddy, swinging the bull by the tail like a bat, hits all of them out of the arena. (Spoiler for Part 2: This scene would be repainted and reused for the 1946 Mighty Mouse bullfighting cartoon Throwing the Bull).
1937 brings the first Warner Bros cartoon to the ring. Picador Porky, directed by Tex Avery, brings Porky Pig to the role of toreador. Sort of. This cartoon represents Mel Blanc’s earliest work for WB (though not as “Porky”). Porky (the obese version) and two scruffy buddies roll into a riotous Mexican town on the day of a big bullfight that awards a 1000-peso prize to the winner. Porky and pals disguise themselves as a toreador and a bull, intending to fake a fight. When the real bull is released, funny Avery gags, including the bull chasing Porky around the frame of the film, enliven things. Porky’s pals re-emerge to clobber the bull, but in the end, it’s the bull who gets the prize!
I’ll be back with Part Two of this series tomorrow. Hold off trying to second guess all the bull fighting cartoons after 1937 for twenty-four hours. We’ll see Gandy Goose, Mighty Mouse, Droopy, Woody Woodpecker, and, yup, Porky Pig again as they tackle ferocious bulls and woo lovely senioritas!
