Cartoons About Cartoons (Part 16)

A wild bunch of episodes today from 1947 and ‘48, including a quartet of Tex Avery adventures into the surreal (two of which are among his most controversial), most of the theatrical history of perhaps Disney’s most “looney” character, and side-visits with Bugs Bunny and Little Lulu, as the fourth wall again falls like the walls of Jericho.

Clown of the Jungle (Disney/RKO, Donald Duck, 6/20/47 – Jack Hannah, dir.) – A Bird Lover’s Photographic Expedition causes Donald Duck to pitch camp in the remote South American jungle. This gives him cause to meet up with a strange creature he had previously encountered within the “Aves Raras” (rare birds) home movie reel he screened in a segment of “The Three Caballeros” – the Aracuan Bird, whom a narrator describes as the slap-happy “clown of the jungle”. It appears the Disney staff took considerable liberties in the design of this character, bearing little resemblance to anything in nature, and merely invented from their own fertile minds. Or, more accurately, it may be that they “borrowed” aspects of the character from the fertile minds of another set of creators – as much of the bird’s facial features, and his overall zaniness, bear a strong resemblance to Woody Woodpecker. Of course, Woody bears strong resemblance in mannerisms and voice to the original Ben Hardaway model of “Bugs’” Bunny, who in turn bore some resemblance to Daffy Duck – so how far back should we really trace?) Suffice it to say that the Aracuan – the only bird of the jungle to wear a signature human-style horizontal-striped shirt – is a total, out-of-control screwball, who will perform any impossible stunt for a laugh. He is perhaps the only classic-era Disney character to entirely defy the boundaries of realism, knowing no limits to his madness excepting those of the imagination. In this regard, he seems to have been Disney’s answer to Tex Avery and Robert Clampett – almost as if the dodo bird and Screwy Squirrel walked in for a visit on the set at the same time. While the Aracuan’s appearances were few in the studio’s history (another one of which is discussed below), he was well-remembered enough to serve as the model for a later character developed as a screen spokesman for Seven-Up television commercials produced by Disney (Fresh-Up Freddie), and would make a reappearance with Donald in a television cartoon produced for ABC’s “Mickey Mouse Works”, the hilarious “Bird-Brained Donald”. Most recently, he was given a recurring role as the caretaker (with an unbreakable lifetime contract) of a cabin inherited by Donald in the Disney Channel mini-series, “Legend of the Three Caballeros”. (By the way, the Aracuan’s original appearance in “Three Caballeros” deserves mention, where he briefly runs out of the picture frame a la Avery’s wolf, and also uses a magic pencil to draw multiple railroad tracks to split the cars of a train to Baia apart from one another).

As Donald attempts to pose a sleeping crane for a photo shoot, the Aracuan keeps randomly walking across the screen within camera range, muttering in shrill voice an indecipherable South American tune about himself, and sometimes popping up as if from the very edges of the screen at stage left, right, and upside down from the top. After repeatedly disrupting Donald’s shots, the Aracuan takes hold of the crane’s wing, spins the crane around, then strikes his own pose against the crane’s side, while the only part of the crane remaining visible is his rear end. Donald has had enough, and picks up a club-shaped stick of wood to knock some sense into the Aracuan. But the zany bird doesn’t take easily to disapproval, and begins weeping rivers of tears at Donald disliking him. The bird decides he mist discipline himself for arousing Donald’s ire, and tries to do so through attempted suicide – in overkill fashion similar to a suicide scene from a previous season’s Tex Avery installment, “What Price Fleadom” at MGM – using poison bottles, an axe, a revolver, and a hangman’s noose (with which the bird holds himself suspended in mid-air by his own arm). Donald relents, telling the bird he’s forgiven, and shakes the bird’s hand before attempting to shoo him away. The Aracuan has never had a handshake before, and admires the custom. He suddenly returns to Donald, to shake Donald’s foot, then the leg of Donald’s camera tripod, causing Donald and the camera to crash to the ground. The Aracuan concludes his overtures of friendship by shaking Donald’s bill.

Next, the Aracuan intrudes upon a perfect shot of a quartet of hummingbirds, appearing among them, dressed in the hat of a Russian Cossack, and converting the hummingbirds’ number and choreography into a vigorous Russian dance. When Donald takes a swing at the Aracuan with his camera, the bird disappears behind a rock, then reappears, wearing a fireman’s hat and mounted on a ladder, to squirt Donald in the face with a seltzer bottle. Donald’s temper rages, while the bird, similar to Daffy Duck in “Porky and Daffy”, climbs aboard an imaginary motorcycle, and goes speeding off through the jungle. Donald gives chase, until the invisible cycle hits a rock, and the Aracuan goes soaring, landing with his beak planted into the ground. Donald appears with a sledge hammer, and begins to drive the Aracuan into the ground like a stake. But his hammer blows are soon joined by the blows of a second hammer, wielded by – the Aracuan, who appears in duplicate alongside Donald, driving the still-visible feet of his previous self into the ground. To make sure the hammered bird doesn’t get loose again, Donald places a large rock over the buried bird’s feet. The new Aracuan now with Donald on the surface helps out, by handing Donald more rocks to pile on – then a stack of cut logs. The camera shifts to reveal the efforts of Donald’s labors. The stones and logs have taken the shape of a humble domicile, for which the Aracuan provides the crowning touch – a sign reading “Home Sweet Home”. As soon as the sign is hung, the Aracuan disappears into the doorway of the house, then emerges, dressed in the apron and cap of a busy housewife. The Aracuan hands Donald a lunchbox, plants a kiss on Donald’s beak, and waves goodbye, sending Donald off to work. Donald marches happily away, ready to face a day’s labors, when realization breaks through that he has been made a fool of once again.

A new, oddly vigorous species of bird appears, attracting Donald’s attention for a new camera shot. Donald fails to notice that the new bird is attached to a string, which little by little is pulled upwards, causing the “bird” to climb the side of a tall tree. Donald matches the bird’s climbing moves, by repeatedly re-adjusting and raising the legs of his camera tripod. At the top of the tree stands the Aracuan, reeling in the line attached to the fake bird with a fishing reel. Just as the puppet bird is raised out of camera view, the Aracuan disposes of his rod and reel, and instead holds out over Donald’s head a large wooden mallet. The Aracuan quickly exchanges a nod to the audience watching outside the theater screen, as if to acknowledge to them, “You know what’s coming.” Donald rises to the top of the tree, and smacks his head into the mallet, briefly knocking himself unconscious. The Aracuan places in Donald’s mouth a lit cigar. It is a trick one, which ignites at one end like a rocket flare, exerting jet force to zoom Donald quickly to the very bottom of the tree. Donald, still astride his camera mount, is saved from a crash by the tripod legs stopping their movement when fully compressed, breaking Donald’s fall. Donald, reawakened, issues a sigh of relief, and takes a puff on what is left of the cigar. Now it chooses to explode. Donald s left in a crater, his tripod obliterated, and unspooled film trailing out the side panel of his camera. Suddenly, the film is speedily wound up by the Aracuan, who hastily stuffs the film spool back inside the camera (through undoubtedly useless from being exposed to light). He has spooled the film badly, and portions of it stick out everywhere from the camera’s closed side panel. So the Aracuan takes a pair of scissors, cuts at the protruding film loops, and fashions the broken film fragments to resemble the petals of a sunflower, handing the whole mess back to Donald.

More nuttiness follows. A pair of sunglasses worn by the Aracuan emit spring-loaded boxing gloves upon Donald’s chin, A magic pencil performs the old gag of drawing a doorway into a boulder, allowing the Aracuan to pass, but Donald to slam into the drawing upon the rock. The Aracuan magically appears from a street elevator built into bare jungle ground, armed with a camera and tripod of his own, and a backdrop cutout of the type used by novelty photo shops at various beachfront amusement parks, which, when placed in front of Donald, makes him appear to be in a striped bathing suit at the seashore. The Aracuan squeezes the camera shutter ball, and another jet of water squirts from the lens into Donald’s face. The Aracuan performs another lap around the screen, muttering his song in a sort of victory celebration, until, to his surprise, Donald appears under a tarpaulin, pointing with one hand to a mount underneath the canvas covering, as if finally willing to take the Aracuan’s picture. The flattered Aracuan instantly reappears, wearing a British bowler hat, and strikes a majestic pose. But Donald lifts the tarpaulin, revealing not a camera and tripod underneath, but a mounted machine gun. The Aracuan, realizing Donald s mad again, for the second time breaks into a crying jag, repeats his suicide attempts, then bravely faces the weapon as if before a firing squad, opening his shirt to reveal his pounding heart, ready to take it like a man. Donald pulls the trigger, and the bullets fly, until the smoke from their explosive heads fills the frame. Donald ceases fire, laughing maliciously, yelling, “I did it, and I’m glad.” But his laughter quickly turns to shock, as the smoke clears, revealing his tent shot away behind where the Aracuan stood, its pointed roof the only thing remaining, now resembling a large striped beach umbrella. Below it rests the Aracuan, lounging on a beach chair and sipping a cool glass of lemonade. Donald’s eyes glaze over, he strums his lips, and finally cracks. Now, mirroring the moves of the Aracuan, Donald wanders across the scene, mumbling the Aracuan’s tune, copying the bird’s zip in from left, right, and top of screen, and then finally demonstrating his knowledge of the cartoon physics of the closing iris, trotting upon the edge of the ever-closing circle in a spiraling path, and shrinking in size to fit, until the very last frame in which the screen closes to complete black.

Uncle Tom’s Cabaña (MGM, 7/19/47 – Tex Avery, dir.) – Old Uncle Tom is spinning tales to a group of black tykes clustered around his cabin. Tom promises to tell the real, true story about Uncle Tom’s cabin, claiming, “Now, this is the first one o’ them Hollywood cartoon companies ever got the straight dope on this Uncle Tom stuff.” He tells of Simon Legree, owner of an entire city, save one lot – the one with Uncle Tom on it. Legree’s headquarters are located in a skyscraper called the Legree Building, advertising on the door “Loans, mortgages, and crooked deals – widows evicted, old ladies tripped, dogs kicked, and kittens drowned”, and featuring a floor mat reading, “Welcome, sucker”. Legree himself is a “two-face” – literally – and a “low-down snake”, as he slithers across his office floor covered with money. Planning to foreclose the mortgage on the cabin, Legree crosses the office corridor to a room marked “bloodhounds”. “But they was busy”, narrates Tom, as we see the hounds inside, all in hospital beds, donating to the Red Cross blood drive. So Legree arrives in person by helicopter at Tom’s place, announcing that if Tom does not make payment by 12 midnight, out Tom goes. Tom hasn’t a penny, but calls by telephone (choosing between short phone for local and tall phone for long distance) for his only friend, Little Eva (Avery’s Red, decked out in a bevy of Southern belle petticoats)/ Eva comes over, and they mull over the problem, while Tom, to help his thinking, noodles around with some boogie-woogie notes on a piano. Red (we’ll call her that hereon for the sake of familiarity) begins to shimmy around to the music. This gives Tom “the big idea…”

“UNCLE TOM’S CABAÑA”, boasts a huge neon sign above the cabin, as the small field around the rustic residence becomes a parking lot, and the interior is converted into a night club. Red provides the entertainment, and a sign outside reads “No dogs allowed – Wolves welcome.” Tom rakes in the dough, but Legree isn’t getting his share. So Legree sneaks in, grabbing Tom and taking him to the cabin attic, where he ties Tom to a huge powder keg and lights the fuse. Oblivious to what the effects may be of the imminent explosion, Legree goes downstairs and takes in Red’s show (a hep rendition of “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny”). Legree mimics the reactions to Red of Avery’s wolf – with an added gag intended to press the buttons of the censors that slipped through. Legree is about to steal the cash register when Red’s act comes on. At first sight of her, the cash drawer of the register concealed within Legree’s waistline pops open, spilling cash upon the floor. Need I explain the double entendre? After Red’s act concludes, Legree, like the wolf, attempts to make off with her. But waiting outside the door is Tom, mashing him flat with a mallet blow. One of the kids interrupts Tom’s storytelling, asking how come Tom wasn’t “blowed up” on that powder keg. Tom explains that the sweat piring off of him flooded the room and put the fuse out. Then Legree produces a machine gun, firing bullets at Tom’s chest. The child interrupts again, asking how come Tom wasn’t killed. Tom reveals that underneath his outfit, he was wearing his Superduperman suit, causing the bullets to bounce right off. Tom’s story starts to grow in impossibility exponentially, as Legree causes a train to run over Tom, then a sawmill saw to slice Tom in two. “But Uncle Tom”, asks the inquisitive child again. “Don’t bother me now, boy, I is really goin’” cautions Tom. Before we know it, we are seeing rapid-fire images of Tom being dropped off a cliff, chased by camel and elephant, thrown to an alligator, mowed down by a steamroller, and shot at by a PT boat. The visuals briefly cease, as Tom verbally continues, describing rocket guns, dive bombers, and bazookas. The camera focuses on the inquisitive boy, who shakes his head to the audience, realizing that not a word of this story deserves to be believed. Tom climaxes his tale by having Legree chase him to the top of the Umpire State Building, then push Tom off. “I falls down 14 miles and hit on the pavement – and right there is where I gets mad.” Tom picks up the entire building with Legree on top, and tosses it clear over the moon – “and that was the end of Mr. Legree.” The boy gives Tom a final chance to come clean, asking if all he’s been telling was the truth. “If’n it ain’t the truth, I hopes that lightning comes down and strikes me dead”, boasts Tom in defense. A bolt from the heavens does immediately that, and the transparent bare-bottomed soul of Tom rises from his form, playing a small harp up into the heavens. The boy turns to the audience. “You know, we lose more Uncle Tom’s that way.”

• You may watch this film is you CLICK HERE.

Super Lulu (Paramount/Famous, Little Lulu, 11/21/47. Bill Tytla, dir.) – Another cartoon with consciousness of cartoon comics, as opposed to the big screen – considering that Superman’s animated connection with Paramount had already ended several years before. Lulu’s father comes home from a hard day’s work, to find Lulu engaged in a little light reading – aloud, from a pile of pulp magazines labeled “Super Comics”. Her sound effects and gestures resemble the average decibel level of an episode of radio’s “Gang Busters”, and upset Mr. Moppet no end. “Why do you read this stuff?”, he asks. “They’re simply Super, Daddy”, replies Lulu. Dad grabs away the magazine, and hands her a book from a bookshelf. “Here. Read something sensible”, and sends her to her room, while he attempts to hang up his coat in the closet – make that Fibber McGee’s closet, which Lulu has stacked to capacity with back issues of even more comics!

Upstairs in her room, Lulu discovers her reading assignment for the evening is a copy of “Jack and the Beanstalk”. (Did Dad say this was “sensible” reading?) “Aw, this Jackson’s an icky. What’s super about him?”, Lulu complains. She tries to pass the time instead by changing her wardrobe, with a box marked, “Super Suit”. She emerges from behind a dressing curtain in the guise of “Super Lulu”, giving herself the “It’s a bird. It’s a plane” intro, and takes a flying leap onto the bed – bouncing off onto the floor. Papa complains about the noise, and Lulu decides to behave and finish the book. When she reaches the “happily ever after”, she can only comment, “What corn. I don’t believe it.” The boring story makes her drift off to dreamland. There, her father, now in the role of the magic bean vendor, attempts to instill belief in the doubting Thomas by planting one of the beans in the ground. Living up to his advertisement, the seed sprouts a giant beanstalk. Unfortunately, its tendrils catch Papa’s coat, and drag him upward into the sky. Lulu begins a climb to save Daddy. The ascent is long and arduous – at one point Lulu climbs right through a hole in a star the beanstalk drilled on its way up.

Arriving at the castle in the clouds, Lulu encounters a typical giant, with a somewhat atypical magic hen, who instead of golden eggs, lays Faberge eggs with viewfinders, revealing live images of Western dance hall girls entertaining inside. “Is my Daddy in there?”, Lulu asks the over-stimulated giant. No – Daddy is locked in a birdcage, presumably to be the giant’s next main course for dinner. The giant grabs Lulu away from the cage, but when he opens his hand, Lulu has made a quick costume change to Super Lulu. As she claims to be stronger than any giant, the giant challenges her to a round of arm-wrestling. While the giant has the initial advantage, Lulu forces his arm backward, and wins the match – then judo flips the giant over her shoulder, smashing him into a cuckoo clock on the wall, with the predictable gag of the cuckoo bird coming out of his mouth. The giant picks up a massive club, and as Lulu flies toward him, attempts to bat her for a home run. His blow has no effect on Lulu, but instead stops the club in its tracks, as if he just attempted to strike a stone wall, leaving him vibrating in place – while Lulu takes the club, and knocks him through the flooring into the castle basement. Climbing out of the hole, the giant attempts to load a huge slingshot with a rock intended for Lulu – until Lulu grabs the rubber launcher of the slingshot away from the giant and backwards over the dinner table. She continues pulling until she reaches a giant-sized tomato on the table, and lowers the rubber band around the tomato, then lets go. The vegetable strikes the giant in the kisser before he knows what hit him. When he looks down at the splattered red mess, he assumes the worst. “B-Blood. My blood!”, and faints dead away, while Lulu wipes her feet upon his chest as if he were a doormat, to the cheers of Papa – “That’s my little girl!”

The scene fades back to reality, and we find the picture’s not over yet. Lulu hears the muffled voice of her father downstairs. Still wearing her super suit, she peers down, to see Papa bound and gagged in a chair, while a burglar stashes the silverware into a sack. Lulu “soars” to the rescue – by sliding down the banister and zooming off its end, where she encounters the chandelier above Daddy and the villain, ripping it from the ceiling. It lands upon the robber, encircling him and winding its support chain around him, then conking him on the head with its brass mounting. Lulu stands atop the unconscious hoodlum, shouting her battle cry, which is the same as Donald’s: “I did it – – and I’m glad!” In the final scene, some time later, Papa, impressed with Lulu’s valor, joins Lulu as the newest devotee to the comic book world, reading gangster lines and rendering sound effects in the same manner as Lulu did at the opening of the picture. The comic book lowers to reveal Daddy, now dressed in his own super suit, as both he and Lulu join in the closing cry, “It’s Super!”

King Size Canary (MGM, 12/6/47 – Tex Avery, dir.) – Avery’s surreal masterpiece, taking a one-joke note on fattening a character up, and simply letting it grow to the most outrageous of proportions. The problem arises when a hungry cat invades a pantry in search of his evening meal, only to find the cupboards nearly as bare as the kitchen of Old Mother Hubbard (including an ice box with sign “For Rent” as a furnished room, and a sardine can empty except for a sign reading “Kilroy was here”). One lone can remains – of Cat Food. The cat punctures it open, pouring out a live mouse. But the mouse fast-talks his way out of the situation, claiming he has already “seen this cartoon before”, and that before the picture is over, “I save your life.” As to what to do to appease the cat’s immediate hunger, the mouse suggests eating the “great big, fat, juicy canary” in the next room. The cat reaches into a covered cage, only to find the world’s most scrawny stick of a bird, who weakly sighs, “Well, I’ve been sick.” Even facing starvation, the cat won’t stoop so low as to munch on this tired specimen, and pushes the bird away. Taking one last look over the contents of the kitchen, the cat discovers a bottle of “Jumbo Gro” plant food, depicting before-and-after pictures of a wilted daisy transformed into a giant sunflower. A “Brainstorm” erupts in a flashing cloud over the cat’s head, as the label transforms to pictures of the sickly bird mutated into a large healthy avian. The cat grabs the bird and force-feeds him a dose of the elixir. The bird begins to grow almost immediately, as the cat carries him back to the dinner table – but fails to note that the bird continues to grow, and grow, while being carried. By the time the cat has removed the feathers from one drumstick, the bird towers above the cat, almost to the ceiling. Shocked at the size of his “victim”, the cat sheepishly replaces the feathers he has plucked, and makes a run for freedom. The bird is puzzled, until he looks down at his own frame and notices the massive change. Now realizing he has the upper hand, the bird pounces on the cat, twisting his leg as if in a wrestling hold. But nearby is the shelf on which the cat left the bottle (though it seems the camera has been moving about in many other directions, so that the bottle should have been far, far away). The cat takes a drink himself – and soon is filling the room. As the bird retreats through the wall, the cat follows, tossing the bottle out the window where it will presumably do no more harm. No such luck, as it lands in the mouth of a bulldog outside.

After being chased around the city, the bird passes the house again, and stops cold, then takes on an air of confidence. The cat puzzles at this, until the bulldog rounds the corner of the house, now twice the cat’s size. The cat becomes the pursued prey, while the bulldog drops the bottle down the house’s chimney. It rolls out of the fireplace over to a mousehole, where the mouse seen earlier is reading a copy of “The Lost Squeakend”. Of course, the mouse takes a guzzle. Before we know it, the pursued cat is stopping cold in the middle of the city, pointing with confidence to draw the bulldog’s attention around the corner of a skyscraper – where the mouse waits, now five times larger than any of them. “The dog exits in panic, as the mouse reminds the cat. “I told ya I’d save your life. And here’s the little bottle that did the whole trick.” So big that he walks in a rotund waddle, the mouse bids the cat so long. “But hey”, calls the cat after him, “I’m still hungry!” However, this problem is easily remedied, as the cat envisions, writing on the mouse’s huge rear end – the word “FOOD”. Another dose from the bottle, and the cat is following behind at skyscraper height, carrying a huge knife and fork. An epic chase follows, with the characters dwarfing the scenery of Boulder Dam, the Grand Canyon, and the Rocky Mountains. Taking notable size liberties in one shot, the seemingly smaller duo pause as the mouse hides in a tunnel in a mountainside, while the cat reaches in. The mouse sneaks out the tunnel’s rear entrance and grabs away the bottle the cat left on the ground. One swallow, and the mouse has the upper hand, bashing the cat repeatedly over the head. The cat’s arm elastically stretches to snatch back the bottle, and the cat grows into the clouds. The mouse does the same, and the two vie back and forth for title of top man on the totem pole – until the sound effect of a sputtering engine signals that the bottle’s supply is being exhausted – with the characters in a tie for height advantage. The action comes to a stop, as the mouse addresses the audience. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to have to end this picture. We just ran out of the stuff. Good Night.” The mouse drops the empty bottle – but it takes several seconds before we hear the distant tinkle of glass. It is no wonder. The camera pulls back, to reveal the cat and mouse, waving a fond farewell to the camera, with only a small blue dot supporting their weight amidst the vastness of space. That small dot – the planet Earth!

• You may screen the entire cartoon if you CLICK HERE.

Rabbit Punch (Warner, Bugs Bunny, 4/10/48 – Charles M. (Chuck) Jones, dir.) – Sometimes a foundational premise had to be bent a little to get Bugs Into the action. It had been an easy matter to get Bugs into a baseball stadium, as he could appear from a hole in the ground in the outfield. But a fight ring? Jones and writers Tedd Pierce and Michael Maltese had to think a little about that one. So they came up with the unlikely concept of an outdoor arena built specially to house a heavyweight title event – allowing Bugs to be watching for free from the crest of a distant hilltop. Why this boxing card should be such a draw to the crowds remains a question. The Champion, Battling McGook, faces an obvious lack of competition, as the “challenger”, Dispeptic McPlaster, is no match for McGook in build or stamina. (Does he have any stamina at all, given that the announcer introduces him as “staggering through the ropes”?) The fight looks like it will be a very short, one-sided event, which doesn’t seem to displease anyone except Bugs. His lone voice is heard above the cheers of the crowd – a single, jeering “Boo”, followed by the remarks, “P.U. Ahh, ya big palooka. Why don’t you pick on somebody your own size?” Suddenly, a figure looms behind Bugs. The champ has abandoned his helpless opponent, instead intent on dealing with this obnoxious heckler. Stretching Bugs from head to toe until his height reaches that of the champ, the champ responds to Bugs’ suggestion. “Like you?”, he roars. Lifting Bugs in one gloved hand, the champ throws him like a rock through the doorway of the dressing room, clear through the room, and into the arena. Bugs lands in a heap in one corner of the ring, having picked up a pair of gloves and boxing trunks on his flight through the dressing area. Bugs sizes up the situation with one sentence: “Me and my big mouth.”

The champ flexes his muscles intimidatingly, budding everywhere, and adding two levels of muscles atop muscles. With strained effort, Bugs produces two bulges on his biceps the size of peas. The bell sounds for the first round, and Bugs assumes a fighter’s pose to make the bout look respectable, keeping up a constant banter urging the champ not to pull any punches. The champ doesn’t, knocking Bugs forcefully into the post in his corner three times. Bugs decides it’s time to change strategy. “I’ll ‘faint’ him out of position.” Bugs steps up to the champ, then immediately collapses backwards in a faint. When the champ leans over Bugs to determine his condition, Bugs lets him have it with two simultaneous upper-cuts straight into his belly. The rule book gets tossed out from here. As the fighters await the next round, Bugs lounges reading a good book in an easy chair in his corner, with all the comforts of home. In the opposite corner, the champ labors with bricks and mortar, building a brick encasing around hs right glove. As the round commences, he belts Bugs with a brick wall in the kisser. Bugs falls to the canvas, and a ringside announcer begins the count to call Bugs out. But Bugs’s hand seizes the mike. Despite being still reclined upon the canvas, Bugs delivers a blow-by-blow description to the listening audience, describing himself as up, and showering the champ with all manner of blows from every side. The confused champ, hearing the announcement, looks everywhere for his opponent, and reacts with imagined pain to the described blows which he cannot see landing. He wanders aimlessly around the ring, and finally stumbles over the prone Bugs, himself falling to the canvas. “The champ is down”, concludes Bugs’ broadcast. Figuring out that he has been made a fool of, the champ pulls off his gloves, ready to attack Bugs with bare hands. Bugs also drops his gloves – hoping that no referee will notice the iron horseshoes falling out of each one. The sport changes from boxing to wrestling, as Bugs attempts to lift the champ and twirl him in a helicopter spin. Bugs’s spinning gets slower and slower, and he collapses under the weight of the champ, emerging as a flattened pancake plastered to the champ’s back. Bugs peels himself off from the champ, then seizes the champ’s leg, attempting to bend it every which way. The champ entirely ignores it, feeling no pain, and busies himself on the canvas with a deck of cards, playing solitaire. Realizing he is getting nowhere, Bugs again resorts to chicanery, producing a small wooden board from nowhere, and snapping it in two. The champ assumes the only cause of the sound can be his leg breaking, and he hops around in imaginary pain, calling for a doctor. “I am a physician” responds Bugs, suddenly appearing from the sidelines, dressed in a doctor’s outfit. After diagnosing the champ as suffering from “compound fracture of the left clavichord – with complications, yet”, Bugs reaches into a medical bag for a roll of gauze – and winds the champ up in it like a mummy. One measured sock by Bugs, and the champ hits every post of the ring, causing a neon sign to light up in the arena, reading “Tilt”.

The fight progresses to Round 37. The champ substitutes axle grease for the non-skid solution intended for Bugs to rub his feet in before proceeding into the ring. The trick backfires, as Bugs utilizes his new lack of traction to slide around the ring, attacking the champ from all sides with the graceful moves of a figure skater. Round 48 finds Bugs posing as a popcorn vendor, passing the champ a popcorn sack containing a lighted fuse. BOOM! Round 73 finds Bugs handing the champ the handle-end of a slingshot to hold for a minute, then yanking back on the rubber end to insert a giant boulder into the sling. WHAM! Round 98 finds the champ loaded into a cannon, and Bugs loaded as the arrow of a bow. They both take off at each other, for a head-on collision and a shower of stars. Finally, round 110. The champ has now built a railroad track from the arena entrance to the ring, and is tying Bugs to the tracks. The champ exits the stadium, and returns at the throttle of a thundering locomotive. Motionless, Bugs sweats bullets, as the train roars perilously closer and closer. Just as the camera appears to be about to reveal the locomotive overtaking the camera head on, the image begins to flicker, frame lines appear between respective images of the train, and the picture shatters as if snapped in two, dragging remnants of film sprocket-holes along with it. The screen goes blank, and in a clever and briefer reworking of the ending from the previous “My Favorite Duck”, Bugs enters the empty screen from the wings, and apologizes to the audience. “Ladies and gentlemen. Due to circumstances beyond our control, we are unable to continue with this picture.” Then Bugs pauses, and adds, “And, uh, confidentially…that film didn’t exactly break.” He proudly holds up a large pair of scissors with which he made the film’s final cut, and winks at us, before an iris out.

Blame It On the Samba (from the feature, Melody Time – Disney/RKO, 5/27/48 – Clyde Geronimi, dir.), is an absolute masterpiece. It incorporates all the visual sophistication – and then some – of combining live action and animation previously used in segments of “The Three Caballeros”. It marks the final big-screen reunion of Donald Duck, Jose Carioca, and the Aracuan Bird. (Panchito the rooster is nowhere to be found.) It features irrepressible musical performances by the Dinning Sisters vocally, and instrumentally by organist-par-excellence Ethel Smith, who had already made quite a reputation in her interpretations of South American music with her hit recording of “Tico Tico”, also performed on-screen in MGM’s Esther Williams/Red Skelton extravaganza, Bathing Beauty. And its surreal visual incorporation of musical signatures, symbols and ethnic instruments far surpasses anything previously seen in Make Mine Music. With all of this going for it, topped by the Aracuan Bird’s madness, how can you go wrong?

Words can only provide a rudimentary idea of this film’s content, which truly has to be seen and heard to be delighted in. Donald and Jose Carioca trod along a lonely South American path, feeling blue – and looking it, too, as their entire color palette, even down to Donald’s white feathers, is rendered in blue hues. Ahead of them on the road lies an establishment known as the Café de Samba – built into the pages of an oversize printing of sheet music. Proprietor and head waiter of the Café is our old friend, the Aracuan Bird, who eyes the weary travelers as prospective customers. Donald and Jose take no notice as the Aracuan swings open the cover of the sheet music, placing the doorway of his establishment right across the road. Donald and Jose keep right on walking, bypassing the tables hidden within the music covers. The puzzled Aracuan scoots behind the dejected duo, steering them in a circle back to the cafe’s first table. The Aracuan places menus before Donald and Jose, but the duck and parrot are barely willing to raise an eyelid to peer at the bill of fare. The Aracuan can see something needs to be done to change the mood, so he begins to parade a series of South American rhythm instruments at Jose. Jose’s color gradually becomes more rich, then bursts out into his normal spectrum of full Technicolor. A similar dose of guitar and drums restores Donald to where the only blue left is the deep traditional shade of his sailor uniform. Dancing fever takes over Donald and Jose, who hop up upon a musical staff on the inside cover of the sheet music, to dance in a spotlight. The Aracuan bends one end of the music staff to create a wave in its lines, allowing Donald and Jose to really “hit the ceiling” as the wave passes under them. The Aracuan returns to his rhythm instruments, squeezing, slicing, and dicing them into a set of cocktail shakers, then scoops up Donald and Jose in the shakers too. After some vigorous mixing of the ingredients, the Aracuan pours out the contents into a large cocktail glass, which grows hugely in size as the drink is poured in along with Donald and Jose. The Aracuan removes his waiter’s outfit, revealing a Victorian striped bathing suit, and dives into the drink too. A side view of the humongous cocktail glass shows the mixture within swirling, developing a red glow, and suddenly within materializes the live Ethel Smith and her organ to entertain Donald and Jose, while all rotate around within the bubbling, effervescent drink. The effects animation is a marvel, as is the speed and dexterity of Ethel’s playing. Donald and Jose dance up a storm, while the Aracuan tries to make things even livelier (for example, tapping Ether’s knee with a stick like a reflex hammer, causing her to supply a rear-end “kick” to Donald’s dancing).

The Aracuan interrupts the organ playing by covering Ethel’s eyes with his hands. Or, at least we should just say, hands – as they are not really his own, but a fake pair that stay over Ethel’s eyes even when the Aracuan walks away from her. The Aracuan pulls a curtain down over the scene, as he himself appears in neon playing three different kinds of musical instruments, followed by Ethel demonstrating her own dexterity on a pair of tall bongos. A dancing troupe of oversize instruments surrounds Donald and Jose, while the Aracuan engages in some glass-blowing, his bubble of glass expanding to reveal Ethel samba-dancing inside. Another blow into the molten glass expands one Ethel into three, then another to five Ethels dancing at once, until the glass bubble goes pop. New small bubbles appear in the form of transparent singing lips, and are hand-painted in by the Aracuan as if applying lipstick. The lips morph into the form of butterflies and envelop Donald and Jose. The Aracuan manipulates the butterflies like string-controlled marionettes, picking up Donald and Jose and placing them on a musical cart made of linked quarter notes on the music staff. The Aracuan himself rides a half note like a unicycle, and all three race around the music sheets. The Aracuan reaches the end of a music line first, and pushes on the end of a musical bar to compress the lines slightly, causing ripples in the lines that give Donald and Jose a bumpy ride. Everyone falls back into the cocktail mix (the Aracuan wearing a towel and bathing cap), and a pull of a curtain by the Aracuan places Ethel back at the organ keyboard again. The Aracuan decides to heat things up still more, by placing a match in Ethel’s shoe for a hotfoot. All at once, the pace of the music responds by becoming still faster. Now the Aracuan brings out the big guns, placing a lit stick of dynamite under Ethel’s organ. He appears atop the organ console, waving a construction-crew red flag as if to warn “Danger – we’re blasting.” The whole scene explodes – but miraculously, the parts of Ethel’s organ and bench swirl around in the whirling mixture of the cocktail and reassemble themselves, leaving Donald and Jose to dance the night away with Ethel inside the cocktail glass, while the Aracuan emerges and shuts the music sheet upon them and his café, donning a top hat as if his shift is over, preparing to go home. He reprises his signature knowledge of the boundaries of the screen, running along across the screen edges of the four sides of the picture, then finds himself on the outside of the closing iris, causing him to dart back through the shrinking hole just in time. Reissue prints end here, but the footage of the original feature continues for a few seconds longer, as the Aracuan pops his head back out the iris, to utter a laugh to the audience. Then, his image fades to mere neon-style outlines of his form, and eventually fades to black.

Little ‘Tinker (MGM, 6/15/48 – Tex Avery, dir.) – B.O. Skunk, resident of 129 Limburger Lane, has a problem. Although he showers each day with O-Bouy soap, and perfumes himself with Fleur de Sewer and Shampew, his aroma is enough to wilt the entire row of flowers lining his walkway whenever he steps outside. This can put an awful crimp in a guy’s love life. Every girl of whatever species B.O. meets takes one whiff, shrieks, and then departs – rapidly. Even a love-starved female rabbit who’ll take any “Man”, like the ladies of Bob Hope’s Pepsodent Show, won’t take him. It’s up to Dan Cupid (armed with a gas mask) to provide B.O. with a love manual, entitled, “Advice to the Love-Worn by Beatrice Bare Fax”. Lesson 1 – The Great Lover Routine. B.O. does a voice impersonation of Charles Boyer, but the girl as usual disappears, leaving B.O. to mistakenly kiss a sleeping owl – who immediately falls over deceased. Chapter 2 – The Balcony Routine, finds B.O. serenading, in opera from Rigoletto, a romantic raccoon on a balcony. But the usual whiff brings down a flower pot on B.O.’s head, and results in a dunk in the fish pond below, leaving the fish scrambling out of the water to reach the farthest horizons.

Chapter 3 – Swoon Em, causes B.O. to adopt a disguise directly resembling Frank Sinatra, performing an outdoor concert entitled “Rhapsody in Pew” (actually, a full rendition of Sinatra’s hit, “All or Nothing at All”). B.O. portrays all the perceived weaknesses of the young Sinatra (skinny as a bone, eclipsed by the microphone stand, receiving plasma, oxygen, and assistance from an iron lung to keep going during the performance), while the spectators, females of all kinds (especially rabbits of all ages and even races) drop like flies in a swoon-fest. The females eventually charge the stage, covering B.O. and most of the surrounding stage with hastily-aimed kisses. But it only lasts a moment, when the usual aroma sends them fleeing for air again. B.O. has had it, and is about to take poison in suicide, when Cupid reminds him he hasn’t read the book’s last chapter – Camouflage. B.O. spots a pretty female fox, and by stretching his ears and applying two colors of paint, becomes a reasonable facsimile of a fox himself. A kiss from the girl makes him lose his head for a moment – literally – and the two go strolling through the forest, crossing a log bridge over a stream. B.O. unfortunately stumbles, and the girl also loses her balance, causing both to fall into the water below. B.O. rises, to see the awful sight of all his paint washing off. He turns in embarrassment to see the expected reaction of the girl. But on her side of the stream, the same thing is happening – she is in fact a skunk in disguise too. When the two realize they are the same, they embrace madly in a love-at-first-sight kiss. A heart-shaped iris of red begins to close. Without breaking the embrace, one eye of B.O. opens, looking out at us in the audience, and he takes his copy of the love manual, and deposits it outside the iris before it closes – realizing he will have no further use for the book in the future.

• You may watch the complete cartoon if you CLICK HERE.

Half-Pint Pygmy (MGM, George and Junior, 8/17/48 – Tex Avery, dir.) – George and Junior make their final big-screen appearance, now restyled in a new design more clearly depicting them as bears, but overall less appealing, and also with less-appealing substitute voices. Killing time in a city park (where Junior behaves like a three-year old despite his size, playing with a rubber ball and a set of jacks), the two encounter a newspaper article, offering $10,000 to anyone who can bring back the world’s smallest pygmy. For that kind of dough, it’s off to pygmy country. We next find them astride an elephant, using its trunk to climb down like a flight of stairs, as they discover a pygmy hut. George shakes the hut, instructing Junior to sock with a club the littlest one as the pygmies come out. A tiniest one is sighted, but of course, Junior flattens George instead. George delivers a matching blow to Junior, and the chase is on. This cartoon is in fact practically all chasing, with occasional interludes from the running. George and Junior pass an information hut, and ask whoever is within it which way the pygmy went. The person behind the desk is an octopus, who points every which way at once with his eight arms. A racist gag has Junior tempting the pygmy out of a tree trunk with a slice of watermelon, which the pygmy devours, but still continues his biting, right up to Junior’s elbow. A clever gag appears to show the pygmy traveling across a body of water by walking on stilts. The camera pulls back, revealing that the stilts are not wood, but actually the long legs of a flamingo being manipulated by the midget native. Everybody jumps into the pouch of a kangaroo (how did we get to Australia?), then reappears out the pouch of another kangaroo a few feet away. The pygmy briefly eludes attention by blowing up a large rubber balloon, then inhaling the captured air to inflate himself into a giant (similar in shape to the animals in “King-Size Canary”). But he deflates to normal size as soon as George and Junior pass. Our three principal characters disappear into a dark cave. George strikes a match, revealing a tiger inside the cave, The tiger seems as shocked and scared of the intruders as our heroes and the pygmy are of the tiger, and each reacts with appropriate takes as the match burns out. A trail like that of a comet emerges from the cave, and ducks behind a boulder. From behind the boulder rises Junior, with Geirge appearing next from under Junior’s pith helmet. The helmet rises again to reveal the pygmy atop George’s head. Then the helmet rises once more, revealing the terrified tiger atop the pygmy’s head! Everyone reacts in shock, and scatters in all directions.

Our chasing trio race up the back of a giraffe (seen only as far up as the base of his neck), then race down the back of another giraffe. Or so it would seem. The camera pulls back for a long shot, revealing that everything we have seen is connected – the two giraffe torsos are conjoined by an arc of neck – with no heads. The gag is reversed, with an endlessly-humped camel’s back for the trio to race over, with heads on both ends like a Dr. Doolittle pushmi-pullyu. A pelican swallows its whole body within its beak (a gag lifted verbatim from Bob Clampett’s “Porky and Daffy”). After more animal gags too numerous and corny to mention, the pygmy sets up a booby trap, raising several cocoanuts in a net to the top of a tall tree with a rope and pulley. When George and Junior reach the scene, the pygmy releases one of the cocoanuts. A seemingly-endless chain reaction results, as the cocoanut bounces off George’s and Junior’s heads, temporarily knocking them out, but also bounces off of (or, as in the case of the linked-pouch kangaroos, through) nearly every animal in the jungle, with comic results (inverting camel humps, knocking the spots off a leopard, making a giraffe’s neck short and a hippo’s neck correspondingly long, etc.) One shot even shows the cocoanut sailing over a football goalpost, as we hear the sounds of a cheering crowd. Finally, the cocoanut comes to rest – clunk on the head of the pygmy. George revives, grabbing up the native in his hands. “We got him, Junior. The world’s smallest pygmy!” Upon hearing this, the pygmy finally realizes what all the chasing was about, and shakes his head to George, speaking in a basso voice: “Uh Uhh…Sorry, boys.” He turns and calls to another small pygmy hut. “Uncle Louie?” Out trots another native, so small he is barely a dot on the screen. He continues on, rapidly disappearing over a hill. “D’ohhhh”, respond both George and Junior, who each pull out pistols, aiming them at their own respective heads. Realizing that the audience is watching, and that this might be rather messy, George has the courtesy to pull a curtain down across the screen, containing the standard MGM end card – after which the screen is violently vibrated by the retort of two pistol shots, bringing to a definite conclusion George and Junior’s theatrical career.

• You may watch the film if you CLICK HERE.

NEXT WEEK: At the request of our website curator, next week we’ll take a brief break from our subject topic, placing the spotlight on some unusual and off-beat Christmas tales which generally elude review.