{"id":91124,"date":"2025-07-02T00:01:33","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T07:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/?p=91124"},"modified":"2025-06-30T22:17:05","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T05:17:05","slug":"cartoons-at-bat-part-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/index.php\/cartoons-at-bat-part-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Cartoons at Bat (Part 5)"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"\n

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Several double-headers on the schedule today – two games for Popeye, and two games for Bugs Bunny. Among the other regulation games is a somewhat wild yet plotwise-limited outing by Tex Avery, and the first appearance of baseball in feature-length animation – though really set forth in a high-budgeted \u201cshort\u201d contained within a Disney package film.<\/p>\n

\"\"Ration Fer the Duration<\/strong> (Paramount\/Famous, Popeye<\/em>, 5\/28\/43 \u2013 Seymour Kneitel, dir.) – Popeye, just planting his own garden of spinach in every available square inch of his property, inspires his nephews into planting a victory garden, by telling them a bit of the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, enticing them with the notion of the giant living in the clouds. They get busy, and Popeye takes a time out to doze beneath a tree. The scene moves into his dream cloud, where he imagines his nephews awakening him, to display a beanstalk of the fabled proportions sprouted up from their garden. The nephews tell Popeye to climb it, insisting \u201cWe want a giant.\u201d Popeye claims there ain\u2019t no giants \u2013 and just to prove it, agrees to climb the beanstalk and not bring a giant back. In fact, he uses a more modern means of transportation, producing from nowhere a motor scooter, and riding the maze of beanstalk vines like a cloverleaf freeway maze up to the top. He emerges from a manhole cover in one of the clouds, and sees upon the next-closest cloudbank a huge castle, with sign outside advertising a bed available for the swing shift. In one of the film\u2019s more memorable gags, a taxi, entirely made of puffy white cloud, pulls up, offering transportation to the giant\u2019s house. Popeye enters the cab for the short excursion, then asks the unseen driver, \u201cFare?\u201d Misinterpreting the word as \u201cFair\u201d, the driver responds. \u201cNope. Cloudy and rain\u201d, as the entire taxi dissolves in a scattering of raindrops upon the world below.<\/p>\n

\"\"Popeye knocks on the giant\u2019s door, which opens to reveal the told-of giant, so tall he doesn\u2019t even see Popeye. The massive man carries a large club over his shoulder, in the same manner that a baseball player might carry a bat, and on his chest is written the words \u201cN.Y. Giants\u201d. After a pause to let the joke settle in, the giant looks down at his own shirt, and in self-effacing tones mirroring casual reads in Tex Avery cartoons, remarks to the audience, \u201cI didn\u2019t think it was funny, either\u201d, and wipes the lettering from his chest. The giant turns out to be a hoarder of rationed goods, including first-class rubber tires laid by his magic hen instead of eggs, sugar, silk stockings, pant cuffs, butter, gasoline, etc. \u201cUncle Sam could use all that stuff\u201d says Popeye. Eventually getting the giant to sneeze with his nose full of pepper, Popeye rides a carpet bag full of the rationed goods out the door on the force of the sneeze, and falls over and over down toward earth. But his spinning is back in the real world, where the nephews are attempting to awaken him, to show off their real victory garden. Instead of beans, they have planted mutant plants that are their own solution to the rationing problem \u2013 each producing a rationed item right off the vine. POT-tatoes, CAN-taloupes, and Pine-NIPPLES are among the crops, together with \u201cSquashes\u201d (used tires), \u201cPeaches\u201d (brand new tires), and last of all, a \u201cSHOE tree\u201d, growing rubber-soled shoes by the dozens. Popeye laughs with pleasure at their patriotic breakthrough, as the film irises out.<\/p>\n

\u2022 See RATION FER THE DURATION on DailyMotion HERE<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\"\"Happy Birthdaze<\/strong> (Famous\/Paramount, Popeye<\/em>, 7\/16\/43 – Dan Gordon, dir,) – Popeye receives a V-Mail letter at his battleship, in which Olive invites him to her apartment home for a cake and party in celebration of his birthday. Popeye, however, encounters a fellow crewmate he has not met before – a little runt with goggle-eyed glasses named Shorty, who has no friends and no one to send him mail, and seems intent upon doing himself in, repeatedly pulling out a pistol to aim at his own head. Popeye tries to cheer him up, with words to convince him he is as handsome as a movie star – but the name blurts out \u201cBob Hope\u201d – causing Shorty to revert to the pistol again – until Popeye changes the name to \u201cBing Crosby\u201d. Shorty gets invited to come along to Olive\u2019s party – a mistake, indeed, for the talkative little busybody wants to be a part of everything, including baking Popeye\u2019s cake. In washing up before beginning the baking, Shorty leaves the water running to flood level in the bathroom, washing Popeye out into the street and down the gutter. Shorty meanwhile gathers cake ingredients for Olive, piling them too high, and transferring the load to Popeye while Shorty retrieves a dozen eggs. A badly-timed entrance through a swinging door, and poor Popeye is toppled, with the entire mess dumped all over his uniform. Olive insists he take a bath, and Shorty runs the water again – flooding Popeye out into the sewer for a second time. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Shorty is starting to feel suicidal again, realizing that because of him, Popeye isn\u2019t having any fun – not playing games and stuff as he should on his birthday. Popeye re-enters the apartment, carrying a baseball bat, intending to have some vengeance upon Shorty for his interference. Shorty sees this as an invitation for some indoor baseball, and retrieves a ball. In demonstrating the techniques of Babe Ruth to Popeye in the next room, we hear the clout of wood against ball, and watch Popeye re-enter the room, with the ball repeatedly bouncing off his head. Popeye collapses back into the adjoining room upon a square throw rug, and Shorty darts around its corners, sliding under the rug and upsetting the prone Popeye, as Shorty touhes a furnace grating that serves as home plate. Next. Shorty grabs up a golf club and ball, and demonstrates a Bobby Jones drive, which bounces repeatedly off walls in front of and behinf Popeye, rebounding between wall and Popeye\u2019s head. Popeye falls on his back with mouth open, the ball resting upon his chest, as the pole of a souvenir pennant from Coney Island drops into Popeye\u2019s mouth. Removing the flag, Shorty steps onto Popeye\u2019s chest. \u201cOn the green in 1 – now for a birdie\u201d, says Shorty, as he putts the golf ball down Popeye\u2019s throat. Then, indoor ice hockey, with Popeye nearly swallowing the puck. The puck lands between his feet, as Shorty charges. Popeye takes aim with his hockey stick – not at the puck, but at the oncoming Shorty. He takes a wild swing, but misses, causing his skates to spin in a circle, and carve a hole in the wood of the floor. Popeye falls through, but rises again atop the floorboard, which rests as a ceiling atop the head of a gentlemanly British character who lives in the apartment below. The Britisher politely inquires what is going on, then equally-politely apologizes that he must leave, as he is losing his footing. The Britisher falls out of our view, but Popeye leaps off his head just in time, and kicks Shorty down the hole. Enter Olive with the completed birthday cake, as Popeye tries to hide the hole from view with the throw rug. Olive steps directly upon the rug, and falls through, while the cake, slightly wider in diameter than the hole, remains in the room on the floor. Popeye, realizing Olive is in trouble, darts down to the Britisher\u2019s apartment. \u201cShe went thata-way\u201d, the Britisher says, pointing to an Olive-shaped hole in his own floor. Popeye runs down four or five more flights to the basement, just as the silhouette of Olive appears with a clang among the basement furnace pipes. Popeye darts into the furnace, but is told by Olive that he and Shorty should never darken her door again. Olive exits, blackened with coal dust. Inside the dark furnace, Popeye also finds Shorty, and moans that Shorty has ruined everything – and he didn\u2019t even get his birthday cake. Upstairs, the foot of Olive is seen, shoving the unneeded cake down the hole in the floor. It lands inside the furnace pipes, with a plop on Popeye\u2019s head, a single candle still lit to light the scene. Shorty eagerly asks to blow it out, and does, singing \u201cHappy Birthday to my pal\u201d in the total blackness. Suddenly, a pistol shot is heard and its light momentarily seen – aimed in the direction of Shorty, and presumably by the hand of Popeye. From the darkness, letters appear on the screen and slowly approach the camera, underscored by morbid music, reading \u201cThe Bitter End.\u201d <\/p>\n