MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG [444]

Rabbit Seasoning (1952)

When I was writing about Bugs Bunny last time, I knew I would have to come back to the use of drag because, having seen these cartoons all my life, the use of drag by any Looney Tunes character just becomes something you expect – like it is part of Bugs’ arsenal, so it could be of anyone.

But after re-watching so many Bugs Bunny cartoons in the last few weeks is seeing how, I can now fully appreciate how Bugs has become a queer icon. I had an initial wariness about how drag is essentially being used as part of a deception, but in the universe of the cartoons, it seems to come so natural to Bugs, and works so effectively. This is what happens with any media: everything present in the material has to be considered.

Then I saw the 2003 film “Looney Tunes: Back in Action” – I don’t know how I let it pass me. In a restaurant scene, Jenna Elfman, playing Warner Bros’ vice president of comedy, puts it to Bugs that he should be paired with “a hot, female character”. Spinning into Marilyn Monroe-like garb, Bugs tells her “usually, I play the female love interest.” The response: “About the cross-dressing thing: in the past funny, today, disturbing.” Thankfully, Bugs’ reply is perfect: “Lady, if you don’t find a rabbit with lipstick amusing, you and I have nothing to say to each other.” How’s that for a movie studio’s mascot?

The opposition in this scene was also present fifty years earlier: the 1952 Merry Melodies cartoon “Rabbit Seasoning”, directed by Chuck Jones with a story by Michael Maltese, the middle instalment of what became the “hunting trilogy” – “rabbit season!”, “duck season!” and so on. While the set-up appears to be Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck confusing Elmer into shooting the other, Elmer becomes another tool for Bugs to thwart Daffy – if Bugs is in the cartoon, he is the star.

Towards the cartoon’s end, as Elmer points his rifle into a rabbit hole saying “OK, come on out, I’ve got you covered”, Bugs rises up from the hole, as if in an elevator, dressed in drag, carrying an umbrella and a book – as Bugs walks to a log to read the book, Elmer follows, seduced by what he sees. An incredulous Daffy walks in, declaiming “surely, you’re not gonna be taken in by that old gag”. Elmer replies “isn’t she lovely?” Daffy stamps over to Bugs: “Out of sheer honesty, I demand that you tell him who you are. Well, haven’t you anything to say? Anything?” Bugs put his book down and says, in a feminine voice while cosying up to Elmer, “why yes, I would just love a duck dinner.” Kissing him, Elmer stumbles over to Daffy and shoots his beak off for the umpteenth time. 

Rabbit Seasoning (1952)

Audiences would have been amazed to see this much in 1952, even in a cartoon context. The Motion Picture Production Code, known as the Hays Code, introduced in 1934, does not specifically mention anything in a cartoon context, but it does state that “Sex perversion or any inference to it is forbidden” – this would be hanged in 1961 to “Restraint and care shall be exercised in presentations dealing with sex aberrations.” The Hays Code was also very clear that representation in film could not be given the latitude that you would in a book: “A book describes; a film vividly presents. One presents on a cold page; the other by apparently living people. A book reaches the mind through words merely; a film reaches the eyes and ears through the reproduction of actual events. The reaction of a reader to a book depends largely on the keenness of the reader’s imagination; the reaction to a film depends on the vividness of presentation.” So, because the Code made clear that “Pictures shall not infer that low forms of sex relationship are the accepted or common thing”, and that “Adultery and illicit sex, sometimes necessary plot material, must not be explicitly treated or justified, or presented attractively,” any depictions that come even close to these should be seen to be punished.

Back to “Rabbit Seasoning”. After apologising for suspecting their integrity, Daffy rips Bugs’ wig off, pointing and saying “ah-HAH! Now’s your chance, hawk eye, shoot him, shoot him!” Rubbing off lipstick, Bugs says “he’s got me bang to rights doc, would you like to shoot him here, or wait till you get home”, as repeat of the “pronoun trouble” Daffy falls for at the start of the cartoon. Daffy replies, “oh no, not this time”, telling Elmer “Wait till you get home. They walk home, and Elmer shoots Daffy there. Walking back, putting his beak back into place one final time, Daffy tells Bugs, “You’re despicable”. Bugs shrugs to the camera – end of cartoon.

For what it’s worth, “Rabbit Seasoning” does not appear to have an MPAA rating, presumably because it was passed for exhibition in 1952. The British Board of Film Classification gives it a “U”, adding “Contains mild cartoon violence”, presumably centred on the rightfully outwitted Daffy’s beak.

Rabbit Seasoning (1952)

WHILE STROLLING THROUGH THE PARK ONE DAY [294]

[Above: The Dover Boys at Pimento University, or The Rivals of Roquefort Hall (1942), in the public domain.]

“But hold on, what’s this? It looks like an alert young scout. And that’s just what it is!”

The house style of the Warner Bros. “Merrie Melodies” and “Looney Tunes” cartoons took time to develop. By 1942, the director given the highest budgets, a certain Charles M. “Chuck” Jones, was asked if he could move his cartoons away from the style that had been cemented by Disney, and copied by everyone else. What they got was so different, Jones was nearly fired for it. By the end of the decade, it had changed the industry.

I wanted to start this by concentrating on how batshit crazy “The Dover Boys at Pimento University, or The Rivals of Roquefort Hall” is as a story, how unthinkingly stupid its characters are, and how much of a joy it was to come across it for the first time, but I needed to emphasise from the outset just how important it is in the history of animation – it is like enjoying listening to Jackie Wilson singing “Reet Petite,” then remembering that Berry Gordy, the song’s co-writer, used his royalties from Wilson’s recordings to launch what became Motown Records.

In 1942, American audiences would have got the joke of “The Dover Boys” immediately. It is a satire of “The Rover Boys,” a Boy’s Own-type adventure series set at a military school – one road from it leads to “The Hardy Boys” and “Nancy Drew,” and another to “The Famous Five” and “The Secret Seven.” Names are changed, from Tom, Sam and Dick to Tom, Dick and Larry; their collective girlfriend, Dora Standpipe, was Dora Stanhope; and the most Dickensian name goes to Dan Backslide, formerly Dan Baxter. The Victorian melodrama is played at the expense of the story: we have one-dimensional heroes, a one-dimensional enemy, and a damsel in distress, but from there, the film becomes an onslaught on your senses.

The Dover Boys themselves are introduced on bicycles, all at odd angles, while the narrator refrains from calling them jerks. Dan Backslide is literally green with envy (and probably nicotine), and has no indoor voice: “Confound those Dover Boys! They drive me to drink!” During a game of Hide and Seek, the boys hide across a park, and across the city, and when Backslide sees them, he announces, in a shout that continues to reduce me to laughter with how on the nose the line is, “Dora must be ALONE AND UNPROTECTED!” Even more, when Backslide sees a car, he announces, “a runabout. I’LL STEAL IT! NO-ONE WILL EVER KNOW!” What did I do to deserve the opportunity to laugh so much?!

This is before you even get to the visual gags: all dramatic poses are held in time until we go back to the characters, the Dover Boys punch themselves out in a triangle of fists, missing Dan Backslide, and Dora Standpipe is unnaturally strong, fulfilling her role in shouting “Help!” while throwing Backslide about, until he himself is crying for help – all the while, Dora could either break through the door she pounds on, or just unlock it. It is as if the story was left to replay for years, and now we have come back to it, it has glitched, or degraded, until only bits of it are left.

The animation is much more stylised here – it is more limited, and smear animation is often used between key poses, making for some brilliant freeze frame images. It may also be why, at approaching nine minutes, it is two minutes longer than an average Warner Bros. cartoon without any extra drawing. These techniques are more likely to be found in TV cartoons from Hanna-Barbera, and in cartoons from UPA like “Gerald McBoing-Boing,” and their Mr Magoo series, but it is generally acknowledged that, because Chuck Jones did it in “The Dover Boys,” everyone else could now follow. 

However, for 1942, this may have been too far away from Disney for Warner Bros and producer Leon Schlesinger – they refused to release the cartoon, and Jones was on the verge of being fired, especially when the kind of satire presented could be misconstrued as coming from someone that either didn’t care, or could be taking advantage of their situation by submitting deceptively low-standard work. But because there was a release schedule to keep, and the onset of World War II meant extra talent would be harder to find, everything had to stay where it was. In fact, “The Dover Boys” was one of the last cartoons not to be war-related for a while, as Jones went on to help with the “Private Snafu” shorts for the US army, and all animation companies made war-related cartoons for a few years.

Put simply, just watch “The Dover Boys,” for animation history is remade from here onwards. It was the first time Chuck Jones found one of his own cartoons to be funny, and when you consider what was attached to his name afterwards, that says an awful lot.

I’M OK, YOU’RE SO-SO [235]

Everyone has seen Tom & Jerry – EVERYONE has seen Tom & Jerry. If you noticed that not all Tom & Jerry cartons look alike, did you care? Would you send a death threat to the director if you didn’t like how their particular Tom & Jerry cartoons were done, and why would I ask that if this hadn’t already happened?

One hundred and sixty-one “Tom & Jerry” cartoons were made from 1940 to 1967, directed by William Hanna & Joseph Barbera (1940-58), Gene Deitch (1961-62), and Chuck Jones (1963-67). Naturally, the Hanna & Barbera era is what people will imagine first when they see the characters, and it is their chase template everyone has tried to match with each new film or series.

As a child, we had a Tom & Jerry video cassette at home that presented a number of shorts in random order – mostly Hanna & Barbera-directed ones, but with some Deitch and Jones cartoons thrown in. They were not ordered by year or director, just one cartoon after the other. Much later, I would buy all the shorts on DVD, this time arranged in order of release, and you could see what happened over time: the shorts became progressively less detailed and more stylised until they stopped (Hanna & Barbera), then they became funky and weird (Deitch), then turned into Road Runner mark two (Jones). 

I was surprised to discover the general consensus is that Deitch’s cartoons, which I like for their funkiness, are the worst, with articles and videos online agreeing this is the case. I am doubtful those writing these will have seen or grown up with them, as all of Deitch’s shorts only became available on DVD in the US in 2015 – I bought mine ten years earlier, their having long remained in circulation in the UK on home video and television. If I hadn’t preferred them, I would still be more used to seeing them against the others.

Gene Deitch had been commissioned to make thirteen new “Tom & Jerry” shorts after “Munro,” a short animation about a four-year-old boy accidentally drafted into the US Army, had won an Academy Award for Animated Short Film – Tom & Jerry had done this seven times by this point. Because MGM had disbanded their cartoon unit in 1957, and had been re-releasing old films, Deitch’s shorts were produced at Rembrandt Films in Prague, (at the time still) Czechoslovakia, where Deitch had relocated to produce “Munro,” and had decided to stay. 

However, the budget constraints that smoothed out detail and simplified backgrounds in the latter Hanna & Barbera shorts, limitations the duo continued to work with in television, would also be imposed on Deitch: where “Tom & Jerry” cartoons had cost up to $50,000 per 6-10 minute short, with $1,000 going to composer Scott Bradley each time, Deitch would have only a $10,000 budget per cartoon. What is more, Deitch’s Czech collaborators had not seen “Tom & Jerry,” leading Deitch to do much of the writing and key animation poses in addition to directing.

Tom & Jerry were drawn as they had been previously, and the theme tune remained the same, but the rest was brand new. Instead of constantly running around a house, the locations changed – a haunted castle, ancient Greece, a tropical island, the Wild West, outer space. Only the title characters remain – no Spike and Tyke, no Nibbles or Quacker – and other characters like they come from a different series entirely. Any previous friendship or comradery between Tom & Jerry were gone, replaced with a tit-for-tat, David and Goliath struggle. The gags have a different sensibility - Tom is forced to drink a bottle of cola, taking on the shape of a bottle; Tom prepares to spit watermelon seeds at jerry, so his face becomes the shape of a cannon; when Jerry’s blood pressure is monitored, he inflates. Tom is whacked more than before, often from his owner or another person after something Jerry has done, or because he is simply there. The action itself is less fluid, becoming jerkier and more manic. There are no real stories, each being a succession of scenes until an end is decided. As stated in a voiceover in “The Tom & Jerry Cartoon Kit,” featuring the most impressionistic backgrounds of all the shorts, by using none, “the result may not make sense, but will last long enough for you to be comfortably seated before the feature begins.”

What probably led to the death threat Deitch apparently received was how clearly there were different decisions being made – the music was written for mood and not action, the gags weren’t the same, and Tom & Jerry still looked like someone else drew them. Deitch admitted in 2017 that they could have been better animated, and truer to the original cartoons, but the inexperience of his team, and the low budget, meant only so much could be achieved. 

However, Deitch was a cartoonist more in the modern mould – he served an apprenticeship at UPA, pioneers of a modernist limited animation style seen in “Gerald McBoing Boing” and “Mr Magoo,” and would later create Tom Terrific and Clint Cobbler when later at Terrytoons. As previously stated, Deitch had won an Oscar, and the sort of production he would make could have been anticipated - if he didn’t think the job was for him, he could have said no. On the part of MGM, they had the most financially successful cartoons of 1961-62, beating Warner Bros. for the first time. 

The death of Gene Deitch in April 2020 led to “Tom & Jerry” being the most remarked-upon work of his career, bypassing his feature film “Alice of Wonderland in Paris” (1966), his episodes of the “Popeye” and “Krazy Kat” TV series, and a twelve-minute adaptation of a book made to meet a deadline on film rights, meant never to be seen but now posted on YouTube when rediscovered in 2012 – “The Hobbit.”

MGM contracted Chuck Jones to continue producing “Tom & Jerry” in 1963, the producer that signed Deitch having left. I guess that Jones is more of a known quantity through the Looney Tuines and Merrie Melodies series, but he redesigned Tom & Jerry entirely, their dynamic is different again, the gags are different again, the music is scored differently... and everything else that was said about Gene Deitch’s version.