September in the Rain (No Plot? Plenty of Problems!)

 

Director: Friz Freleng (credited as “I. Freleng”)

Summary: Your typical “midnight in the store” cartoon. This one is in a grocery store on a rainy night where the products and their label mascots come to life and do bits and musical numbers (some of which are recycled from other shorts, since Freleng did do that). It’s short, it’s sweet, it’s played straight, and while not that many people like it, I think it’s fine for what it is.

The Channel(s): TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, and on DVD.

Part(s) Edited: All the black caricatures are cut from this short, though the 1995 Turner dubbed version at least left in the Al Jolson “Dream of Wheat” (Cream of Wheat) mascot serenading the Aunt Emma (Aunt Jemima, now known as “Pearl Milling,” which yeah, does sound like the name of a U.S. Southern black woman and “Aunt Jemima” could have been her nickname when she became known for her pancakes or what her white slave owners called her) mascot with the title song. I’ve never seen that version; I’ve seen the version where every black caricature is cut and the cartoon, which already has a 5-minute, 47-second runtime, now runs at 3 minutes and 32 seconds (or 4 minutes and 36 seconds, if it’s the version where the Al Jolson/Aunt Emma part was left in, but not the performance of “Nagasaki” at the end).

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit: On the one hand, the cartoon was just a collection of musical numbers and light comedy bits, so complaining about how the edits ruined the cartoon is kinda stupid on my end (not as stupid as making an already short cartoon shorter, but that’s neither here nor there). On the other hand, it’s obvious that parts are cut because of the jump in music.

Video Comparison: Instead of doing one video showing the uncut vs. cut scenes, I’m showing the actual cartoon vs. the common edited version (Cartoon Network, Boomerang, TBS, TNT, and on DVD) and the 1995 Turner dubbed version (which probably aired on Cartoon Network, TBS, and TNT back in the 1990s, though it could have been made for unnamed syndication and some home media releases):

Uncut Version:

Edited Version #1 (version where all black caricatures are cut)

Edited Version #2 (version where the Al Jolson/Aunt Emma part is uncut, but the ending isn't):

Availability Uncut: Yeah, about the only place this is available uncut is The Golden Age of Looney Tunes laser disc (volume 4, side 10). The DVD version of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie, Carefree, has an edited version, though I don’t know which one (the one where all the black caricatures are cut or the one where at least the Al Jolson/Aunt Emma scene was uncut). It hasn’t been on television since…I wanna say, the early 2000s (last seen on Cartoon Network) because, even with the parts cut, it’s just filler. Be glad that the uncut laser disc version can be found on sites like archive.org.

‘Til next time…

Porky's Hero Agency (No Re-Guard for Consistency)

 

Director: Bob Clampett (credited as “Robert Clampett”); Chuck Jones (credited as “Charles Jones” for animation)

Summary: Porky (depicted here as a child character) reads some Greek myths before bed and dreams that he runs a “Hero for Hire” agency who runs afoul of a man-hungry Medusa (the gorgon who turns men to stone with her cursed gaze) who works as a photographer and collects her rock-hard victims to use as statues.

The Channel(s): Cartoon Network (barring The Bob Clampett Show), Boomerang, MeTV, and MeTV Toons (surprisingly, not Nickelodeon)

Part(s) Edited: Two small parts for the same reason: The guard pulling Porky through the barred door window and putting him in line to be Medusa’s next victim, and the guard telling Porky that he’s next, with Porky backing away and imagining himself as a piggy bank. The alleged reason: either the guard is an outdated caricature of a black man or he's in blackface. I’m leaning hard towards the caricature claim, because there’s nothing that says that the guard is a white guy in questionable race make-up.

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit: We’ll get to the “why this grinds my gears [if it ever did]” bit shortly. I just want to bring up this:

I don’t understand why the price for a “fair maiden” rescue is lower than one for slaying dragons (which I don’t even think was part of Greek mythology. Yeah, they had the hydra, which was a dragon-like creature with three heads, but not the kind of dragon you hear about in fairy tales and epic, medieval fantasies that try to be like J.R.R. Tolkein with varying degrees of success and failure) or a daring last-minute rescue (and why change the price from $25 to 3 for $10)? Are damsels (or maidens) in distress so common that you can get them for cheap?

And let’s see how much all those prices would be in 2025:

The $50.00 (in 1937 money) dragon slaying would be $1,120 today (this also applies to the “genuine Egyptian pyramid” that Medusa makes out of a group of men in a human pyramid), which, yeah, pricey, but is worth it, give how difficult slaying a dragon is. From the stories I’ve heard and seen, it’s a one-man operation and only the bravest and most valiant definitely need to be paid that for the work done. The $12 per dozen in 1937 would come to $268.00 today, which might not seem much, but if you slayed more than ten dozen, you could clean up ($268 x 120 [ten dozen] = $32,160).

Fifty cents (in 1937 money) for a “fair maiden/damsel in distress” rescue is $11.20 today. I…guess that’s an improvement, but it seems like there’s no good money in rescuing maidens and damsels, despite that that’s one of the best parts about myths, legends, pulp stories, and most action and fantasy movies and TV shows. You want women to be safe, don’t you? On the other hand, with the large amount of “fair maiden/damsel in distress” rescues priced at $11.20 in today’s money, you could clean up a decent amount. It’s not going to be on the same level as ten or more dozen dragons slain, but it’s still a good amount.

The old price for “thrilling, last-minute rescues” was $25 a pop in 1937. In today’s money, that’s $560.00. Not bad, but a bit too rich for most people’s blood, that will no doubt spill because they can’t afford it. The new price where it’s three rescues for $10.00 (1937 money) would be $224.00, which, yeah, is a better deal. I just hope Porky(karkus) has a good installment plan, especially for the dragon slaying.

The old man statue labeled an “antique” that’s priced at $60 billion in 1937 money would be around $1.34 trillion in 2025. You read that right: trillion. So saying that you’re worth more dead than alive isn’t just an expression.

The “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil” statue that was $3.00 in 1937 is $67.20 today, though I thought it would be priced higher, since Three Stooges memorabilia would be more popular, especially if it’s the original trio of Moe, Larry, and Curly.

Okay, the math and economics lesson is over for the day. Time for some film editing and criticism:

The first time the guard was cut looked painfully obvious, as there’s a jump in the audio track (at least from what I remember from seeing on Cartoon Network. I have vague memories of seeing it on Nickelodeon, but from what I could tell, the guard’s two appearances weren’t censored). Second edit…can’t really complain about it because of how seamless it is. It’s not on the edit approximation video, but the second edit was supposed to go from Medusa creating the Egyptian pyramid from a human pyramid to Porky walking in disguised as the Dick Powell statue, which Medusa immediately falls for.

Video Comparison:

Availability Uncut: For a mid Porky cartoon that was mostly shown on television (at least in my youth), this actually does have some good home media releases. In 1992, it was released (as a computer-colorized edition, which I assume is the copy that aired on such channels as Cartoon Network, Boomerang, and Nickelodeon when they turned Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon into a daytime show) on the VHS “Porky Pig: Days of Swine and Roses” as part of the Authentic and Original Looney Tunes Cartoons VHS collection (yeah, that title sounds very much like something from a gray market video distributor, where most, if not all, the cartoons are public domain -- at best. At worst, it sounds like a video collection series from Wish or Temu, but, in order to actually be like those, “Looney Tunes” has to be misspelled as “Loney Toons”). Two years later, “Porky’s Hero Agency” was released on the laser disc called “Wince upon a Time: Foolhardy Fairy Tales and Looney Legends” (a collection of Warner Bros cartoons that spoof fairy tales and mythical stories). Seven years after that, the short appeared on volume 9 of this British Looney Tunes video collection called, “The Looney Tunes Special Bumper Collection.” Today, the cartoon can be found, uncut, uncensored, and in its original black and white either as a special feature on the DVD version of the movie Marked Woman, starring Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart, or, if you’d rather buy cartoon compilation DVDs instead of old movies with the cartoon shorts that ran concurrent with them in theaters as special features, the Porky Pig 101 DVD set.

‘Til next time…

The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos (Not Kid-ding Around)

 

Director: Frank Tashlin

Summary: Forest animals (a lot of which are caricatures of singers, actors, and radio personalities of the time) participate in the Woodland Community Swing Variety Show on radio station KUKU.

The Channel(s): Cartoon Network

Part(s) Edited: During the performance of the title song, there’s a sequence where we pan across a row of animal-based caricatures of celebrities that were popular at the time of the cartoon’s release in theaters. When Cartoon Network aired this in the 1990s, they shortened the pan to remove the appearance of the blackfaced Al Jolson caricature named “Al Goatson: The Singing Kid” (“kid” as in “baby goat,” not “human child,” though, from what I’ve seen and experienced personally, one tends to act like the other).

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit: Like the previous entry, this doesn’t “grind my gears,” but it does make me question some things. Namely, “Why would Cartoon Network just cut the Al Jolson goat when you also had Fats Swallow, the bird/toad(?) caricature of Fats Waller, who was black and often caricatured on such Warner Bros. shorts as ‘Clean Pastures’ and ‘Tin Pan Alley Cats’? Wouldn’t it make more sense to just cut the entire pan across the celebrity animals, as cutting in the middle of a panning shot is jarring and will make even first-time viewers realize that something’s gone?”

On top of that, I had the good fortune not to see this edited. It was uncut on an early 2000s showing of The Acme Hour (a cartoon block that aired for one hour on weekdays and two hours on weekends that mixed Warner Bros cartoons with Fleischer Popeye shorts and both MGM cartoons [Tom and Jerry and the shorts directed by Tex Avery when he was fired from Termite Terrace] and had bumpers that showed POV shots of what it’s like to be on the business end of classic cartoon slapstick, such as getting hit in the face with a wooden plank, having a piano and an anvil fall on your head, skating on rocket-powered rollerskates, etc), but, sadly, only once. After that, the short was phased out and replaced with other cartoons. The Looney Tunes Fandom Wiki is where I heard that it was edited. While I do want to take that website’s word for it, I can’t really believe them 100% unless I have evidence like, say, a video clip of the cut scene, complete with Cartoon Network’s station identification bug. 

Since we don’t have one, I’ll just do an approximation edit.

Video Comparison: Hot, fresh, and rife with commentary from me. Not much, but it’s a start:

Availability Uncut: This one isn’t as widely available as it should be (should it be, though?). It was on the Golden Age of Looney Tunes laser disc (volume 4, side five) and its most recent appearance is on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, volume three (disc two, which features Warner Bros cartoons with celebrity caricatures and pop culture references of the day. Anyone who tells you The Simpsons and Family Guy are the only cartoons that are stuffed with pop culture references and celebrity caricatures hasn’t seen a Looney Tunes cartoon beyond what they remember, either vividly or vaguely, from childhood. It’s lousy with it, and Internet forums, wikis, and comments sections will be happy to guide you on what you missed…assuming you can put up with petty arguments and misinformation).

‘Til next time…

Rover's Rival (Washed-Up Antiques Roadshow)

 

Director: Bob Clampett (credited as “Robert Clampett.” Sounds oddly proper for someone like him. Like calling Will Forte “Orville Willis Forte IV”), with Chuck Jones (credited as “Charles Jones”) as an uncredited co-director (though he is credited for animation).

Summary: Porky literally tries to teach his old dog new tricks, but a smart aleck puppy keeps trolling him.

Fun Facts: This is the first cartoon to use “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down” as the Looney Tunes theme song (Merrie Melodies’ theme is “Merrily We Roll Along,” for those who use both interchangeably) and the first to use the ending card where Porky bursts out of the drum and stutters, “Th-Th-Th-That’s All, Folks!” (there’s a short-lived Bugs Bunny variant where Bugs bursts out of the drum, snacks on a carrot, and says, “And dat’s de end!” Kinda wished they did variations with other characters, like how the end of Tiny Toon Adventures had the characters close out the cartoon, like Gogo Dodo saying, “It’s been surreal!” and turning the TV off with a remote, Plucky saying, “Parting is such sweet sorrow,” or Dizzy Devil saying “Show over” and eating the rainbow-colored concentric circles until his eyes are the only things left. There’s a YouTube compilation of this, naturally).

The Channel(s): Nickelodeon (possibly)

Part(s) Edited: Nickelodeon’s redrawn-colorized version (according to the old Censored Cartoons Page and the Looney Tunes Fandom Wiki) muffled out the young pup calling Porky’s dog an “old  antique” after the old dog slams his head into a washtub that’s hanging on the wall outside Porky’s house.

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit: Not so much “grind my gears” as “make me ask a lot of questions about the veracity of the claim.” Editing a cartoon to remove a kid character insult an elderly character seems out of character for Nickelodeon (especially in the 1990s, when the whole aesthetic of that channel made kids and teenagers believe that they had the power and reasonable adult figures were old-fashioned and out-of-touch), so what was the point of this edit? I wouldn’t put it past the censors of that channel to show some hypocrisy (the syndicated/acquired shows can’t have any ageism and adult-bashing from kids, but the homegrown shows Nickelodeon made can). Then again, what if it wasn’t a censorship cut? What if the sound quality was so bad that the audio just strategically cut out on that part and fixing it was either a) impossible, or b) not cost-effective. Or what if the viewers couldn’t understand the pup’s dialogue and thought it was muffled or muted?

Video Comparison: I’m not going to do my usual “compare/contrast” or “edit approximation” video this go-around. What I am going to do is upload both the original black and white version and the redrawn-colorized version and let you, the reader/viewer, decide if any audio censorship was done. From where I stand, there was no editing, but if anyone has any evidence that says otherwise (f.eg, a video of when this short aired on Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon with the edit actually there for all to here), then please come up and testify.

Black and White version:

Redrawn-Colorized version:

Availability Uncut: It was already uncut (allegedly) when aired on television, but, if you want the black and white version where the audio is high-quality, then look no further than the Porky Pig 101 DVD (disc two)…and I mean that literally, because that’s the only physical media release it has. It was available on Boomerang’s streaming channel and HBO Max (back when it was first called HBO Max and then when it was just Max. Now it’s back to HBO Max), but was dropped between 2024 and 2025 (this year).

‘Til next time…

Yet Another Brief Announcement

As you’re waiting for the next installment, I’d like to interject with some news about the blog. Don’t worry; it’s all good:

1) Looking over at the older videos and how I did them, I’m going to redo them, since I now have more of a handle on linear video editing. “I’ve Got to Sing a Torch Song” (which, according to my stats, is the most popular blog post here, next to the one about the 12 banned Bugs Bunny shorts and the one about The Censored Eleven) definitely needs a redo, as I really screwed up in editing it, as does “Buddy’s Showboat.”

2) I am considering adding a page where it’s just all of the compare-contrast/editing approximation videos (there is a difference between those: the compare-contrast videos usually have actual footage of how the cartoon was edited on the network or in syndication. Editing approximation videos are just me trying to figure out how the edited version looked), so if you don’t feel like reading my ramblings (or you need evidence for an online discussion or a video channel about censorship in cartoons. If you do the latter, please credit my blog and myself. Nobody likes a plagiarist), you can just go to the clips and see for yourself. They’ll all be attached to my Google Drive, so you can download them with ease.

The next installment is scheduled for next week (hopefully) because I’ll be on vacation from work, which leaves me time to write and do housework.

‘Til next time…

Speaking of the Weather (An Old Buddy [Cartoon] of Mine)

Director: Frank Tashlin

Summary: A “midnight in the store” cartoon (the first of three that Tashlin did and his first color cartoon), featuring celebrity caricatures and spoofs of popular reading material of the day all set to the title track of the short. This one takes place at a drugstore after midnight, and the reading material shown are magazines of all types. Like all “midnight at the store” shorts, this one has a rather thin story to break up the monotony of the gags and music. This one has a yegg from The Gang Magazine trying to break into a safe shown on the cover of The Magazine of Wall Street and Business, only to have everyone from Boy Scouts from Boy’s Life magazine to Greta Garbo on the cover of Photoplay stopping him when the crook inevitably escapes from the prison cell on the cover of LIFE.

The Channel(s): Cartoon Network and Boomerang

Part(s) Edited: A light edit on this one. When the prisoner makes his escape and all the magazine characters go after him, all that was cut were two shots of the African natives running towards the camera, which, if you can believe it, is recycled footage from “Buddy of the Apes” (which definitely didn’t air on Cartoon Network due to the stereotypical depictions of African natives/non-white indigenous peoples) and “Buddy’s Theatre” (which also didn’t air on Cartoon Network for the same reason, though, now that I think of it, I don’t think Cartoon Network aired any Buddy cartoons because…they just weren’t that good. Not even Late Night Black and White showed them, to my knowledge, and they showed the few shorts that had Goopy Geer as a character).

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit: Not much, unless you count the second edit where you can clearly hear the angry natives over the shot of the thug bouncing on the spears thrown at him. Even then, I give that a pass, because audio cue mistakes happen a lot in editing and that mistake can easily be dismissed as the walla of off-screen magazine characters that somehow got spears from other magazine covers (possibly one about primitive weapons or touring African jungles).

Video Comparison:

Availability Uncut: “Speaking of the Weather” hit the home media release trifecta of the 1990s going into the early-to-mid 2000s: it was on the laser disc and VHS versions of the Golden Age of Looney Tunes series (volume 1, “1930s Musicals”) in 1991. Fourteen years later, it appeared on the third volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection (the volume where the concentric circles are black, Bugs is holding one of the singing girls from that short, and it comes with a warning about politically-incorrect content courtesy of Whoopi Goldberg) on the second disc, featuring Hollywood spoofs of the 1930s, ‘40s, and 50s. Three years after that, it appeared as a special feature on the DVD version of the movie, Gold Diggers of 1937, starring Dick Powell, Joan Blondell, Victor Moore, and Glenda Farrell, and that’s where it’s been ever since. As of this writing, it hasn’t been re-remastered for Blu-ray or put on streaming, which is a shame, because this feels like it could have been on HBO Max when that service first launched in 2020, only to be pulled because it had outdated racial and ethnic stereotypes in it.

‘Til next time…

 

Porky's Railroad (Re-Drawn Together)

Director: Frank Tashlin

Summary: Porky’s clunky, yet reliable train engine, Toots the 15th Century Unlimited (a 2-2-2 engine --two leading wheels, two driving wheels, and two trailing wheels -- popularly called a “Jenny Lind”)  squares off against Dirty Digg’s streamlined train, Silver Fish (no word on what kind of wheel alignment it’s supposed to have) in this battle between old tech vs. new tech.

The Channel(s): Unnamed syndication, Nickelodeon, and MeTV

Part(s) Edited: A very quick sight gag. During the race between Toots and the Silver Fish, a brief scene showing the Silver Fish racing by a woodpile that flies up revealing a black man (one that kind of looks humanoid, the way Bosko did) in tattered clothes was cut. Surprisingly, neither Cartoon Network nor Boomerang cut that part, and I actually found proof of it (see the “Video Comparison” section below).

The redrawn-colorized version also cut a short scene where Dirty Digg’s Silver Fish turns a tunnel inside out, and the end where Porky is crowned the new engineer of the Silver Fish, but those cuts were because redrawn-colorized versions had a hard time replicating the frenetic and fast-paced animation of these black-and-white shorts (mostly Bob Clampett’s work, but Frank Tashlin did a lot of what Clampett would be known for) and would often drop scenes because they weren’t usable (if you think that’s bad, wait ‘til we get to “The Daffy Doc” and “Wholly Smoke”).

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit: This probably doesn’t grind my gears as much as it should. The “black man in the woodpile” edit goes by so fast that you don’t even notice. However, the Looney Tunes Fandom wiki says that it was cut because it’s a visual pun on a racially offensive saying. We have enough racist sentiment in this world; we don’t need any more unless it’s backed by historical context or someone challenging and condemning it, so I don’t know or want to know what that saying is.

As for the two other cuts…those were cut due to shoddy workmanship, not censorship. I’m not running a “Shoddy Workmanship” blog, though I do like pointing out how redrawn-colorized cartoons look like complete and utter crap, since I remember seeing those a lot on Nickelodeon (and occasionally, Cartoon Network).

Video Comparison: In a return to the style of the pilot blog post about Bosko, The Talk-Ink Kid, I’m going to show the full, uncut black and white version versus the redrawn-colorized edited version:

Uncut (black and white version):

Uncut (computer-colorized version as seen on Cartoon Network):

Edited (redrawn-colorized, as seen on Nickelodeon, MeTV, and unnamed syndication):

Availability Uncut: It is available on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 4 DVD (on the second disc centered on Frank Tashlin cartoons), the Porky Pig 101 DVD set, and the Porky Pig volume of a UK-based DVD set called “The Looney Tunes Big Faces Box Set” (a.k.a “The Kids WB Bumper Box of Toons”). It’s not on streaming as of yet, but it doesn’t matter, as this cartoon has been in the public domain since 1965, so you can watch it wherever fine public domain films (live-action and animated) are uploaded.

For more information on trains and how they’re depicted in the media, visit https://obscuretrainmovies.wordpress.com

‘Til next time…