Director: Tex Avery (uncredited); Leadora Congdon (credited, though she was credited for layout and background work, as well as being the “moderne art” designer and conceptualist). It’s confusing, yes, but Tex Avery did direct this cartoon, even though he didn’t care much for it, as it was out of his humor wheelhouse (even though a thorough viewing shows that there are some Tex Avery-ish gags in this. They were most likely scaled back because the cartoon is more eye candy than a laugh fest).
Summary: The staff of a hicktown hotel await the arrival of a female guest known as “Miss Glory.” A bellhop, who has dreams of bellhopping for the more refined, upscale city hotels, falls asleep and gets his wish, leading to a big musical number and string of gags involving drinks, the excesses of the wealthy, the appearance of one “Miss Glory”, and how everyone there wants to see her.
The Channel: Syndication/local affiliate (WNEW in New York, circa the 1980s)
Part(s) Edited: Once again, I’m amazed at just what American TV censorship (whether from a major network or a minor affiliate station) finds objectionable in something that doesn’t seem it. This time around, we have this: Somewhere in the 1980s, WNEW in New York City cut the part where the bellhop thinks a snooty, Margaret DuMont-style society matron is the fabled “Miss Glory,” but isn’t, as she takes one look at him and walks away, not knowing the bellhop is stepping on the train of her yellow dress. When her dress strategically comes apart behind a potted plant (even though she is wearing a slip, it’s treated like nudity because of Hays Code restrictions and the fact that most slips are sheer/see-through), the matron decides to treat the audience to a fan dance, until we see that her slip has a patch on it. The consensus (at least on the Looney Tunes Fandom Wiki) is that the scene was considered too risqué for children/family audiences. I would have said because the scene ran long, but who says it can’t be both?
How It Plays Edited/Video Comparison: I did this approximation/compare and contrast video as the Looney Tunes Fandom Wiki worded the edit, which is as follows,
“When this short aired on New York's WNEW channel in the 1980s, the sequence where the snooty society matron's dress rips off (because the bellhop had been standing on it) and she does a fan dance with fern leaves to cover up was cut due to being too sexually suggestive for a family/child audience.”
To me, that means that, after the three butlers and the rural bellhop drunkenly sing the end of the title song, the edited version goes straight to the rural bellhop applauding something off-screen and the fat man at a table yelling for service. I feel that WNEW’s version did include the bellhop asking the snooty matron if she’s Miss Glory, but cut off before she walks away. Either way, the cut is very obvious for a scene that doesn’t make or break the cartoon’s already meager plot:
Availability Uncut: You’re in luck. This is available uncut (sadly, not in public domain, despite that the title song is, and currently not on streaming, even though this doesn’t have any problematic content. Maybe art deco is too pretty for today’s audiences) on the Golden Age of Looney Tunes laserdisc and VHS (volume 1, “1930s Musicals”), as a special feature on the DVD version of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie, Top Hat; on disc four (the most-requested one-shots) of the sixth and final volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set (and disc 2 of the shorter, more family-friendly Spotlight Collection DVD set); on the DVD and Blu-ray version of the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection, volume 2 (the Blu-ray version of which has become very hard to find); a DVD called Looney Tunes Musical Masterpieces, and a repackaged version of Looney Tunes Musical Masterpieces that comes sandwiched with Tom and Jerry’s Musical Mayhem and the Scooby Doo movie, Music of the Vampire.
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