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.

Fun Fact: This was submitted and screened for an Academy Award nomination, but was never picked. That...might be for the best, given how painfully average it is, but the rotoscoping on the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers dance is at least worth something.

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/weekend 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.

EDIT (8/1/2026): This cartoon is also available for streaming on Tubi. And yes, it is uncut, uncensored, and in its original black and white format.

‘Til next time…

The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos (Not Kid-ding Around, or The Singing Kid Is Not All White)

 

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).
• Initial titles for this include “Porky’s Bag O’Tricks!” and “Ol' Man Rover” (a spoof on the 1927 musical “Old Man River”). I like the second one. The first title sounds like it’s about Porky dealing with an incompetent magician or being an incompetent magician.
• The young pup actually has a name, according to the animation draft sheets. Apparently, his name is supposed to be Zippy.
• Speaking of Zippy, his voice actor and the voice of Rover the elderly dog are currently unknown. However, whoever voiced the two may have also voiced the blabbermouth duck from “She Was An Acrobat’s Daughter” who keeps asking his father questions about the movie they're watching starring Leslie Howard and Bette Davis and the old man on “Ain’t We Got Fun?” (no points on who would have voiced who. It’s fairly obvious). Those two shorts haven’t been censored for anything, but, if I ever get around to doing a blog either covering all 1000 WB theatrical shorts or (more realistically) just covering the ones I find interesting, weird, bad, good, inspirational, or forever living rent-free in my head thanks to childhood nostalgia, I will definitely cover one or both of them.

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).

UPDATE: “Rover’s Rival” is, as of August 2025, one of the 700 to 800 classic Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts uploaded to Tubi after HBO Max took them off their platform.

‘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 Duck Hunt (House of End Cards)

 

Director: Tex Avery (credited as “Fred Avery”)

Summary: Inspired by reading a book, Porky decides to go duck-hunting…and encounters a crazy duck (daffy, if you will) that proves hard to take down. Oh, and there’s a strange interlude involving drunken fish singing Moonlight Bay.

The Channel(s): Various, mostly unnamed syndication and international versions, though Nickelodeon did air a redrawn version that had the cut described below.

Part(s) Edited: After the cartoon ends with Porky getting punched in the face by his upstairs neighbor who got shot in the ass for the second time, the original end card had “That’s All Folks!” already written out while Daffy jumps, bounces, and dances around the letters. Sunset Productions back in 1955 cut that because Warner Bros. initially didn’t want to be associated with television. Most redrawn versions (particularly the Nickelodeon version that aired when Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon was a daytime show and all of their black and white shorts -- just the Porky ones, as the Bosko and Buddy shorts were phased out -- had to be colorized) also have this edit, but their versions either replace the end card with the “That’s All Folks!” concentric circle card or the abstract WB end card from the post-1964 cartoons. Nickelodeon definitely did the latter, while the former was seen more on international cuts, specifically on an Italian VHS version of Bugs Bunny’s 50th Birthday Collection.

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit: Not much, though, if I had to pick, just the fact that it’s considered a censorship cut. Censorship cuts are the ones that remove content that’s considered harmful or offensive by polite, corporate society (violence, sex, drug abuse, actions that can easily be imitated by impressionable viewers, anything that fans the flames of racial, ethnic, sexual, or gender-specific hate, whether it’s serious or in jest; anything that could cause undue distress to sensitive viewers, anything advocating antisocial or self-destructive behavior, etc). There’s nothing objectionable about this, except for the fact that Warner Bros once objected to being associated with television, and the fact that it’s included as a censorship cut on the old Censored Cartoons Page, the Looney Tunes Fandom Wiki, and this very blog is a worrying sign that people don’t know what words mean. I’m only including it here to show you just how ridiculous it is. Is it really censorship if the scene itself is innocuous? The answer is, “No. Then it’s just a cut for time or for some kind of legal issue involving copyright, in which case, it’s a syndication cut.”

And if you’re playing at home, no, Porky shooting his upstairs neighbor in the butt twice wasn’t cut, nor was the sequence with the drunken fish, not even on channels that have a history of editing irresponsible gunplay and/or drunken behavior (so…Cartoon Network, Boomerang, and maybe Nickelodeon, but I can see Nickelodeon only editing the gun parts).

It should also be of note that some redrawn versions (and the computer-colorized version that I'm so sure aired on Cartoon Network and Boomerang outside of Late Night Black and White) do exist with the original end card, but cut the part where a cross-eyed hunter and his equally crossed shotgun shoots down two planes while aiming for a duck and the end where Porky stutters that he has no more bullets in his rifle. It's from a Brazilian channel called SBT.

How It Plays Edited/Video Comparison: Since the audio hasn’t been altered (just the video), it does come off as weird, but it’s not anything to freak out over…unless you’re a purist who advocates for uncut and uncensored entertainment (which I can get behind). As for the edits done on SBT...cutting the cross-eyed hunter part doesn’t make or break the short, but it does look obvious because a fake fade-out was used (and I've seen enough edited Warner Bros. cartoons on TV in the 1990s and early 2000s to know that a fake fade-out to the next scene usually means something was cut). The end with Porky stuttering that he doesn’t have any more bullets...yeah, audio edits are hit or miss (with more misses than hits, though the misses usually become hits due to how laughably bad they are. If you’re like me, you remember when most edited-for-TV movies hired replacement voice actors to bowdlerize lines that had swearing, crude, sexually suggestive comments; or were just generally offensive for one reason or another. Most of those lines have become memes. These days, you can easily mute the line, cut or shorten the scene with the offending line, use an alternate take that was done while the film was being produced, or use A.I. dubbing, the last of which is still in its experimental phase, but, give it time, and it will catch on) and this one was a miss.

As always, here’s the video:

Availability Uncut: It was shown uncut on the “Daffy Duck: The Nuttiness Continues” 24 Karat Golden Jubilee VHS and Beta collection back in 1985, though that version had “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down” dubbed over the original opening theme and was time-compressed. The actual version where all parts are intact, it’s in black and white, it’s not sped up, and the original music is on the track can be found on either the Essential Daffy Duck DVD (disc one) or the Porky Pig 101 DVD (disc 2), and will be included in the upcoming Looney Tunes Collector’s Vault Blu-ray. It was on Max/HBO Max, but, for reasons unknown, all of the classic Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts have been removed. Here’s hoping it’s only temporary.

‘Til next time…

Thought I’d do something different, since this is the first cartoon that pairs Porky and Daffy, the first time Daffy is shown as actually living up to his name, and the first time Mel Blanc voices Porky, since Joe Dougherty was let go due to not being able to control his actual stutter during recording.

Porky's Romance (Dog-Gone Love)

 

Director: Frank Tashlin (credited as “Frank Tash”)

Summary: In this, the debut of Porky Pig’s shallow love interest, Petunia Pig (who isn’t as nice and bland as later incarnations), and the final cartoon with Joe Dougherty as the voice of Porky (who was let go because Dougherty’s actual stutter was slowing down voice recording. It’s the opposite of what we have now, where producers will cast an actual stutterer because one who can fake a stutter is considered “ableist.” What a world!), Porky comes over to try and win Petunia’s hand in marriage, but it becomes clear that she only wants him because he bought chocolates and flowers. When Porky attempts suicide over being rejected and used, the hanging goes pear-shape and Porky sees what life would be like if he did marry Petunia.

The Channel(s): The WB

Part(s) Edited: Surprisingly, Porky’s botched suicide wasn’t cut, nor was Porky and Petunia going straight to the Honeymoon Hotel, kissing, and turning off the lights (the shorthand way of showing sex on a wedding night in Hays Code-censored movies. They probably still do it today, but only as a joke or if something is meant to be PG instead of PG-13 [which sadly seems to be as far as most creatives are willing to go. I want my R, NC-17, and unrated entertainment that’s not confined to HBO and premium cable. And maybe G-rated stuff, since that's not as common as it used to be]), Petunia feeding chocolates to her dog (which is extremely dangerous to do), or Petunia beating Porky with a rolling pin (classic female-on-male domestic abuse schtick. It’s a total double standard that “You Beat Your Wife” gets censored on The WB, but not that part).

Nah, fam. What got cut was the very end, where, after Petunia wakes Porky up from his suicide attempt and agrees to marry him after turning him down, Porky (thinking back to the nightmare where his blushing bride becomes a slovenly, unashamed housewife who feeds chocolate to her dog and nags Porky about the housework and childcare) decides, “Screw that!” and bolts, but not before coming back to retrieve the box of chocolate and give Petunia’s dog a well-deserved kick in the ass. The WB didn’t appreciate Porky kicking the dog, so it was cut.

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit: Nothing, except for the whole double standard about how “Wideo Wabbit”’s “You Beat Your Wife” part was censored, yet Petunia whaling on Porky with a rolling pin was uncut. That’s more a Tumblr argument and I was only into Tumblr to find like-minded people who want to be better fiction writers and thought Cartoon Network’s Time Squad (from 2001) was rife with homosexual innuendo and jokes more suited for Adult Swim rather than daytime Cartoon Network (which it is. Rob Paulsen’s podcast episodes with Mark Hamill and Pamela Segall-Adlon say so and co-creator Carlos Ramos [who has his own Tumblr filled with weird art and answers to fan questions] agrees).

How It Plays Edited/Video Comparison: 

The ending is abrupt, but not annoyingly so. Ending it with Porky running away after retrieving his chocolates (or even with Porky running off and leaving Petunia and the chocolates behind) is more believable story-wise, as it shows that Petunia only liked Porky because he had chocolates for her and the dream showed what would happen if Porky did marry Petunia and she continued her chocolate eating. Either taking the chocolates away from her or leaving her with them is a final “Screw you!” to her and everything she stands for when it comes to shy men (or anthropomorphic pigs) trying to pour their hearts out to high-maintenance women (or high-maintenance, anthropomorphic sows in this case, since a sow is a female pig, but that word can be used like “bitch” or “cow” to be a derogatory term for a woman, whether deserved or not) who just aren’t feeling it.

Availability Uncut: Your choice: The Looney Tunes Golden Collection, volume 3 DVD set (on the third disc with optional commentary by Mark Kausler) or the Porky Pig 101 DVD (disc 2). It, sadly, isn’t available for streaming or digital download (so, no HBO Max, no Warner MediaRIDE, no Amazon Prime Video, no iTunes, No Boomerang streaming, and definitely no Tubi) as of this writing.

‘Til next time…

Porky's Road Race (Putting the "Race" in "Racial Stereotyping")

NOTE: Because most of the celebrities identified here will be unfamiliar to most readers, I have provided links to their Wikipedia pages as a diving board for the inevitable fall down the rabbit hole of old-school Hollywood trivia and history.

Director: Frank Tashlin (credited as “Frank Tash”)

Summary: Porky competes in a celebrity-studded car race, where the favorite to win is Borax Karoff (Boris Karloff). Can Porky beat him and win the $2 million dollar prize (which comes to $1.63 after something called a “less tax”. And don’t get me started on what those figures would be when adjusted for current inflation…)?

The Channel(s): Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Boomerang

Part(s) Edited: Just one, and it’s a very fleeting cut, whether you’ve seen this edited or not. The redrawn- and computer-colorized versions shown on all three channels (though Cartoon Network once had an uncut computer-colorized version, as seen in this picture: 

The station identification bug doesn’t lie, and it doesn’t look like it was PhotoShopped or was created with A.I., since PhotoShop would be too obvious and A.I. as we know it now wasn’t around when this aired on Cartoon Network between 1992 and the early 2000s) edited the scene at the beginning of the race where all the drivers speed off was cut to remove the part where a vehicle driven by Stepin Fetchit trails behind them on a racecar called, “The Knee Action Special,” which is a bike meets an Olympic-style luge (not bad for those who want to take it easy and help the environment, but really not appropriate for a race that favors fast cars).

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit: Nothing. The edit is seamless and a throwaway joke like that doesn’t add much to the story…unless, of course, you’re a purist who hates it when television censors anything it airs, from classic cartoon shorts to contemporary movies and TV show reruns. The scene is only there because the cartoon is about celebrity caricatures of the era in a road race, from the comedy stars like Edna May Oliver, W.C. Fields, and Charlie Chaplin to the more serious stars, like Boris Karloff, Greta Garbo, and John Barrymore (yes, he is related to Drew Barrymore). Stepin Fetchit would definitely be in the comedy section, as that kind of racial humor was popular in its day. If I have one complaint about the edit, it’s that Cartoon Network and Boomerang should have cut W.C. Fields using booze to jump-start Edna May Oliver’s car, since Cartoon Network does have a history of editing out alcohol references, though, compared to editing out outdated racial and ethnic stereotypes, editing for alcohol references is a tad more inconsistent.

How It Plays Edited/Video Comparison: Right here, now without watermarks!

Availability Uncut: Your choice: the Looney Tunes Golden Collection volume three DVD set (which is the start of the classic cartoon DVDs having warnings about some of the shorts containing content now considered “politically incorrect” or “problematic” due to outdated racial and ethnic caricatures) or the Porky Pig 101 DVD set (using the same copy from the former DVD set). Will it ever see a remastered for Blu-ray, streaming, or digital download version? Maybe, but not likely.

‘Til next time…