Hamateur Night (I'm OK, You're UK)

 

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

Summary: A local theater holds an amateur night, where the acts stink out loud and only the best of the worst can win it (so...it’s an updated version of Into Your Dance from 1935). All the while, Egghead keeps interrupting with his rendition of “She’ll Be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain When She Comes” and getting pulled by the “get off the stage” hook that is a trope on cartoons like this (I know a more-or-less modern version of this is The Sandman [a man dressed as a circus clown] sweeping off bad acts with a push broom on episodes of Showtime at the Apollo).

Fun Facts:

- The Four Daughters mentioned in the marquee gag at the beginning is a real movie. It’s a 1938 romantic drama about a charming, young stranger and his bitter, cynical composer friend upending the lives and loves of a happy, musical family. The four daughters were played by Gail Page and The Lane Sisters (Priscilla, Rosemary, and Lola). 

- Phillip Kramer, a radio comedian known for his work on the radio show, The Grouch Club, was the voice of the canine emcee in this short.

- This cartoon premiered alongside the feature film, They Made Me a Criminal, starring John Garfield, Claude Rains, and a group of New York City Broadway actors known as The Dead End Kids (and also known as The East Side Boys, The Tough Little Guys, and The Bowery Boys). It was also directed by Busby Berkeley, who is known more for doing musical films featuring elaborate, geometric set pieces and beautiful showgirls on parade. You probably have heard of some of them: 42nd Street, Footlight Parade, Gold Diggers of 1933, Dames, and Fashions of 1934.

The Channel(s): BBC (as part of Rolf Harris Cartoon Time)

Part(s) Edited: Hurray, it’s yet another edit done for time/more commercials rather than for objectionable content (though, considering that the United Kingdom is stricter in what’s appropriate for children’s/family audiences than the United States is, an argument can be made that the “Four Daughters with Selected Shorts” pun could be considered risqué, but that’s by American standards, not UK). When this cartoon aired on the BBC’s show Rolf Harris Cartoon Time (now considered problematic since the show’s host was later outed to be a paedophile [spelling it the British way this time around. I know this isn’t the American way]), the beginning with the Four Daughters marquee and the band warming up was cut, going straight from the titles to the canine-looking host introducing the show and Egghead twice interrupting with “She’ll Be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain” before getting the hook…twice.

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit(s): Like many edited for syndication cuts before it, just the fact that there’s nothing about the cut that would warrant the scene being cut other than “We need to trim this for time.” On top of that, cutting it so that way it starts with the host introducing the show doesn’t make or break the scene. Viewers will still know (by virtue of the title and what the new opening scene is) what’s going on. Then there’s the fact that Swami River’s act was never cut on UK TV, despite the UK having rules against showing content that could be insensitive to minority audiences, and that does include outdated, stereotypical depictions of racial and ethnic groups that were once okay to show, but now aren’t. If HBO Max in the U.S. could pull “Hamateur Night” for that reason (meanwhile, MeTV didn’t censor that scene and Tubi actually showed the cartoon, despite not airing many WB shorts with racial and ethnic stereotypes and showing “Believe It or Else” with edits – stay tuned for that one), then what exactly was stopping the UK from doing the same?

Video Comparison: 

Availability Uncut: Bad news: its physical media history doesn’t look too good. It was on the Golden Age of Looney Tunes laser disc and VHS in the early 1990s (both on volumes centered around Tex Avery’s best work at Termite Terrace) and didn’t get another release until 2023, where it appeared on the second volume of the Looney Tunes Collector’s Choice set, as well as the repackaged version from 2024 that includes all four volumes. Good news: it’s a public domain short (has been since 1967), so you can watch it on YouTube, other video sites, and the occasional gray-market home media release.

Is/Was It on Streaming or Digital Download: Yes. As I mentioned before, this was on HBO Max for a limited time in 2020. A year after that, it was streaming on WarnerMedia RIDE until 2023, which did seem to welcome some controversial shorts, but not all of them. Since 2025, “Hamateur Night” is on Tubi’s Looney Tunes channel, uncut, uncensored, and remastered.

‘Til next time, stay Looney and be Merrie.

Those Beautiful Dames (A Shamn Dame)

 

Director: Friz Freleng (credited as “Isadore Freleng”)
Summary: This is more-or-less "The Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives," only it's about an orphan girl who wishes to have toys, but is too poor to buy one. Instead of Santa coming to give her toys, the toys come to her run-down shack to cheer her up by giving her a home makeover (a modest one for the 1930s) and throwing her a party with cake and ice cream. Cute kids' fantasy stuff.
The Channel: unnamed syndication, Cartoon Network, and streaming (HBO Max [a.k.a Max])
Part(s) Edited/Video Evidence: Today, we have a two-fer (or three-fer, rather, but I only have evidence of two channels editing this short). Rather than explain it by writing it down (and because I recently installed DaVinci Resolve and gotten the hang of editing on non-linear video software, which is easier than what I used to do back when I was in film school), you can click here to see the video (if anything happens to the video, I will re-edit this blog).

How It Plays Edited: The Cartoon Network version where the Jazz Bow band scene was replaced with the scene of the toys gathered around the girl and the girl looking amazed that the toys she had seen in the store window are here and made over her broken-down shack has the most obvious "replace problematic scene with more benign footage" edit I've seen...so far (I'm not at the later cartoons yet). The edit done to the scene of the pickaninny girls next to the chocolate cake is similar (and looks and sounds obvious that something's missing) on both the Cartoon Network and (HBO) Max/streaming version, with the only notable differences being that the streaming version has more vibrant colors, the sound is clearer (the better to pick up on audio jumps, my dear), and there's no station identification bug at the bottom right of the screen.

Availability Uncut: Until a restored, remastered version that's uncut and uncensored resurfaces, your best bets to seeing this uncut are on the Golden Age of Looney Tunes laserdisc (volume 5, side 6) or as a special feature on the 2006 DVD release of the film Dames, starring Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell.

Beauty and the Beast (No Time to Duck, or Duck Off)

 

Director: Friz Freleng

Summary: In a cartoon that's nothing like the 1991 animated Disney feature film, the 2017 live-action Disney film, or even the 1946 French film (which wasn't made by Disney, but is worth seeing if you hate or are sick of Disney), a little girl dreams she's in Toyland (or some kind of nursery rhyme fantasy kingdom that was popular and appealed to kids at the time) and teams up with a toy soldier to take down a beast that's threatening to destroy the dream world.

The Channel: Unnamed syndicated prints.

Part(s) Edited: The scene of Humpty Dumpty laughing at the toy soldier blushing over being kissed by the little girl shortened the part where, after Humpty Dumpty falls off the wall and breaks, five wooden ducks pop out and do a dance/skate on their wheel feet as a gnome feeds soda crackers through a fan to simulate snow. As the old Censored Cartoons Page and the Looney Tunes wiki section has stated, this scene isn't problematic (unless you find a man blushing over being shown any kind of open affection, Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall as per that nursery rhyme that didn't even mention he was an egg, or the sight of wooden ducks somehow offensive) and was only edited because the sequence ate a lot of clock and would probably cause a lot of people (particularly younger audiences, since this does feel like something that would appeal more to children) to get bored with it and tune out.

How It Plays Edited/Video Comparison: Like the older black and white musical cartoons, this doesn't affect the plot much. There's a slight jump in the audio, but the scene has nothing to do with the rest of the short, so you're not missing much. And the approximation video below shows that, despite some amateur video editing on my part:

Availability Uncut: On physical media, it’s available on the Golden Age of Looney Tunes laserdisc set (volume 2, side 7). On streaming media, it’s available restored on HBO Max (now known as “Max”). It might come out on physical media again someday, especially since the new restored version really captures the whimsical, fairy tale aesthetic that Cinecolor tried to capture in the 1930s (though I’m so sure, through 1930s eyes, it probably did look amazing).

Update: As of 2025, “Beauty and the Beast” isn’t on HBO Max (a.k.a Max) anymore and, strangely, isn’t a part of Tubi’s 700-800 WB shorts collection. However, it is a part of the first volume of the Looney Tunes Collector’s Vault Blu-ray that was released this year.