Polar Pals (In Cold Blood, or Bullets Over the Arctic Circle)

 

Director(s): Bob Clampett (credited as “Robert Clampett”)

Summary: Porky Pig, who, in this short, lives in the Arctic and frolics with the wildlife (which, yes, does include Antarctic animals. That’s just how it was until we had people who could actually look online and find which animals are Arctic and which aren’t)...until a fur trapper named I. Killem appears and goes on a spree to have all of Porky’s animal friends killed and turned into coats and hunting trophies. That’s pretty dark for something that plays out like one of those thinly-plotted 1930s cartoons that were a flimsy excuse to advertise music in the studio library, but, hey, it was a different time.

Fun Facts: 

• The $4.98 for the coats that I. Killem imagines the seals as would be $113.71 in 2026 money. That’s...actually not that bad of a price (only because $4.98 makes the coats look cheap. $113.71 makes me think, “Yeah, that sounds about right for seal coats”), but you know people will still complain because of animal cruelty.

Because the “Fun Facts” is a bit light this time around, I want to introduce a new segment that I might make regular the more I keep up with this (and because the last entry also had this) called, “Letterboxd Says The Darndest Things,” where I find the most...“interesting” (for lack of a better word) Letterboxd review and add in my two cents, equal parts agreeing with its sentiment or countering with my take on it.

Today’s entry comes from Tim Brayton, who gave this cartoon two-and-a-half stars, and had this to say about the short:

I failed to note when posting about “Kristopher Kolumbus Jr” that it was the kick-off to an eight-month period of 1939 during which the Bob Clampett unit was the only team at Schlesinger’s making black-and-white Looney Tunes with Porky Pig, while the [Tex] Avery, [Chuck] Jones, and [Ben] Hardaway/[Cal] Dalton units were exclusively focused on Technicolor Merrie Melodies. It’s exceedingly tempting to speculate that this is related to the sudden explosion of evident contempt Clampett had for his job: we’re in a run of just crushingly mediocre Clampett cartoons, and “Polar Pals” feels almost even more bored with itself than “Kristopher Kolumbus Jr.” That cartoon sucked, but at least it had some weird touches and a general mood of “fuck you” superiority. This [“Polar Pals”] just feels like somebody attempting to make the most generic possible musical 1930s cartoon, starting from a dismal, droning pop song about Eskimo kisses performed by a super generic woman’s group. And then it goes into a series of competently executed, deeply unimaginative physical comedy gags about polar animals (both poles, but that’s to be expected) dealing with how everything is made of ice. The standout moment, which is not to say the highlight, is obviously when Porky not only strips nude to take an ice shower (Mel Blanc’s stutter on “Singin’ In The Bathub” is charming), but when drying his ass afterwards, shimmies his junk right at the camera. Otherwise, it's mostly fine, but boring to watch, and it feels like it was boring to come up with it, and it’s not remotely a coincidence that this is our first Looney Tune in a while that only barely manages to pass the 6-minute mark.

Things I Agree With Him About This Short: Porky stutter-singing “Singin’ in the Bathtub” is charming/funny.

Things I Will Meet Tim Halfway About This Short: Yeah, the musical number does feel a bit tedious and Bob Clampett’s Porky cartoon track record after “Porky in Wackyland” wasn’t all that great, but the short is worth it for I. Killem attacking the animals, the animals fighting back, and the end where Porky drops through the ice and gets frozen. That has more of a “fuck you” sentiment than whatever “Kristopher Kolumbus, Jr.” had (though I’m probably wrong on that, since I’ve never seen “Kristopher Kolumbus, Jr.” It’s one of those shorts that wasn’t on TV because it was too racially insensitive to air, even with edits. I can easily find it online now and see for myself, but that can wait for another day...or a full-on blog where I go through all 1000 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts with my skewed and fractured take on what I’m seeing) since this is when Bob Clampett was using Porky more out of contractual obligation rather than a geniune love for the character or interest in expanding his personality or roles.

Things I Don’t Agree With About This Short:

• Tim lost me on “...when drying his ass afterwards, shimmies his junk right at the camera...” Why’d you have to word it like that? Plus, this is Bob Clampett we’re talking about. Like Tex Avery and (on occasion) Frank Tashlin, Clampett liked to put in questionable gags just to see if the Hays Code/studio censors take notice. “An Itch in Time” is Clampett’s best example.

• I personally think the short’s stand-out moment is when I. Killem attacks the animals. That’s probably the best black humor a WB cartoon had in the days before Chuck Jones put out funnier shorts, even if it feels like something Tex Avery would have done (at least at MGM. Not so much Termite Terrace).

• Porky’s reflection on the ice wall as he’s dancing is also a stand-out in this short, if only because that’s the part I remember most from my days of seeing it as a child (well, teenager, since I don’t really remember seeing this on any channel but Cartoon Network).

• This short is six minutes and 32 seconds. I’d say it does past the six-minute mark...unless Tim was watching the edited version, which I will get to...right now.

The Channel(s): Nickelodeon (Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon [no word on whether it’s the Nick at Nite version or the daytime version. I’m going to assume it’s both])

Part(s) Edited: Two scenes of gun violence during I. Killem’s rampage to turn Porky’s polar pals (title drop!) into furs and trophies:

• The penguin running from the machine gun fire and watching in horror as his shadow gets shot and melodramatically dies.
• A drunken walrus getting riddled with gunfire, but not being affected by it. The walrus laughs, hiccups, declares, “Ya never even touched me!”, downs his booze, and watches (without reacting in pain) as his stomach becomes a cartoon sprinkler, thanks to the alcohol leaking out of his bullet wounds.

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit(s): Since the cartoon has been declared one of Bob Clampett’s lesser works in his black and white Porky Pig filmography, then taking away the only truly funny scenes in the short does kill the vibe somewhat. What I don’t get is the fact that why wasn’t the scene of the polar bears, seals, and mooses armed with rifles getting blasted into looking like the study parlor of a great white hunter’s (read: animal trophy heads and rifles on the wall and a bearskin rug near a roaring fireplace) mansion (or hunting clubhouse, where he and others like him gather to drink and discuss their adventures) cut? Was it too cartoony to be considered violent? If that’s true, why was the drunk walrus being turned into a sprinkler cut? That’s the cartooniest gag I know in my years of watching classic shorts for both fun and knowing the ins and outs of comedy (both animated and live-action). It can’t be because the walrus was a drunk. If you can believe it, Nickelodeon actually left in tobacco and alcohol references in their shorts, but cut out pill-popping (I know “Beep Beep!”, “Stop! Look! And Hasten!” and “Mexican Boarders” have been cut for that, but “The Last Hungry Cat” wasn’t). Oh, 1990s Nickelodeon...

Video Comparison (I am fully aware that Nickelodeon probably did all their edits on a computer-colorized version. Recreating the edits on a black and white copy is for demonstration only. Plus, I didn't think to download a computer-colorized version until just now): 

Availability Uncut: “Polar Pals” is on three — count ‘em — three disc-like forms of physical media. First, we got its 1994 release on the Longitude and Looneytude: Globetrotting Looney Tunes Favorites laser disc -- and the cover for it really is a sight: 

You got Bugs Bunny allegedly looking at a map, when his eye line seems to be in the direction of watching Penelope the cat once again trying to escape the amorous embrace of Pepe Le Pew [who has the same sheik headdress as the one from “Little Beau Pepe,” and, despite how easy it could have been, doesn’t look like Yosemite Sam’s]; you have Gogo Dodo behind Bugs, but no Porky Pig in sight; you have Sylvester glaring at the Hungarian dancing mouse from “Mouse Mazurka,” but there’s no Tweety in sight; you have a sad-looking Playboy Penguin from “Frigid Hare” and “8 Ball Bunny,” and you have Yosemite Sam as his sheik self from “Sahara Hare” looking pissed as he sticks his head through the ship’s porthole. It’s funny for being so bad, in my opinion. 

Thirteen years later, “Polar Pals” is on the fifth and penultimate volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set (on the fourth disc, which features rarely seen black-and-white cartoons from the 1930s and early 1940s, though I must protest, because some of them have been seen on television and have had parts cut). Ten years after that, the short was released on the Porky Pig 101 DVD (third disc), which features 101 Porky Pig cartoons (a lot of which are the ones that have either been banned from airing on American TV or edited to remove problematic content before airing on American TV).

Is/Was It on Streaming or Digital Download: It was available on HBO Max (both when it started out as HBO Max and when it was called Max), but now it’s on Tubi. As of this writing, it’s unavailable for digital download.

‘Til next time: Stay Looney and Be Merrie!

Golddiggers of '49 (Of Mice and Laundrymen/Shot-Tub Party)

Director: Fred Avery (you probably know him better under the name "Tex Avery")

Summary: Yay! We're finally into the fast-paced, gag-packed, irreverent side of Looney Tunes cartoons (a.k.a, the kind everyone remembers and can quote better than most classic episodes of The Simpsons). It's not a perfect start, but it's still a start. We still have a ways to go, but it's not an anodyne musical or a Buddy cartoon. Anyway, this cartoon is a Beans the Cat cartoon (but really features Porky Pig more) where it's the Gold Rush and Beans finds the mother lode, which means everyone in town (including some Chinese laundrymen) want a piece of the action.

The Channel: Nickelodeon (both the Nick@Nite black and white version and the computer-colorized daytime/weekend version of Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon).

Part(s) Edited: Today, we have two titles for two cuts that were done. Let's start with "Of Mice and Laundrymen": Both the Nick@Nite and the daytime versions of Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon cut all scenes featuring the Chinese laundrymen digging for gold just like everyone else, including one scene where the laundrymen riding on a rickshaw -- because, why not? -- are trailing behind Porky's junker of a car and get covered in a cloud of exhaust where they turn into (who else?) Amos 'n Andy from the radio show of the same name, complete with blackface and ethnically iffy voices.

On to "Shot-Tub Party": Nickelodeon's daytime version (which was computer-colorized in the 1990s, as opposed to the horrid 1960s redrawns that managed to suck all the fun out of the animation, especially in the black and white Bob Clampett shorts) not only edited the scenes with the Chinese laundrymen looking for gold, but also cut the part where Beans shoots at the villain with his rifle, the bullets hit the villain's backside into a drop-seat onesie-type opening, which reveals that the villain didn't get hurt because his butt was protected by a metal tub. I'm...guessing this was cut because it looked too inviting to impressionable viewers to imitate? Yeah, I know Nickelodeon cut gun violence and dangerous behavior just like any other American TV channel at the time, but this only makes partial sense to me. Did they really think most kids back then had metal tubs just randomly lying around, looking to make for an ineffective shield for bullets?

How It Plays Edited: Considering the fast pace of the cartoon, the edits do come off as seamless and they were more joke scenes than plot scenes. However, the jump in audio should tip you off that there's something missing (on all three edits). As always, here's a video comparison.

Availability Uncut: You have three choices: you can enjoy it as a special feature on the DVD release of the film Gold Diggers of 1935, or on the fourth disc of the fifth volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD, or as part of the first disc of the Porky Pig 101 DVD.

Buddy's Circus (Ubangi The Drum Slowly)

 

Director: Jack King

Summary: Buddy owns a circus filled with funny animals, non-white natives who can do strange things with their bodies, and a white baby who wandered in on the acts.

The Channel: Nickelodeon (Nick@Nite version of Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon)

Part(s) Edited: Every scene involving the Ubangi circus performers, including a scene where one of the aerial acrobats falls and catapults a baby off a seesaw and the scenes at the sideshow featuring Elastiko the Indian Rubber Man and Asbesto the Human Stove (the last one is not only an edit to get rid of outdated African/otherwise non-white native caricatures, but also an edit for dangerous behavior involving swallowing fire. This is going by my observations, since this was not mentioned on the old Censored Cartoons Page or the Looney Tunes wiki) was cut.

How It Plays Edited/Video Comparison: The first part with the Ubangi Brothers (though the one with oranges for breasts and a skirt is very much a woman. Not a particularly flattering depiction of an African native woman, but what do you expect from 1934?), Elastiko the Indian Rubber Man, and Asbesto the Human stove being cut is no big loss, since it's just a compilation of gags with no real bearing on the story. The second part with the baby getting catapulted...the only criticism I can give is that there's a minor continuity error that not even a diagonal wipe effect that looks like it was part of the cartoon can save:

Availability Uncut: Surprisingly, this is available on home media, uncut, uncensored, and remastered. Your choices are either the Looney Tunes Golden Collection (volume six) DVD set or the Blu-ray version of the Wheeler and Woosley film, Kentucky Kernels. It's probably not going to be on streaming or digital download any time soon, so get it while it's hot on disc.

Buddy The Woodsman (A Lesson in Chinese Cookery)

 

Director: Jack King

Summary: Just the typical post-Bosko musical fluff, with Buddy as a lumberjack, dealing with chopping trees, Chinese camp cooks, and a bear that wandered in from the forest.

The Channel: Nickelodeon (Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon, Nick@Nite version)

Part(s) Edited: Though Nickelodeon does edit to get rid of outdated East Asian (read: Chinese and Japanese, mostly) stereotypes (with some exceptions), they kind of split the difference here. We do get to see scenes of Chinese camp cooks saying nothing, but the part where one of them rings the triangle, announcing dinner in what I assume is broken English (sounds like straight-up, garden variety gibberish, but it could be interpreted as broken English with a Chinese [Mandarin, mostly. Cantonese and other dialects don't get the representation in Western film that they should] inflection) was cut. The Censored Cartoons Page and the Looney Tunes wiki do say that the edit was done with an obvious computer wipe effect, but the edited version I saw on Archive.org (which may or may not still be uploaded) had it as a simple cut that anyone can do, including me when I created the compare and contrast video.

How It Plays Edited/Video Comparison: It...actually plays pretty well without the scene. As mentioned before, there was an edited version on Archive.org, but it might have been taken down and since I didn't download it as proof that it was edited on Nickelodeon, I decided to recreate the cut to the best of my ability. As always, here's the video:

What Wasn't Cut That Should Have Been Cut: Definitely the totem pole creature dance. Not just because it could be offensive to indigenous peoples who have totem poles as part of their culture, but the scene just ran too long. I know Buddy cartoons have a reputation for being boring, but this is ridiculous.

Availability Uncut: As of 2024, there's no official release of this (and, because of the outdated ethnic stereotypes, there probably won't be, unless someone has the guts to use the content warning from the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVDs from volumes three to six for future home media releases and streaming). I found the uncut version on Archive.org (as well as the edited version that used to be there), so that's pretty much where it will be until DCMA requests take it down.

How Do I Know It's Sunday? (Why Should You Care It's Edited)

 

Director: Friz Freleng

Summary: It’s a “products/label mascots come to life to sing the title song and perform in a closed store” cartoon, but, instead of taking place at night, it takes place on a Sunday during daylight hours, when most, if not all, stores would be closed so people can go to church and rest.

The Channel: Nickelodeon (Nick@Nite version of Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon, because where else would this air? I think I would have remembered it on the daytime version where it was nothing but the post-1964 Daffy Duck/Speedy Gonzales cartoons, the post-1964 Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoons made without Chuck Jones’ involvement, the redrawn- and computer-colorized Porky Pig cartoons from the 1930s, the Pepe Le Pew shorts made after 1949’s “For Scent-imental Reasons”, and the semi-forgotten, “underrated gems” shorts -- both one-shot and with established characters --  that aired between 1949 and 1963).

Part(s) Edited: Just two scenes of outdated black/African-American stereotyping:

• The black chef on the Scream Wheat (Cream of Wheat) box singing along with the mammy caricature on the box of Aunt Eliza (Aunt Jemima, now known as Pearl Milling) during the title song. I don’t know if the shot of them in the background was cut too, but, for the purposes of the approximation, I’m going to leave it in because I feel that that’s what Nickelodeon did.

• The kid mascots using the ceiling fan as a merry-go-round -- not because it’s dangerous behavior that can easily be imitated by young, impressionable viewers, but because there are two black caricatures riding on the ceiling fan blades.

How It Plays Edited/Video Comparison: As I've mentioned before: cartoons like this don't lose much in terms of story or plot when it comes to being edited for either time or content (mostly content). With this one, however, I'm amazed there weren't more cuts to outdated racial and ethnic stereotypes. I'm guessing it would have led to a very choppy and incoherent cartoon if Nickelodeon went in that direction. If I wanted a musical cartoon that's severely edited to get rid of outdated racial and ethnic stereotypes, I can watch the Cartoon Network cut of "September in the Rain" (and I have. Thanks a lot, Acme Hour). Here's the approximation compare and contrast video:

Availability Uncut: If you can believe it, this actually has a home media release -- two of them, in fact. It was first released on the Looney Tunes Collector’s Edition VHS (volume 5’s “Musical Masterpieces”) in 2000. Eight years later, it was released on DVD as part of the sixth and final Looney Tunes Golden Collection set (it’s on disc three, which is dedicated to the Bosko, Buddy, and one-shot musical black and white cartoons).

Box Car Blues (Throw Mammy From the Car...Again!)

Director: Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising

Summary: Bosko and a pig traveling as hobos in a boxcar.

Part(s) Edited: As the blog title implies, this post is more-or-less a sequel to the one for “Sinkin’ in the Bathtub”, as both that cartoon and this one were edited on Nickelodeon to remove Bosko yelling, “MAMMY!” during a perilous moment (in this case, it’s during the three times he goes through a tunnel on top of a boxcar). And, as I said in the first one, for more information about how and why this would be considered offensive, look up “Al Jolson” and the 1927 film, The Jazz Singer. Surprisingly, the train pulling the hill’s “pants” down, revealing polka-dot underwear and the hill coming to life and being embarrassed over it wasn’t cut. You’d think Nickelodeon’s censors at the time would have caught that. Then again, knowing what we know now about how the kid actors were treated on most Nickelodeon shows, maybe they looked the other way.

How It Plays With the Edit: We’re still in “edits that make no difference since the cartoon is thinly-plotted anyway” territory. There might be a slight jump in the music track, but nothing too jarring.

Availability Uncut: No physical media or streaming release as of 2024, but it is a public domain cartoon, so you can easily find it online, in bargain bin DVD releases, or right here: