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…

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 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…