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…

Bosko's Picture Show (Hit-ler and Miss, or Meet the Fawkers)

 

Director: Hugh Harmon and Isadore "Friz" Freleng

Summary: In this, the last Bosko short made for Warner Bros/Leon Schelsinger studios, Bosko shows viewers what a night at the movies was like back in the early 1930s. There were sing-alongs with actual in-house organ players, a newsreel showing world events, a short film featuring comedy duo Laurel and Hardy (though some theaters showed other shorts from comedy duos -- and trios, in the case of The Three Stooges), and a melodrama where Honey is in danger of being kidnapped by Dirty Dalton (the cur!).

The Channel: Nickelodeon (Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon -- Nick @ Nite version; as of the second airing)

Part(s) Edited:

• The “Out of Tone” newsreel sequence is missing the story of a Hollywood screen lover (Jimmy Durante) spending his vacation in Germany getting chased by Adolf Hitler (in what is commonly believed to be his first caricatured appearance in an American cartoon. “Cubby’s World Flight”, an obscure short made around the same time as this, is considered the first, but when was the last time you’ve heard someone talk about Cubby?) with an axe.
• During the melodrama He Done Her Dirt (And How!), Bosko shouts “The dirty fuck!” when he sees Dirty Dalton (the cur!) sneak onscreen on a wheel-less bicycle. The first time Nickelodeon aired this short, that part wasn’t cut (or so it’s believed). Starting with the second time, “The dirty fuck!” was changed to “The dirty cur!” (with “cur” being recycled from the part near the end where Bosko yells, “Stop, you cur!” before jumping through the movie screen).

How It Plays Edited: The first cut doesn’t really affect the overall short. The abrupt cut in audio might hint at something missing, but it can logically be written off as a scene that was cut before theatrical release, not a scene that was edited when aired on television. As for the second cut, it’s obvious that something’s been changed, as this video will show you:

Availability Uncut: The only official release it has (as of 2024) is on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection volume six (on the third disc dedicated to Bosko, Buddy, and one-shot black and white musicals). As it’s still under copyright, you’re not going to find the whole thing on YouTube. You might find clips of the infamous “dirty fuck” line and a review/commentary or two, but no full cartoon. Archive.org does have it uncut, but even that website has had copyrighted videos taken down, so catch it while you can or just shell out money for an official release.

EDIT: “Bosko’s Picture Show” can also be found as a special feature on the Blu-ray release of the movie Lilly Turner, starring Ruth Chatterton and George Brent. The movie was released on Blu-ray this year; that’s why it was never mentioned until now.

Final Thoughts and Miscellany: If you’re wondering whether or not Bosko actually did call Dirty Dalton a “dirty fuck,” then you’re not alone. A lot of classic animation fans and historians have argued this. Some believe that Harman and Ising wouldn’t go that far, since this was the time that the Hays Code was in effect, but no one really took it seriously until mid-1934 (this cartoon was released in 1933, so dicey content in American movies still popped up here and there. You can visit pre-code.com or just look up “pre-Code movies” on YouTube or whatever search engine you prefer if you want to learn some American film history before its Golden Age) and think that Bosko called Dirty Dalton a “dirty fox” (which is the line in the closed captions/subtitles on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection volume six version) or a “dirty mug”. While Mark Kausler (animator and director of the 1991 animated version of Beauty and the Beast, the 1994 animated version of The Lion King, and 2001’s Osmosis Jones) thinks Bosko’s line was “the dirty mug,” according to lip sync and a perceived soundtrack flaw that turned an innocent word obscene, animation historian Jerry Beck had several people see the film, with all of them concluding that Bosko indeed called Dirty Dalton a “dirty fuck.” As for me, I believe Bosko did say “dirty fuck,” but it sounded more like “dirty fock” (rhymes with “hawk”). Guess if the short “u” sound was replaced with an "aw" digraph sound, no one would know the difference back then.

Then there’s the question of why Harman and Ising would let this slip. Was it because films back then were trying to be as subversive and obscene as possible, which caused the Hays Office to censor films more harshly after mid-1934, since the Code wasn’t as enforced as it should have been when it first came out in 1930? Were Harman and Ising so mad at Leon Schlesinger over budget issues that this was their “screw you”/“up yours”/“take this job and shove it” (all of which would be too rude to say or imply under the Hays Code, just so you know) moment that led them to go work for MGM? Or is it actually just an innocent word turned rude?