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!

Pilgrim Porky (Catch of the Day)

Because Thanksgiving (United States version. I know Canada had their version in October and other countries don’t celebrate the holiday) is right around the corner, I decided to jump ahead and do a “Drawn and Quartered” installment for “Pilgrim Porky,” which came out in 1940 (I finished the 1938 cartoons and will start on 1939 after this, my report on “Holiday for Drumsticks,” and my report on “Patient Porky,” which is more-or-less a sequel to “The Daffy Doc”). Please enjoy, have a safe and happy holiday (assuming you celebrate it), and try not to fill up too much on turkey. Tryptophan knock-out is real.

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

Summary: We see our porcine protagonist set sail from England to Plymouth Rock on the coast of Massachusetts in this historical parody of The Pilgrims leaving their native land for America. Plenty of visual gags and a running gag about a cook finding a big enough fish for the crew abound.

Fun Facts:

- The short has a gorgeous computer-colorized version that’s been under copyright since 1995.

- This did air on television, despite being one of many Warner Bros shorts that isn’t shown much on television or home media due to outdated racial stereotypes. If it didn’t, then I wouldn’t have it on my list, much less push it ahead so that way I can publish its Censorship Report on Thanksgiving (U.S. version).

- In yet another connection between Bob Clampett and Disney Studios (particularly the 1937 animated version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves), the narrator (voiced by Robert C. Bruce, who mostly played narrators of the WB and MGM Studio spot gag/newsreel parody shorts) says, “Heave-o, heave-o/It’s off to sea we go!” when Porky and the other Pilgrims set sail. No points on what that’s referencing, though you can click the link here if you truly and honestly don’t know.

The Channel(s): Nickelodeon

Part(s) Edited: All three scenes of the ship’s cook (meant to be a caricature of a black man, judging by the Eddie “Rochester” Anderson vocal impression Mel Blanc used and how much he looks like the elevator operator from “Patient Porky,” which I covered previously) were cut: when we first meet him and he dives in to get a fish; when we see him again, getting a medium-sized fish, only to be told by the narrator that it’s not big enough, and the end where a big fish swallows him.

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit(s): Since the cartoon is a pretty light affair, I don’t think the edits hurt the cartoon much…outside of the abrupt ending after the Native Americans meet Pilgrim Porky and his crew. For those asking, “Why didn’t Nickelodeon cut the appearance of the Native Americans?”, the answer is quite simple: it would have ruined the continuity. I’m so sure this is one of those cases where Nickelodeon had to leave in the Native American stereotypes because they were germane to the story, whereas the black chef looking for fish in the ocean was 86’d for not being germane to the plot (what little it had of it. It was mostly a Tex Avery-style spot gag short, only Bob Clampett directed it).

Video Comparison: I’m doing something special this go-around. Instead of my compare/contrast videos, I decided to take the short in question and do a full re-enactment of what it was like as an “edited-for-TV” version. I did use to do this with the Bosko shorts, but that was a long time ago (I am still planning on re-creating the videos and putting them in a library for people to view instead of having to sit through my gassing on about the cartoons in question):

Availability Uncut: This has been released on home media. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing. If you want to (legally) see how beautiful it is in color, then you can find it on the DVD release of the movie The Fighting 69^th (which has a Looney Tunes parody title: “The Fighting 69-1/2th,” a one-shot Friz Freleng cartoon that shows red ants and black ants going to war over an abandoned picnic lunch. That does have a Censorship Report attached to it, but I won’t get to it until later, as that came out in 1941 and is also included in the DVD version of The Fighting 69^th), starring James Cagney, Pat O’Brien, and George Brent. If you want to see “Pilgrim Porky” in glorious black and white, then I recommend either the fifth volume and fourth disc of The Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set or the fourth disc of the Porky Pig 101 DVD set. No Blu-ray releases as of yet. It wasn’t released for reel-to-reel projector, and it wasn’t available on any official or unofficial VHS, Beta, or laser disc sets.

Is/Was It on Streaming or Digital Download: Nope. No Amazon Prime Video, no HBO Max (or just plain “Max”) [both in the United States and Latin America/Brazil], no iTunes, no Boomerang app, and definitely no Tubi. As I mentioned in “Fun Facts,” this was rarely shown due to racial and ethnic stereotyping, even though most of the focus is on the stereotypically black ship chef and not the Native Americans Porky meets (at least when it comes to Nickelodeon censorship).

‘Til next time, Stay Looney, and Be Merrie.

The Daffy Doc (Crude Reproduction, Imperfect Frame/Signs of the Times)

 

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

Summary: After causing chaos during an operation at the Stitch in Time Hospital (where their motto is, “As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Rip”), Daffy Duck decides he needs to prove himself a competent doctor…by knocking out, abducting, and performing unnecessary surgery on an unsuspecting Porky Pig.

Fun Facts:

- Going by the logline, this is one of Bob Clampett’s most twisted cartoons so far, but even he (and his colleague/frienemy Chuck Jones) thought the two inflation (nothing to do with skyrocketing prices and everything to do with an innocent animation gag becoming a sick fetish thanks to freaks and weirdos online airing out their dirty laundry…which they probably sniffed and shuddered orgasmically before they did it) scenes involving Porky and Daffy crashing into an iron lung was tasteless and shameful. Why? Because this was made when there was a polio epidemic and the vaccine wouldn’t be considered safe, potent, and for public use until 1955 (seventeen years after the cartoon was released in theaters) after being developed in 1952 (so…14 years later) by Jonas Salk at the University of Pittsburgh. It’d be like doing jokes about face masks, medical staff/facility shortages, and hospital respirators for COVID…or any AIDS/HIV joke involving gay men, heroin addicts, blood donors, or blood-donating gay male heroin addicts (which would have been a smash in the 1980s, but unbelievably offensive today).

- The lip sync for Daffy in this short is pretty much nonexistent (there are only two scenes where his mouth moves in sync with his lines), but I think that adds to the wacky and surreal humor.

- Daffy’s hopping walk as he’s following Porky is a reference to Dopey’s hopping walk during the “Heigh Ho” sequence on 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves from Disney. Don’t believe me:

Clampett vs. Disney -- Round One:

I guess Bob Clampett really did admire Walt Disney’s work, but also loved referencing/spoofing it, such as Mr. Meek blushing after Daffy kisses him (cf. Bashful doing the same when Snow White kisses him) on “The Wise Quacking Duck” (in fairness, that was probably a common trope back then, but the realization that the two scenes may be related due to Clampett’s love of spoofing Disney popped in my head when I wrote that and it’s easy to draw that conclusion, especially since [a] “meek” and “bashful” are synonyms (thank you, excessive thesaurus reading as a child), and that was the thought thread that led me to think, “Hey, Clampett might have ‘borrowed’ from that.” Yeah, my mind goes to strange places sometimes, but, as long as I find a justified reason why I would think that, or someone or something to challenge that belief, it’s not a problem, and [b] I made a video comparison of it):

Other examples of Clampett spoofing/referencing Disney include: the scene of the flying elephant holding up a sign that reads, “I Am Not Dumbo” on “The Bashful Buzzard,” the fact that Clampett did an African-American jazz spoof of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves called “Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarves” (originally titled, “So White…” but was changed due to audiences potentially mistaking it for Disney’s first animated feature film and possible legal repercussions from Walt himself), and “A Corny Concerto” basically being Fantasia if Termite Terrace did it. There are more examples; those are just off the top of my head.

- You can tell that Clampett was focusing more on Daffy than Porky in this one. In fact, a lot of the shorts made after “Porky in Wackyland” seem to have Porky in a limited role, despite him being the star. In this one (which can, at least, be forgiven because the title is called “The Daffy Doc”), Porky doesn’t appear until the four minute and 50 second mark…in a cartoon that’s six minutes and 59 seconds long (when shown uncut. The redrawn edited version has Porky’s appearance clock in at four minutes and 47 seconds in a cartoon that lasts six minutes and 34 seconds).

-”Patient Porky” is considered a remake of this, so I will be covering that the same way I covered “Milk and Money” vs. “Porky’s Prize Pony,” because both of them have been edited for African-American stereotypes, though “The Daffy Doc”’s version is more subtle.

The Channel(s): Nickelodeon, unnamed syndication (for those channels besides Nickelodeon that aired the redrawn-colorized version), and MeTV.

Part(s) Edited: Okay, time to break this down again. There aren’t that many scenes that were cut (at least, upon first glance), but Nickelodeon aired two colorized versions of the same short. No points on which version is the more severely cut:

- Nickelodeon initially aired the infamous redrawn-colorized version from somewhere in the 1960s, which shortened the part where Daffy holds up signs telling people to be quiet to remove the “Hush Yo’ Mouf” sign (which one blog identified as African-American vernacular English [AAVE], which, in my day, was called “ebonics” and does refer to Daffy reading it off as, “regrettable,” though it sounded more like Daffy said, “Shut yo’ mouth,” not “Hush yo’ mouf.” Still, I get where this person is coming from, but ten bucks says that this is yet another white person flagellating themselves over sins of the past. I have seen worse African-American stereotypes on better animated shorts) and the sign with Hebrew writing (in one of the rare times Nickelodeon edited something for having outdated Jewish stereotypes. The only other time was the scene in “Bosko’s Picture Show” where Hitler chases after Jimmy Durante with an axe because, in his twisted, genocidal mind, “long nose” equals “being Jewish”) which translates to Bill Holman’s “Silence is Foo!” from the Smokey Stover comic strip when shaken (for the curious monolingual with dreams of being a ployglot, “Zol zein shah!” actually does mean “Shut up” or “Be quiet!”, but not in Hebrew. It’s Yiddish, which is medieval German mixed with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic and other Romance languages. It does use the Hebrew alphabet, but mostly, I’ve seen Yiddish words and phrases spelled out in English).

This is the only censorship-based edit made in the redrawn-colorized version, because the next two cuts are simply because of shoddy workmanship:

- The next cut in the redrawn version comes when, after Daffy takes Porky’s temperature with a lollipop, Daffy decides to call in a consultation by hitting himself with a mallet, summoning two ghostly versions of himself (done with double-exposure effects) who discuss with the corporeal Daffy what to do about Porky and his “condition.” That scene was cut because it was too difficult to replicate in redrawn-colorized version. The redrawn version keeps Daffy hitting himself with a mallet, then cuts to him with a saw, trying to operate on Porky. The edit makes it look like Daffy anesthetized himself before operating on Porky (like on that scene from The Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror” from season ten where Dr. Nick injects himself with a sedative before giving Homer his hair transplant…or the season six Simpsons episode where Dr. Nick accidentally anesthetizes himself before removing Bart’s appendix), which…actually does fit in with how much of a danger Daffy is when he lives up to his name and has a job in the hospital that involves medically treating patients, up to and including performing surgery. Wow. One of the few times an edit improves a scene instead of dumbing it down or making it worse. The only bad part is the continuity error of how Daffy got the saw, though that can be written off as, “He got it off-screen” or “Sometimes, it’s best if a director doesn’t show you everything that happened.”

- The final cut comes during the infamous ending of Daffy chasing Porky with a saw and the two of them crashing into the iron lung, being spat out by the machine, and going through a comic body inflation cycle before the cartoon irises out. All that was cut on the redrawn-colorized version because (say it with me now): “It was too difficult to replicate.”

Fortunately, Nickelodeon aired a computer-colorized version in the 1990s where the only edit done was the “Hush Yo’ Mouf!”/Hebrew writing translating to “Silence is Foo!” scene to remove “Hush Yo’ Mouf!”

Decades later, when MeTV aired it, they aired it the same way Cartoon Network aired some of its shorts: first uncut, then edited, then back to uncut again (surprisingly, “The Daffy Doc” was not on that list of Warner Bros cartoons that went through that ordeal on Cartoon Network. It should have been, but I guess Cartoon Network didn’t know that “Hush Yo’ Mouf!” can be construed as a stereotypical way African-Americans say, “Hush your mouth!” [sarcastically]: And they’re usually so good with identifying objectionable content in otherwise family-friendly viewing…). Initially, “The Daffy Doc” was shown uncut on MeTV until January 2023, when an episode of their classic cartoon installment show, Toon in With Me, cut Daffy holding up both the “Hush Yo’ Mouf!” sign and Hebrew sign that translates to “Silence is Foo” when shaken. Two years later (2025), the scene was reinstated.

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit(s): The only thing that grinds my gears about the “Hush Yo’ Mouf!”/“Silence is Foo” part is how the MeTV version killed the joke. I wish they would have done it like Nickelodeon and just cut the first sign, or, better yet, just cut it so that way it goes from “Shhh!” to “Silence is Foo!” The rest of the edits don’t grind my gears as much because I know redrawn-colorized versions ruin great cartoons, especially those that are considered the best at being wacky and packed with wild takes.

Video Comparison: 

Availability Uncut: This one has a good run on physical home media.

- In 1985, it was released on the VHS and Beta versions of the “Warner Bros Cartoons Golden Jubilee 24 Karat” collection (on the video/Beta tape called “Daffy Duck: The Nuttiness Continues…” Of those videos, I had the Foghorn Leghorn one, the Sylvester and Tweety one, the Wile E. Coyote/Road Runner one, the Bugs Bunny one, the Speedy Gonzales one, the one showcasing the best cartoons directed by Chuck Jones, the one showcasing the best cartoons directed by Friz Freleng, and the one showcasing the best voice acting done by Mel Blanc. The Daffy one, the Porky one, and the Elmer Fudd one I never had. The Pepe Le Pew one is a gray area, because, while I never got the actual tape, I did ask someone to record some select cartoons off it in a tape trade back when I had a VCR and the “Pepe Le Pew: Zee Best of Zee Best” DVD wasn’t made yet).

- Eleven years later (1996), “The Daffy Doc” was released on a UK VHS called “Daffy Duck” as part of their “Looney Tunes Collection.”

- Ten years after the UK release (2006), it appeared as a special feature on the DVD version of The Marx Brothers film, Room Service (which featured a pre-I Love Lucy Lucille Ball. In fact, Lucille Ball did a lot of movie comedies before becoming more well-known as a TV star).

- A year after that (2007), “The Daffy Doc” was picked for the fifth volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set (on disc three, which celebrates Bob Clampett’s best works. This version also has audio commentary by Mark Kausler, who does point out that, later in their respective lives, Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones didn’t like the iron lung gags because they felt it was insensitive to polio sufferers).

- Four years after that (2011), it was on disc one of The Essential Daffy Duck DVD set.

- Six years after that (2017), “The Daffy Doc” was released as part of the Porky Pig 101 DVD set (since it’s technically a Daffy/Porky cartoon).

- Finally, eight years after that (2025), “The Daffy Doc” appeared as a special feature on the Blu-ray release of the movie, The Citadel, starring Robert Donat and Rosalind Russell.

Is/Was It on Streaming or Digital Download: Yes. It was one of many Warner Bros shorts that used to be on HBO Max (then Max) between 2020 and 2025, and is now on Tubi as of 2025.

‘Til next time, Stay Looney, and Be Merrie.

 

I’d like to thank NotebookLM for helping me research and outline this and other Warner Bros shorts. It started off as just needed background material on the Porky/Sylvester horror vacation trilogy shorts, but I did find some interesting stuff on this short. Maybe I’ll do a regular, “analyzing Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies” shorts blog later, because you can learn a lot on how Daffy’s wacky persona in this short is different than it is on “The Wise Quacking Duck.”