Summary: Your typical “midnight in the store” cartoon. This one is in a grocery store on a rainy night where the products and their label mascots come to life and do bits and musical numbers (some of which are recycled from other shorts, since Freleng did do that). It’s short, it’s sweet, it’s played straight, and while not that many people like it, I think it’s fine for what it is.
Fun Fact: This was submitted and screened for an Academy Award nomination, but was never picked. That...might be for the best, given how painfully average it is, but the rotoscoping on the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers dance is at least worth something.
The Channel(s): TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, and on DVD.
Part(s) Edited:All the black caricatures are cut from this short, though the 1995 Turner dubbed version at least left in the Al Jolson “Dream of Wheat” (Cream of Wheat) mascot serenading the Aunt Emma (Aunt Jemima, now known as “Pearl Milling,” which yeah, does sound like the name of a U.S. Southern black woman and “Aunt Jemima” could have been her nickname when she became known for her pancakes or what her white slave owners called her) mascot with the title song. I’ve never seen that version; I’ve seen the version where every black caricature is cut and the cartoon, which already has a 5-minute, 47-second runtime, now runs at 3 minutes and 32 seconds (or 4 minutes and 36 seconds, if it’s the version where the Al Jolson/Aunt Emma part was left in, but not the performance of “Nagasaki” at the end).
What Grinds My Gears About the Edit: On the one hand, the cartoon was just a collection of musical numbers and light comedy bits, so complaining about how the edits ruined the cartoon is kinda stupid on my end (not as stupid as making an already short cartoon shorter, but that’s neither here nor there). On the other hand, it’s obvious that parts are cut because of the jump in music.
Video Comparison: Instead of doing one video showing the uncut vs. cut scenes, I’m showing the actual cartoon vs. the common edited version (Cartoon Network, Boomerang, TBS, TNT, and on DVD) and the 1995 Turner dubbed version (which probably aired on Cartoon Network, TBS, and TNT back in the 1990s, though it could have been made for unnamed syndication and some home media releases):
Edited Version #2 (version where the Al Jolson/Aunt Emma part is uncut, but the ending isn't):
Availability Uncut: Yeah, about the only place this is available uncut is The Golden Age of Looney Tunes laser disc (volume 4, side 10). The DVD version of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie, Carefree, has an edited version, though I don’t know which one (the one where all the black caricatures are cut or the one where at least the Al Jolson/Aunt Emma scene was uncut). It hasn’t been on television since…I wanna say, the early 2000s (last seen on Cartoon Network) because, even with the parts cut, it’s just filler. Be glad that the uncut laser disc version can be found on sites like archive.org.
Summary: A pig king returning to his castle discovers that the queen (a hippopotamus) is in her parlor (title drop!) and isn’t interested in seeing anyone, least of all her husband. Goopy Geer the court jester tries to cheer up the king, and ends up saving the queen from the advances of a black knight (“black,” as in “evil,” not “having dark skin.”).
The Channel: Cartoon Network (on an episode of Late Night Black and White).
Part(s) Edited: Like “Goopy Geer,” Cartoon Network cut a small part near the beginning to remove a character now seen as an outdated racial stereotype. LIke “Freddy the Freshman,” the outdated racial stereotype is Jewish. The scene in particular is the pig king asks a line of knights where the queen is cuts off before the sixth knight asks the seventh knight (the Jewish caricature one) about the queen (or “ka-veen,” as the seventh knight pronounces it).
How It Plays Edited: Does nothing to the story continuity, but does look obvious. If there’s a seamless way to do it, then I haven’t heard of it. My video version isn’t representative of how Cartoon Network cut it. For all I know, Cartoon Network probably left in a brief shot of the Jewish knight, but cut off before he could say anything (that’s how comically inept Cartoon Network’s editing can be at times, though they have nothing on how MeTV edited “Bugs’ Bonnets,” “Hop and Go,” or any of the “Now I’ve seen everything!” suicide scenes from “Tortoise Wins By a Hare,” “Horton Hatches the Egg,” and “Cross Country Detours”).
Video Comparison:
Uncut version:
Edited clip (approximation as re-created by me):
Availability Uncut: Like “You Don’t Know What You’re Doin’!” and “Goopy Geer”, this short is available on the Golden Age of Looney Tunes laserdisc (this one is on side ten of the fourth volume) and is freely available on online video sites because it’s a public domain cartoon (has been there since 1961). Surprisingly, “The Queen Was in Her Parlor” is also available for streaming on (HBO) Max (has been uploaded since 2020) and is a special feature on the Blu-Ray version of the pre-code film, The Mask of Fu Manchu (released in 2024).
Update: “The Queen Was in Her Parlor” has, as of 2025 been taken down from HBO Max (a.k.a Max) and is now on Tubi.
EDIT (2024): This introduction was back when I was going to group the edits by channel, not in chronological order. While the introduction doesn't apply to the direction I want to take the blog, I'm leaving it as is, because to do so would deny that the introduction never existed. On top of that, we have a generation of people who don't remember when Nickelodeon aired the Looney Tunes cartoons. It's a good history lesson, if nothing else.
For those who either weren't born between the years 1988 and 1999 (or too young to remember those years), there was a time when Nickelodeon was one of many American free-broadcast and pay-TV channels that aired the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons.
Nickelodeon's way of airing them was different. When it started out in 1988, the cartoons aired on Nick at Nite, Nickelodeon's block for old TV shows (around that time, it would have been programs from the 1950s to the 1970s that were in the Paramount library). The selection was slim: black-and-white shorts made before 1943 (specifically, the Bosko and Buddy cartoons, with some one-shot musical shorts), redrawn-colorized versions of the 1930s-1940s Porky Pig cartoons, and the post-1964 cartoons (most of which were the ones where Daffy Duck is paired with Speedy Gonzales, the Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons made without Chuck Jones' involvement, and the desperate attempts at creating new characters [Cool Cat, Chimp N. Zee, Bunny and Claude, etc] before Warner Bros. animation studio shut down completely in 1969) were all that aired.
When Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon moved to daytime hours, the line-up was changed to get rid of the Bosko, Buddy, and one-shot musical black and white cartoons; changed some of the redrawn-colorized cartoons to computer-colorized, and added some Warner Bros. shorts that would otherwise not be available on network television: the Speedy Gonzales cartoons made between 1954 and 1963 when he was paired with Sylvester or a one-shot character, the Pepe Le Pew cartoons made after 1949's "For Scent-imental Reasons", the post-1948 Foghorn Leghorn cartoons, and a lot of shorts (with one-shot or lower-tier characters) considered "forgotten", "underrated", and "hidden gems" by the more hardcore of Looney Tunes cartoons fans. Yes, the more popular shorts were included, but weren't aired often (possibly because they were needed on other, less niche networks).
In contrast to network television of the time, Nickelodeon didn't edit for slapstick violence, suggestive humor, tobacco smoking, alcohol drinking, or use of dynamite or bombs. Nickelodeon's cuts were for profanity (a rarity, but it has happened), any activity considered dangerous and easy for young and impressionable viewers to copy, comically violent gags that were too violent by the network's standards, suicide played for comedy, ingesting pills or dangerous chemicals, outdated racial caricatures of African-Americans, East Asians, and (sometimes) Native Americans/American Indians, and references to World War II involving Adolf Hitler, Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan and the Japanese (the more innocuous WWII references to buying war bonds, rationing food, and recycling scrap metal were left intact).
Other cuts done to the cartoons were to shave off some time for more commercials, and, in the case of a lot of redrawn-colorized cartoons, edits done to cover up the fact that the artwork was terrible and there was no way in Hell that the Korean animators were able to re-create the lively and over-the-top animation done by Bob Clampett (and, on occasion, Tex Avery, Frank Tashlin, Norm McCabe, and Chuck Jones, but most of the redrawn-colorized cartoons were originally black and white cartoons directed by Bob Clampett).
As you'll see, compared with other channels, Nickelodeon's cuts made more of an effort to make the edits for content as seamless as possible. There were more successes than failures and some attempts proved that whoever edited the classic cartoons for content at Nickelodeon at least had a sense of humor. However, that's just my opinion and you (the reader) might not feel the same way.
Summary:Bosko and his similar-looking girlfriend, Honey (remember, these were made back when Mickey and Minnie Mouse were popular and other cartoon studios tried to imitate that success) go on a car ride that goes comically wrong. Oh, and the first part has a lot of comedy set to the short’s title song. That, too, was common in the early days of Warner Bros. Cartoons.
Part(s) Edited:Yes, even the very first Warner Bros. cartoon was censored when aired on American television. But Nickelodeon’s edit was fairly light. All they cut was Bosko yelling, “MAMMY!” as his car chases him down a hill with Honey in it. For more information about how and why this would be considered offensive, look up “Al Jolson” and the 1927 film, The Jazz Singer.
How It Plays With the Edit: Since this is an early Warner Bros. cartoon where the plot and characters are thin and the shorts only existed as a kind of early version of the music video, there's no need to worry about any jokes being ruined or plot holes. However, according the the old Censored Cartoons Page, Bosko shouting "MAMMY!" was muted rather than cut, so having Bosko shout with no sound coming out may turn that scene into a non sequitur. I did a crude compare/contrast video just to show how I think the edit played out.
Availability Uncut: It's been in the public domain since 1958, so you can find it on YouTube and similar video sites if you want to see it there. For those who love physical media, this short can be found on The Uncensored Bosko DVD (volume 1), the third volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set as a special feature, volume two of the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection Blu-ray (on disc three), and on several public domain VHS tapes (for those who still have VCRs) and DVDs, particularly Inside Termite Terrace volume two (VHS), Hugh Harman & Rudolf Ising's Uncensored Cartoons Collection volume one (DVD), and Hugh Harman & Rudolf Ising's Uncensored Cartoons.
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