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…

Buddy of the Apes (A Closer Look-Out)

Director: Ben Hardaway

Summary: In this spoof of Tarzan (the movie version with Johnny Weissmuller as the title character), Buddy (who is living in the jungle) is targeted by African cannibals and the only ones who can stop them are his animal buddies.

The Channel: Sunset Production/Guild Films syndication

Part(s) Edited: I was going to omit this one, since this is one of those cartoons that rarely, if ever, airs on American TV due to outdated racial and ethnic caricatures and the fact that Buddy cartoons aren’t very popular, but, it turns out that this did air on television edited. Between 1955 and 1968, “Buddy of the Apes” aired without the scene of the "look-out" cannibal native alerting the cannibal chief about Buddy and the animals (I’m going to assume by how it’s worded on the Looney Tunes wiki that the rest of the scenes with the African cannibals wasn’t edited). This also was on Nickelodeon’s list of Warner Bros cartoons they could legally air at the time they were running the Nick@Nite version of Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon, but, due to Standards and Practices (read: the network censors), couldn’t air it because it would take too much time, money, and effort to edit all the racially insensitive scenes.

How It Plays Edited/Video Comparison: Turns out the version I have is the edited Guild Films/Sunset Productions version. I still did a compare/contrast approximation video, but with a twist. This is one of those “so obvious, it hurts” cuts that even first-time viewers like me can pick up on because of how quickly it goes from the “look-out” cannibal sliding down the tree to the chief ringing the triangle nose ring on the cannibal sitting next to him. There’s something obviously gone.

Availability Uncut: As of 2024, there’s no uncut version on official release (or even unofficial release, as it’s not a public domain cartoon that’s always featured in home media releases that have public domain cartoons) and most WB cartoon fans (barring the hardened completionists) aren’t clamoring for remastered, uncut, and uncensored Buddy cartoons (heck, some were surprised when “Buddy’s Beer Garden” made it to the Looney Tunes Golden Collection). The version I found on Archive.org is the edited Guild Films version, so that will have to do until someone pipes up and says an uncut version exists. It happened to “Buddy the Woodsman,” so anything’s possible.