Porky's Picnic (Plain as the Black on Your Face/In a Detroit Minute)

 

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

Summary: Porky and his girlfriend, Petunia (the one that’s actually nice to Porky instead of the one from “Porky’s Romance,” who only likes Porky because he had chocolates and flowers for her) go on a picnic near the zoo, and Porky must keep an eye on Pinky, Porky’s mischievious nephew, who keeps trying to cut off a squirrel’s head with a pair of scissors (yeah, that’s beyond mischievous and straight up “sign you’re raising a future serial killer.” At least by today’s standards. Back then, no one really cared).

Fun Facts: 

• This short is the first time since “Porky’s Romance” that Petunia Pig (Porky’s love interest in the same vein as Minnie Mouse or even Honey from the Bosko and Honey cartoons) was shown, though she was seen in “Scalp Trouble” as a picture on Porky’s wall and she would have been in “Porky’s Party,” but Bob Clampett uninvited her.
• Unlike Frank Tashlin’s version, this version of Petunia Pig is actually likeable, but incredibly bland (much like Porky himself in these shorts where he’s not paired up with someone crazy like Daffy).

• The 515 train in this short is the same one from “Porky’s Railroad” and this Tex Avery color cartoon called “Streamlined Greta Green.”

Letterboxd Says The Darndest Things: Feelings about this cartoon range from “It sucks” to “It’s fairly standard, but has its moments.” Tim Brayton combines those two sentiments into one somewhat verbose review with a two-and-a-half-star review tacked on:

Not without its compensations: there are some interesting staging choices, including the needlessly complex and artful use of translucent foreground elements at one point, and the short has exceptionally clear designs on the comic possibilities of Porky's stutter leading him to words that are, by all apparent logic, more complicated than the one he couldn't spit out. But more than any of Bob Clampett's sleepy, disposable "I grow weary of this guileless pig" 1939 Porky cartoons, this feels like we're actually watching the animation, storytelling, and gagwork regress in real time: this feels just so extremely much like a cartoon from the first half of the '30s (it feels like multiple specific cartoons, in fact), from the scenario to the languid pace of the gags to the way that the cruel and selfish Petunia Pig, whose torment of Porky was funny because it was mean, has been rebooted as a nice cartoon girlfriend who is way too close to Cookie, paramour of the dreaded Buddy, for comfort. Anyway, I know where this is all going because it's 84 years later and the Looney Tunes would spend the decade after this transitioning from "the funny animal cartoon series put out by Warner Bros." into "an American institution and one of the greatest bodies of work in the history of comic cinema", but if I were a cartoon fan watching this as they came out in '39 (if indeed such beings existed in '39), I strongly feel that this is the point I'd be bailing out on Porky.

Sc8lo’s review focuses more on Pinky Pig’s unsettling penchant for comic animal abuse, brings up a strange choice in story beat that most wouldn’t notice immediately, and steals my bit on revealing where the cartoon is available uncut (if it’s available on home media at all):

What starts out as a cutesy short winds up being a bit maniacal thanks to the inclusion of Pinky Pig in his second and final appearance. His inclusion does throw up a lot of questions. What is his relationship to Porky here and why is he going around trying to decapitate squirrels like Cropsey from The Burning?

Why does Porky offer to take Petunia on a picnic only to go straight for a nap as soon as they arrive?

This short is available on Porky 101.

Finally, we have Horse Man Jack, who expresses his dislike for the short and brings up a good reason (one of many, actually) why I don’t consider the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons child-friendly:

I’ll always find it funny how much the Looney Tunes shorts hate children considering that they’re, you know, popular with children. Unfortunately this one isn’t funny and the classic Ye Olde Cartoon “throw in a blackface gag for no reason” moment sours the mood.

To be absolutely fair to Horse Man Jack, the Looney Tunes shorts weren’t “meant for children” when they were in theaters. That only started to happen thanks to television reruns and being put on Saturday morning, weekday afternoon syndication, and cable, where they were edited to make them child-friendly. At least the home media releases had them uncut and, later, they were made for both family viewing and for collectors who want the shorts uncut, uncensored, and with a warning about how some of the jokes and scenes haven’t aged well, but will be shown as a reminder of our less-enlightened past so we can make a more enlightened future (I don’t know how that’s going to work, but I admire their optimism).

The Channel(s): Nickelodeon and syndication (WKBD in Detroit, Michigan during the 1980s)

Part(s) Edited: 

• The WKBD version that aired back in the 1980s took a chunk out of the first two and a half minutes of this short — definitely for time reasons/more commercials, but the scene of Pinky detaching the side car from the motorcycle and him and Petunia racing dangerously down the road and nearly getting hit by a train could be seen as a content cut for dangerous, imitable behavior (if that were true, then why weren’t the running gag of Pinky trying to cut a squirrel’s head off with scissors and scenes of Pinky wandering off to harass the animals at the zoo cut?) and scenes of peril and threat (even though the peril and threat has a reassuring outcome). WKBD also shortened Petunia kissing Porky as a reward for rescuing Pinky, not because it may be seen as sexual, but because Porky had mud on his face and when Petunia kissed him, it transferred onto her and put her in blackface because her lips weren’t covered in mud.

• Nickelodeon’s version left in the beginning, but also aired two versions where the blackface kiss was edited: the computer-colorized version where the kiss was shortened (so, same version as WKBD) and a redrawn-colorized version where the scene in question was left in, but the lips were also colored brown so the blackface just turns into a face covered in mud, though, if you look at the scene closely, you’ll see that there’s one frame when Petunia pulls back where the lips are still white. In fact, here's that frame now:

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit(s): Not much for the “blackface kiss” part, since that’s justified. However, I would like to add that, despite Cartoon Network’s and Boomerang’s histories of editing out outdated depictions of African-Americans and black people in general (which includes blackface), that scene wasn’t edited or altered in any way. I understand The Bob Clampett Show version not doing it, since that show had most of their shorts unedited (or close to it), but “Porky’s Picnic” was shown outside of that series on installment shows like The Looney Tunes Show (2003 edition), Bugs and Daffy, and The ACME Hour. What’s that about?

WKBD cutting the first two and a half minutes of it — yeah, there’s no excuse for that, except for wanting more time for commercials. The first two and a half minutes do lay out a lot of exposition for this short (however thin it might be) and cutting it just ruins it.

Video Comparison: 

Availability Uncut: As of this writing, the only place you can find this uncut, uncensored, but not restored/remastered on physical media is on the Porky Pig 101 DVD set, which came out in 2017.

Is/Was It on Streaming or Digital Download: It was on streaming from 2021 to 2023 on Warner MediaRIDE (which was only available as a streaming service in Honda cars). After that, it was gone. It’s not even on Tubi, which I don’t understand. The blackface kiss could have squeaked by unnoticed and there are a lot of cartoons besides this that have kids behaving badly, so what makes this one so special that it’s not allowed to be shown? Maybe it’s because it’s not that well-liked.

‘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.”

Wholly Smoke (Three Car[toon] Pile-Up on Tobacco Road)

READER WARNING: This is probably my filthiest episode yet due to the frequent mentions of things that will trigger and upset modern-day audiences, including references to sexual and non-sexual abuse, use of homophobic language (that’s not directed at anyone), references to discrimination, and, of course, outdated racial and ethnic stereotypes. If you know my blog by now and what I cover, then you shouldn’t worry about it. If not, then I suggest you either stop reading here or continue on, but know that I do not condone or encourage any bad behavior or upsetting situations presented here. All of these are fleeting references shown in an educational/historical context mixed with humor to make it less of an emotionally-draining slog. The only reason I put this warning here is because there are crybabies out there who don’t want to listen to reason. Then again, no one really comments on my blog anyway, so why am I worried? Still though, it’s a safety precaution in case it does happen.

Director(s): Frank Tashlin

Summary: In this Very Special Episode™ (not really, but the subject matter does put it there by the high, personal standards of the generation who grew up on sitcoms and funny cartoons that suddenly had episodes that tackled serious issues, like drug abuse [including alcohol and tobacco], sexual abuse [including sexual harassment, rape, sexual assault, child molestation, and sexual intimidation/blackmail], non-sexual abuse [including domestic violence, child abuse, elder abuse, bullying, self-harm, and suicide], family strife, body image issues, mental health problems, gun violence, terminal illness, dealing with death, and everyone’s favorite modern-day problem: showing that discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual preference, social class, disability, and religion is alive and well after all these years), a God-fearing Porky Pig (depicted as a child here) is sent to church by his mother (who gives him a nickel for the collection plate) and gets sidetracked when a young tough guy bets that Porky can outsmoke him on his cigar, leading Porky to stumble into a closed tobacco shop and meet Nick O’Teen, a smoke cloud that ruins Porky’s respiratory system to teach him the lesson that little boys shouldn’t smoke.

Fun Facts:

• This is the final Looney Tunes cartoon Frank Tashlin directed during his first stint at the studio, where he left to work at Disney and, later, Screen Gems. Tashlin’s departure (as well as his expressive animation work) is what landed Chuck Jones his new position as animation director (though he wouldn’t become the animation icon he is now until later). Don’t worry, Tashlin fans. Frank would come back just as World War II started (which coincided with Norm McCabe getting drafted and ending his brief stint as director with the shockingly offensive, “definitely-a-product-of-more-racist-times” short “Tokio Jokio”) and he’d make more shorts until he left again to do live-action comedies that feel like cartoons due to how wacky they are.
• Tedd Pierce (one of Termite Terrace’s most prolific animation writers, joining Michael Maltese and Warren Foster) voiced Porky Pig’s mom and Nick O’Teen

The Channel(s): Merrie Melodies Starring Bugs Bunny and Friends (FOX version; I found a syndicated version that was computer-colorized and uncut), Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Boomerang.

Part(s) Edited: There’s a lot to cover on which channel cut and altered what, so I’m going to break it down the only way I know how: through lists (trust me. When you watch the compare/contrast video, you are going to need the lists to keep track):

Merrie Melodies Starring Bugs Bunny and Friends (FOX edition) Version:

• Cut the matchsticks striking themselves and becoming blackfaced as they harmonize the beginning of the “Little Boys Shouldn’t Smoke” song. Didn’t cut the second shot of the blackfaced matches after the London pipe says, “Children should not smoke, rather!”

• Aired a version where the pipe cleaner walking around, heading for a dirty pipe, sticking his head in it, coming out looking like Cab Calloway, and singing “Little BOYS shouldn’t smoke!” was cut. The shot of the blackfaced pipe cleaner during the end montage of the song was not cut.

Nickelodeon/Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon Version

• Also cut the matchsticks striking themselves and becoming blackfaced as they harmonize the beginning of the “Little Boys Shouldn’t Smoke” song. Didn’t cut the second shot of the blackfaced matches after the London pipe says, “Children should not smoke, rather!”

• Aired a computer-colorized version where the pipe cleaner walking around, heading for a dirty pipe, sticking his head in it, coming out looking like Cab Calloway, and singing “Little BOYS shouldn’t smoke!” was cut, even though I distinctly remember that scene being uncut on Nickelodeon in the early 1990s (there was also video evidence that Nickelodeon aired an uncut, computer-colorized version, but I can’t seem to find it. The closest I can find is the syndicated Merrie Melodies Starring Bugs Bunny and Friends version). Neither version cut the shot of the blackfaced pipe cleaner during the end montage of the song.

Cartoon Network and Boomerang Version

• Aired a redrawn-colorized version that kept in the matchsticks striking themselves, but changed the blackface to redface (which sounds what happens when a white person plays a Native/Indigenous American, a Communist Russian, or someone who’s constantly embarrassed or has high blood pressure. Hey, if yellowface is used for white people playing Asian and brownface for white people playing people from India, African-Americans, Latinos, or really anyone with brown skin, then redface can be for that).

• Cut the Cab Calloway pipe cleaner part rather obviously. They left in the white pipe cleaner walking out and looking around, then, because they also cut the Indian peace pipes dancing around Porky as he’s tied to a flaming pipe, immediately cut to the scene of a Cuban cigar climbing out of the box and shaking two matchboxes like maracas.

• Had an alternate version of the end of the musical number after the Busby Berkeley-esque cigarette march spelling out, “NO SMOKING,” that replaces the scenes cut for being racially insensitive with more benign footage, which, for some reason, includes the Indian peace pipe part that was edited. The video explains it better than I could.

What Wasn’t Cut But Should Have Been: The “Light a fag/and take a drag” line, of course, since U.S. slang uses “fag” more as a homophobic slur rather than a slang term for a cigarette. The UK (and possibly Australia/New Zealand) uses “fag” to mean both, though some people think the UK only uses the “cigarette” variant. Also: neither channel cut the Cuban cigars part (even though the sombreros and dancing suggest that they’re Mexican. Cuba and Mexico don’t have the same culture, and their Spanish does have differences and nuances to it too, especially when it comes to accents, pronunciation, and the slang/colloquialisms).

It really doesn’t matter. The use of that word (whether to describe a cigarette or fan the flames of homophobia), the underage smoking theme, and the outdated racial/ethnic stereotypes are why this short isn’t as frequently-shown as it used to be, which is a shame, because the underage smoking theme isn’t glamorized or encouraged. The cartoon’s main message is that smoking is bad for kids (or anthropomorphic animals coded as children for the sake of the story).

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit(s): The only thing that grinds my gears is Cartoon Network’s/Boomerang’s version. Not only is it a redrawn-colorized (which means terrible art, bad coloring, and worse animation), but the way they cut the Cab Calloway pipe cleaner scene was appalling in how painfully obvious it is. Most versions would just cut away after the white pipe cleaner puts his head in the dirty pipe (I’m assuming that’s what Nickelodeon’s edited version did after it aired uncut) or go from Porky getting force-fed chewing tobacco to the Cuban/Mexican cigar dance number. Either version would have been fine with me. Cartoon Network’s and Boomerang’s version just had the pipe cleaner walk around, then cut to the Cuban/Mexican cigar dance number, which isn’t fine with me, because the uncut version has stuck with me for so long that if there was a change, I’d instantly know it.

Video Comparison: Here it is, in all its infuriating (at least to me) glory. I’m still using Filmora Wondershare with the watermark. It’s going to take me a few weeks to get the un-watermarked version. I tried making it on Da Vinci Resolve, but it kept crashing on me:

 

Availability Uncut: It didn’t have any VHS, laser disc, or even Super8 releases. It was only released on DVD and Blu-ray. Here are the DVD sets you can find them on (all uncut, uncensored, in black and white, and remastered and restored):

• Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD (volume 5, disc four, with optional commentary by Daniel Goldmark, who talks about the musical cues of the short)
• Looney Tunes Platinum Collection Blu-ray (volume 3, disc two, same version from the Golden Collection DVD)
• Porky Pig 101 DVD (disc 3)

Is/Was It on Streaming or Digital Download?: Not as of this writing, and probably never because of the un-PC content, mostly the racial caricatures, but some might not like the underage smoking theme or the fact that Porky goes to a Christian church (where else is he going to go? Jews and Muslims don’t allow pigs, pork, or anything made from pork and pork by-products. Then, there are the religions that feel that eating animals is wrong and would rather be vegetarian or vegan for moral reasons rather than for health reasons…). So, enjoy the DVD releases while you can.

Before I close out, I want to share this video that also covers how “Wholly Smoke” was censored on American TV, but my version actually covers what channels cut it and the differences between cuts:

'Til next time...