The Film Fan (Empty Promises)

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

Summary: This is basically Friz Freleng’s “She Was an Acrobat’s Daughter” filtered through one of Clampett’s Porky Pig cartoons where Clampett can’t be arsed to put Porky in an interesting situation, but the cartoon itself is an interesting time capsule about what it was like to go to the movies in the 1930s (similar to “Bosko’s Picture Show” and “She Was an Acrobat’s Daughter”). In this one, Porky (who is supposed to be a kid character, but is shown as an adult) is out on a grocery run, but sees a “Kids Admitted Free Day” poster at the local movie theater and decides to partake. The rest of the cartoon is a string of gags involving movie trailers and situations associated with 1930s movie-going (my favorite is the one where a snooty society lady tells the audience that she and her dog don’t go to the movies [there were people like that back then, who thought the movies were low-class. These days, it’s only the half-truth, though the magic is fading as new technology, fatigue for the old, and audiences wanting higher quality continues to grow. I believe things will sort itself out, since there are people out there trying to change the movie-going experience], but the dog obviously makes an exception when he sees a poster for a movie about trees).

Fun Facts: 

• Porky’s coin-flipping walk cycle was recycled from “The Daffy Doc.” A bit obvious to be a fun fact, but it is amusing to point out, and it helps you see it for yourself to make sure I’m not just pulling facts out of my butt.

• The ticket taker is reading John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath during the scene of Porky finding out about the “Kids Admitted Free” day and running inside. There wouldn’t be a film adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath until 1940 (with John Ford as director).

• Some movie references for those who think the Golden Age of Hollywood started in the 1980s and 1990s (it didn’t, godddamn it!):

Ahs of a Wizard: The Wizard of Oz, obviously. The Oz books (by Frank L. Baum until his death in 1919, yet continued under different authors until 1963, known as “The Famous Forty,” and considered canon to the series) started in 1900 (that’s 126 years ago, for those keeping score at home) were 39 years old at the time of this short, but the movie that everyone knows (the one MGM produced that had Judy Garland as Dorothy) was released in August of 1939 (so, four months before this short).

Gone With the Breeze: Gone With the Wind (adapted from Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel), which was produced by...(gasp): Warner Bros. Studios, same place that also did the Looney Tunes! What’s more, this cartoon came out the day after Gone With the Wind premiered in theaters.

The Masked Marvel and Sterling: Sounds like a rejected Marvel movie, but it isn’t. It’s a reference to the Western serial, The Lone Ranger, with Sterling as a stand-in for the titular hero’s horse, Silver. If the footage from the trailer looks familiar, that’s because it’s recycled from “The Lone Stranger and Porky,” which, if you’ve been paying attention, was the first WB cartoon of 1939 and starred Porky Pig in it (even though the role was almost as small as the one here). We’ve come full-circle here, people, because this is the last Bob Clampett-directed Porky cartoon of 1939 (and, by proxy, the 1930s). “The Curious Puppy” from Chuck Jones is the last cartoon of the year and decade.

Letterboxd Says The Darndest Things: I know. I said I wouldn’t bring this back (at least, not as frequently), but this particular review from Brandon Reese (not Tim Brayton, surprisingly) has got me scratching my head on whether he likes it or not, considering he’s pointing out everything that’s wrong with it. Is this that “liking things ironically” trend I kept hearing about from 2010 to 2015?:

I like Clampett the satirist because he barely rises to the level of satire. The target of the gag where a bus pulls up and unrolls like a sardine tin to let dozens of people off is buses, if there even is one. It's less specific targets and way more just a vibe. He can't think of a specific example per se but you know what he's talking about when he says everything is sort of shitty and everybody's an idiot, right? That's the advantage guys in the 30s had from not growing up in a landscape polluted by Bill Hicks.

It's never a good sign when Porky is a child. Porky is a middle aged man somehow simultaneously henpecked and divorced. He carries that with him even in childhood and even though he looks more like a human baby than a pig. And yet this short persists. Porky is merely a framing device, here. Make him a teenager. Who gives a shit? The gags are good, which makes sense because this premise (Porky goes to the movies) is actually a flimsy excuse to invent Robot Chicken.

This short ends on an unbelievably weak note but I don't care because I had already decided I liked it at that point.

About the only thing I agree with him about is the fact that Porky looks like an adult here, but takes advantage of a “Kids Admitted Free” day at the movie theater. Either that’s a continuity error in a series that normally doesn’t have fans who care about them or Porky is taking advantage of “Kids Admitted Free” day because he’s young enough to lie about his age and the movie ticket takers don’t care (though they do care enough to send the manager to announce that Porky’s mom — and everyone else’s — notified the audience about a child who would rather take in a show than go out grocery shopping for the family).

In contrast to that, I found this review of the cartoon from “Eliza’s Review Blog” (which I used before as research on “The Daffy Doc”), whose writer does paint it as better than it is, despite being a thin attempt at recreating “She Was an Acrobat’s Daughter.”

The Channel(s): Nickelodeon (Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon, colorized redrawn version)

Part(s) Edited: A rather innocuous edit this go-around. The redrawn colorized version cut a brief scene introducing the Looney Tone (not “Tune”) News by Warmer Bros. (“The Newsreel With ‘Oomph’”), featuring newsreel anchor Dole Promise (reference to Lowell Thomas, who actually was a newsreel anchor, as well as a TV and radio broadcaster, a non-fiction writer focusing on biography and travel narratives; and a documentarian whose works turned T.E. Lawrence [a.k.a “Lawrence of Arabia”] into an international celebrity).

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit(s): Yeah, this is one of those edits that doesn’t do anything to ruin the cartoon, but it does aggravate me when stuff like this gets cut for little to no reason. Since this edit happened in the redrawn colorized version, I’m going to assume the cut was done for the usual reason: because the redrawn-colorized versions of black and white shorts had the worst art and animation, and there were times where footage would be so unusable that it had to be scrapped.

There was also word on the old Censored Cartoons Page back in the late 1990s into the early 2000s that there may have been other cuts to this, like how there may have been a scene featuring the trailer for the double feature Honeymoon in Bali with The Old Maid that was allegedly replaced with a shot of Porky and two ducks watching the screen. That claim has since been debunked when the Censored Cartoons Page was revamped. I can see why people would want to believe parts were cut: because of either a tight budget or the Hays Office telling Bob Clampett they had issues with the joke, the actual scene showing that trailer either had to be cut or was only written or pitched as an idea, but never made. The cartoon does feel like it’s been stitched together (as I mentioned before: most of it is recycled from “She Was an Acrobat’s Daughter,” while Porky’s walk cycle from “The Daffy Doc” was reused) with random gags holding it together...though it’s not as bad as “Bacall to Arms,” which I will get to in the future.

Video Comparison: 

Availability Uncut: Today, I’d like to release a new format that I hope to keep for later posts. It’s a timeline showing the release years of a short, followed by any interesting notes. I’m doing one for the physical media releases and one for streaming and digital download.

“The Film Fan” Physical Media Release Timeline

Is/Was It on Streaming or Digital Download: It was/is on streaming, but not digital download.

“The Film Fan” Streaming Media Release Timeline

‘Til next time: Stay Looney and Be Merrie!

Naughty Neighbors (Let's Not Du-et and Say We Did)

Yay! After weeks of interruptions, we finally found this week’s entry! Granted, it’s not one of the better Porky Pig cartoons of the era, but it is sweet and charming and has some good visual gags, so...enjoy?

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

Summary: Petunia Pig and Porky Pig declare peace between their respective families, the Martins and the McCoys, who have been violently feuding all this time, but when the feud starts up again, it’s up to Porky and Petunia to use peace through brute force (or a literal “love bomb”). It’s basically Romeo and Juliet filtered through the Hatfields and McCoys feud, and with a happy ending.

Fun Facts:

• This is the final appearance of Petunia Pig in the Golden Age era. Petunia would come back decades later in the DC Looney Tunes comics and 86 years later in 2025’s The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, now voiced by Candi Milo (with Porky voiced by Eric Bauza).

• The newspaper is dated June 18, 1942, which is two and a half years after this short’s release, yet reports on the sinking of the Titantic, which happened 30 years before the short’s release. That’s probably the weirdest newspaper since the one from “Tortoise Wins By a Hare” that was dated for 1942, but reported that Adolf Hitler committed suicide...which didn’t happen until 1945. Before there was “The Simpsons predicted Donald Trump would be U.S. President,” there was “Looney Tunes predicted Hitler would kill himself.”

• The newspaper also has a headline about animator John Carey’s birth. John Carey was born in 1915 and died in 1987 (Carey would have been 24 when “Naughty Neighbors” was theatrically released and 27 according to the 1942 newspaper), further asking what kind of timeline the newspaper editors think they’re in.

The Channel(s): Unnamed syndication, Nickelodeon (Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon), and WKBD in Detroit, Michigan (1989; as part of the Porky Pig and Friends compilation show)

Part(s) Edited: A rather innocuous part (but one that probably had to be cut due to time or to cover up the shoddy workmanship of the notoriously awful redrawn-colorized version): Porky and Petunia’s duet of “Would You Like to Take a Walk” (with modified lyrics) was shortened on the redrawn-colorized version and when it aired on Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon. How shortened? Well, the first part of it is gone, as you’ll see in the video comparison.

Over on WKBD in Detroit, the first 45 seconds of the short were cut for time reasons, though the video I found on YouTube showed that the cartoon was basically reduced to nothing after a long intro made by the station that feels familiar, like I may have seen it on a local affiliate in Pennsylvania as a kid.

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit(s): The redrawn-colorized/Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon version’s cut is obvious, and kind of surprising, considering that the cartoon is actually safe to watch. The violence isn’t even that gruesome (it’s just the typical slapstick you get from Bob Clampett, though even that feels toned down for this), the kissing is G-rated, and there’s no racial/ethnic caricatures that makes modern audiences cringe in disgust. There is a slight World War II reference with the “non-aggression pact” leading to more violence, but that’s oblique enough that casual viewers aren’t going to understand it at first watch.

Video Comparison: 

Availability Uncut: To show just how unpopular this cartoon is (outside of occasionally airing on television), its physical media history shows it’s only been released twice: once on the 2001 Looney Tunes: The Collector’s Edition VHS (volume 12, dedicated to Porky and Daffy shorts). Sixteen years after that, “Naughty Neighbors” appeared on the Porky Pig 101 DVD set, where all black and white Porky Pig cartoons went to die (and this one has a music mistake where a loop of the “Porky's Tire Trouble” title card music plays over both the title card to this cartoon and the first few seconds up until the Martins and the McCoys start fighting).

Is/Was It on Streaming or Digital Download: However, something good did come from t-t-that: streaming gave it a better home and exposure. Boomerang’s streaming app had “Naughty Neighbors” from 2017 to 2024, while HBO Max (and its short-lived rebrand Max) had it from 2020 to 2025. And yes, it’s one of the Tubi 786 as of this writing.

‘Til next time: Stay Looney and Be Merrie!

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