IT CAME FROM THE BOTTOM SHELF!

Back in February, the Warner Archive Collection provided a gift to animation lovers with the Blu-ray release of Tex Avery Screwball Classics: Volume 1 and on December 15th they will follow-up with Volume 2.  Both discs are strong contenders for my “Picks of the Year” best-of list, and they should be considered “must own” titles for cartoon fans.  If you read my previous review for Volume 1, you can skip the introductory paragraphs (which are near identical to the prior write-up) and go directly to the boldface type for descriptions of the cartoons included in Volume 2.

You may not recognize the name Tex Avery, but chances are you’ve seen some of his cartoons.  If not, you’ve certainly been exposed to his influence on pop culture.  When someone describes something as “cartoony,” what they often mean is that it is “Avery-esque.”  Tex was the zaniest of the classic animation directors, and he was more interested in getting a laugh than considerations like plot or character.  His cartoons regularly included fourth wall-breaking gags, and he popularized the elastic eye-popping exaggeration that has influenced cartoons, films, and television that followed, including Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Mask, The Ren & Stimpy Show, Animaniacs, and SpongeBob Squarepants.

Tex Avery developed his “anything-for-a-laugh” style at Warner Brothers, but it came into full bloom in 1942, when he moved to Fred Quimby’s animation department at MGM.  The Warner Archive Collection’s new Blu-ray is the second in a multi-volume series collecting Avery’s classic MGM cartoons.  Unlike Warner’s ongoing series of Popeye releases, the cartoons are not presented in chronological order, because some of the earlier titles need additional restoration work.  Instead, the 21 cartoons in Volume 2 include some of the most popular titles, including Little Rural Riding Hood, Magical Maestro, and The House of Tomorrow, along with a selection of cartoons starring Avery’s recurring characters Droopy and Spike.

Below is a brief overview of the titles included in the set.  Animation lovers don’t need me to tell them that these cartoons are absolutely delightful.  They are fast, laugh-out-loud funny, beautifully illustrated, and vibrantly painted.  However, fans may be wondering if the cartoons are presented in their complete, unedited, original release form.  Happily, they are.  Of course, that means that ethnic jokes and other gags that are out of step with today’s culture are left intact.  As such, the disc begins with the following disclaimer:

“Some of the cartoons you are about to see are a product of their time. They may depict some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that were commonplace in American society. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. While the following does not represent the Warner Bros.’ view of today’s society, some of these cartoons are being presented as they were originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed.”

With that out of the way, let’s get to the program, which has been split into four categories…

TEX AVERY CLASSICS 

(This category consists of standalone cartoons without regular recurring characters.)

Little Rural Riding Hood (1949)

“Kissed a cow.” The disc begins with a semi-sequel to Red Hot Riding Hood, which led off Volume 1, and the follow-up is just as funny as its predecessor. The Country Wolf (Pinto Colvig) is interrupted in his pursuit of Country Red Riding Hood (Colleen Collins) by a telegram from his cousin inviting him to the city.  The City Wolf (Daws Butler) takes the Country Wolf to a nightclub to see a real woman, City Red (Imogene Lynn). Of course, the Country Wolf goes gaga for Red in the standard eye-popping Tex Avery manner.

The Cuckoo Clock (1950)

This lesser Avery entry begins promisingly with several visual jokes with literal interpretations of common phrases (similar to Symphony in Slang from Volume 1). However, it quickly devolves into a Sylvester and Tweety-like Cat versus Cuckoo bird melee.

Magical Maestro (1952)

A magician (Daws Butler) is kicked out of a theater by an opera singer, and he enacts his revenge by taking the place of the conductor. While the opera singer performs “Largo al factotum” from Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, the magician uses his magic wand to create chaos. This is one of the funniest cartoons that Tex Avery ever produced, and the “hair in the projector gate” gag is an all-time classic. Unfortunately, Magical Maestro is also the most racist cartoon in this collection, as the opera singer is transformed into many ethnic caricatures, including Native American, Chinese, Hawaiian, and a blackface parody of the popular African-American vocal group, The Ink Spots. Some historical context should be provided when introducing this cartoon to younger viewers.

One Cab’s Family (1952)

Tex Avery cartoons weren’t known for strong story or heart, but this short has both. The story chronicles the birth and early years of a young taxi cab. His Pop (Daws Butler) wants the kid to grow up to be a taxi cab like his old man, but the kid wants to be a hot rod. This short is another all-time classic, and it features some exceptional voice work from Daws Butler (who was Tex Avery’s Mel Blanc).

The Cat That Hated People (1948)

A black cat (Paul Frees doing a fairly poor Jimmy Durante imitation) explains the various reasons that he hates people.  Seeing a chance to escape the nuisance Homo Sapiens, the cat takes the drastic step of taking a rocket ship to the moon.  The story is threadbare, but the animation is vibrantly beautiful.

Doggone Tired (1949)

A hunting dog needs to get a good night’s sleep in order to get up and hunt a rabbit in the morning, so the rabbit makes certain that the dog fails to get any shuteye.  This is basically a one-joke short, but the variations are clever.

The Flea Circus (1954)

When theater owner, Pepito (Daws Butler), loses his flea circus to a passing dog, the sole remaining flea, François Le Clown (Bill Thompson using his Droopy voice) vows to bring back the circus troupe. When François saves the star of the show, Fifi Le Flea (Francoise Brun-Cottan), they marry and return to the theater with a new troupe. This short is unique and colorful, but I’ve always found it a tad odd. The multiple maternity jokes may go over the heads of younger viewers.

Field and Scream (1955)

Ed Jones, the typical American sportsman goes on a hunting and fishing trip, leading to numerous blackout gags. There’s no story in this one. It’s just a series of visual jokes, including a contractually-required mother-in-law gag.

The First Bad Man (1955)

This cartoon was The Flintstones before The Flintstones was The Flintstones. Cowboy singing star Tex Ritter narrates the story of Dinosaur Dan, the first criminal in Texas, circa One Million B.C. This is one of the more original and creative cartoons from near the end of Avery’s run at MGM, but it still includes a mother-in-law joke.

DROOPY

(This glum-looking, deceptively meek, white Basset Hound became Avery’s most popular creation at MGM.  Six of the seventeen Droopy shorts that Avery directed are collected in this section of Volume 1.)

Out-Foxed (1949)

A group of English hunting dogs, including Droopy (Bill Thompson), are offered a steak for every fox that they bag. This begins a battle of wits between the hounds and the very upper-class Reginald Fox (Daws Butler doing a Ronald Colman imitation). The animation is beautiful, and the plot is unique for a “hunter versus hunted” scenario, in that both the hunter (Droopy) and hunted (Reginald Fox) are likeable characters with which the audience has a rooting interest.

Droopy’s Double Trouble (1951)

Head butler, Mr. Theeves (Daws Butler), allows Droopy to hire his twin brother Drippy (both voiced by Thompson) to look after the house. Spike the bulldog (Thompson again, with an Irish brogue) stops by and asks for a handout. Droopy is obliging but Drippy repeatedly roughs up the tramp.  The premise of this short is pretty simple, but it features lots of memorable gags and some of the most exaggerated “shock takes” to be found in this collection.

The Three Little Pups (1953)

In this variation of The Three Little Pigs, the Big Bad Dog Catcher (Daws Butler) attempts to capture Droopy (Bill Thompson) and his brothers, who are holed up in Droopy’s house of bricks.  Due to budget cuts, the animation was getting flatter and less detailed than in previous cartoons, but the jokes are still sharp and land well.

Drag-a-Long Droopy (1954)

As mentioned before, budget cuts begin to show in the cartoons of the mid-Fifties, but Drag-a-Long Droopy contains some of the most beautiful painted backgrounds in the history of MGM animation (the work of artist Johnny Johnsen).  The gags are also above-average in this top notch Western short, pitting sheepherder Droopy (Bill Thompson) against a cattle-ranching Wolf (director Tex Avery helping out with the voice acting).  This is one of the all-time best Droopy shorts.

Homesteader Droopy (1954)

“I sure hate to do this, but it’s the law of the West.” This is another Western spoof. This time Droopy (Bill Thompson) is a homesteader with a wife and baby in tow, who are bedeviled by Dishonest Dan, The Cattle Man (Tex Avery). While this is another above-average short with nicely painted backgrounds, it suffers in appearing on the disc immediately after a slightly better Droopy Western.

Dixieland Droopy (1954)

By this point, the animation was not only flatter, but also more stylized (probably a result of both dwindling budgets and the influence of competing animation studio UPA). John Brown narrates this supposedly true story of a Dixieland-obsessed dog, John Pettibone (Droopy with a different name). Overall, this short is fairly forgettable.

SPIKE

(Two cartoons starring Spike the Bulldog are collected in this grouping. While Spike became a slightly racist Irish caricature in later cartoons, he is voiceless in these early outings.)

The Counterfeit Cat (1949)

A canary-crazed cat disguises himself as a dog in order to snatch a bird that is guarded by Spike. By using a seemingly endless supply of bones, the cat distracts the bulldog, without ever managing to completely succeed in his bird-napping scheme. This is a middle-level Avery entry, but there are some good gags mixed in.

Ventriloquist Cat (1950)

A cat finds a device to throw his voice, and uses it to torment Spike. While this short is well-animated, the premise is fairly one-note and predictable.

CARTOONS OF TOMORROW

(This popular series of four cartoons envisions the world of the future from a 1950s perspective.)

The House of Tomorrow (1949)

In the first and best of the series, narrator Frank Graham walks us through the time-saving and potentially lethal features of a futuristic home. As with all of the shorts in this series, there is no story. It’s just a series of one-off gags. I hope you like mother-in-law jokes.

The Car of Tomorrow (1951)

This follow-up is well animated, but not only have the mother-in-law jokes worn out their welcome by this point; this is the second-most racist cartoon in the collection. In addition to a handful of ethnic stereotypes, this short takes the prize as the most sexist cartoon included on the disc.

TV of Tomorrow (1953)

Paul Frees narrates this interesting time capsule. Despite the fact that the television sets and features showcased in this short were meant to be futuristic in 1953, the designs were still tied to the era of cathode ray tubes and rooftop aerial antennas. The jokes may be completely baffling to anyone born in the time of remote controls and widescreen monitors (let alone cell phones and tablets).

The Farm of Tomorrow (1954)

Narrator Paul Frees returns for the weakest of the shorts on the entire disc. The gags consist mostly of “we crossed an X with a Y” jokes and bad puns, and the animation is sub-par. The cost-cutting measures are pretty obvious here, with simplified artwork and non-animated still shots that the set up each gag.

USA/C-149m./Dir: Tex Avery/Wr: Various, including Heck Allen, Rich Hogan, Jack Cosgriff, and Roy Williams/Cast: Daws Butler, Bill Thompson, Paul Frees, Tex Avery, June Foray, Colleen Collins, Joi Lansing, Pinto Colvig, John Brown, Don Messick, Bea Benaderet, Francoise Brun-Cottan, Tex Ritter, Red Coffey

For Fans of: If you love the zanier Looney Tunes cartoons, or if you are a fan of the feature films that Tex Avery influenced, such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and The Mask (1994), you are sure to love the classic cartoons in this new Blu-ray collection.

Video: The Warner Archive Collection’s Blu-ray release of Tex Avery Screwball Classics: Volume 2 is a treasure trove for animation lovers.  Not only are the cartoons presented in their original, uncut form; they have been lovingly restored and scanned in 4K.  The original negatives of these cartoons were destroyed in the 1965 MGM vault fire, but you would never know it in viewing this collection.  Warner Brothers has collected the very best surviving elements and the shorts are vibrant, colorful (from eye-popping reds to pearly pastel backgrounds), and look as fresh as when they were originally released.  (By the way, the cartoons look much better than the low-res images included with this review.)  In addition, the DTS-HD 2.0 Mono Master Audio track is crisp, clear, and dynamic, with no age-related hiss or distortion.

One might have hoped for a complete Tex Avery MGM collection in chronological order, but considering the work that has gone into this collection, it makes sense that Warner released the shorts that required less digital clean-up and allowed more time to work on the more damaged prints.

• Special Feature: Tex Avery: The King of Cartoons — This 52-minute documentary from 1988 is a good primer on the animator. However, since this film was made long before these cartoons were restored, don’t expect pristine video quality from this vintage feature.

Streaming: Some individual Tex Avery cartoons may be available to purchase or stream on various services, but this particular collection (and the newest restorations) are only available in this Blu-ray set.

More to Explore: If you don’t already have Tex Avery Screwball Classics Volume 1, that disc is also essential. While you are waiting for Volume 3, I suggest checking out some of the Warner Archive Collection’s other Blu-ray releases of classic animation, including the Tom & Jerry Golden Collection: Volume 1 and Popeye the Sailor: The 1940s Volumes 1, 2, and 3.

Trivia: Viewers that are unfamiliar with old time radio of the Forties and Fifties may miss some of the references in the Tex Avery cartoons. For example One Cab’s Family is a play on the popular radio soup opera One Man’s Family. Many of the characters were also modeled after popular radio personalities. Droopy’s voice and demeanor were modeled after the character of Wallace Wimple on the radio comedy Fibber McGee and Molly, which was also voiced by Bill Thompson. Country bumpkin characters in the cartoons were often modeled after Red Skelton’s Clem Kadiddlehopper, Edgar Bergen’s Mortimer Snerd, or radio comedienne Judy Canova.

For More Info: Tex Avery’s animation career was well covered in a couple of books — Tex Avery: King of Cartoons by Joe Adamson and Tex Avery: The MGM Years, 1942-1955 by John Canemaker.