Patient Porky

Patient Porky Stars Porky Pig and was directed by Bob Clampett, written by Warren Foster and scored by Carl W. Stalling. Patient Porky was released on September 14, 1940. The cartoon features the Bugs Bunny prototype, who has a mere cameo.

A title card at the beginning claims that the cartoon is adapted from a book called The Pains Came, but this is merely a joke, a pun off the novel and film The Rains Came.

The cartoon begins with a tour of a hospital. Porky checks in, with a stomach ache, caused by overeating at his birthday party. Instead of a real doctor, he encounters a patient posing as "Dr. Chilled-Air" (a reference to Dr. Kildare), who is eager to operate on him with a saw.

One of the many relics from the days when Porky Pig mostly appeared in black and white cartoons, Bob Clampett's "Patient Porky" does contain a racial stereotype (in the form of an elevator operator). As in "The Daffy Doc" two years earlier, an excessively eager physician (the forementioned "Dr. Chilled-Air")  tries to operate on Porky (in the earlier one, it was doctor wannabe Daffy Duck).

Having seen many of Porky's cartoons from his debut until the US entered WWII, one can see that the studio usually cast Porky in rather sedate, pedestrian roles: fireman, pilgrim, bullfighter. Therefore, this one was pretty much representative of the era. "You Ought to Be In Pictures" may have been the one exception. Porky's roles got really cool once Chuck Jones started directing him regularly after WWII, frequently casting him as a foil to Daffy's craziness.

Patient Porky is available, uncut and restored, on Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 5, Disc 3.