Looney Tunes Christmas Carol

From 1979 it's the Charles Dickens classic done up Looney Tunes style. Yosemite Sam is miserly Ebenezer Scrooge and Porky Pig, is Scrooge's clerk, Bob Cratchit. Cratchit is fired on Christmas eve for the unpardonable act of using coal to keep warm. When Scrooge evicts Cratchit and his family from their modest dwelling, heroic Bugs Bunny decides to dress like a ghost and teach the hot-tempered miser a lesson on the meaning of Christmas.

There are several errors in this short so here's what you should be watching for. When Bugs Bunny quietly sneaks a piece of coal into Crachit's workroom, Scrooge is counting his money and reaches 5,887. Bugs Bunny leaves, and Scrooge's cat notices a piece of coal missing from the fire. When he makes Scrooge lose count, Scrooge had just counted 5,889. There is a gap of over fifteen seconds between this and Scrooge counting 5,887. During this time, Scrooge would have exceeded 5,900.


The pillows on Scrooge's bed disappear when he runs to the window to see what is who is singing "Deck The Halls".  When Bugs Bunny (disguised as a ghost) appears to Scrooge, he has his arms up and his eyes wide. In the next shot, (close-up) his arms are outwards and his eyes are angry. Bugs Bunny (disguised as a ghost) puts his arms up when he tells Scrooge that he's taking him to see the man in the red suit. Bugs' shadow, however, does not put its arms up. The door is closed when Scrooge asks the ghost, "Down there?" In the next shot, the door is open.

Peace On Earth

Peace on Earth is a 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon short directed by Hugh Harman, about a post-apocalyptic world populated only by animals.


Two young squirrels ask their grandfather on Christmas Eve who the "men" are in the lyric "Peace on Earth, good will to men." The grandfather squirrel then tells them a rotoscoped history of the human race, focusing on the neverending wars men waged. Ultimately the wars do end, with the deaths of the last men on Earth, two soldiers shooting each other. Afterwards, the surviving animals discover a copy of the Bible in the ruins of a church. Inspired by the book's teachings, they decide to rebuild a society dedicated to peace and nonviolence (using the helmets of soldiers to construct houses). The cartoon features an original song written to the tune of "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing".

According to Hugh Harman's obituary in the New York Times and Ben Mankiewicz, host of Cartoon Alley, the cartoon was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. However, it is not listed in the official Nobel Prize nomination database. Mankiewicz also claimed that the cartoon was the first about a serious subject by a major studio. In 1994, it was voted #40 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field. It was also nominated for the 1939 Academy Award for Short Subjects (Cartoons). It did not claim that honor (which instead went to Walt Disney's Silly Symphony The Ugly Duckling).

William Hanna and Joseph Barbera remade the cartoon in CinemaScope in 1955. This post-World War II version of the film, entitled Good Will to Men, featured updated and even more destructive forms of warfare technology such as flamethrowers, bazookas, and nuclear weapons.

This version used a choir of mice as the main characters, and also had more direct religious references (the Book is called "The Bible", while in Peace on Earth is simply referred to as the book of human's rules). The new Hanna-Barbera version was also nominated for the Best Animated Short Subject Oscar. This was William Hanna & Joepsh Barbera's First (and Last) One-Shot cartoon since War Dogs.

The Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives

Christmas Eve 1933,  A poor orphan boy trudges through the snow, pathetically. He finally arrives at his miserable cabin. While he is crying, Santa arrives and, singing the title song, offers to take the boy to his workshop. They arrive, and the toys go wild. He plays with a few toys. A candle falls off the tree and starts a fire. The toys try in vain to fight the fire; the boy hooks up a hose to a set of bagpipes and takes care of it.

Much like many of the Warner Brothers cartoons from this time this cartoon is not very good. The plot is thin and to be honest there's just nothing very original or remarkable about it. On the positive side the animation is adorable and nicely done for how early this cartoon is.

Thr music is mostly enjoyable with some entertaining sequences like the title song and a Kate Smith doll singing, "Shine on Harvest Moon". It was during this period that the Merrie Melodies shorts' purpose was to showcase a song that was published by the Warner Bros. publisher in each short with the showcased song's title the name of the film. That's the case here. 

This is the uncensored version of the Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives so my apologies to the offended. In the censored version the second half of this cartoon is severely shortened due to the removal of three gags: the boy starting a wind-up toy "Sambo Jazz Band", a baby doll falling into a bucket of coal and emerging in blackface to say, "Mammy!" to which a nearby Mammy dolls responds,"Sonny boy!" and the doll from "Red-Headed Baby" and two black dolls singing a chorus of the title song.

Snow Business

Keeping with the Christmas theme since it is December here is 1953's Snow Business. This cartoon was actually produced in 1951 but wasn't released until 1953. Snow Business is one of my favorites out the Tweety and Sylvester series, probably because they were more friends than enemies.

What I enjoy most about this cartoon is that it's not your typical "Sylvester is starving so he tries to eat Tweety plot". They throw a starving mouse into the mix who tries to eat certains parts of Sylvester. How's that for a change of pace? Myself, I thinks it's brilliant.     

Heavy snow traps Sylvester the Cat and Tweety alone in Granny's mountain cabin. The standard expository Mel Blanc radio report announces that the roads will be blocked for six weeks. Panicked, Sylvester looks for food in the icebox, cupboards, and closets, finding nothing but boxes and boxes of bird seed. He quickly seizes upon the idea of coaxing Tweety into being cooked, proposing sailboat play (in a stock pot) and skating (in an oil-lined skillet).

 The Sylvester-chases-Tweety cycle is continually disrupted, however, by an unnamed mouse who is even hungrier and more desperate than Sylvester. The mouse seizes upon the idea of eating Sylvester, and has a great deal more luck in cooking various portions of the cat than Sylvester has in cooking Tweety.

 At cartoon's end, Granny arrives with a backpack full of food—all boxes of bird seed. Tweety and Sylvester (obviously disgusted at not having cat food) are both at the table eating the bird seed in bowls. The mouse has one last attempt at Sylvester, when Tweety asks Sylvester how he liked the bird seed and the mouse bites him on the tail with Sylvester yelling and flying up in the air, Tweety says "Aw, come now, it can't be that bad."

When this cartoon was shown on CBS, the part where the hunger-crazed mouse sticks Sylvester's tail in a toaster and Sylvester extinguishes the flames with an ashtray was cut.

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.

Bingo Crosbyana

Back when Warner Bros. animation was still in its relative infancy - and Mel Blanc wasn't yet providing the voices - they made this quirky short in which revolves around a group of fun-loving insect which have taken over a kitchen. The female insects promptly become enthralled by a crooning show-off of a fly, Bingo Crosbyana, "the crooning hit of all Havana", a caricature of the singer Bing Crosby, who incurs the jealous resentment of their boyfriends. Bingo, however, literally shows his colors (yellow) when a spider invades the kitchen, leaving Bingo to cower in fear inside a roll of wax paper. After the boyfriends team up to trap the spider on a sheet of fly paper, Bingo emerges from the wax paper roll and attempts to resume his braggadocio, only to be put in his place decisively.

Bingo Crosbyana was one of two Warner Bros cartoons (along with Let It Be Me) which Bing Crosby initiated lawsuits to suppress because they portrayed him as a coward.

One little fly is next to a matchbox labelled "Portis Matches". This is one of many hidden references to he town of Portis, Kansas which can be found in LT&MM cartoons - including "Porky's Pet, "Porky in the North Woods", "Porky's Road Race", "Sniffles and the Bookworm" and "The Case of the Stuttering Pig". Why did they use Portis? Because it's the hometown of the writer, Melvin "Tubby" Millar.

In another scene a couple of wine bottles are visible. One says "90 percent Portis". The other says "Yale". They seemed to really have a thing for Portis in this cartoon.

The Cat Came Back

Here is the unedited version of the 1936 merrie melodie "The Cat Came Back". This one is kinda hard to find on the internet so I figured it would be a good idea to post it. As of today it is out there on youtube but with youtube's track record for taking down copyrighted material, it won't be there long.

When this cartoon was in released into syndication an entire series of scenes were cut: mousetraps (during the opening training scenes), a plunger, and characters poking each other in the eyes.  It was the final Warner Bros. cartoon to be produced in two-strip Technicolor and the only two-strip Technicolor Warner Bros. cartoon made in 1936.

This cartoon was reissued twice as a Blue Ribbon Merrie Melody. The first reissue occurred on July 15, 1944 during the 1943-44 season (evident from the style opening rings used: blue rings with a red background). The second reissue takes place on June 5, 1954 during the 1953-54 season (evident from the style opening rings used: orange rings with a blue background).

The version I've posted is the 1954 reissue with the cartoon network logo, which appears to be the only version available on the internet.

The plot goes something like this: A curious kitten leaves her family to play with an equally curious little mouse from across the hall, despite both being told by their mothers how bad the other's family is. Mama Mouse warns her kids to stay away from cats, while Mama Cat tells her kids to attack all mice. The kitten and mouse sneak out of their lessons and listen to some records together as an excuse to get in some hot 1930s tunes and dance around. While dancing, they accidentally fall down a drain into the sewer. The little kitten is saved by the little mouse. The two mothers get together to rejoice, but old feuds are not so easily forgotten, and the cat and mice families start to fight again.