Title: Naughty But Mice
Studio: Warner Bros.
Date: 5/20/39
Credits:
Supervision
Charles Jones
Story by Rich Hogan
Animation Phil Monroe
Musical Direction
Carl W. Stalling
Series: Merrie Melodies
Running time (of viewed version): 7:58
Looney Tunes the Chuck Jones Collection Mouse [Blu-ray]
Synopsis: Sniffles gets drunk on cold medicine, befriends an electric razor, and is almost eaten by a cat.
Comments: Lindy's, Gotham, La Conga, Tro(cadero, presumably) are all signs on buildings below the opening clock tower; they're all old restaurants in LA, (see http://www.latimemachines.com/new_page_41.htm and following; relatively, 3656 Wilshire, 7050 Hollywood at Sycamore, (not listed), 8610 Sunset) so I assume the clock tower is/was a real landmark in downtown LA as well. Looking at Lindy's address on Google Street View, however, I can't locate a plain clock tower, and a Google satellite view doesn't show anything that looks like a clock tower shadow in the immediate vicinity. It may just be an imaginary crunching together of places in the cartoon, or perhaps the bell tower is no more. Or maybe I'm just missing it. I'm pretty sure the Savoy was a nightclub, thus the drinking place here. Ah, but I can only put off having to deal with Sniffles for so long. Yes, a Sniffles cartoon. Why couldn't Jones take a hint from almost every other cartoon series of the year and do his best to minimize his starring charater... Radium hair pins; for cancer hair? Electric needles; for ... uh... electrostim? Magnetic flasks, electric waterbottles, saturated irium tweezers, repercolating percolators, 2 killowatt clocks, these are the things in this drug store. Sniffles is sick and drunk instead of sickly sweet in this cartoon. The very Jones-y looking cat tries to use the UFO catcher to pick up Sniffles (called a toy steam shovel, because people hadn't imagined seeing UFOs very much at the time). As much as I hate Sniffles, I have to admit that Lantz's Babyface Mouse is worse. Strangely, the electric razor seems to be sentient, and not just in a pink elephant fashion. There's lots of standing around drunk in this cartoon, which I would need to have lots of repetitive photos to accurately represent.
Sniffles was so drunk that the inanimate object he imagined was alive went after a real life cat? Dang, he really got his drank on.
ReplyDeleteIf nothing else, the drunk, life-of-it's-own razor was a precursor for the Indian snake-charmer razor Bugs sent after Elmer in Jones' "Rabbit of Seville". That's worth at least one bonus point to mitigate Sniffles' presence.
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