Looney Tunes: "The Wearing of the Grin"

Premiered July 28, 1951

It is a dark and stormy night and 12 miles to Dublin.   

Porky Pig (Mel Blanc) spies a "quaint old" castle in the distance and decides to see they can give him a place to stay for the night. 

On the way to the castle, he sees a sign that says "Beware the Leprechauns" and scoffs at the idea. 

Upon arrival, Porky is greeted by a "picturesque caretaker of the auld sod" who introduces himself as Seamus O'Toole  (an uncredited John T. Smith).  O'Toole informs him that nobody lives in the castle - apart from himself and the leprechauns. 

Porky scoffs at this again and demands to be taken to a room, slamming the front door.  This causes a mace above the door to fall, knocking Porky out cold. 

The caretaker is revealed to be a couple of leprechauns (calling themselves O'Pat and O'Mike) who, in true fairy fashion, decide to mess with Porky's head after concluding that he has come to steal their pot of gold. 

When Porky comes to, he is escorted to a room by HALF of the caretaker and doesn't notice at first. When he does notice, Porky is terrified and hides in the bed, which turns out to be a trap door! 

Porky drops down a shaft, landing in a leprechaun courtroom.  There the leprechauns charge and convict him of attempting to steal their pot of gold and sentence him to the "wearing of the green shoes." 

At first Porky admires the nice shoes, but soon comes to realize that they are cursed, as his feet begin a frantic Irish jig that dances him through a nightmarish landscape full of Irish symbols while O'Pat and O'Mike laugh at him. 

Will Porky be able to escape the leprechaun's trickery?  Or is he doomed to the "wearing of the green shoes" for all eternity? 

RigbyMel says: 

This Chuck Jones-directed short is the last solo appearance of Porky Pig in the classic era of Looney Tunes.  Porky was Warner Brothers' breakout star when he debuted, but had since been eclipsed by Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny.  

"The Wearing of the Grin" also stands out since there are not all that many St. Patrick's Day themed cartoons out there.   Some might argue that the short doesn't explicitly take place on March 17th, but with all the leprechaun mischief and Irish symbols (like harps and shamrocks), I think it has enough Irish detail to qualify as a "holiday" short.  

The green shoes plot point in this short borrows heavily from Hans Christian Andersen's 1845 fairy tale "The Red Shoes," which concerns a pair of ballet slippers that never let their wearer stop dancing.  His jig through an amazing surrealist Salvador Dali-inspired landscape is quite memorable.  

It's also interesting to note that the title of this short is a reference to "The Wearing of the Green," an old Irish street ballad. 

The animation is a lot of fun to watch and the voice work is - as always - great.  If there's a complaint to be made about this short, it's that the "Irishness" is a bit overly broad and stereotypical, but as this is a cartoon, broad and stereotypical work reasonably well for comedic purposes.  

"The Wearing of the Grin" is a silly and enjoyable short and is worth including in your holiday viewing this March.  

RigbyMel's rating: 

3 shamrocks

Popeye The Sailor: "Patriotic Popeye"

Premiered May 10, 1957.

"Fireworks is  too dangerous!  I'm gonna see that you haves a safe and sane 4th of July!"
-Popeye

On Independence Day, Popeye the sailor (Jack Mercer) is tending his garden.  His nephews (also voiced by Mercer) are excited about celebrating the occasion by setting off firecrackers.

Popeye forbids this says it's too dangerous and locks the fireworks up in a shed.  The nephews accuse their uncle of spoiling their 4th of July.

Popeye is determined that they have a "safe and sane" 4th of July and suggests some alternate ways for the boys to celebrate, like playing baseball, grilling hot dogs and going for a drive in the country.  However, every time Popeye turns his back, the nephews attempt to get the fireworks out of the shed.

The boys eventually get the fireworks and predictable pyrotechnic chaos ensues.   The nephews' actions place them and their surroundings in danger.  Can Popeye save his nephews?

J.A. Morris says:
As we've said here before, there isn't a lot of 4th of July-themed programming out there, so it's always nice to find stuff like "Patriotic Popeye."

Popeye says he wants the boys to have a "safe and sane 4th of July."  This is a reference to a movement that started in Cleveland in 1908 in the wake of several fireworks-related accidents that caused injuries and deaths.  Cleveland passed laws that made it a "safe and sane" city  which prohibited firework use and their ordinances served as a model for other cities.  So you might say "Patriotic Popeye" is PSA about fireworks safety.

Popeye certainly comes off as a killjoy here, but the nephews' antics ultimately prove him right.  This short contains some nice animation, such as this bit where a swarm of hornets forms an eye:

Like most Popeye cartoons, "Patriotic Popeye" does feature (SPOILER ALERT!) some spinach-enhanced heroics from the sailor man.

A note about the nephews:
Popeye's four nephews first appeared in a 1942 cartoon called "Pip-eye, Pup-eye, Poop-eye an' Peep-eye," which were the nephews names.  "Patriotic Popeye" only features two of these four and doesn't name them.  I'm not sure what happened to the other two.

"Patriotic Popeye" isn't the best Popeye short ever but it's fun and filled with fireworks, roman candles and hot dogs, it's full of 4th of July imagery.  It's worth watching, especially recommended for hardcore fans of Popeye the sailor.

J.A. Morris' rating:

.5

2 and a half American Flag.

RigbyMel says: 

"Patriotic Popeye" is an amusing, if not a "classic" animated short.   I appreciated the safety message about fireworks,  even if the humorous action of the short kind of undercuts it a little bit.

I find it interesting that since this is a short made during the 1950s,  we see a large bottle rocket labeled the "Atomic Sky Rocket" -- a reference very much of the time and of the "space race" period of U.S. history.

Popeye's troublemaking nephews strike me as perhaps owing more than a little bit to some similar tropes employed by other animation studios and it's odd that neither Olive Oyl nor Bluto make an appearance in this cartoon.   However, there's plenty of holiday-themed action, so maybe they aren't needed? 

This is a short worth watching even if it's not precisely a classic.

RigbyMel's rating: 

2 American Flags.

Popeye: "Fright To The Finish"

Premiered August 27, 1954.

"So beware this Halloween Eve, when the Earth will be haunted by spooks, ghosts, and hobgoblins."
-Olive Oyl

It's Halloween night and Olive Oyl (Mae Questel) is reading a book of spooky stories.  This sets Olive on edge and she is afraid that ghosts and hobgoblins will haunt her.

Popeye the sailor (Jack Mercer) and Bluto (Jackson Beck), Popeye's rival for Olive's affections, are bored by Olive's frightful tales.  Bluto wishes Popeye would leave so he can be alone with Olive, Popeye wonders why Bluto hasn't gone home already.

Bluto gets a fiendish idea.  He will scare Olive Oyl out of her wits and blame Popeye, which will send her into his arms.  Bluto perpetrates several Halloween tricks to further his plan.

Will Bluto succeed?

J.A. Morris says:
I grew up watching various Popeye cartoons and I've long been a fan of the spinach-eating sailor. Fright To The Finish was produced by Famous Studios.  Hardcore Popeye fans prefer the Fleischer Brothers shorts, but this Halloween toon is pretty good.  Fright To The Finish has great animation and is packed with sight-gags from start to finish.

It's full of great Halloween imagery like skeletons and jack o'lanterns.  The voice cast is also excellent.  Jack Mercer (who is also credited with writing Fright To The Finish) voiced Popeye for nearly five decades and he does a great job here.  Mae Questel (the definitive Olive Oyl voice actress) and Jackson Beck are also very good.

(A mild SPOILER below)

Fright To The Finish is a rare Popeye cartoon where the sailor man does not save the day by eating spinach.  I watched it several times before I noticed this departure from the formula.

This short can be found on a dvd called Popeye:The Sailor Man (75th Anniversary Collection) and it can also be streamed on Amazon.

Fright To The Finish is a very enjoyable Halloween cartoon and is highly recommended.

J.A. Morris' rating:

4 Jack O'Lanterns!

RigbyMel says:

This is quite an enjoyable animated short.  

There is definitely an emphasis on the "trick" aspect of "trick or treat" on full display here,  as well as some rather wonderful sight gags -- particularly involving poor Olive Oyl's reactions to the appearance of various Bluto-created ghosties and beasties.    One almost has to admire Bluto's Halloween prank ingenuity.  

There were several bits of this short that reminded me a bit of the Brom Bones/Ichabod Crane rivalry as depicted in the 1949 Disney incarnation of the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow", but the dynamic is different enough not to detract from the fun.  

Popeye plans to get his own back with a little help from some of Olive's vanishing cream

I also love that we get a series of "vanishing cream" gags in this. I've always enjoyed the way cartoons will play with this notion since it's totally what little kids think of when they hear the term "vanishing cream."  

I  find it interesting to see the way that different signs and signifiers of the spooky season are deployed in this short -- we don't see children trick or treating, but we do get ghost story telling, pranks, skeletons, jack o'lanterns and even ghostly manifestations, after a fashion.   Halloween is not quite as strictly codified as other holidays and this makes for intriguingly varied pop cultural takes on the spooky season.

RigbyMel's rating:

4 Jack O'Lanterns!

Funny Little Bunnies

Premiered March 24, 1934.

"The storybooks say that far, far away,
 There's a green enchanted dell.
 Where the rainbow ends and everything is gay,
  And the Easter Bunnies dwell."

Beyond the rainbows, a veritable army of bunnies decorates Easter Eggs and Easter candy in an assembly line fashion so they're ready to be delivered by the Easter Bunny.  Like Santa's elves, the bunnies decorate all year round.  They're assisted by a flock of hens who lay eggs that rabbits decorate with every color of dye imaginable.

Chickens -- who sound kind of like Clara Cluck -- laying eggs.

Some bunnies serve as models for chocolate bunny sculptures.

Chocolate bunny sculptors hard at work.

And, of course,  the bunnies make and fill Easter baskets.

J.A. Morris says:
The summary is short because, that's basically what happens.  Like a lot of early animated shorts, Funny Little Bunnies exists so that animators can show the audience "look what we can do!"

It has lots of beautiful animation and cute animals and entertaining ways to show us how Easter candy is made and how Easter Eggs are colored.

There is one not-very-pleasant aspect of this short we should point out.  At the 1:37 mark, a bunny falls into a vat of chocolate and emerges looking like an ugly racial stereotype.  It's a product of its time and I won't hold it to today's standards.  That doesn't make it okay.  It's probably over the heads of younger views today, but if you watch it with a kid, be prepared to answer questions.

This cartoon can be found on a DVD called Walt Disney Treasures: Silly Symphonies.  It's currently out of print, but it can be purchased online and is also available at many libraries.

Funny Little Bunnies is a generally nice short cartoon and a decent addition to the somewhat limited Easter TV and film offerings.  But the racially insensitive bit and the lack of a real story prevent me from giving it a higher rating.

J.A. Morris' rating:

3 Easter Eggs.

RigbyMel says:

This is a slight, but generally enjoyable Easter short cartoon.   As J.A. Morris says above,  the animation is beautiful,  but there is some unfortunate racial and disability stereotyping that, while common in the time period,  doesn't sit well today.

Plaid paint! Och!

Disney's Silly Symphonies series was a chance for the studio's animators to flex their artistic muscles and develop the art of animation.   The series in general was notable for its use of the Technicolor process, the inclusion of primarily musical soundtracks and experimentation that was a lead up to the eventual production of animated feature films like Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs.

Egg decoration by firing squad?!?! 

I appreciated the creativity of some of the bunnies' candy production processes - getting dye colors from a rainbow was a nice touch.

So, THAT'S where Easter egg dye comes from!

Overall, Funny Little Bunnies is a cute short.  It is a solid entry in the Silly Symphonies series and is worth a look seeing as there are not very many animated Easter options out there.

RigbyMel's rating:

2 and a half Easter Eggs.