Not the Funniest Freleng: Krazy's Port Whines

Travel and intense research have me busy this week, so I haven't had much of a chance to post. But for your amusement (?) and edification, here now is Port Whines (1929), another of the earliest Columbia Krazy Kat shorts—and another that hasn't been seen with sound in decades.

See Jerry Beck's earlier post on Ratskin (1929) for the inside information on where the video element comes from (and why it looks the way it does). Thanks to Cole Johnson—and by extension, the Vitaphone Project—for supplying the audio. As before, I handled the editing, and while the two elements didn't always match, I did my best to stretch and splice and sync things up as they should be. The video element has British main titles, fascinating enough in and of themselves that I didn't want to put faux Columbia originals in their places.



Port Whines isn't the most exciting cartoon we'll ever see. Only a few moments of delightfully crude violence save us from a rather basic musicale. In fact, even as a song cartoon the film falls short; while Ratskin featured a lively mix of popular songs, the body of Port Whines is dominated by the public domain "Life on the Ocean Wave," "Sailing, Sailing," and "Pop Goes the Weasel."

Only the main title tune, "Me-Ow," is a licensed number—and even it would soon be replaced with Mintz's self-owned similar cue, "You Are the Kat's Meow" (first used in Kat's Meow, 1930).

Perhaps the most interesting moment comes at 3:45, where the rooster's smoke ring stunts look to be animated by none other than Friz Freleng. Freleng worked with Mintz's New York staff in 1929 while waiting for Harman and Ising to sell their Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid (1929) pilot; in Port Whines, Freleng's obviously West Coast, Oswald-inspired design style clashes with the other animators' work. By Farm Relief (1929), however—just two shorts later—the rest of the Krazy staff seems to be imitating Freleng, with various degrees of success. The trend would only continue when the studio moved west in early 1930, and more Los Angeles animators joined the relocated crew.

It's no mean tribute to Freleng, especially at this early stage of his career, that his brief sojourn at a foreign studio should have had such an influence. The formerly Fleischerian stock company of earlier Harrison and Gould, with its truly bizarre elephant and hippo characters, would never be quite the same.

The Tammany Kat is Loose: Ratskin

Call him/her whatever gender you will—George Herriman's Krazy Kat is cartoondom's most famous masochist. When not reveling in the dubious joys of being bonked with a brick, Krazy is willfully undergoing other embarrassments. Employing Felix the Cat's voice double is just one example.

Jerry Beck, blogging at Cartoon Brew, is just now featuring a cartoon I've helped him "restore"—Ratskin (1929), Krazy's first sound short at Columbia. The Vitaphone Project recently recovered the film's long-lost soundtrack; Beck had his amateur video recording, and doing a little editing, I've aided in reuniting the two. And who knew? The usually far more kreative Krazy howls and yowls in a comically awful house cat impersonation, notable for its similarity to the poorly-received Felix "voice" Pat Sullivan employed at the time. Did the same actor meow badly for two New York studios? What was Charles Mintz thinking?

Maybe he felt it was the only way to tie into a famous song on the soundtrack! Ratskin is the first of many cartoons I know to enlist "Me-Ow," a 1909 pop tune by Harry Kerr and Mel B. Kaufman. Sylvester, Bosko, and Farmer Al Falfa have gamboled to this chestnut so often that almost every animation fan knows the melody—if not its name and theme. Here, courtesy of the invaluable UCSB Cylinder Archive, is Irving Kaufman performing the tune ten years after its creation:



Apart from being catchy in and of itself. "Me-Ow" exemplifies the bond between vintage cartoons and bygone cultural mores, a topic I'll be discussing fairly often here. In the early 1900s, cats weren't just household pets; they were equally common as strays, and thus seen as symbols of illness, savagery, and feral behavior. Of course, such behavior often mandated societal "punishment." So the image of the cat as comedic fall guy was also born at this time—but with an undercurrent of grotesque realism rarely present today. The drowned cat, sacked and tossed in the river, was a fact of life in 1910. So was the cat on a fence being battered with boots, and the randy cat slain by its multiple mates. In "Everybody Knows It's There," a David Reed tune recorded in 1908 by Edward M. Favor, the narrative could casually describe "every cat in town" being "slaughtered"—presumably as disease-carriers—and expect listeners simply to smile at the animals' bad luck.



In line with this, is it such a surprise that "Me-Ow!" is actually about a pet owner's unsuccessful efforts to kill his furry ward? Maybe it made Jerry Mouse's top ten.

Ratskin also features other popular songs of its era, some of which Cartoon Brew has listed for us. But I'd like to draw your attention to another that fascinates me: "Tammany." Dating from the worst period of Tammany Hall graft, Gus Edwards' and Vincent Bryan's tune likens political thugs to the lawless Indians of racist stereotype—an obvious comparison, given the Tammany society's use of Native American terminology. By the time of the later Merrie Melodie Bowery Bugs (1949), "Tammany" had simply become a tune evoking a late-19th-century slicker; in Ratskin, its original meaning was still remembered, thus its tongue-in-cheek use with an actual Wild West scenario. Here it is as performed by Billy Murray, later the voice of Bimbo, in 1905:



Hmm, it seems I've strayed rather far from Coconino County here. Then again, so would Columbia's version of Krazy Kat. Quick, Ignatz... the brick!

[Updated—thanks to Cole Johnson for corrections re: the Tammany society's Native American connection.]

Legendbreakers: Hare-um Scare-um

I've always had a soft spot for Hare-um Scare-um (1939), Bugs Bunny’s third cartoon. As a kid, I actually ranked it among the best Warner Bros. shorts: I liked the gags, I liked the goony formative version of Bugs, I even memorized the song he sang. While I grew out of considering the film a classic, I remained interested by new discoveries related to it. Michael Barrier learned, for example, that Hare-um marked the first time the new star was advertised as Bugs Bunny (even though he wasn’t named in the film itself). More recently, Mike Van Eaton and Jerry Beck found original art to a promo brochure that was part of that ad push.

When I first heard talk of Hare-um—a cartoon I thought I knew inside and out—perhaps having an extra scene or scenes, I didn't believe it. I went into denial. But soon, an urban Internet legend had developed to the point where I finally became curious. Could I get to the bottom of it? What would Duck Twacy do? What would... Snopes do?

Merrie Meleodies - Hare-Um Scare-Um (1939)
Uploaded by Cartoonzof2006

Legend: Hare-um Scare-um (1939), the third cartoon to feature a prototypical Bugs Bunny, has been edited for violence in the print we usually see (above). The full, original version ended with Bugs and his "whole family" beating the stuffings out of hunter John Sourpuss and his dog, perhaps so violently that only their decapitated heads are left to roll away over the hill for the closer.

Status: PARTIALLY TRUE.

Examples:

[Jerry Beck and Will Friedwald, The Warner Brothers Cartoons, 1981]

"The censored ending has the hunter being beaten up by the rabbit and his whole family."

---

[Visitor to The Unofficial Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Page, c. 1998]

"This is what I was told was missing at the end: All of the rabbits attack the hunter (not Elmer Fudd, but a one-shot hunter) and his dog. The smoke clears and we see two heads—the hunter's and the dog's—rolling off down the same roadway into the sunset as the iris brings the toon to a close."

---

[Visitor to Toon Zone, 2002]

"Supposedly the rabbits beat up the hunter and dog, causing a cloud of smoke. When the cloud clears you see the heads of the hunter and dog rolling down the road."

---

[Visitor to Misce-Looney-Ous blog, 2008]

"I don't know about 'heads rolling into the sunset,' but in the version I've seen, the rabbits just start beating the heck out of the hunter and his dog, then iris out. If there's a longer version (and there could be), I haven't seen it."

---

[Visitor to YouTube, 2009]

"yea i think i have seen both on cartoon network in 2000 when i wuz 4 im 13 now iand i think i remember seein both in my long term memory i remember the dog and hunter gettin beat up and their heads are rolling down a hill." [SIC!]

Origins: The 1998 version of the rumor, posted to the Censored Cartoons Page and recovered through the Wayback Machine, turned out to be the earliest mention I could find anywhere of "rolling heads.” As such, it's notable for its "I was told" qualifier: the writer made clear that he hadn't seen the unedited ending himself; he was just quoting an anonymous source. Neither perfect understanding nor certainty was implied.

But the Censored Cartoon Page got around, and the iconic mental image of disembodied, rolling heads obviously stuck in film geeks' memories. Even the modern version of the Censored page describes the "rolling heads" scene as common knowledge, at least in the context of hearsay.

Yet there are obvious problems with it. One commonly referenced element—the dog's presence—is extra-unlikely, as the dog exits the film two full minutes before Sourpuss issues his challenge to fight. And while the goofy, Egghead-like Elmer prototype could remove his head for a gag in 1937 (Cinderella Meets Fella), would Schlesinger animators really decapitate Sourpuss permanently—even for a scene that was nixed?

Sometimes an obvious clue is right in front of your nose. As you’ll see above, years before any reference to rolling heads, Jerry Beck and Will Friedwald referenced a less explicitly gruesome version of the final sequence in their seminal book, The Warner Brothers Cartoons (1981). How had I forgotten that? If I wanted more details, why not simply try to watch what they’d watched?

Luckily, at least one original print of Hare-um Scare-um still existed. I cornered and screened it recently in a film archive. Here’s what I saw.

"I can whip you and your whole family!" shouts John Sourpuss.

Bugs and his infinite family appear and put up their dukes. We hear the same musical flourish that marks the fadeout in the standard version—but there's no fade this time.

The bunnies rush Sourpuss...

...and fight in a cloud of dust. There's no sign of who's winning at first.

At the end of the battle, the bunnies rush away as one, down the road and over the horizon—visible only as a dust cloud trail.

The remaining smoke of battle clears to reveal a disheveled, but intact Sourpuss.

A critical-looking Bugs zips back onto the scene alone...

...to return Sourpuss' battered rifle to him, throwing it down on the ground hard. Smack!

Bugs (sternly): "You oughtta get that fixed. Somebody's liable to get hurt!"

His sternness vanishing, Bugs reverts to his former looney attitude.

He laughs and whoops his way down the road toward the horizon—bouncing on his head all the way, pogo-stick style.

John Sourpuss, left alone, does a long, furious slow burn...

...then snaps like a twig, and—now insane—bounces on his head toward the horizon, too. Iris out.


How many copies of the original are out there? Surely not many; I can state with surety that Cartoon Network never aired one. On the other hand, it seems possible that some thirty years ago, when Beck and Friedwald did their original research, the news of what they'd seen got around. Maybe some cartoon fan remembered the scene in full, described it vaguely to another...

...and a statement like "they bounce over the hill on their heads" was simply misheard as the more grotesque "heads bounce over the hill." After all, the scene was snipped from most versions of the film. If one hasn’t seen a censored moment, it’s easy to presume it must have been yanked for the ugliest reasons. Maybe that’s how the rumor got started.

Given that the scene seems non-controversial, why was the edit done? I can only make an educated guess: it’s so much like the ending of the earlier Daffy Duck and Egghead (1938) that it comes across as completely unoriginal.

"Hold onto your seats, folks! Here we go again..."


[Thanks to Jerry Beck and Mark Kausler for a lot.]