DVD/BLU-RAY AVAILABILITY:
Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. V (Warner Brothers DVD 112172)
You can watch an original black-and-white version of this historically important cartoon HERE. Finally.
To appreciate the first Warner Brothers cartoon by Fred Avery, it's important to see it in the context of the other Warner Brothers cartoons of its season.
Leon Schlesinger's cartoon studio was in a creative doldrums in 1935. The once-manic energy of the first WB cartoons, produced and directed by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, was long gone. Harman-Ising's star employee (and fellow ex-Disney alumnus) Isadore "Friz" Freleng had begun to direct for Schlesinger, but his best work was years ahead of him.
The studio's attempts to create likable recurring characters had failed. Despite the obvious lack of appeal of Buddy and Cookie, Beans, Ham and Ex, et al, the studio stubbornly stuck with them. Walt Disney had long set the example: you had to give audiences a character they could laugh at and with. Easier said than done, especially when the Disney templates were either ciphers (Mickey Mouse) or blowhards (Donald Duck).
Schlesinger's color cartoons, which showcased a song from the Warner Brothers publishing house, and usually had no continuing characters, were marginally better, though still rather dull. Like the other Hollywood cartoon studios, Schlesinger's felt the impact of the critically-lauded Walt Disney shorts. Disney sought to create the illusion of life in his animation--at the expense of imagination, energy and humor.
This challenge effectively stale-mated theatrical animation in the last half of the 1930s. As studios with smaller staff and budgets copied the Disney approach, usually without enthusiasm, the entertainment value of their collective output miserably dwindled. Ironically, the most ardent and obvious copyists of the Disney Way were Harman and Ising, who established a cartoon studio with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and immediately launched into their Happy Harmonies series--the most successful and lavish Disney knock-offs of their day.
The New York studios still showed signs of life, in Paul Terry's crude but vivid output, and in the black-and-white cartoons of The Fleischer Studio--particularly the rowdy, engaging Popeye series. (Fleischer was already grabbing at the Disney brass ring with its ambitious but often dull Color Classics cartoons.)
The 1935 animation industry was in creative gridlock, unsure of its next move, and unenthusiastically trying to produce what it thought audiences might like.
