The Bear's Tale: Splintered Shards of a Fractured Fairy-Tale

Release date: 4/13/1940 (according to BCDb)
DVD-Blu-Ray Availability: Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 5 DVD set

You may view the complete version of this cartoon HERE.

Still riding high, Avery & Co. return to one of the director's pet projects--trashing Disney-style fairy-tale cartoons. Light on narrative (much like Uncle Tom's Bungalow and Little Red Walking Hood), The Bear's Tale is a fourth-wall demolition derby, with the director adding his gleeful voice work to a spicy, chaotic stew.

I'd like to know who really wrote this cartoon. It's far too sophisticated, cool calm and collected to have come from the likes of "Bugs" Hardaway. I assume this title card is a typical example of Leon Schlesinger's rotating credit system.

The cartoon manages to avoid actual animation for about a minute, via novel credits that make maximal use of still images. Pages keep turning, as narrator Robert C. Bruce fools us into getting all snuggly and comfortable--as does the music of Carl W. Stalling, who was by now a master of easing us in via familiar snatches of classical and popular tunes.

 Avery kids journeyman director Mervin LeRoy, who helmed everything from Little Caesar (1930) to The Bad Seed (1956), and had a hand in a long list of enjoyable classic Hollywood product.

"What Makes Me Wild?.... What Makes Me Wild?" A Day at the Zoo, Perhaps Not

Release date: 3/11/1939 (according to BCDb)

DVD-Blu-Ray Availability: on various PD bargain DVDs and VHS tapes

You may view this cartoon HERE.

Good-natured yet tepid, this second topical spot-gag cartoon (released almost a year after the first, The Isle of Pingo Pongo) showcases all that was good--and lacking--in this genre.

In the spring of 1939, such a cartoon was fresher and far funnier. Though imitations of Avery's first spot-gag film (as influential to other animators as A Wild Hare and Porky's Duck Hunt) would show up in rival studios' product, their sheer, overwhelming dreadfulness makes Avery's half-strength efforts seem more amiable.

This is Avery Lite--on a break between two superb cartoons, he coasts on a handful of pleasant-to-painful puns, blackout gags, mass media references and the strength of Carl Stalling's bullet-proof musical score.Whenever inspiration flagged, though contracts demanded X amount of cartoons, Avery had this format to fall back on for the rest of his career.