Category: Friz Freleng

Isadore Freleng was responsible for more Oscars won than any of his co-workers. Here’s anything he directed.

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Pigs in a Polka

“I’m the smart little pig. I build my house of bricks.”

How about another “Fantasia” parody? (Can’t ever have too many!) Set to Brahms “Hungarian Dances”, we see the familiar tale of the big, bad wolf, andthethreelittlepigs. The first pig has the most adorable voice. (Thank you, Sara Berner) He stretches out a wire frame and piles straw on it. Done. The second pig is less adorable and builds his house of matchsticks. It collapses. The third pig is not cute. (Sorry, Blanc) But he is worthy of the intelligence pigs possess. He works hard while his (siblings? friends? love interests?) play. Cue dancing wolf. To get closer without them running, he dons a gypsy disguise. The pigs follow. They fell for it.

PSYCHE! They take his costume and do the dance themselves. Now the chase is on. They run to the straw house. The wolf sets it on fire. They run to the still demolished (match) stick house, and rebuild it as fast as they can. The wolf adds one more and it crumbles. Brick house it is! The wolf tries to blow it down, and is only offered mouthwash for his troubles. He goes to run into the door to knock it down, but the pigs open it up and let him run through the house into the back door.

Later the pigs are happily dancing. (Except for the third one. Spoilsport. He needs a name. They all do. So in order… Crunchy, Pancake and Mel) The wolf is outside dressed as a homeless woman in a snowstorm. (A talcum powder dispenser hanging over his head.) Crunchy and Pancake ignore Mel’s warnings and let “her” in. Mel finds out that the wolf has a record in the dress to make it SOUND like he is playing a sad violin song. Flipping it over gets a new song that the wolf dances his disguise off to.

The pigs run up the stairs to the suddenly existing 2nd floor. They take the elevator back down. The wolf does the same, but instead of another lift, he travels down the shaft (passing by ten stories somehow) and lands hardly. (Mel’s full name is Mel C. Escher)

Personal Rating: 4

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Pigs is Pigs

“And please, could we have alots of ice cream, tonight?”

I remember when I first watched this. I had just got done killing off a case of the munchies, and decided to keep watching that Looney Tunes DVD set I got for my birthday. Turns out irony can be delicious too.

Our short shows a house full of happy piglets. For the most part. One piglet, Piggy (no relation to the other W.B. character named that,) doesn’t want to play. He’d rather obsess over food. Sniffing some pies his mother made, he grabs one, spins it on his finger and eats. He attempts to do this with the other, but is caught. She scolds, but her words fall on hungry ears and he just goes back to fantasizing.

Later, it is dinner time. Piggy’s favorite time. Mom says they must all say grace, but they pray instead. (Laugh. I’m funny.) During this, Piggy ties all the spaghetti strands together. As soon as the grace is over, he digs in and slurps down the rest of the family’s supper, to his mother’s anger. The next day, he is invited into the house of some creepy, yellow, hiccuping, bald guy with the voice of Billy Bletcher. (Pete the cat, Henrey Bear, etc.) He offers him a feast and Piggy happily sits down to eat. Oh no! It’s a trap! He is strapped into the chair, and a clamp clamps his snout. The mad man is going to give him all the food he can handle, and then some!

First course, soup. (Red pea soup? Oxtail soup?) A water wheel made of spoons, paddles into his forced open mouth. He has bananas shot down his throat and a gumball machine doling out olives as fast as he can be forced to swallow. Next, ice cream. Bellows puff air through the cone and launches the ice cream into his head. (What a waste of cones.) Time for the main course! A sandwich the size of a mattress! (First use of Freleng’s “Hold the onions” gag.) He is forced to chew it, and then for dessert he is fed pies (spun like the way he ate his mother’s) from a pie-a-trope.

After a montage of all this repeating, the piglet has become a ball of food inside a bag of skin. The man lets him go, but tells him he’s not half full. Piggy goes to leave, but can’t resist a turkey leg for the road. He takes a bite and blows up. Wow. That was morbid.

Okay okay, he wakes up. It was all a dream. And what does he do now that he’s safe at home? Eat breakfast of course.

And after I finished watching for the first time, I decided to go eat more too. I’m an American and therefore, I can eat pure fat like it’s carrot sticks.

Personal Rating: 5

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I Haven’t got a Hat

“Listen m-my-m-m-m-my children and you shall hear, of the m-m-mi-m-midnight r-ri-ride of P-P-Paul-P-P-Paul R-R-Revere.”

Hello children. You now may recite for your parents today.

(What the heck is wrong with that student in the lower right?)

Now for the birth of my favorite cartoon character ever: Porky Pig! And he’s not alone. This short starts off with a cast of characters. Also appearing is the school teacher: Mrs. Cud the teacher, Beans the cat, Oliver Owl, and the puppies, Ham and Ex. (They point at us and whisper. Am I the only one who wants to know what they’re saying? Because I love attention!)

At the local schoolhouse the students are performing for their parents. First up is a timid little guy, who had no idea he will become the worlds most famous pig. (I don’t care what ignorant children think.) This is Porky’s beginning. He tries to recite “The ride of Paul Revere.” (This is B.B. Before Blanc. Originally it was a man named Joe Doughtery, a REAL stutterer.) Porky has such a difficult time that the crowd gets tired and whistles a pack of dogs to chase Porky off. Jerks. (Yes there are dogs that are anthropomorphic and some that aren’t. Why question it?)

Next up is Kitty, and if you thought Porky was nervous, well, she is just downright petrified. Porky at least went on stage of his own free will. Kitty can’t even finish “Mary had a Little Lamb.” She’s so scared she bolts at the last verse. Next are the pups, who sing our title song. In the crowd Oliver gets out some candy to munch. Not only does he refuse to share with Beans, (Who for the record didn’t really ask) he sticks his tongue out at him. The next performance (in this line of characters that WB was pretty much using to figure out which would be a good replacement for Buddy) is Oliver himself. He takes his candy, turns his nose…beak up at Beans, and goes to play the piano.

To get his revenge, Beans sneaks around outside and puts a non-anthro cat in the piano. To add to the chaos he then adds a dog. Suddenly the piano starts playing “The Storm” by itself, to Oliver’s amazement. The audience can’t see him behind the instrument, so they think he is a musical prodigy. When the music ends, Oliver happily takes the credit. Just at that moment the animals leap out, and the cheers become jeers. Ollie sees Beans laughing and sprsys green ink at him. The force causes Beans to fall back and launch some red paint back at the bird. Caught in the same predicament, the two shake hands and share a truce.

Personal Rating: 3

(Seriously, what is wrong with that student in the bottom right?)

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The Last Hungry Cat

“Sardines and milk wouldn’t have done it, you had to commit murder.”

Parody Time! It looks like “Hitchcock Presents”, but instead of a person its a bear. (I guess? It could just be a very strange hairdo.) He tells us a story. In this strory a one Sylvester the cat is about to break into Granny’s house and eat Tweety. Once grabbing him, he loses his balance on the stack of furniture he is standing on and everything collapses. Tweety uses this time to escape. Sylvester comes to and seeing the feather in his mouth deduces that he ate Tweety. Hearing Granny he makes his leave happy to have escaped.

The narrator works his nerves up by calling it murder. It doesn’t help when Sylvester walks by a newspaper hunting a criminal known as “The Cat.” He hides in a building. (I assume it’s his house.) He tries to relax by listening to the radio and reading but both things just add to his guilt. So he resorts to smoking and coffee drinking. (To calm his nerves I guess? I don’t think coffee does this, anyone care to explain?) He stays awake all night. While taking a sleeping pill shower he breaks down sobbing. The narrator tells him to give himself up and Sylvester agrees.

Upon arriving back at the scene of the crime he finds Tweety alive and well. His happiness soon turns to hunger, when Granny whacks him for trying to eat her bird. The narrator ends his tale and Sylvester throws a brick at him.

Personal Rating: 3

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The Coocoo nut Grove

“My, oh my. Just look at all the Celeb-reties.”

In the middle of a jungle is a trendy nightclub called the Coocoonut grove. Ben Birdie (Bernie) is our host, and he’s not the only one here. W.C. Fields the pig is there with Katherine Heartburn (Hepburn) the horse. Tarzan is there in a tree, and a lady is chased by Harpo as a… Bird? I think. He’s got a beak…

The music starts up and everyone dances. Laurel and Hardy (as a monkey and pig, respectively) share a coconut. Laurel must have drank a little too hard, as he sucks out all of Hardy’s body fat. Edna May Olliver does a dance to Clark Gable’s delight and the Dionne quintuplets perform. Tarzan is frighted by a mouse and Harpo finally catches the woman only to find it’s Groucho in drag. (That gag will never get old.) Helen Morgan sings, but her singing is so sad that even Edward G. Robbinson and George Raft cry. The combined tears of the singer and audience create a sea of tears, (eat your heart out Alice) which carries them all away.

Personal Rating: Depends on how acquainted you are with the parodies. If you know who is being spoofed, then 3. Otherwise, 2.

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Hare Do

“I have more fun than people.”

For this round of hunting, Elmer has a “wabbit detector.” It picks up Bugs who gives clues to Elmer to where he is and leads him off of a cliff. Bugs runs and catches a cab saying that only early risers can catch him. Elmer the driver mentions that he got up at a quarter to five. (Yes, he actually got one on Bugs this time.) Bugs runs into a theater to hide.

He clambers over people to get a seat, repeats to get a carrot, repeats to go back to his seat, and repeats when Elmer chases him. Elmer clambers over the people and an old woman (Bugs) beats him for this repeated gag. When Elmer tries to fight back, he gets thrown out. Elmer comes back in, finding  a message on the screen that informs him that he is wanted at the front. When he goes to retrieve the message, Bugs throws a pie in his face.

The chase resumes and Bugs hides in the men’s room. After Elmer runs in Bugs switches the signs and calls the usher. Fudd is again thrown out. He comes in again, but gets caught in stampedes of people leaving the intermission to smoke and returning to the film afterwards. Bugs is the one changing the sign and his fun ends when Elmer escapes. He chases Bugs to another theater where Bugs plays usher and gets Fudd to sit down. Thanks to the sunglasses on, Fudd is unaware that Bugs places him on a unicycle that leads into a lion’s stomach. The lion gets lunch and Bugs gets applause. A happy ending for all.

Personal Rating: 3

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The Wabbit who came to Supper

“Oh, that you Murt? How’s every little ting?”

Bugs is on the run from Elmer and his pack of dogs. Just as he is about to meet his fate, Fudd (in his fat design) gets a telegram. Elmer’s uncle Louie has just decided that when he dies his $3,000,000.00 will go to Fudd. There’s just one catch: no harming animals. Especially Rabbits. (I dunno, maybe its a test to see if he’s worthy? Or Louie just really loves animals. Rabbits in particular.) Elmer grants Bugs his freedom and goes home to find the wabbit in his shower.

Elmer pulls a gun on him, but Bugs reminds him of his Uncle’s words. Elmer begs Bugs to leave and ultimately locks him out of the house. Bugs puts on a act that he is dying in the cold, and mentions that the scene should get him an academy award. (Here’s a legit question: WHY DIDN’T LOONEY TUNES GET ONE TIL 1948!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?) But clearly I digress. Elmer brings him in and caters to his every whim.

Soon he gets a note telling of his uncle’s passing. However, dues to tax deductibles it ends up with Elmer actually owing money. Free of his burden, he chases Bugs. Bugs tries to pass it off as New Year’s Eve, and pulling his drag routine for the first time, before finally running from the house. But at least he was kind enough to leave Elmer a gift: An Easter egg full of little rabbits.

Personal Rating: 3

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A Hare grows in Manhatten

“I’ll moidalize ya!”

We begin with a voice identified as Lola Beverly. She is in Hollywood and aims to interview the stars. Naturally, we come to Bugs. He tells his life story which begins with him being born in New York. He grows up, and one day runs into a gang of dogs. (Yep. That one with the derby is Spike.) They think they spy an easy target and “dogpile on the rabbit” (with Bugs being the one on top.)

Bugs ducks into a sewer and when Spike tries to follow, he smacks his head on the manhole. Bugs pulls the ole “Does the rabbit have big ears, a fluffy tail, and hops” gag, with a great response from Spike that I’m not about to spoil.  After catching on, the chase continues. Bugs hides in a cigarette ad, which rats him out, so he sends Spike over the edge of the building with a stick. Spike grabs on to a clothes line, but Bugs plays Tweety and slowly removes his toes. (Apparetnly Spike was Bug’s 30th dog that day.)

Bugs walks on, thinking he’s rid of the canines, when they corner him in an alley. He grabs a book to defend himself but there’s no need. The dogs leave when they read the title: “A tree grows in Brooklyn”

Personal Rating: 4

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Hare Force

“Heavens to Betsy! A poor, little, rabbit out in the cold!”

It is a cold evening. Our setting is a house that is home to a Proto-Granny and a dog named Sylvester. (Proto putty-tat? I’ll leave that up to you. He looks more like Willoughby to me) Sylvester is happy to be in front of a toasty fire but is angered when Bugs is found at the door and he is instructed to take care of the rabbit. As soon as the old lady leaves, he throws Bugs out. Bugs makes a snowman in his likeness and when the guilt-ridden dog brings it in, he flips out when it melts.

Bugs tells him to hide outside, but when he hears the granny returning, he pretends the frozen dog is posing for a picture. After getting put out again, Sylvester jams a stick in the door frame to keep the door open, but Bugs closes the bottom half anyway. Later, Bugs feels guilty and when he goes to let the dog in, he gets put out. They continuously throw each other out until the woman gets fed up and decides to throw them both out. They form a truce and toss her out instead.

Personal Rating: 3

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You Ought to be in Pictures

“You mean to say you want to get out of your cartoon contract?”

Once upon a time, Friz Freleng left Warner Bros. for MGM. Long story short, he hated it. He did get his old job back and this was his short he made to thank everyone for the welcome home.

At the Warner Bros. studio, everyone goes for lunch. Daffy tells Porky that his talent is too great to be squandered in cartoons and that he should go into the full-length movies. Porky somewhat agrees, and goes to talk to Schelsinger. (Interesting note. Leon is the only one doing his own voice. Everyone else (including the studio guard played by Micahel Maltese) is played by Blanc) He lets Porky out of his contract, knowing he’ll be back.

Porky leaves for the movie studio, but the guard won’t let him in. (I don’t know if he’s being a dick or he doesn’t know who Porky is.) Porky disguises himself as Olliver Hardy and sneaks in. He disrupts a film, is thrown out, and decides to get his old job back. Daffy meanwhile has used this opportunity to sell himself as the new star. When Porky comes back and discovers this, he beats Daffy to a pulp, and gets his own job back. Happy, he gets back on the drawing board and throws a tomato at Daffy.

Personal Rating: 5