#hubie and bertie

[termiteterraceclub]

Termite Terrace Club - August 25th

1945 - Fresh Airedale - Dir. Chuck Jones

1951 - Cheese Chasers - Dir. Chuck Jones (Hubie and Bertie's last short)

1956 - Raw! Raw! Rooster - Dir. Robert McKimson

1995 - Carrotblanca - Dir. Douglas McCarthy #LooneyTunes #LooneyTwt

[dailylooneys]

Mouse Wreckers

(1949, Chuck Jones)

[thinkbolt]

Mouse Wreckers (WB, 1949) - dir. Chuck Jones

[acmeoop]

Convincing “Roughly Squeaking” (1946)

[textsfromlooneytuneland]

(330): 

When in doubt, it's too much cheese

[incorrectlooneytunesquotes]

[Elmer puts a basket with cheese and mice inside in trash]

Bertie: Gross! Is this his house?

Hubie: No! It's his garbage can!

Bertie: Oh.

[skullislandproductions]

Hubie and Bertie, the mouse duo of Chuck Jones fame, appeared as assassins on the “Duck Dodgers” episode “Too Close for Combat,” 2005. Using their special brand of covert psychological warfare, they turn Dodgers and the Cadet against one another.

[theanimationalley]

[looneysmackdown]

ROUND 1B

[padraicratigan]

OF MICE AND THE MEN WHO DRAW THEM

By Charles Solomon, published January 3, 1987.

Never mind the return of King Kong: Mus domesticus (better known as the common house mouse) strikes again.

American animation studios have released so many mice in the last few months that theater screens have begun to resemble Hamelin before the Pied Piper. Fievel and the other members of the Mousekewitz family in Don Bluth’s “An American Tail” arrived on the heels of Disney’s “The Great Mouse Detective.” “Mickey’s Christmas Carol”--starring the most famous mouse of all--recently made its annual appearance on television.

Every animator secretly hopes to emulate the success of Walt Disney--whose studio was built on one mouse. But even Mickey’s enduring popularity can’t explain the overwhelming preponderance of mice as cartoon characters.

“It’s a terrible to thing to say, but mice are easy to draw,” observes commercial animator Bob Kurtz. “All you need is a triangular shape with a little black dot for a nose, wide round ears and a tail, and you’ve got it! Once you stick on the big round ears, people will accept anything as a mouse.”

“It’s not that we keep coming up with reasons to do another mouse picture,” says Glen Keane, a young animator at Disney who designed many of the characters in “Mouse Detective.” “The best stories for animation seem to use mice--a lot of children’s books feature mouse characters. Personally, I’m sick of drawing mice.”

But children’s literature and folk tales--the traditional source of stories for cartoons--don’t offer many alternatives.

“In folklore and legend, the mouse is never the attacker--those are rats,” says Frank Thomas, one of the key group of animators Disney referred to as “the Nine Old Men.” “A mouse is always depicted as a helpless little guy. Since he has no teeth or claws or horns or strength to fight back with, he has to live by his wits--which puts him in situations that can serve for ‘Mr. Everyman.’ ”

“What other animal could you use?” he adds. “Raccoons are cute, but they have teeth and claws. A fox is too smart. Puppies are cute, but a dog has too much drive. The success of all the cartoons with mice has reinforced this Mr. Nice Guy concept. In reality, they’re nasty little critters, although they’re cuter than the dickens.”

“It’s odd that mice are perceived as endearing in animation but terrifying in reality,” says Warner Bros. cartoon director Chuck Jones, who made a few films with the mouse characters Hubie and Bertie. “Nobody’s comfortable with a mouse in the house: Even grown men will run for the hills if there are mice in the house.”

Another reason for the abundance of mice is, as Kurtz suggests, that they’re easy to draw.

“For almost any other animal, you have to know a lot more about anatomy,” says Ollie Johnston, another of “The Nine Old Men.” “You have to keep the anatomy of most four-legged animals accurate, unless you dress them up in clothes. You can treat mice as little humans.”

On the screen, an animated dog or a cat standing on its hind legs just looks like a dog or a cat in an uncomfortable position. (To make Garfield walk upright, cartoonist Jim Davis has to distort the anatomy of his cat’s limbs and give him odd, human feet.) But if an animator stands a mouse on his hind legs, audiences accept the character as a miniature human. The snout becomes a large nose; the forelimbs, little arms; the forepaws, tiny hands.

“When I drew Bernard and Bianca in ‘The Rescuers,’ I imagined anatomically correct mice,” continues Keane. “But I didn’t think of the characters in ‘Mouse Detective’ as mice--they were real people to me.

“When you look at Mickey Mouse, you don’t think ‘mouse,’ you think ‘cartoon.’ That simple approach to drawing a cartoon character based on a caricature of a mouse led to the mice in cartoons done today. They don’t look like real mice: They’re caricatures of caricatures of caricatures. It would be nice to start again and see if someone could come up with a new way of doing mice-- that would be a challenge.”

In fact, the current infestation of on-screen mice may have passed its peak. Don Bluth has moved to Ireland, and is reportedly making a feature about dinosaurs. “Oliver,” the next Disney cartoon feature, has a cast of dogs. Still, a sequel to “The Rescuers” is also in the works. And foreign mice may arrive to take up the slack, in the dubious tradition of San Rio’s “The Mouse and His Child” (Japan, 1982).

After considering the rodent-ridden history of animation, Kurtz concludes, “When you think about how many cartoon mice have been done, it’s amazing that Jiminy Cricket didn’t turn out to be a mouse!”

[termiteterraceclub]

Termite Terrace Club - April 23rd

1938 - The Penguin Parade - Dir. Tex Avery

1949 - Mouse Wreckers - Dir. Chuck Jones

1960 - Who Scent You? - Dir. Chuck Jones

TV

2023 - The Looney Tunes Show Season 2: “The Black Widow”

[rapidkirby3000]

One of the few earliest 'Music You Can Hear' moments for yours truly upon reruns as a kid over here. 😅

Mouse Wreckers

(1949, Chuck Jones)

[thinkbolt]

Hypo-chondri-Cat (Warner Bros, 1949) - dir. Chuck Jones

[sean-gaffney]

Looney Tunes Collector's Choice Vol. 4 Announced

I had written a post, which you can find here, where I talked about Looney Tunes that were never released officially in any medium. Did any of those make the new collection? Mostly no, as expected, but yes, one or two did! Let's look at the contents, in the order listed in the press release.

Along Came Daffy (1947, Freleng, Blue Ribbon). A semi-remake of Daffy's Southern Exposure from 1942 and Wackiki Wabbit from 1943, this has two starving men (who look a lot like Yosemite Sam, one red and one black) trying to eat Daffy, who has come to sell them cookbooks. Classic 40s Daffy.

A Bone for a Bone (1951, Freleng). This is one of the ones never released on home video before now! (It has streamed.) The Goofy Gophers vs. a dog, and while enjoyable, it's not the lights out classic the previous two Gopher cartoons were.

The Cagey Canary (1942, Avery/Clampett, Blue Ribbon). Tex Avery started this cartoon, then left Schlesinger's, so Bob Clampett finished it. It's very reminiscent of later Tweety and Sylvester cartoons.

D'Fightin' Ones (1961, Freleng). A psrody of the movie the Defiant Ones, starring Sylvester and a bulldog.

Dangerous Dan McFoo (1939, Avery, Blue Ribbon). A parody of the poem The Shooting of Dan McGrew. Avery would return to this poem several times over his career. This is the first cartoon to feature the voice of Arthur Q. Bryan (future Elmer Fudd) and Robert C. Bruce (the narrator voice for almost every WB cartoons from this point on).

Devil's Feud Cake (1963, Freleng). A "cheater" cartoon, using footage from previous cartoons. Yosemite Sam dies and goes to hell, and is told to bring Bugs back there to avoid eternal damnation. Not great, but they're running out of Bugs cartoons.

Double Chaser (1942, Freleng, Blue Ribbon). A "chase" cartoon to the extreme, with a mouse, cat and dog.

Double or Mutton (1955, Jones). A Sam Sheepdog/Ralph Wolf cartoon, with lots of cartoon violence against Ralph that was censored on TV being uncut here.

Fox Pop (1942, Jones, Blue Ribbon). A fox hears that silver foxes are highly prized, and paints himself silver, only to realize they only want the skin. Jones is starting to slowly become funny in 1942, this is a good example of him getting better. Also, a public domain cartoon, so has appeared on many bootleg WB collections. This is restored.

Henhouse Henery (1949, McKimson). An early Foghorn Leghorn cartoon, and the first to use "Camptown Races".

Holiday for Drumsticks (1949, Davis). Daffy Duck tries to "save" a turkey from Thanksgiving by eating all his food for him. A classic, one of three cartoons newly restored for HD for this set.

Hopalong Casualty (1960, Jones). A late-period Coyote/Roadrunner cartoon. The one with the earthquake pills.

Hyde and Go Tweet (1960, Freleng). Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with Tweety and Sylvester.

The Impatient Patient (1942, McCabe, B&W). Released in its original black and white for the first time officially on home media, this has a loopy Daffy trying to deliver a message to "Chloe" in a parody of horror movies.

Leghorn Swoggled (1951, McKimson). The other Foghorn Leghorn/Henery Hawk title on here.

Meatless Flyday (1944, Freleng). A spider tries desperately to catch a fly. Finally foiled by wartime rationing.

Mouse-Warming (1952, Jones). Claude Cat versus a boy and girl mouse rather than Hubie & Bertie. This was on the Mouse Chronicles Blu-Ray, but unrestored.

The Mouse-Merized Cat (1946, McKimson, Blue Ribbon). The final Babbitt and Catstello cartoon, where Babbitt tries to get Catstello (a mouse - don't worry too much about it) to go after the cat by hypnosis. Catstello imitating Rochester has been cut from TV airings, will be uncut here.

Muscle Tussle (1953, McKimson). Daffy must try to defeat a muscle-bound blond at the beach in order to keep his flighty girlfriend. A parody of the "90-pound weakling" ads.

Muzzle Tough (1954, Freleng). The second Tweety and Sylvester cartoon on here, and another new restoration (maybe - does Japanese release only count?). Sylvester tries to get past Hector the Bulldog to get at Tweety.

Peck Up Your troubles (1945, Freleng, Blue Ribbon). Sylvester's second cartoon, and basically a Tweety cartoon only with a woodpecker. A new restoration, and thank God, as the old print looked awful.

Quack Shot (1954, McKimson). Daffy tries to stop Elmer Fudd shooting ducks. For the most part, his attempts rebound on him, but Daffy has the last laugh. Possibly the last Daffy Duck cartoon where he's "old-school" loopy Daffy all the way through. New to home media!

Road to Andalay (1964, Freleng). A post-64 (but only just) Sylvester and Speedy Gonzalez cartoon, but still directed by the master. New to home media!

The Sneezing Weasel (1938, Avery, Blue Ribbon). A standard 30s Merrie Melodie, but Avery's constantly chuckling weasel (voiced by Avery himself) is what everyone remembers.

Streamlined Greta Green (1937, Freleng). One of WB's classic plots, where a child is bad, is shown how bad his actions are, supposedly learns his lesson, but in reality doesn't learn a thing. This time the child is a car.

There are also two bonus cartoons, Lighter Than Hare (1960, Freleng) and Stork Named (1955, Freleng). Both came out years ago on collections that released the shorts as "widescreen". The fans were unhappy. They did not want a previously unseen version that cut the top and bottom of the cartoon, they wanted THEIR version. So these are in regular size (but restored).

It's a strong, if safe, collection. A lot of cartoons people have been begging for, including me. No blackface gags to worry parents, and only one Speedy Gonzalez cartoon to worry censors. I can't wait. No Porky Pig, though. :(

[drama-glob]

can razzle and dazzle from hazbin hotel play as hubie and bertie from looney tunes?

I don't see why not. :)

[mannytoodope]

Hubie: Hey, Bert! C'mere!

Bertie: Yeah, yeah what is it? What is it?

 Hubie: Nice, huh?

 Bertie: Yeah, yeah. Sure, sure.What did  I do?! What did I do?!

Hubie: You didn't do nuthin’, look