#they had black slogan signs the second date but I gave mine away!

[qazastra]

the goods!! i also got a shirt :]

[ducktracy]

bob clampett’s porky

porky was the original star of warner brothers after rising to popularity as the stuttering sidekick of beans the cat. we’ll get to porky’s full history when we get to friz freleng, who created him, but today we’re going to talk about bob clampett and his porky. without bob clampett, porky wouldn’t be one of my favorite looney tunes characters to date.

bob clampett’s first directorial credit was co-directing with ub iwerks and chuck jones on 1937’s “porky and gabby”. in it, porky and gabby goat (porky’s hot tempered, surly goat sidekick who got kicked to the curb in 1937 and didn’t come back until 2018 in wabbit/new looney tunes) go camping and (predictably) experience a series of mishaps. porky and gabby is a good short for 1937, highly predictable and low budget, but still entertaining.

porky was a bit of a trouble spot for directors. he was hard to get down. how old is he? some shorts he’s shown with having a mother, working on his father’s farm, etc. what does he do? what are his motivations? everyone struggled to really give him a definitive personality. everyone except bob clampett.

1938-1939 is really when clampett began to solidify porky’s personality. the 1938-1939 title card for looney tunes actually donned a porky drawn by clampett. notice how big his eyes are and how symmetrical and circular he is. clampett was pretty well known for giving characters bigger eyes than other directors.

clampett’s “porky in wackyland” (1938) was a huge hit and is considered one of the greatest cartoons even today. in it, porky travels to darkest africa to find the only existing dodo bird left. he ends up in “wackyland”, population 100 nuts and a squirrel with a slogan expressing that “it CAN happen here”.

porky wanders through wackyland, befuddled and confused. porky finds the ever elusive dodo bird, who harasses him and leads him through all sorts of obstacles: slamming into doors, brick walls, etc. porky finally dons a disguise and bonks the dodo bird on the head with a mallet. he asks “are you really the last of the dodos?” to which the dodo haughtily replies “YES, i’m really the last of the dodos! ...AIN’T THAT RIGHT, FELLAS?”

out of nowhere, an armada of identical dodo birds swoop in around porky and scream in ear-splitting unison, “YEAH MAN! WOOOOOOOOOO!” topped with the trademark iris out.

clampett made porky to seem youthful. before, he was just a prop for impending doom to beat him down, but clampett wanted to change that. he made him cute, appear as a young adult, and give him a lot of naïveté. he was good-hearted, bad things still happened to him, but at least he had some sort of innocence and personality to him. of course, in the same sense, he could occasionally foster a temper, feel frustrated, etc. he wasn’t just a prop. he had emotions, both good and bad.

the black and white shorts are surprisingly entertaining, especially clampett’s. the low budget was rather constricting, but clampett didn’t let that stop him. shown below in 1939’s “porky’s picnic” is an expression that i just LOVE that comes completely out of nowhere.

it doesn’t even have a name, but you can feel it. clampett is renowned for his zaniness and over the top expressions, and we can see that trying to weasel its way out of its egg here.

1940 comes and clampett opens up the decade known as the golden age of cartoons with “porky’s last stand”, the first short released in the 40s.

this is a personal favorite of mine. porky and daffy work at a restaurant together, an angry customer demands he get a hamburger. daffy (you can already smell the trouble) promises he’ll fix him up a hamburger right away, but when he goes to retrieve the meat, he finds a sign left by “the mice” who have beat him to it. daffy, desperate, finds a little calf grazing on some grass and decides to kill it. he follows it into a barn muttering and strutting along happily (and daffily), and when he goes to pull the calf out from inside the barn by the tail, he’s met face to face with an angry bull instead.

basically the rest of the short turns into a prolonged bull chase with porky and daffy. it’s a good one though, with porky’s oblivion as to why daffy is so upset (asking if someone is there to see him and declaring “must be a salesman!”) and daffy’s wacky nature always landing them into trouble (including waving a red cloth and yelling “HEY FERDINAND!”)

i LOVE this porky here. he’s starting to look a bit similar to how he’d continue to look. his head is still a perfect circle, but his ears have gotten more pointed and his eyes don’t take up nearly as much room on his face. this is my favorite iteration of porky, i think it’s a great balance. he looks so charming and adorable, but he has a lot of potential for some great expressions too.

here we have “porky’s pooch” from 1941, what would kick off the charlie dog and porky series—charlie dog winding up on porky’s doorstep begging to be taken in, porky denying him entrance, and a wild goose chase between a dog trying to find a home and a stubborn, oblivious, easily gullible pig. porky is still comprised of mainly circles, but his eyes are certainly a lot bigger than the last picture. his ears are also standing straight up instead of at an angle.

1943’s “a corny concerto” is one of the first clampett shorts we see with porky in color. it’s also interesting to note that this is one of 3 appearances he makes together with bugs, the other 2 in frank tashlin’s “porky pig’s feat” (1943) and gerry chiniquy’s “dumb patrol” (1964).

1943 was an interesting year for clampett, it was really when his shorts started to be up and running. he had taken over for tex avery who had left the studio in 1941, and thus clampett got access to iconic animators such as rod scribner and bob mckimson (who would take over for clampett).

here we can see porky looking a lot more like how he’ll continue to look through the years. his head weight isn’t as evenly distributed, instead of being a perfect circle on top of a mass of cheeks, the cheeks and his head sort of connect instead of piling on top of each other. his ears are smaller and less prominent, and bluntly speaking he’s a bit uglier too LOL. i like porky’s ambiguity, he can be REALLY cute and also REALLY ugly. i really like that though. maybe he’s getting wrinkly with age? 🤔

1944 gives us “tick tock tuckered”, a remake of one of clampett’s first cartoons, “porky’s badtime story” (1937). remember gabby goat? you should because he’s at the beginning of this post. since he’s currently in cartoon purgatory at this point, daffy decides to take over in gabby’s place instead.

clampett is known for making daffy live up to his name (which we’ll cover later), but in this short he shows some of his curmudgeon tendencies (lightning striking an umbrella to which he declares “EGADS, I MUST HAVE ENEMIES!”) porky is still mild mannered porky, trying to tell daffy what to do so they don’t make too much noise sneaking late into work, insisting that opening an umbrella indoors is bad luck, etc. this screenshot he’s definitely back to his “cute” stage, his head seems to be more circular again and his eyes are moderately sized.

then we have 1946’s “baby bottleneck”, one of clampett’s last shorts. i love this short so much. porky takes over as the stork and is in charge of delivering babies to expecting mothers across the world, with daffy as his assistant.

this cartoon just shows how flexible and malleable porky’s character is. he’s orderly and tries to get the job done, hard working and committed. he politely asks daffy to sit on an egg and “hatch it out” so they can find out who the expecting mother is. daffy agrees... until he doesn’t, randomly refuses out of nowhere, and walks away singing.

unexpectedly, porky, who was just smiling and batting his eyes at daffy is now grabbing him by his neck, demanding him to sit on the egg, and pushing and fighting and even throwing him to the ground to just sit on that damn egg. it’s rare that we see porky lose his temper since he’s so well known for being the straightman character, so when he DOES get angry it packs such a punch. porky barrels after daffy, not giving up his pursuit, until they both end up running on the conveyer belt that burps, swaddles, and delivers babies to their mothers. porky and daffy end up being merged into a hilariously disturbing baby, with daffy’s head and torso and porky’s stubby legs sticking out of a diaper.

finally, we reach “kitty kornered” (1946), clampett’s last short with porky. a pesky group of cats lock porky out of his house (one of which is a prototype sylvester) and he tries and tries again to get ownership of his house again. another great porky cartoon: he’s extremely gullible (believing the cats who claim that they’re aliens who are invading his house and that he should leave immediately) but at the same time runs for a gun and tries to shoot them, angrily protesting “I’M BEGINNING TO HATE PUSSYCATS!”, etc. the short ends with porky being kicked out of his house one last time.

he turns to the audience and asks “pardon me, but does anyone in the audience know somebody who knows somebody who has a house to rent?” (albeit with a lot more stuttering). i think this is an appropriate end to clampett’s porky. it’s almost as if he’s asking if there are any other directors who could take him under his wing, to give him a new home.

this is a bit discombobulated and disconnected, but i’m hoping that the pictures make up for what my words do not, how you can see his development physically (and hopefully emotionally too). i never expected to like porky, he bored me as a kid and i never thought twice about him, but now i like him more than i do bugs, and it’s all thanks to clampett. he gave porky a wide range, with looks and scenarios. he could be sweet and innocent one second and angry and bitter the next with absolutely no warning. even in a predictable plot you still didn’t know what he would do. he’s a very endearing character and has a ton of funny lines. he’s very hard to dislike.

i hope this was informative! the best way to see for yourself is to watch these shorts yourself and to get a feel for them. studying screenshots and analyses is helpful, but it’s truly something else when seeing everything in motion with sound, dialogue, etc. THANK YOU for sticking with me and i hope you enjoyed this!