Looney Tunes Collector’s Vault Vol. 2 Celebration & Review

Join us as we celebrate the release of the Looney Tunes Collector’s Vault Volume 2 Blu-ray, with Warner Archive’s George Feltenstein and animation historian Jerry Beck. George and Jerry share their stories of curating this set, the restoration and remaster details, and we all share our reviews and highlights. And stick around as George previews if we will be getting a volume 3. 

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Highlights: 
• suppressed cartoons finally available to own on physical media 
• why A Lad In His Lamp opens Disc One 
• how 4K scans from original negatives change everything 
• Disc One highlights including Daffy Duckaroo and black-and-white gems 
• Tweety and Sylvester craft, plus why Friz Freleng deserves more credit 
• oddball shorts and experimental art styles that expand the library beyond the box-cover stars 
• Disc Two - familiar classics upgraded to high definition 
• Road Runner cartoons as a masterclass in evolving design and direction 
• context around controversial gags, reissues, and why credits got stripped 
• Speedy Gonzales and Pepe Le Pew in modern conversations 
• what it takes to get Volume 3 approved 

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Transcript

Suppressed Cartoons And Adult Collectors

Tim Millard 1:03

Hey Tim Millard here, and many of you are just as excited as I am about the release of the Looney Tunes Collector's Vault Volume 2 Blu-ray. And joining me are George Felstein of the Warner Archive and animation historian Jerry Beck. And they have a lot of great information to share today. Background on these cartoons, as well as the work that they put into pulling Volume 2 together. So lots of good stuff here. George may also give us a little sneak peek as to whether there is a volume three in the works on the horizon. So you'll want to stick around to hear about that. And of course, we'll talk about specific titles and some of our reviews or just things that we thought were noteworthy about titles on this release. Well, George and Jerry, very exciting today. I'm calling this release day. We get uh a few of these every year for the big uh Looney Tunes releases that you've had over the last few years. And so many fans now are getting their copies, starting to watch them, and commenting about how much they're loving this release. What are you hearing?

George Feltenstein 2:12

That was the hope and intention.

Jerry Beck 2:13

Yeah, Jerry. That's that's the same thing. Hearing that people are really, really loving this, uh, you know, makes me happy. Uh this is dream come true.

Aladdin’s Lamp And 4K Restoration

George Feltenstein 2:24

Yeah, yeah. I I think the thing that's of particular note is we were able to include a handful of cartoons that have been uh let's just say suppressed, and now we desuppress them, and uh they are available to own on physical media, whereas you may not see them anywhere else. And that's the beauty of ownership. We had to delay this release because we had the surprise of trying to get Tom and Jerry in there before Christmas, so that pushed this down because there's only so many people uh that can oversee this kind of work, and uh I think the results are well worth waiting for. It's a really entertaining set. We're very proud of it.

unknown 3:20

Yeah.

Tim Millard 3:20

Hey, let me ask you about those suppressed cartoons. Are some of those only available on this Blu-ray?

George Feltenstein 3:28

That's correct. You know, this is intended for the adult collector, and we made the pitch that adult collectors are not the audience that are gonna have problems with some of these issues. And uh they are a product of their time, but they should be made available. So we've been able to open the door a bit, and I'm hoping we can continue opening it further, the more we get support for these releases, the more we'll be able to broaden the spectrum. We start out the very first disc with the very first cartoon is one that was hands-off for 20 years or more. Aladdin's Lamp with Bugs Bunny, great cartoon, great Jim Back's voice as the genie. One of my favorites. Jerry, I think it's a favorite of yours too. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. It just seemed ridiculous that we weren't able to do anything with the cartoon. That's how we start things off with a bang, and uh I really think it's a very, very entertaining set. It crosses from the 30s to the 60s. There's just a lot to love here. I'm hoping that the fans will be really happy with the result.

Tim Millard 4:55

Well, I was gonna start with the lad in his lamp because it is the first one and it's so uh noteworthy. So I'm glad you went there. This is a terrific short, and it looks amazing. And this is this was one that was remastered, wasn't it, for this release?

Disc One Deep Cuts And Daffy

George Feltenstein 5:09

Yeah, 4K scan off the original successive exposure negative. You can't get better than that. A lot of TLC went into making it be when that shield comes on and the music comes on, Jerry goes, Wow! Or ooh, this is a it's a real running gag between us. Like, I'm so excited when he finally gets to see what we've been doing and the net result. And uh that goes back to Looney Tunes Golden Collection, DVD Volume One. Oh, I think it goes back to the golden age of Looney Tunes. Oh, of course. Yeah. But there wasn't as much of an ooh and off actor because they didn't look particularly magnificent. But compared to what we were used to seeing as kids with purple-pink prints with no color on the local television station, it was a step forward at the time. But as technology has progressed, it it's really amazing what can be done. You can't really start a collection better than a cartoon like that, where it's just bugs at his best. I love that little period of McKimson and Bugs in the late 40s. Um, it's a little punch. I wouldn't even call him a little. He's healthy, he's had a lot of carrots, right? You know, Tim, you got the discs. Tim. Watch them. I'm really wanting to know. Tell us what you think of Collector's Vault Volume 2.

Tim Millard 6:47

George, I have a couple of pages here of all of the things that I wanted to talk about. That's because I personally loved this release. And I've got so many things about this release that I wanted to both bring up and ask you guys and get your feedback on. But we already talked about what I think is one of the gems of Disc One, and that is a lad in his lap. But the kind of another thing that came to my mind is you put a ton of great Daffy Duck cartoons on Disc One. And I was gonna just pick one, you know, and I thought, well, I'm gonna definitely go with the Daffy Duckaroo because that black and white remaster looks amazing. Oh, yeah. But not only that, it's so entertaining. And I know it was one that was censored, and and there's other things around it that it was it was cut shorter and all these things. So that right off the bat blew my mind. I love it. I even put a uh first look online on it because I thought people have to see how great this looks. It's fantastic. You mentioned it on a previous podcast, so I was very much looking forward to it, and I was blown away.

Jerry Beck 7:55

There's a few of these later black and white, they stopped making the black and white Looney Tunes in 1943, I believe. And if they were in color, they'd be classics at the way we still think of all the great classics of the 1940s. The fact that they were in black and white, uh they were relegated to an old Porky Pig package, right, that I know uh George knows about back in the 50s. They weren't seen on the Bugs Bunny show. They weren't in the syndication that George and I grew up with, but they are as good as any. The 1940s black and white Looney Tunes, most of them featuring Porky Pig, but some of them just featuring Daffy, some of them featuring uh no-name characters of that time, like Hop and Go. Uh Joe Glow the Firefly. Joe Glow the Firefly is a whole bunch. That's what really makes me happy about this sort of thing. We can get those protected and out for people to see what we're talking about. In the case of the Daffy Duckaroo, it wasn't the content. Although, if one were to recount the story of that content, one could think the whole thing is a cartoon you wouldn't show. But the reason it was not, you know, shown before uh because when it was syndicated, they had to take out every reference to Warner Brothers. Right. Uh they did that with Porky and Wacky Land 2. They would literally make a horrible razor blade cut into the prints. You know, we we restored, of course we restored that because for that brief moment, Warner Brothers was not involved. They didn't want their name on television, they weren't selling the television yet, you know, movie theater owner. You know, we were we were still pure to you. That's why the Paramount logos were cut out on Popeye and other things. So that was the real reason it was held back. That and the fact that we'd have to restore it as we have now, you know, uh, you know, was was an effort. I mean, that cartoon has Native Americans, yeah. You know, it has Daffy Duck and Drag as a squaw, you know, uh it has a lot of wartime gags about rationing. So it's a really oddball cartoon. I can understand why it wasn't in wider circulation later, but it's it's a classic.

Tim Millard 10:00

Yeah, yeah. I absolutely loved it. A couple more here. I want to mention Boston Quacky.

Jerry Beck 10:07

Oh, yeah.

Tim Millard 10:07

You know, I'm you know, George, I'm such a Noor fan. I loved that one, and it just is so great. Just and the look of it, the styling, and you've mentioned the writing. The writing is superb.

Tweety, Sylvester, And Directing Craft

George Feltenstein 10:20

Well, all the ingredients come together to make a perfect souffle. Yeah. Even the cartoons that aren't like A plus tier, they're relatively so brief that if if a cartoon doesn't hit the bang gong right out of the gate as a masterpiece, they're still entertaining. Yeah. You know, the Warner Cartoon Studio was shut down in 1963, and new cartoons were produced by David DePatty and Friz Frilling using the same building here on the lot and distributing through Warner Brothers, and Warner Brothers owned them, but they weren't produced by this studio. Some of those don't have the best reputation, but there's an audience that wants them. And so we, especially as the series hopefully continues, we will be able to get more of the black and white early cartoons out from before Porky Pig. You know, Porky really put the studio on the map having a big first cartoon star. Bosco and Buddy never became stars. They didn't draw people into theaters. But Porky Pig and then Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny and Tweety and Sylvester and the list goes on and on. They did, and they became movie stars, cartoon movie stars, if you will. By building a library of these cartoons presented in this way that is also financially digestible. I mean, 50 cartoons for $25, that's 50 cents a cartoon. That has a good value proposition to it.

Speaker 12:05

Yeah.

George Feltenstein 12:06

We just hope we can continue to do more, but I just want to focus on the fact that today people can own 50 more cartoons in Blu-ray that can knock their socks off terms of entertainment, how great they look, how great they sound. So it's a lot to celebrate.

Tim Millard 12:25

Well, another character that I really loved felt like it was highlighted on disc one, and that is Tweety. I don't know if that was done on purpose, but when you watch I taught a putty tat, it looks amazing. And just to have that on here, it's kind of surprising to find so many high-quality cartoons on here that have never been released. And I know there's many reasons for that, but tell us a little bit about this one, Jerry.

Jerry Beck 12:54

Tweety might just be the second underbugs in terms of superstar Warner Brothers cartoon characters. They made many, many, more than people realize on that one character. And they were all, with the exception of the first three that were directed by Bob Clampett, they were all directed by Friz Freeling, or his unit, actually, now that I think about it. The very, very last ones were done by Freeling's unit while he was working on the Bugs Bunny show. And they all have a certain point of view, certain animators who animated the characters in certain ways that is, in some ways to a layman, is unperceptible, but to us, you know, that's the character. Oh, that guy does the character perfectly. You know, people like uh, you know, Jerry Chinnake in particular, and of course the great layouts, uh Holly Pratt is the other name I definitely want to mention with those. I did a book. I mean, it's somewhere on my shelf, I'm not going to pull it off, but I did a Tweety and Sylvester book. And there's so many, so many great cartoons. It really highlights to me what a master Friz Freeling is. And I I always feel he's neglected among, you know, behind Avery Jones, Clampett, you know, and others. Uh Freeling really was a comedy master. I don't even know how he got that way. He just got it through, you know, his force of will in the 1930s. He worked on the, he gets credit on the very first Looney Tune as an animator. He was there from the beginning to the bitter end, really, really understood comic timing. That was his thing. So I'm going to stop talking about Freeling, but the fact that there's a few tweeties on side one, I think there's I don't think it's overwhelming. But I I do think that uh there's wow, there's so many good ones. It's like Bugs Bunny. They're almost all good.

Tim Millard 14:34

Yeah. I mean, when I when I said Tweety, you could say, well, what about Sylvester? I mean, he's in a lot of cartoons on this disc as well. You know, obviously.

How Restoration Tech Finally Caught Up

Jerry Beck 14:43

Sylvester's probably, besides Bugs Bunny, and again, somebody will somebody will call me out on this, but he's probably the most uh directed by other directors. He didn't have like one main director. I guess somebody would say Freeling was, but all of the directors made that character their own, you know, like Chuck Jones making him the scaredy cat, so to speak. And uh uh, you know, Robert McKimson introduced Sylvester's son and Hippety Hopper and and all that, that developed a whole other series around that character. And then there's just plain miscellaneous Sylvester cartoons that pop up, including on this set. I mean, it's it's a rich history. One could probably take every cartoon they did, even the ones from the early 30s and the later 60s, and I can at least explain something. I can't say it's the greatest cartoon with the greatest amount of merit. I can at least put it in a context of why it's important historically, why it was important to the studio in general. You know, they're all worth having. And I feel like when we talk to our fans, I feel like we are all us and them, we're all going on a great adventure to discover all these cartoons and all these layers that the Looney Tunes had. And that's another reason why, to me, like I said, hope it doesn't come off as corny to say this is the Lord's work. We are we are putting these cartoons, restoring them for the for everybody, for the next generation. If we weren't doing it now, I don't know. I don't know. We could almost assume it might not be being done at all.

Speaker 16:13

You know.

Oddball Shorts And Bold Art Styles

George Feltenstein 16:14

Well, we we have evidence, empirical evidence of what happens when people who don't know what content they're dealing with approach a project, and they don't, if they don't know, like when I got to MGMUA home video, at that time MGMUA had the pre-49 Warner Library for features and the pre-August 48 Warner Library for short subjects and cartoons. And so they had these like Bugs Bunny Cartoon Festival featuring Hold the Lion, please. And there'd be like four random cartoons. The people that put these things together knew nothing about the cartoons. Nothing. Nothing. And I had to, as a new employee, I couldn't come in there and say, you don't know what you're doing. I was very gentle in my approach and trying to enlighten people. Hey, we want to market classic animation to adults. And to Warner Home Video's credit, it really started here in 1985 with the Golden Jubilee cassettes. Those were really beautiful done. And they had come up with a 50th anniversary of Looney Tunes, when in fact it was the 50th anniversary of Porky Pig's appearance in I Haven't Got a Hat. Right. So it was kind of like a faux anniversary, but the net result of it was a collection of cartoon video cassettes that people could be excited about and that were done nicely. What I did at MGM UA with video cassettes, the cartoon movie stars, and that's when Jerry and I started talking. That was marketing the cartoons to adults, not to moms and kids. Although if a mom and kid picked it up, it would be fine. And then with the Laserdisc sets, we wanted to present virtually all the cartoons that were in that portion of the library. That was done from 35 millimeter prints. And when we looked at them, we were like, oh my god, this is so magnificent. We would never go near a print now. Right. We want to go to the negative. But it's taken a long time to do that because the way films were transferred to videotape in the 80s and 90s and even in the aughts, you wouldn't touch the negative. You'd have the negative maybe make an intermediate element. You know, it could destroy the negative sprockets and all. Scanners don't even touch the film per se. So that's why we can do so much more now and increase the quality. But the main objective remains the same. And that is to get these wonderful animated films out to the people that want them and hopefully to new audiences. If they've discovered them on television and they want to own them and never have them taken away from them with great quality, that's what these discs are all about.

unknown 19:41

Yeah.

Tim Millard 19:42

There's some others here I just wanted to highlight. Get your guys' uh feedback as well. But little blabber mouse. Oh, yeah. I wasn't familiar with this one. And I love the photography as you're getting the tour with this WC Fields mouse telling you everything. Uh it looks terrific. Well, what's your thoughts, Jerry?

Jerry Beck 20:04

Well, it's an interesting cartoon. It has a WC Fields caricature. It's uh it was almost like they were trying to uh uh create characters that could host uh the sort of thing that happens in that cartoon. Um I mean that's part of the early uh or later 30s Merry Melodies where they had to incorporate a song into every film. And you know, I'm really uh I'm delighted we're going there. I'm going to that area. Most people, when they do think of Looney Tunes, including collectors, we do think of Bugs Bunny. We think of all the characters that are on the on the front of the box.

Speaker 20:37

Yeah.

Jerry Beck 20:38

Um, that's what we think of. The library is bigger and richer than that. And that's what a cartoon like Little Blabbermouse attempts to show.

Tim Millard 20:46

Yeah, I enjoy that part of it, uh, George. Uh the fact that you're watching, you know, a Bugs, the Tweeties, Foghorn, Leghorn, and then you get a little blabbermouse, or you'll get a country boy from 1935, and they look so different, of course.

George Feltenstein 21:02

I was a teenage thumb. You can't rule that out. Well, I was gonna bring that up. That is like, well, it's modern art, it really is what it is. It's exactly what it is.

Jerry Beck 21:11

It's the UPA influence, Jerry, right? Yep. Um, Chuck uh was uh in the into that. He went to the festivals around the world in the 50s. There weren't even animation festivals yet. There were uh the beginning of the con film festival. Those sort of things were happening in the later 50s in Europe, and they would show new uh animation from around the world, short form animation, experimental animation. Chuck Jones and many, many other artists uh at the Hollywood studios were watching what was going on in Europe and what was going on with animation, where the progression was. I love Disney, but what Disney was not producing cartoons that were getting more and more elaborate as time went on. Uh, and they were stuck in their character animation rut, which is not a problem for a lot of us. But seeing what else you can do in animation, the the door was unlocked with UPA, then the international people came in. I love this. It's not Chuck, it's the studio. The studio allowed uh Chuck and others, and others at the Warner Studio to experiment and try something new. Whenever they did try something new in the past, they'd come up with characters that became stars, like The Roadrunner, you know, or Speedy Gonzalez or this sort of thing. So the studio did encourage them to make these not only a one-shot, but to go crazy with it. And Chuck in the 60s made several um uh almost abstract cartoons, uh culminating in a non Warner Brother cartoon, culminating in the Oscar for the dot in the line for MGM. Uh that was really where he was going with that. You know, it's it's again, it's one of those to me, very, very fascinating to see uh Milt Franklin, Mel Blank, um other new voices finally get. Credit. Um, Shuck expanding his artistic horizons beyond you know Warner Brothers cartoons. It's just fantastic. And I'm so happy we're putting those out.

Tim Millard 23:11

Yeah. Yeah. Well, a couple more to highlight before we we jump to uh disc two. I just wanted to to bring up was I did enjoy Dr. Jekyll's hide with Sylvester Spike and Chester. That was a fun, fun take um on that story. And then this uh Bone Sweet Bone with the little pup that I thought was highly entertaining as well.

George Feltenstein 23:33

Uh it's an adorable cartoon. I love that cartoon.

What Disc Two Adds In HD

Jerry Beck 23:35

Yeah. Part of the whole uh Arthur Davis unit at that time. You know, in a in within a year or so, Tashlin and Clampett left the studio. And uh McKimson filled in in the Tashlin unit. He took over that unit, and Art Davis actually took over Bob Clampett's unit. But within a year, uh they probably finished up both of them um uh scripts that were left over for the previous director. Bone Sweet Bone is pure Arthur Davis. He's using a lot of people who weren't being used at the studio to their best advantage. He was taking them on. He brought over some of his colleagues from uh Columbia Pictures. He had been a director at Columbia Studio. Not much came from that, but some really, really great animators that he potted over to uh Warner Brothers. I happen to like diversity. I love bugs, I love the characters, they're handled so perfectly. But the other stuff is fascinating to me because it's like this might be a direction the studio could go, maybe, you know, who knows?

Tim Millard 24:35

Kind of another that fits, I think, into there. This Angelo the Mighty Flea. Oh, yeah. Into it's his own. I mean, there you get these one-offs or or these characters that you don't get to see too often. Exactly. I love the disc one concept and the fact that this is now the sixth disc. If you go with the four that were in the original Collector's Choice, and now this is the second volume uh in the Vault series. I love the fact that you have so many animated shorts coming out, George, that have never been released before. So what a treat. Yeah, what a treat. Well, let's go now to disc two. And George, maybe you can give us just a brief rundown of what disc two is supposed to do.

George Feltenstein 25:23

Well, the cartoons on disc two have all been available before on DVD, but they've never been available to own as part of an animation collection on Blu-ray in high definition. I would say, with a few exceptions, they are of a more greater familiarity to uh fans. They're seen more often and they're more talked about, hence their arrival on DVD years ago within the Golden Collections or those superstar single discs. But there's great stuff. I think we have two Charlie Dog cartoons. I love Charlie Dog. We've got, you know, Bugs and Daffy, and every one of them, I think, is a home run cartoon. Jerry, would you agree?

Jerry Beck 26:11

I would absolutely agree. As I review them, as I look them over, they're almost all ones you have to have. Yeah.

Speaker 26:19

Right.

Jerry Beck 26:19

I were teaching a class. You gotta see this one. You gotta see these. Like Tim says, I'm actually still amazed that we have so many great ones like these that haven't been on Blu-ray. We got the only Art Davis Bugs Bunny, Bowery Bugs. Oh my god, there's so many. You have ones that the studio didn't think people should see. Is that a way of wording it? Things like frigid hair, because he has an Eskimo chasing him around on that one, and wagon heels, a clampet, Porky, Out West, Injun Joe. A lot of great stuff on there. I'll leave it at that. And on and on and on. I mean, if there's a conscious effort of us throwing something in, honestly, I'll tell you what it is. It's the Roadrunners, which I love. I don't agree with anyone who says you can watch 10 Roadrunners in a row. I think your mind would turn to Mush, but having them scattered throughout, they are great. The Roadrunners may have been the easiest series that Chuck could direct. He actually mentions that in his books. They had that formula down pat. But each one has its own art direction. There's no repeat, except for the Acme Corporation, there's no repeat. And the animation, the more subtle animation, as especially as the years go on. One could really study the artistry of Chuck Jones just by watching the Roadrunners in order. Because, you know, as we all know, the earliest ones, Fast and Furious and Beep Beep and all that, they take place in a what looks like a real uh desert, you know, an American desert somewhere. By 1959, 58, 60, the Roadrunner is in some kind of Maurice Noble crazy layout 50s, nutty, but yet it's still the Roadrunner and Coyote. The gags are hilarious, but the visuals are updated constantly. You know, I'm always telling my students that in the golden age, these were not only on screen and by the public considered different movies, different pictures. In the animation studio, they treated each production as if it was a brand new movie, a brand new fresh telling. Chuck Jones would redraw the model sheets in every cartoon, no matter who it was, Charlie Dog, Bugs Bunny, the Roadrunner and Coyote, whatever his look was of that moment. There were model sheets to be followed for the specific production. But it wasn't like they created a Bugs Bunny model sheet in 1943, and that was it through 1963. No, that wasn't it. They treated each cartoon uh completely different in its own way. And that's one of the reasons that so many other things, the animators, the directors, the individual scoring of the music in each cartoon, that's what all makes these cartoons work. Makes these cartoons classic. So 51, you watch one a week. We'll probably have another set out before before you're done.

Tim Millard 29:20

I thought the the one I wanted to mention, Stop, Look, and Hasten, was uh especially good.

Jerry Beck 29:27

That's a great cartoon.

Tim Millard 29:28

It's a great cartoon, and the colors just pop.

Bugs Controversies And Awards History

Jerry Beck 29:32

Oh, yeah. There was talk a long time ago. I remember reading an interview way back when in the 70s with I think it was with Chuck Jones, and the interviewer was saying, you guys didn't seem to do much with color before 1948. He wasn't, he didn't understand the differences in the TV packages. He didn't understand the context that all of them were made in. Uh, there was an interesting comment for him to say Chuck didn't actually know what he was talking about, but he said, Well, we got more into color as the 50s went on. That way he gave him an answer, he gave him the answer maybe he was looking for. But the reality was they were into color from the beginning of color. You know, they had to be. They were making technicolor cartoons, you know, back in the golden age. That the rest of the program at the theater were all was probably in black and white. So uh these cartoons popped from the beginning. And because of TV distribution, because of 16 millimeter the stocks they're on, that that faded, and we're bringing that back.

Tim Millard 30:30

Well, one thing I noticed about this disc is that you have so many fantastic Bugs Bunny cartoons on here. And you did mention some already, Jerry, but I wanted to go back to the heckling hair. I was a huge fan of Fox Town from volume one. Right. And there's a connection there, but heckling hair, it's terrific. It's Tex Avery.

Jerry Beck 30:53

Yes. Well, it's as those are Tex doing the initial Bugs Bunny cartoons that he did. He really defined the character in the subsequent cartoons to uh a wild hair. Wild hair is considered the first Bugs Bunny, and people say he defined the character. Really, if you look at his next two or three, it re really becomes Bugs Bunny, you know, in every way. Heckling Hare is a classic. It's also that one was controversial for the ending. You know, Avery, believe it or not, was not a character guy. He wasn't really a character, as much as you could say that he is by watching a lot of his cartoons, but he was more of a gag guy. The joke was more important than even the character. And he had this idea what if we killed his character off tremendous amount of freedom all throughout. Rarely got notes from Leon Schlesinger. You know, I always thought it was weird that Clampett had Bugs Bunny be the fall guy in, you know, in uh falling hair, uh, which is a weird, it's weird for that aspect of it. Right. I remember that bothering me when I was in like a lot of leeway on what they could do. And again, for Avery, at that point, Bugs Bunny is just hitting that cartoon, Heckling Hair, might have been in production before Wild Hair came out, before they decided to make Bugs Bunny a star and a full-length series. So he has a gag with the characters. It's a gag where the characters are falling to their death at the end. And you can see that in the film. What he did was, for a joke, was to repeat that gag and fade out on that. And Leon, who rarely scolded or even gave any notes to the animators, didn't like that. You're killing off my major star. We can't do that. I find it interesting that Avery was able to get what he wanted later at MGM, where he kills off Screwy Squirrel in the last Screwy Squirrel cartoon. So that was a thing with him. It was just jokes. You know, Heckling Hair is is definitely a classic. He got suspended over that.

George Feltenstein 33:05

You could say Chuck Jones did the same thing to Bugs in the end of What's Opera Doc.

Jerry Beck 33:11

Yeah, but yes, but but Bugs raises his head to I know.

George Feltenstein 33:15

What did you expect? A happy ending? You know. Or what did you expect in an opera? That's right. Right. Yeah. But I mean, like, even though he comes up and says that last line, it's still disturbing, especially with those camera angles. And I mean, it's one of the greatest cartoons ever. And Jerry, you'll know if this is true. Is it true that they spent more money on that cartoon and got the budget from Roadrunners that they could, you know, chop down the budgets a bit?

Jerry Beck 33:46

The story, the famous story by Chuck Jones is that he knew it was going to cost more money. There were going to be more shots in the film, more backgrounds. It was just going to be more elaborate in the direction he wanted to go there. And what they did was he purposely scheduled for his production schedule for the next couple of months. He purposely put a Roadrunner before it and a Roadrunner after it in the production cycle. And he shaved off two weeks from the first one to add two weeks to what's out production. And he shaved off two from the other one coming up and was able to spend more time and thus more money on this one cartoon. You know, it's one of those things. It's also one of the many, many, many throughout history that probably should have gotten the Oscar that year, probably should have been nominated. I don't think it was nominated, you know.

George Feltenstein 34:37

No, it wasn't. I was just thinking the same thing. Yeah. Because uh while Tom and Jerry deservedly brought home seven Oscars, Warner Brothers' cartoons were largely ignored by the Academy. The fact that Ninety Night Bugs, which I think is a good cartoon, not a great one, that's the one Bugs Bunny cartoon that won the Oscar.

Jerry Beck 35:00

Yeah, and I think in that case, it was one of those, they still do this today, one of those symbolic Oscars for his career. You know, they do this for uh actresses and actors, you know. Uh that's what I think. That's my guess, because it was the next year, it was 58. Yeah.

George Feltenstein 35:17

I mean, it took probably at least another decade, if not longer. I think it was really the early 1970s, that people started to say, hey, wait a minute. These aren't kids' cartoons, these aren't Saturday morning cartoons, these are these are great American films. Yep. This is a body of work that represents incredible talent and animation, which is another form of filmmaking that deserves to be respected, like live action filmmaking. Right. And I think Jerry's probably been at the forefront of this, and I've been alongside him for certain things that he's worked on. And our mutual friend and mentor, Mr. Leonard Malton, uh, really paved the way. And also, I would have to say, Greg Ford, also a friend. They've set up an architecture so that future generations will look at these films with the respect they deserve and really get into the underskin of the people who worked on them and how they came up with the gags and the topicality of some of them representing the period of time when they were made, especially the wartime cartoons. You know, I didn't learn about ration stamps as a kid from anything other than uh and all that stuff.

Jerry Beck 36:51

Yeah, it's it's you know, I've I've said this before. You know, these cartoons were of their time. They were never meant to be repeated. They were never meant to be on a Blu-ray. There was no such thing. They didn't know if they were ever going to be on television because the studios were against television. These would never be on TV. Uh there was no repeatability. They knew that. Well, they did have the blue ribbon reissue program. That's later. I I I should really have finited the the with a thinking sort of a change after the war. But yeah.

Speedy And Pepe In Today’s Context

George Feltenstein 37:20

And and MGM had the gold medal reprints. At Warner Brothers, when a cartoon was re-released, Jack Warner wanted to be able to save money on the reissues. So he came up with this blue ribbon gold medal award title card to eliminate the credits of the people who made the cartoon and uh sometimes specialized animation that was related to it. And they did this to the negatives. Just like when they would cut a film for re-release and cut 20 minutes out of Captain Blood, they would toss out the negative footage that they were they didn't think about the future. And I think what's interesting also about the Warner reissues, the Blue Ribbon reissues, they were sold to theaters separately from the Bugs cartoons. The Bugs cartoons were sold as its own unique product line. I hate to speak of it that clinically, but Bugs was so powerful a draw at the box office that they would separate out his cartoons from everything else they would re-release.

Jerry Beck 38:33

In a way, in a way, if you think about it, I've studied the release charts and things. They had, like you say, about a late 40s four series, so to speak. They had Bugs Bunny specials, they had the Blue Ribbon series, and they had the Looney Tunes and Mary Melodies series. This is the late 40s, 50s, and 60s. Before that, it was another story too. My guess now would be that the Looney Tunes and Mary Melodies sold to the theaters at a certain price point. And the Bugs Bunnies, they probably got more. They charged extra film rental.

George Feltenstein 39:07

A little less. That was the case as well. Yes.

Tim Millard 39:10

Well, there's a few more here on disc too that I wanted uh to really highlight. One is, of course, the I think the only Speedy Gonzalez cartoon you have on here, and that is Mexican Borders. I think there is a lot of uh fans that were happy to see the inclusion of Speedy. This is a highly entertaining cartoon.

Jerry Beck 39:31

Well, Speedy is a hero. I know George will want to speak about that a little bit. George is Speedy is not a character to be uh withdrawn from our, you know, the library. Absolutely.

George Feltenstein 39:41

There is a comedian, very popular comedian. I assume you guys have heard of him, Fluffy, aka Gabriel Iglesias. Okay. He has specials on Netflix now. He he talks about they tried to cancel Speedy. They don't realize Speedy is our hero, you know. And the whole audience went like, ah, you know, they people love Speedy Gonzalez. And I'm happy to say there there never has been any discussion. I've been here for several years. There's never been a discussion anywhere in the company that I'm aware of of canceling Speedy Gonzales. Even if the cartoons aren't good in like some of the later ones from the Patty Frilling era, he's still funny and adorable. You know, a great character. Yeah.

Tim Millard 40:34

Another character that it was good to see on here, Pepe Le Pew. I'm a big fan. And to have Odor of the Day and Sentimental Over You. I always enjoy them. It's fun, like you have here, Jerry, where you've mentioned that you know, you get to see different characters, so it's a real mixture. It's nice to have a Pepe dropped in here and there, just like you have a Roadrunner mixed in here and there. That kind of element of it reminds me of my youth and watching these and just having all the different characters come up.

George Feltenstein 41:08

Um, and to that point, and this was somewhat accidental, but as we were putting together, I guess the collector's choice. For volume two on, I think we did. We decided to go alphabetical. So this way you weren't seeing, you know, five Tweeties in a row, or it mixes it up a little bit. So it's like putting your iPhone on shuffle for music. You don't know what you're gonna get. And I think that's what's kind of fun about it. But happily you can look on the back of the box and see every cartoon, what disc it's on, and know how to get there. Uh, you don't have to put the disc in the machine to know what cartoon you want to see. So that's why the type is so small, because we have to get all that information in there. Um but I also think uh my colleagues came up with some beautiful artwork. It's very, very nice. The packaging is really quite beautiful, the menus are fun. Just everything about these sets we're very, very proud of. And we hope people will really enjoy them.

Jerry Beck 42:20

The uh alphabetical order uh concept, I think it was some sort of we were thinking about how to do this, and it just plopped out. It wasn't as thought out as you might think. But the thing is, it was perfect. We were we were shocked and delighted that it works really well. And I think part of that is the, and this goes for the fans too, the collective memory of watching Looney Tunes on TV. Unless I'm mistaken, when they had the Bugs Bunny show way back when, or any of the any iteration of showing Looney Tunes on TV, I don't recall them running three bugs in a row or three daffies in a row or only showing cartoon superstars. They would it would be a whole throw of different different characters and different styles. Um, Pepe uh was a very popular character. Uh I believe it's the second or third cartoon that won the Oscar uh for Pepe. One of the ones we're running on here is uh Art Davis, and he's just really kind of using the character design. Uh, he's not in the same mold as the way Chuck used the character. He's not an amorous skunk. He's not that he's uh he's just a funny character in this particular cartoon. I personally have come to Pepe's defense many times because I believe I don't want this to be controversial. I believe that uh most people who are me tooing Pepe LePew don't watch the cartoons or understand the concept.

George Feltenstein 43:46

Oh, for sure.

Jerry Beck 43:48

Absolutely. First of all, let's go back to the line, these were not aimed at kids anyway. Okay, number two, we're laughing at Peppy, not with Peppy, because we see somebody acting stupid, really silly. Mel Blanc's French voice, French accent, the lines, the parodies of French speak that are in the cartoons. There's so much to enjoy in these films. And uh Pepe loses most of the time, I think, I think all the time. He doesn't get the girl because he acts this way. He he loses. So I mean, I hate to go into it that deep. I shouldn't uh have to, you know, but there are people who think that, and as far as we're concerned, Pepe is not uh, you know, uh canceled over here at Warner Archive.

Porky, Horror Gags, And Nightmare Fuel

Tim Millard 44:37

That's good. I don't think I've ever gone that deep. I just I just think it's funny. Um couple more tweeties on here that I thought were really fun, and I think uh you know they're different. A bird in a guilty cage. I like that whole department store setting.

Jerry Beck 44:54

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. Yeah, they they had to figure out different uh places to put Tweety that would loan to the The comedy. You know, they've done others, you know, where he's in a ship or you know, whatever. One of my favorites is when they're in the hospital. You know, there's all sorts of things like that.

Tim Millard 45:09

Yeah. And then The Last Hungry Cat, where you have this uh this parody of the Alfred Hitchcock presents, what a great setup, and then the story is really fun.

George Feltenstein 45:21

Yep. Well, they love doing that. They loved finding a little hook to be on the cutting edge of the humor. And that was cutting edge for its time.

Tim Millard 45:31

Yeah, because that was uh what early 60s. Yeah, yeah. And then there's a lot of really good porky pig on this two.

George Feltenstein 45:40

You can never have enough porky.

Tim Millard 45:42

Yeah. And you've got the you've got the two with Charlie Dog that I thought were interesting because they both have orphan in the title. You've got awful orphan, oh yeah, which starts.

George Feltenstein 45:54

And then often an orphan.

Tim Millard 45:55

And then often an orphan.

George Feltenstein 45:57

Yeah.

Tim Millard 45:57

Uh they both look uh terrific. They're kind of heartwarming in in their way, too, you know, the orphan tale. Uh, but they're good. And then I thought this one was a really unique one, Claws for Alarm. Oh, yeah. Where you have Porky Pig and Sylvester, and Sylvester's just he's the Freddy cat in this one. Right, right. And you got the haunted house. And the uh the art design on that one is quite stunning as well.

Jerry Beck 46:22

Mm-hmm. That's that's the thing that really comes through for me. I don't care if it's one of the ones from the 30s or 40s or especially the 50s. I think a lot of us kids took the 50s stuff uh for granted because the background art was minimal, not unlike what Hannah Barbera did in their early TV cartoons. And it just felt differently. But now looking at them on Blu-ray, knowing they were shown in theaters, they're really artistically, you know, they're just as beautiful as any modern art from that period. Yeah. I agree with that 100%.

Tim Millard 46:55

I mean, that's a perfect one for Halloween, obviously. Uh that should be played every Halloween. And then Mouse Menace, that's a very interesting cartoon as well.

Jerry Beck 47:04

Yeah. That's such a strange period for Porky Pig because he was the star, you know, for five years. Now he's sort of a supporting player, but they're kind of keeping him alive because, well, he's a star, you know. I mean, you know, so they keep making uh new ones with him. You know, is he the hero? Is he the fall guy? I mean, what you know, what's his exact role? The uh Wagon Heels is one of the great remakes uh of a black and white cartoon that uh clampett did. I actually believe most of the remake cartoons, I call them remake cartoons, are better than the originals. Uh the another great one, of course, would be uh Back Alley Operar with Sylvester and Elmer.

George Feltenstein 47:44

That was notes to you, right?

Jerry Beck 47:45

Notes to you, right? And it's not as good, in my opinion, in the original version. I agree. And the uh that's the same director. Uh, this is the same director too, now that I think about it, Rag and Heels. And he's improved it. You know, he made it even funnier. Giving the the red skin blue skin, you know, which I think is I I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I mean that's that's hilarious. That's you know, that's a joke. That's what they call a joke, son. You know, uh just switching the color. You know, great stuff. That's all I'm gonna I'm gonna uh you know. I love that Mouse Menace is that was one of those cartoons when I was a kid. I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. It gave me nightmares. Because there's a scene in it with that robot cat.

Speaker 48:23

Yeah.

Jerry Beck 48:24

I mean, I'm like, I'm like, I was scared of that. I remember that. I still remember that feeling. It's great.

Tim Millard 48:29

There's one other one here that I I wanted to get your your thoughts on because I just thought it was so it was a little strange, but Jumpin' Jupiter.

Why Ownership Matters And Volume Three

Jerry Beck 48:38

Well, Jumpin' Jupiter is the third of that trilogy with Porky and Sylvester, but he takes it into space. I I love it. I love it. It's it's I don't know where they were going with that exactly, but it was you know that's that's the again the beauty of the Warner cartoon. I also mention this a lot when I speech, speechify, but they didn't have to change things like that in a formula. That's just because Chuck wanted to. They could have made the same cartoon over and over again, believe it or not, and nobody would care. Why do I say that? Look at the Casper cartoons, look at the Mighty Mouse cartoons over at Terry Tunes, they made the same cartoon over and over and over again. A lot of studios did that because there was really at the time no reissues. If somebody liked that, they did it again. They didn't read it. They made the cartoon again. So the fact that they didn't, or they did it so few times, or that they did, and it's better in the remake, you know, that speaks of how great Warner Brothers' cartoons was, and there's those great talents behind it. You know, I'm I marvel at that. Slightly off topic, but the Avery MGMs, I think it's 66 cartoons. I added them up one day. And yeah, they might reuse Droopy, or there might be a similar situation, maybe Dumbhounded and Northwest Sounded Police. They're both great on their own terms. You know, these guys just were in their element when they were making these cartoons. I totally agree.

Tim Millard 50:11

So many good porky pigs on here. Um, I'll just wrap it up with the pest that came to dinner, uh, an Arthur Davis one. So many good ones on there. 20% of these cartoons are bugs, and probably 20% is porky. Like, there's just so many great for the classic uh characters that people love and and they want to see, you know, on the disc twos. I I have the preferential to the disc ones because they're just so unique and different. And I've seen, you know, like a lot of us, we've seen the disc two ones, but to have them for the collector now on a disc. It's kind of amazing that some of these, George, never were in a Looney Tunes collection when they're this popular and well known.

George Feltenstein 50:53

Well, it's an embarrassment of riches, and it's a matter of curation and care and going the extra mile to do the best that we can in putting something together that's going to be entertaining. And also has its own sense of style and characteristic. And uh, I think this may be the strongest yet of these collectors' collections between the choice and the vault. I think this is top-notch.

Tim Millard 51:25

Well, yeah, and you mentioned that if we can, you know, keep supporting these, and if people will buy these, and I think the case to own these is very strong because there are cartoons on here you can't get anywhere else. And and streaming, they're not podcasts. That is the truth. And they look uh they look fantastic. I think that's another thing that we should really highlight is the fact that you're not gonna see these any better than you see them in Blu-ray.

George Feltenstein 51:59

I agree. So that's the beauty of it. Yep.

Tim Millard 52:02

Well, George, I think that just leaves one question left to address before we wrap up today, and that is the status of a volume three. Do you have any information you can share with us?

George Feltenstein 52:15

We're this close. I'm waiting to get the final approval budget, but we're this close to the volume three. I haven't seen the official. Yes, you can go ahead and spend this huge amount of money. Initial sales are very, very promising. And I think they'll get us to the place where management will look at that and say, yes, continue. And we hope to continue and continue and continue.

Where To Buy And How To Follow

Jerry Beck 52:44

You know, I'd like to mention these a little bit about the subtle difference between the uh collector's choice and the vault series. The obvious on the surface, the vault has double the amount of cartoons. The choice series was started because we were recognizing that the collector, uh the adult collector, was buying these in a big way, in a big way. It wasn't moms and kids the way it used to be. It's now, it's now the uh the collectors who really, really uh, you know, are voicing their opinions and things. So we wanted to address that, do a collector's choice and get some of these great gems on to uh uh Blu-ray. But the vault is a little different only in that we're really making a deeper dive. It's just deeper. We we've we've given the collectors their choice. Now we're going even further in, which includes oddball merry melodies from the 30s. It includes films like A Lad in His Lamp, Restored, um, uh deeper, you know, and more aimed toward that collector. And volume two, to me, reflects that even more than volume one. And from what I know, if we can do volume three, it will be even more so.

George Feltenstein 54:00

Well, everything is in place. We just need to get that theoretical check signed, and then we're off and running.

Tim Millard 54:10

Wow, it's always uh great to hear from Jerry and George and to talk with them about Looney Tunes and these classic animation releases. It's like going to a masterclass with two animation historians who have been working on, but wait a second, that's exactly what it is. And we are lucky here at The Extras to have them on, to have them talking to us, and to have them sharing their stories after decades and decades of working on these cartoons in the various formats from VHS to Laserdisc to DVD and now to Blu-ray. So thanks to them for coming on the podcast and hope you guys enjoyed it. If you're still with us, I think uh you are fans of what we do here at The Excuse, which is hear from those who are working on these releases and not somebody else's opinion and somebody else who thinks that they can just be a critic of everything that these two gentlemen do for us as collectors. So I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for listening, thanks for watching, and uh you can look for more with these two if we're lucky enough to have a volume three. It sounds like we might be getting there, so fingers crossed on that. If you haven't ordered this uh collection, you can still order it from Movies Inc, from Amazon, or from other digital retailers. So look for those links in the show notes, and uh we'll have more information and clips and everything on our YouTube page on Facebook. So if you enjoy the clips and you enjoy the podcast, be sure to subscribe and check all of those out. Until next time, you've been listening to Tim Millard, stay slightly obsessed about Looney Times.