by E.O. Costello

Glossary

Alphabetical Listings

A / B / C / D / E / F / G / H / I / J / K / L / M / N / O / P / Q / R / S / T / U / V / W / X / Y / Z

Glossary

Alphabetical Listings

A / B / C / D / E / F / G / H / I / J / K / L / M / N / O / P / Q / R / S / T / U / V / W / X / Y / Z

Glossary

Alphabetical Listings

A / B / C / D / E / F / G / H / I / J / K / L / M / N / O / P / Q / R / S / T / U / V / W / X / Y / Z

Glossary

Alphabetical Listings

A / B / C / D / E / F / G / H / I / J / K / L / M / N / O / P / Q / R / S / T / U / V / W / X / Y / Z

Glossary

Alphabetical Listings

A / B / C / D / E / F / G / H / I / J / K / L / M / N / O / P / Q / R / S / T / U / V / W / X / Y / Z

Glossary

Alphabetical Listings

A / B / C / D / E / F / G / H / I / J / K / L / M / N / O / P / Q / R / S / T / U / V / W / X / Y / Z

Glossary

Alphabetical Listings

A / B / C / D / E / F / G / H / I / J / K / L / M / N / O / P / Q / R / S / T / U / V / W / X / Y / Z

Glossary

Alphabetical Listings

A / B / C / D / E / F / G / H / I / J / K / L / M / N / O / P / Q / R / S / T / U / V / W / X / Y / Z

P-38 & P-40

Two of the most distinctive fighters produced in the United States during World War II, the Lockheed P-38 was a superb long-range fighter with a highly dinstinctive twin-boom design. The Stupid Cupid (Tashlin, 1944) uses a drawing of one when a love-struck bluebird, hit by a Cupid-fired arrow, pursues his lady love with the speed of a P-38, briefly transforming into one. The little Daffy Duck-like bird in A Corny Concerto (Clampett, 1943), upon spotting a goofy vulture/condor making off with some cygnets, gets angry and takes off after the predator, mimicking the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, the famous fighter of the Flying Tigers. Note the distinctive use of the shark-tooth painting on the picture.

PASSE

A parody of Pathé, whose symbol was a French rooster -- the company was originally French -- who supplied newsreels for Warner Brothers. Warners eventually purchased the newsreel operations in 1947, shutting them down in 1956.

Parodies using this gag and similar gags can be seen in Buddy’s Theater (Hardaway, 1935), Tokio Jokio (McCabe, 1943) and others. Porky’s Snooze Reel (Clampett/McCabe, 1941) uses the rooster logo in conjunction with the slogan “The Eyes, Ears, Nose and Throat of the World”, a play on the slogan of Paramount News. The Hole Idea (McKimson, 1955) uses a Warner Pathé newsreel.

PAUL REVERE FOUNDATION

Name of the medical facility where Bugs Bunny is an experimental animal destined for use in a brain-switching experiment in Hot Cross Bunny (McKimson, 1948).

The slogan underneath the name reads “Hardly a man is now alive”, a clever reference to the well-known Longfellow poem.

PECK, GREGORY

Peck is caricatured in Slick Hare (Freleng, 1947) as eating a steak with an old-fashioned straight razor. This is likely a reference to his role in Alfred Hitchcock’ Spellbound, in which such a razor is featured prominently.

PENELOPE

Name now given to the usually black female cat who is usually unlucky enough (or, perhaps, lucky enough) to acquire a white stripe, thus making her the object of the affections of Pépe le Pew in a number of cartoons. I believe Cats Bah (Jones, 1954) is the only cartoon that actually identifies the cat as Penelope, when she is addressed by her owner as she is being walked on a leash.

PENNER, JOE
(1904-1941)

Penner had a brief but meteoric career and radio in the 1930s, briefly achieving fame with a series of catch phrases such as “Wanna buy a duck?” and “You naahh-sty man!” One of the earliest roles of Mel Blanc on national radio was as the voice of Goo-Goo, the duck that figured in the first catch-phrase above.

Egghead, the forerunner of Elmer Fudd, was based in part on Joe Penner, using some of his mannerisms, most notably in Daffy Duck and Egghead (Avery, 1938). The little brother rabbit Elmer in My Green Fedora (Freleng, 1935) laughs like Penner. Vocal actor Dave Weber seems to have provided Penner-like voices for a number of WB cartoons in the 1930s.

PÉPE LE PEW

One of the signature characters of Chuck Jones, this skunk with an overactive libido and fetid “Franglais” -- most of it courtesy Mike Maltese -- did not start out in the form that he is known today. In Odor-able Kitty (Jones, 1945), the character is revealed to be a fraud, with a midwestern accent and a wife with two kids. Jones wisely decided to bring back the character without these handicaps, and the fetid Frenchman won Jones his only Oscar for a Warner-released theatrical cartoon: For Scent-imental Reasons (1949) in spite of the fact that Eddie Selzer, the producer, hated the character.

While most of the Pépe cartoons tend to look alike and have similar plots, there is enough fun in the fractured French to liven up the shorts, preventing them from becoming mere Speedy Gonzales cartoons in a different Romance language (so to speak). A funny twist on the usual cat-gets-painted routine comes in Dog Pounded (Freleng, 1954), in which Sylvester makes a bid for Tweety disguised with white paint as a skunk. His ploy succeeds in scaring away the dogs, but winds up attracting Pépe!

The character is partly a spoof, in both name and manner, of Charles Boyer’s Pépe le Moko who appears in such films as Algiers. Pépe did, however, spoof Maurice Chevalier in at least one cartoon, Scent-imental Romeo (1951).

There is one somewhat unusual Pépe cartoon, Odor of the Day (Davis, 1948), that has a practically silent Pépe. The short makes no use of the “Franglais” dialogue that marks the Jones efforts, though this does not, by any means, make it an inferior cartoon.

Most Pépe cartoons in which a locale is specified take place either in France or a French-speaking area, such as New Orleans in Really Scent (1959) or Algeria/Sahara in Little Beau Pépe (1952). One cartoon, Scent-imental Over You (1947), takes place in New York City, on the Upper East Side.

Filmography, all Jones unless otherwise noted:

• Odor-able Kitty (1945)
• Scent-imental Over You (1947)
• Odor of the Day (Davis, 1948)
• For Scent-imental Reasons (1949)
• Scent-imental Romeo (1951)
• Little Beau Pépe (1952)
• Wild Over You (1953)
• Dog Pounded (Freleng, 1954) cameo
• The Cats Bah (1954)
• Past Perfumance (1955)
• Two Scents Worth (1955)
• Heaven Scent (1956)
• Touche and Go (1957)
• Really Scent (Levitow, 1959)
• Who Scent You? (1960)
• A Scent of the Matterhorn (1961)
• Louvre Come Back to Me (1962)

PETRILLO

At the end of Hurdy Gurdy Hare (McKimson, 1950), as Bugs and Gruesome Gorilla are raking in a fortune from a hurdy-gurdy, Bugs says “I hope Petrillo doesn’t hear about this!”

Bugs is referring to James C. Petrillo, the imperious head of the American Federation of Musicians, a musicians’ union. Petrillo lead numerous strikes, one of which prohibited members of the union from performing live music on television between 1944 and 1948. From 1942 to 1944, Petrillo banned all AFM members from making records. The record companies eventually capitulated and gave musicians royalties on every record sold or broadcast on the radio. Petrillo did not hesitate to take on the movie studios as well. The studios, in the switch to sound, threw a lot of former movie theater orchestra members out of work, and Petrillo fought the studios for years over the use of recorded music in theaters. Hence the concern expressed by Bugs over using hurdy-gurdy music.

PETUNIA PIG

The girlfriend of Porky Pig in a handful of thirties cartoons. Bob Clampett, in his interview in Funnyworld #12 (1970), credits Frank Tashlin with the creation of Petunia at the instigation of Leon Schlesinger. The character has generally been much more prominent in the comic books that in cartoons.

Filmography:

• Porky’s Romance (Tashlin, 1937)
• The Case of the Stuttering Pig (Tashlin, 1937)
• Porky’s Double Trouble (Tashlin, 1937)
• Porky’s Picnic (Clampett, 1939)
• Naughty Neighbors (Clampett, 1939)

PICKER, SYLVIA

Radio actress of the 1930s. Believed by researcher Hames Ware to have provided the voice for Sniffles at one point.

PIERCE III, EDWARD STACEY (“TED” or “TEDD”)

Along with Warren Foster and Michael Maltese, one of the writers with the longest tenure at WB. Pierce is listed in the first cartoon to carry a story credit, The Lyin’ Mouse (Freleng, 1937). Pierce was teamed for a time in the mid-1940s with Maltese for such cartoons as:

• Holiday for Shoestrings (Freleng, 1946)
• Rhapsody Rabbit (Freleng, 1946)
• A Hare Grows in Manhattan (Freleng, 1947)
• Slick Hare (Freleng, 1947)
• Bugs Bunny Rides Again (Freleng, 1948)
• Back Alley Oproar (Freleng, 1948)
• Buccaneer Bunny (Freleng, 1948)
• Rabbit Punch (Jones, 1948)
• A Pest in the House (Jones, 1947)

Pierce teamed up with Foster for Room and Bird (Freleng, 1951).

Solo writing credits for Chuck Jones include:

• The Night Watchman (1938)
• Case of the Missing Hare (1942)
• The Dover Boys (1942)
• Super-Rabbit (1943)
• The Aristo Cat (1943)
• Odor-Able Kitty (1945)
• Hair-Raising Hare (1946)
• Knight-Mare Hare (1955)
• Rocket Squad (1956)
• The Abominable Snow Rabbit (1961)

Pierce also received solo story credit for the following Friz Freleng shorts:

• Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips (1944)
• Hare Force (1944)
• Duck Soup to Nuts (1944)
• Life With Feathers (1945)
• High Diving Hare (1949)
• Mouse Mazurka (1949)
• All A-Bir-r-r-d (1950)
• Bunker Hill Bunny (1950)
• Mutiny on the Bunny (1950)

Starting around 1951, Pierce began to write almost exclusively for Robert McKimson. Credits for McKimson cartoons include:

• Hillbilly Hare (1950)
• Early to Bet (1951)
• Who’s Kitten Who (1952)
• The Super Snooper (1952)
• Cat-Tails for Two (1953)
• Design for Leaving (1954)
• Little Boy Boo (1954)
• The High and the Flighty (1956)
• Stupor Duck (1956)
• Tobasco Road (1957)
• Pre-Hysterical Hare (1958)
• The Mouse That Jack Built (1959)

His last credited film is Hawaiian Aye Aye (with Bill Daunch for Gerry Chiniquy, 1964). A gap in credited work during 1954 and 1955 can probably be explained by work at UPA during that period.

According to Jones, Pierce added the second “d” to his name after puppeteer Bil Baird dropped an “l” from “Bill”. Pierce is said to have insisted the dropped “l” was the next to last. Screen credits until about 1943 list him as “Ted”.

Pierce is caricatured as the tall, thin castaway in Wackiki Wabbit (Jones, 1943) providing the voice for his own character, along with fellow writer Mike Maltese. Pierce is also said to have provided the shadow of the theater patron shot by Egghead in Daffy Duck and Egghead (Avery, 1938), and the stool-pigeon theatergoer who tips off the police in Thugs With Dirty Mugs (Avery, 1939).

References to Pierce can be seen in Bugs Bunny Rides Again (Freleng, 1948) as one of the names carved in the pillar that Bugs leans on, as well as in Rocket Squad (Jones, 1956) as one of the known criminals listed on the crime computer. Note also “Dr. Pierce’s Mild Pills” in Stupor Duck (McKimson, 1956).

Pierce did a fair amount of vocal work as well; he was probably responsible for the Babbit voice in cartoons like A Tale of Two Kitties (Clampett, 1942), the father quail in Quentin Quail (Jones, 1946), and possibly as the Gildersleeve character in Hare Conditioned (Jones, 1945). (Some of the characterizations, credited to Pierce in Funnyworld #17 are open to question, the Gildersleeve character in particular.)

Pierce also worked for other cartoon studios. He worked at the Fleischer studio in the late 1930s and early 1940s on both shorts and the feature film Gulliver’s Travels (1939). Pierce is credited with at least one Superman short, The Arctic Giant (1942). Qualification, perhaps, for Super-Rabbit!

Pierce also did voice work at Fleischer’s, in such cartoons as Stealin’ Ain’t Honest (1940) in which he played Bluto, as well as providing voices for other characters. I have also seen him credited as the voice of C. Bagley Beetle from the studio’s ill-fated feature film Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941).

Pierce worked on a part-time basis at Screen Gems (Columbia) around 1946-47, and at UPA in 1954-55 where he contributed to an Academy Award winner, When Magoo Flew (1954). He also had stints with Walter Lantz around 1960, and at MGM in the Gene Deitch era, for Tall in the Trap (1962).

PIRATE SUBS

The plot of Porky the Gob (Hardaway/Dalton, 1938) involves a hunt for a pirate sub, staffed by some outlandish characters, one of which has an outlandish uniform and an even more outlandish mustachio. Porky, left alone to guard his ship, manages to fend off an attack by the sub, capture it, and claim the reward.

It is interesting to note that so-called pirate subs were very much an issue at the time this cartoon was made. The Spanish Civil War was still raging at this point. The forces of General Francisco Franco were supported by Fascist Italy and Germany and were fighting the Loyalists, who were partly supported by the Soviet Union. Italian submarines operating without identification -- in the words of one historian, as pirates -- sank several Soviet and other merchant ships attempting to bring weapons to the Loyalist side.

PISTOL P. MOMMA

The author of the book on child psychology offered to Porky by the Blockheed welder/mother in Brother Brat (Tashlin, 1944). Refers to a popular song of that era, “Pistol Packin’ Momma”.

PITTS, ZaSu
(1898-1963)

Scatterbrained character comedienne whose zany presence and “oh me, oh my” characterizations livened many comedies through the 1930s. Pitts was the model for Mae Questel’s characterization of Olive Oyl in the Fleischer Studio’s Popeye cartoons. According to Katz, the name ZaSu was derived from combing the names of two of her aunts, Eliza and Susan.

The mama pig at the end of Farm Frolics (Clampett, 1941) wearily observes in a ZaSu-like voice, “Ohhhh, deeeaar -- every daaay its the saaaame thing.”

PLANE DAFFY

Frank Tashlin cartoon from 1944 featuring Daffy as a military courier facing a Nazi seductress/spy, Hata Mari.

The cartoon opens with rhyming narration. It would be interesting to know if this narration was written by Dr. Seuss (Ted Geisel), who is known to have worked on some of the Private Snafu cartoons around the time this was in production.

Note the list of pigeons on the blackboard, many of whom refer to studio personnel:

#17 Cal [Dalton]
#16 Ace [Gamer]
#15 Ray [Katz]
#14 Leon [Schlesinger]
#13 Homer
#12 Walter [probably referring to actor Walter Pidgeon]
#11 Curt
#10 Dick
#9 Tubby [Millar]
#8 Warren [Foster]
#7 Fred

Caricatures of Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göering, and Joseph Göebbles appear at the end of the cartoon when Hata Mari makes her report.

PLAYBOY PENGUIN

Sad-eyed, silent little penguin who appears in two Jones cartoons: Frigid Hare (1949) and 8 Ball Bunny (1950). I have taken the name from the copyright registration for the character: GU 15567, February 27, 1950.

PODDANY, EUGENE

When Carl Stalling suffered a severe head injury in the early 1950s, he was temporarily replaced by Eugene Poddany, one of his assistants.

Filmography, all 1951:

• French Rarebit (McKimson)
• The Wearing of the Grin (Jones)
• Leghorn Swoggled (McKimson)

Poddany would go on to work on many scores for Chuck Jones’ MGM cartoons in the 1960s.

PONS, LILY
(1898-1976)

The entry in Katz for Pons:

Celebrated coloratura soprano of the Metropolitan Opera who starred in several Hollywood films... RKO’s answer to Columbia’s Grace Moore.

There is a town in Maryland named Lilypons in her honor.

A caricature of Pons as “Lily Swans” appears opposite Grace Moose in The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos (Tashlin, 1937), each trying to outdo the other in hitting high notes.

POPEYE

Quite remarkably, there are no fewer than four direct references in Warner Brothers cartoons to the rival Popeye series from the Fleischer studio. In Porky’s Garden (Avery, 1937), a little chick who loses out to a big bully chicken in a scramble for veggies eats some spinach and turns into a mini-Popeye, complete with bulging forearms and gravelly voice, and proceeds to thrash the bully. In The Major Lied Till Dawn (Tashlin, 1938), the Major gets bounced from a boxing ring where he has been sparring with numerous animals, remarking as he takes out a can of spinach: “by Jove, if its good enough for that sailor man, its good enough for me!” He eats the spinach, gets bulging muscles, and goes on to pummel the animals. In Porky’s Hero Agency (Clampett, 1937), Porky adds a pair of Popeye arms to the Venus de Milo, and in Scrap Happy Daffy (Tashlin, 1943), Daffy moans for a can of spinach after getting thrashed by the Nazi goat.

PORKYAKARKUS

Character played by Porky in Porky’s Hero Agency (Clampett, 1937). Based on a character named Parkyakarkus played by Harry Einstein on the Eddie Cantor radio show. Another bow to Einstein’s character can be seen in the turtle who referees the duel in Daffy Duck and Egghead (Avery, 1938).

PORKY’S DOUBLE TROUBLE

Frank Tashlin cartoon of 1937 involving a switch between Porky and a nogoodnik lookalike who is, naturally, quite different from Porky in character -- especially when kissing Petunia.

To a certain extent, the cartoon borrows from the plot of The Whole Town’s Talking, a 1935 film directed by John Ford, in which a bank clerk played by Edward G. Robinson is a dead ringer for a notorious crook.

PORKY’S HERO AGENCY

Robert Clampett Looney Tune from 1937. In a dream sequence, Porky Pig imagines himself in Ancient Greece, attempting to defeat the Gorgon, who uses a magic needle to petrify her enemies. She’s apparently been hard at work within the Schlesinger studio. A still reproduced in Schneider’s book shows a picket fence comprised of people in the Clampett unit at the time. Left to right, they are Lu Guarnier, Robert Cannon (in glasses), John Carey, Ernest Gee, Clampett, and Chuck Jones (who was not yet a director).

Note also the references to Shirley Temple and the Three Stooges, who get turned into the Three Wise Monkeys.

PORKY PIG

A landmark character in the Warner Brothers pantheon, primarily because he was the first character developed at the studio to have long-term staying power.

His origins came about in the years after Harman and Ising left Schlesinger, taking Bosko and Honey, the only real cartoons stars the studio had, with them to MGM. After the clear failure of Buddy to develop any sort of following whatsoever, Bob Clampett suggested a kiddie gang, modeled on the Hal Roach Our Gang comedies. Porky made his appearance in I Havent Got a Hat (Freleng, 1935) as the requisite fat boy character, stuttering through a rendition of the Longfellow Poem “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere”.

While the other characters in the gang -- Beans, Ham and Ex, Tommy Turtle, and others -- faded out, Porky was carried forward. Between 1935 and roughly 1938, there was a vast amount of experimentation with the character, casting him sometimes as a child, as in The Blow-Out (Avery, 1936), sometimes as a wooding adult in Porky’s Romance (Tashlin, 1937).

It took two events to cause the character to jell. One of these was Mel Blanc taking over from Joe Dougherty as the voice of Porky, and giving the stutter a subtler comic spin. The other was an almost total makeover of the original character by Clampett. While Clampett did not have a monopoly on Porky, it was his work as a Looney Tunes director in 1937-1941 that played a fundamental role in shaping the character. Clampett essentially made Porky a foil for wacky doings, usually opposite Daffy Duck, who made his debut in a Porky Pig cartoon, succeeding characters like Gabby Goat, who did not take as a sidekick.

Ironically, it was the era of fast-paced cartoons that eventually did Porky in. His sweet, gentle, low-key persona did not quite fit in the 1940s style of Warner Brothers animation, and he gradually faded into the background, in spite of a number of fine shorts by Frank Tashlin (in particular), Friz Freleng, and, in the late 1940s, Chuck Jones. Jones eventually found an ideal role for Porky as a wry Greek Chorus to the nonsense of Daffy Duck in cartoons like Rocket Squad (1956), Deduce, You Say (1956) and Robin Hood Daffy (1958).

One self-described (and self-appointed) advocate for stutterers has attempted to launch a campaign to have Porky dropped, alleging various harmful effects of the trademark stutter on children who really stutter. Aside from the fact that I doubt there is any solid proof of this, I think it is insulting to the character. Stutter or no, Porky has nearly always been presented as a decent, nice, and, in later years, very observant character. In spite of his speech impediment -- not terribly unlike the one Elmer Fudd has -- he usually manages to triumph over or otherwise evade whatever is threatening him.

POWDER GAG

Gag used twice by Freleng in the shipboard confrontations between Yosemite Sam and Bugs Bunny. The gag involves Bugs tossing matches into the powder hold, making Yosemite Sam fetch them initially, and then causing an explosion when Sam refuses to get the match one last time, though Sam usually relents at the last minute and attempts to get it. Seen in Buccaneer Bunny (1948) and Captain Hareblower (1954).

POWELL, DICK
(1904-1963)

Crooner who starred opposite Ruby Keeler in a number of Warner Brothers musicals of the 1930s, including Flirtation Walk, Footlight Parade, 42nd Street, and others. Powell made an interesting career shift in the 1940s, becoming a tough guy in movies like Murder My Sweet (1945).

He was still in his singing phase when he was caricatured by Warner Brothers cartoonists. The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos (Tashlin, 1937) features a crooning “Dick Fowl”, and A Star Is Hatched (Freleng, 1938) features a very good caricature of Powell singing a medley of military tunes in a Busby Berkley-like routine.

POWELL, WILLIAM
(1892-1984)

Longtime actor best remembered for playing the Dashiell Hammett’s character of The Thin Man (Nick Charles) in a series of movies in the 30s and 40s. Powell also played Philo Vance in a series of films, and enjoyed a number of other memorable roles, including 1932s Lawyer Man and Flo Ziegfeld in 1936s The Great Ziegfeld.

Powell, in his Thin Man character, can be seen in the Tashlin “things-come-to-life” cartoons Have You Got Any Castles? (1938) and Speaking of the Weather (1937).

PRATT, HAWLEY

Outstanding figure in the Freleng unit, whose layout work was essential in making that unit’s cartoons some of the slickest ever to come from the studio. Like several other top staff members, he was given the chance to direct in the early 1960s.

A box of “Hawley & Pratt” baking soda can be seen in I Taw a Putty Tat (Freleng, 1948), in another one of the many little jokes Paul Julian slipped into his backgrounds.

Filmography as director:

• The Pied Piper of Guadalupe (with Freleng, 1961)
• Prince Violent (with Freleng, 1961)
• The Last Hungry Cat (with Freleng, 1961)
• Crows Feat (with Freleng, 1962)
• Mexican Boarders (with Freleng, 1962)
• Senorella and the Glass Huarache (1964)

PRIVATE SNAFU

Character created by the Warner Brothers cartoon studio for The Army-Navy Screen Magazine series produced by Frank Capra during World War II. The name “Snafu” is a play on the soldiers acronym for “Situation Normal All Fouled/F***ed Up”. Private Snafu was a soldier who rarely, if ever, did anything right. His mistakes were used to get across serious points in a humorous way. Some of the Snafu shorts were written by Ted Geisel (“Dr. Seuss”). W. Munro Leaf, who was in the Army at that time, is known to have collaborated with Geisel on at least one Snafu short.

Standards were a bit looser for the Snafu shorts than they were for theatrical releases. Due to their target audience, cheesecake shots such as the pinup used to hatch pigeon eggs in The Three Brothers (Freleng, 1944) and the sexy Nazi spy in Spies (Jones, 1943) were used. Risqué humor and dialogue, including occasional four-letter words like “damn” and “hell” were also allowed. Other than that, the cartoons had some similarities to the normal Warner Brothers shorts, to the extent of using the same artists, Carl Stalling’s scores, and Mel Blanc. Robert Bruce, as usual, did narration and a few of the voices, notably for Outpost (Jones, 1944) and The Chow Hound (Tashlin, 1944).

Not all of the Private Snafu shorts were made at Warners, though most of them were. The forerunner of UPA produced a few Snafu shorts as well. Toward the end of the war, the Tex Avery unit at MGM was working on one short, Mop Up (also known as How to Get a Fat Jap out of a Cave) when production was terminated by the end of hostilities.

Animation from one Snafu short, Target: Snafu (Freleng, 1944) was re-used in a later Freleng theatrical short, Of Thee I Sting (1946). The gag using the misplaying of “Those Endearing Young Charms” on a booby-trapped piano, followed by the correct playing with disastrous consequences, was first used in Booby Traps (Clampett, 1944), years before Freleng would use it yet again in Ballot Box Bunny (1951) and Show Biz Bugs (1957).

Snafu had a naval counterpart, Hook, a few films of which have recently been discovered. He makes one appearance in a theatrical cartoon: as the soldier giving the horse a rubdown in The Draft Horse (Jones, 1942).

Private Snafu filmography:

• Coming Snafu (Jones, 1943)
• Gripes (Freleng, 1943)
• Spies (Jones, 1943)
• The Goldbrick (Tashlin, 1943)
• The Infantry Blue (Jones, 1943)
• Fighting Tools (Clampett, 1943)
• The Home Front (Tashlin, 1943)
• Rumors (Freleng, 1943)
• Booby Traps (Clampett, 1944)
• Snafuperman (Freleng, 1944)
• Private Snafu vs. Malaria Mike (Jones, 1944)
• A Lecture on Camouflage (Jones, 1944)
• Gas (Jones, 1944)
• The Chow Hound (Tashlin, 1944)
• Censored (Tashlin, 1944)
• Outpost (Jones, 1944)
• Pay Day (Freleng, 1944)
• Target Snafu (Freleng, 1944)
• The Three Brothers (Freleng, 1944)
• In the Aleutians (Jones, 1945)
• It’s Murder She Says (Jones, 1945)
• Hot Spot (Freleng, 1945)
• Operation Snafu (Freleng, 1945)
• No Buddy Atoll (Jones, 1945)
• Coming Home (Jones, not released)
• Secrets of the Caribbean (Jones, not released)

A survey written by the author about Snafu and Hook, providing more detail as to the individual cartoons and their production, can be found in Issue #37 of Animato! magazine.

“PUSSYFOOT”

Wide-eyed, innocent kitty who wins the heart of bulldog character Marc Antony. Featured in a series of Chuck Jones cartoons which usually involve Marc Antony protecting Pussyfoot from a variety of threats.

Filmography, all Jones:

• Feed the Kitty (1952)
• Kiss Me Cat (1953)
• Feline Frame Up (1954)
• Cat Feud (1958)

“PUT OUT THAT LIGHT!”

During the Second World War, blackout conditions were imposed in a number of areas, particularly on the East and West coasts, for fear of submarine or air raids. Air raid wardens, in distinctive white helmets and arm bands of the type worn by the Mount Rushmore figures and the Statue of Liberty in The Weakly Reporter (Jones, 1944), would patrol an area, telling people who had lights showing to “put out that light!”

This phrase was used as a gag in a number of cartoons. One very clever use was in Hiss and Make Up (Freleng, 1943), in which Roscoe the Dog, in order to prevent Granny from seeing the muddy pawprints Wellington the Cat has put all over the living room to frame Roscoe, shouts the phrase as soon as Granny turns on the light, causing her to turn off the light and hurry back to bed. Other uses can be seen in Meatless Flyday (Freleng, 1944), in which a warden, observing the neon sign being lit up by the chasing Spider and Fly, yells the phrase. An offscreen warden shouts the phrase in Jack-Wabbit and the Beanstalk (Freleng, 1943) when Bugs lights a match to see inside the hat belonging to the Giant. It is also shouted by Tweety in the closing gag of A Tale of Two Kitties (Clampett, 1942).