Between 1961 and 1962, MGM released 13 Tom and Jerry cartoons produced at a Czechoslovakian animation studio under the guidance of expatriate Americans Gene Deitch and William N. Synder. It is safe to say that very few people adore these films – with their cheapjack animation, irritating sound effects and stupid scripts, these Tom and Jerry endeavors represent some of the shoddiest animation ever put forth by a Hollywood studio.
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Wideo Wabbit (1956)
Directed by Robert McKimson
Story by Tedd Pierce
Music by Carl Stalling
Animation by Ted Bonnicksen, Keith Darling, Russ Dyson, George Grandpré
Bugs Bunny answers a newspaper advertisement seeking a rabbit to appear on-camera at QTTV-TV. Bugs shows up and is hired, unaware that his job is to be the prey in Elmer Fudd’s television program “The Sportsman’s Hour,” sponsored by The French Fried Fresh Frozen Rabbit Company. Bugs narrowly avoids being shot by Elmer on live television and escapes through the corridors of the television studio, disguising himself as various small-screen personalities before turning tables on his predator by tricking Elmer to dress as a rabbit. Bugs then dresses up like Elmer and shoots the rabbit-suited Elmer on television.
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A Star is Bored (1956)
Directed by Friz Freleng
Story by Warren Foster
Animation by Art Davis, Virgil Ross, Gerry Chiniquy
Music by Milt Franklyn
Daffy Duck is the malcontented janitor at a movie studio where Bugs Bunny is the reigning screen star. Annoyed at the attention Bugs is receiving, Daffy marches into the office of the casting director to demand a crack at stardom. Daffy is cast as Bugs’ stunt double in an ongoing production and is dressed in a rabbit suit but soon discovers to his frustration he is being assigned the most dangerous stunts.
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Notable as the final animated short produced and released by MGM, this 1967 film is adapted from Frank Tashlin’s 1947 children’s book about a bear who awakens from hibernation to find a construction site was erected around his cave while he was sleeping. A construction foreman accosts the bear and demands to know why he’s not working, but when the bear identifies himself the foreman insists he is only “a silly man who needs a shave and wears a fur coat.” The bear insists he is not an employee, so he taken by the foreman up the corporate chain of command – to the general manager, the third vice president, the second vice president, the first vice president and the president – who all inform the astonished ursine interloper that he is “a silly man who needs a shave and wears a fur coat.” The bear is then taken to a zoo where the occupants in a cage of bears affirms the executives’ insistence that the bear is not a bear.
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Half-Fare Hare (1956)
Directed by Robert McKimson
Story by Tedd Pierce
Animation by George Grandpre, Russ Dyson, Keith Darling, Ted Bonnicksen
Music by Carl Stalling
Bugs Bunny picks up a newspaper at a railroad station and reads about wintry conditions that froze the local carrot crop, resulting in rabbits leaving the state “in droves” for Alabama, where carrots are plentiful. Bugs is confused and exclaims, “But I don’t have a drove!” Instead, Bugs climbs into a boxcar on the Chattanooga Choo-Choo and encounters a pair of hungry hoboes who resemble Jackie Gleason’s Ralph Kramden and Art Carney’s Ed Norton. The duo envisions Bugs as their long-overdue meal, but Bugs is not easily captured.
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Barbary-Coast Bunny (1956)
Directed by Chuck Jones
Story by Tedd Pierce
Animation by Abe Levitow, Richard Thompson, Ken Harris
Music by Carl Stalling
Bugs Bunny is burrowing underground to visit his cousin Herman in San Francisco when he bangs head-first into a giant gold nugget. The swindler Nasty Canasta tricks Bugs into believing he has a depository bank for storing the gold, and Bugs entrusts his new fortune with the miscreant. After Nasty violently waylays Bugs, the angry rabbit vows revenge. Six months later, he tracks down Nasty to the San Francisco casino that he built with Bugs’ gold. Bugs disguises himself as a naïve rural visitor, but this seemingly innocent façade enables him to casually drain the casino of its money by winning Nasty’s rigged games.
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Napoleon Bunny-Part (1956)
Directed by Friz Freleng
Story by Warren Foster
Animation by Gerry Chiniquy, Virgil Ross. Art Davis
Music by Carl Stalling
Bugs Bunny makes “one wrong turn off the Hollywood freeway” and somehow winds up in the palatial headquarters of Napoleon Bonaparte. Mistaking his destination for an ornate movie theater, Bugs disrupts Napoleon’s military planning on a desktop map by moving artillery piece where he sees fit and then sneezing away the map’s contents after taking a too-generation inhale of snuff. Napoleon and his oafish guard (the oversized moronic Mugsy from “Bugs and Thugs”) attempt to subdue Bugs, which proves to be a Waterloo-worthy debacle.
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