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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