Jules White was not, by any stretch of the imagination, the greatest comedy director – but he might have been the resourceful. With the 1956 Three Stooges short “Scheming Schemers,” he created a new film by using stock footage from three different movies while putting forth a work where one of the stars had passed away six weeks earlier.
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Rabbit Fire (1951)
Directed by Chuck Jones
Story by Michael Maltese
Animation by Ken Harris, Phil Monroe, Lloyd Vaughan and Ben Washam
Music by Carl W. Stalling
In the realm of the Bugs Bunny cartoons, “Rabbit Fire” is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing, of course, is the film’s contents – a fast, inventive serving of classic dialogue and innovative visual comedy that resulted in an animated masterpiece. The curse, however, involved the same issues that make it a blessing. “Rabbit Fire” is so remarkable that it created a lightning-in-a-bottle moment that could never be repeated with the same level of style and substance. And Lord knows the Termite Terrace gang tried endlessly to duplicate its brilliance, with results that ranged from almost perfect to dreadful.
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Moe, Larry and Shemp receive a telegram from their roommate/landlord Bill that he just got married and they will need to move out. Rather than be upset by this abrupt eviction, the trio decide to surprise Bill and his new bride by cleaning the residence and installing a television that Bill ordered as a wedding gift. Needless to say, the best of intentions generates the worst possible results.
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The Fair-Haired Hare (1951)
Directed by Friz Freleng
Story by Warren Foster
Animation by Ken Champin, Virgil Ross, Arthur Davis, Manuel Perez, John Carey
Music by Carl Stalling
When Yosemite Sam builds a cabin on top of Bugs Bunny’s hole-in-the-ground domicile, Bugs vows to sue Sam for damages. A judge rules that Bugs and Sam must share the newly constructed residence, with the knowledge that full ownership goes to the survivor if one of them should pass away. Sam opts to speed Bugs’ demise, but his homicidal schemes inevitably backfire. Furious at being outsmarted, he opts to fill Bugs’ subterranean home with explosives, but Bugs redirects the devices to the crawl space between the cabin’s floor and the bare ground. Sam winds up blowing his home into the clouds while declaring, “Well, whaddya know, I’ve got a cabin in the sky!”
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The Three Stooges (Moe, Larry and Shemp) answer an advertisement placed by Scotland Yard for “yardmen” and they inform the inspector in charge that they are perfect for the job – they are newly minted graduates of the A-1 Correspondence School of Detecting. However, the “yardmen” jobs are for groundskeeper positions, which they grudgingly accept under the belief that they will eventually be promoted to crime solving. Thanks to a note blown from the inspector’s desk into their rubbish clean-up, the trio believe they’ve been assigned to protect the valuables in Scotland’s gloomy Glenheather Castle – which a title card tells us is “on the Bonny Banks of Scotland… but ’tis late, and the bonny banks are closed.”
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BOOTLEG FILES 878: “The Selfish Giant” (1971 Oscar-nominated animated short based on the Oscar Wilde story).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: There might be a right issue that is unresolved.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely at this time.
One of the most poignant animated films ever made is the 1971 adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s story “The Selfish Giant.” Directed by Peter Sander and produced on behalf of Reader’s Digest, it is a truly wonderful production that received an Academy Award nomination. However, today the film is almost completely forgotten, which is a major shame.
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Notable as being among D.W. Griffith’s earliest attempts to blend cinema and politics, the 1909 short film “A Corner in Wheat” depicted the rise of the “Wheat King,” a speculator who manages to corner the commodity market on wheat. His success brings him great wealth that is spent on opulent entertainment for his friends, while the farmers who grow the wheat are stuck in hardscrabble lives and the lower classes who cannot afford the price gouging by the Wheat King – the cost of bread loaves is hiked from five to ten cents, forcing many to go hungry. However, the triumph of his business ruthlessness occurs moments before a freak accident where he crushed to death in a grain silo.
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