Notable as the final animated short produced and released by MGM, this 1967 film is adapted from Frank Tashlin\u2019s 1947 children\u2019s 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\u2019s not working, but when the bear identifies himself the foreman insists he is only \u201ca silly man who needs a shave and wears a fur coat.\u201d The bear insists he is not an employee, so he taken by the foreman up the corporate chain of command \u2013 to the general manager, the third vice president, the second vice president, the first vice president and the president \u2013 who all inform the astonished ursine interloper that he is \u201ca silly man who needs a shave and wears a fur coat.\u201d The bear is then taken to a zoo where the occupants in a cage of bears affirms the executives\u2019 insistence that the bear is not a bear.
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While Tashlin\u2019s book makes for an effective parody on gaslighting and peer pressure, the animated adaptation quickly becomes tiresome as the repeated denial of the bear\u2019s identity results in a single joke played to death. The film\u2019s dull visual style \u2013 a mix of limited animation with some clumsy psychedelic touches \u2013 is exacerbated by a thudding narration of Paul Frees that adds to the one-note nature of the work.<\/p>\n
Chuck Jones produced and co-directed (with Maurice Noble) the short and he generously gave Tashlin producer\u2019s co-credit with the hope that he could win the Oscar if the short received an Academy Award nomination \u2013 it didn\u2019t. <\/p>\n
Tashlin hated the film, complaining, \u201cUp front in the beginning of this thing, when they are telling him he is a man and he is insisting he\u2019s a bear, they put a cigarette in his mouth. Now, the picture was destroyed there, because by the acceptance of a cigarette \u2013 you never saw where he got it \u2013 by putting a cigarette in his mouth, he was already a man. You know what I mean? Psychologically, the picture was ruined. It stopped working from that point on. So that was a terrible experience.\u201d<\/p>\n