My favorite cartoon ever
It doesn’t come up often, but every once in a while, someone will ask me what my favorite cartoon or bit of animation is. It happened this weekend at a dinner with the in laws. Being a CG guy, people usually expect me to say Toy Story, or Tron, or even Ice Age (the first CG feature I worked on).
It’s not any of those. My favorite cartoon ever is from 1950, and has nothing to do with computers at all. It’s the Tex Avery short film Ventriloquist Cat.
If you’ve not seen it, the short is about a cat who finds a device which will throw his voice. He then uses the device to torture a dog through the rest of the film.
While most of the short is one standard cartoon gag after another (maybe not at the time), the ending is brilliant. The dog (who the cat has been torturing through the whole picture) ends up on top of a telephone pole. A group of dogs chase the cat up the same pole. The cat doesn’t realize this at the time, and starts to taunt the dogs below by meowing. The cat then sees the dog on top of the pole. As the realization of his situation slowly sets in, he keeps meowing, quieter and quieter, until he explodes into a terrified take. I think this last bit is what makes this my favorite cartoon ever.
I didn’t get too far into my explanation of my favorite cartoon over the weekend before the mixed company started to lose interest, thus the lengthy blog post this morning.
Given the fact that Buck is a cat, and this short stars a cat, I thought it might be remotely related. I would love to invoke some classic animation type stuff in our segment of Six Monsters. Maybe someone else will blog about it 56 years from now?
So what is YOUR favorite cartoon?
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On April 17th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Oops! I forgot to sign my post!
On April 17th, 2006 at 12:00 am
I figured out how to edit my post, and signed it.
On April 17th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Hey Floyd, another east coaster here. I have to say my favorite cartoon of all time is from the same era, by the same director, TEX AVERY. It’s called the MAGICAL MAESTRO and it stars SPIKE the dog as well, but this time he’s an opera singer that is constantly being magically morphed into random different (and now today considered somewhat racist or offensive) carircatures. From Carmen Miranda to Al Jolson, to my favorite one, the Hawaiin trio. This cartoon is pure genius in timing and gaggery (is that a word?) and sadly even though it was never meant to be offensive or malicious in anyway it will never see the lite of day again. It was just a product of a simpler time….back when cartoon animals constantly pulled out guns, bombs and dynamite and occasionally drank poison and hung themselves. Ah the good old days!
On April 17th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Hey Manny, I remember that short as well. I think Cartoon Network used a clip from that one with the dog and the two rabbits as a promo a while back. It was funny each time I saw it.