That’s not all folks. Another volume of the Looney Tunes Collector’s Choice series has been released. 25 shorts are presented on this Blu-Ray disc, 24 of which have never been restored on home media before. As a die-hard Looney Tunes enthusiast, this is very welcome both in terms of preserving more of the classic shorts and allowing easy access to them in the chaotic streaming age.
With this volume, there is more focus on broadly showcasing the different eras of these classic cartoons. From the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s, there is such a variety of shorts from different periods here that it’s almost like walking through a historical exhibit. While there aren’t too many classic shorts that haven’t been released on home media yet, these releases have done a good job highlighting the more obscure and interesting shorts that would usually get overlooked compared to the more popular ones.
Moving onto the highlights, the only completely new restoration here is the Daffy Duck short Mexican Joyride. Following the crazy loon on a trip to Mexico, is another showcase of the talents of the short-lived and underappreciated unit of director Arthur Davis. His focus on expressive and rapid character animation and usage of Daffy as a chaotic everyman are highlighted here very well. It isn’t a classic, but it’s a short that’s needed restoration for a bit and it looks quite vibrant.
Another notable short is Honeymoon Hotel, the first ever color short made at the Warner Cartoon studio. It was produced at a time when Disney had exclusive rights to Technicolor, so other studios had to rely on the Cinecolor process which used only red and green shades. Regardless, this is an important short both historically and development-wise. Its director, Earl Duvall, was one of the first in the Leon Schlesinger-led era of the studio after the initial crew led by Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising had left in 1933. Even though he showed a lot of talent during the chaotic start of the studio, Duvall was quickly fired due to drunkenly demanding a huge pay raise from his boss. This resulted in Leon hiring Friz Freling from the former Harman-Ising group and he was able to bring stability in terms of being a more seasoned and talented individual to help shape the studio and its identity.
This short, alongside Mr. and Mrs. Is The Name and I Only Have Eyes For You, also highlights the early template of the Merrie Melodies cartoons. The reason the series was created was to highlight a song owned by Warner Bros which was often the title of the cartoon. The latter though, directed by Tex Avery, was one of the shorts that indicated how some at the studio saw this mandate as a limitation to their overall direction since Avery seems to minimize the song or only use it for a gag rather than highlighting it in full.
It was eventually decided that a director didn’t have to use a song in the color shorts if they didn’t want to and Avery focused far more on subversive gag-driven cartoons instead. This volume in particular highlights his shorts featuring the character of Egghead. The first recurring character in the color shorts is important as he is the prototype of Elmer Fudd, indicated by him being given that name in the short A Feud There Was (with yodeling by Roy Rogers, and yes THAT Roy Rogers) and having a design that would serve as the basis for Elmer later. This character is also interesting in that there have been debates over if the initial Egghead design and the one that eventually morphed into Elmer were separate characters due to their many differences, but they were likely interchangeable and the crew didn’t give much mind at the time.
Speaking of Elmer Fudd, there is also the short Elmer’s Pet Rabbit where Elmer buys Bugs from a pet store and gets more than he bargained for. The second cartoon starring Bugs Bunny, it’s a bizarre curio that gives him a different design with yellow gloves and without buck teeth. He also has a deeper voice without his iconic accent and a more irritable and aggressive personality. It’s a short that plays around with the character to see what works with him and while it’s a decent cartoon all things considered, it says a lot that most of the elements of Bugs’ character here were left behind since they probably wouldn’t have worked well played out long term.
There are also a few shorts from the later years of the studio. The shorts Dumb Patrol, the last short with Yosemite Sam, and War and Pieces, the last short directed by Chuck Jones after he was fired for breach of contract, were some of the last shorts produced and released by the studio before its closure in 1964. The former was also one of the two shorts directed by Gerry Chiniquy, a longtime animator of Freling’s unit who only became a director because Freling left the studio for Hanna Barbera. Comparing these shorts to the ones of the 30s is fascinating since you can see both the evolution in the types of shorts that the studio would make and how the decline in demand for these types of shorts affected their budgets and presentation.
Another short, Pre-Hysterical Hare, is another that highlights the issues plaguing the studio near the end of its run. Considered by many to be one of the worst Bugs Bunny shorts, it was one of the 6 shorts that used stock music from composer John Seely of Capitol Records due to a 1958 musicians strike leaving the regular cartoon composer unavailable. The short also was unable to use Arthur Q. Bryan due to illness and used actor Dave Barry instead and it’s notably worse since it just sounds like Elmer has a sore throat. All of this, combined with how its director, Robert McKimson, had his work decline sharply in quality around this time due to budget cuts, losing all his best animators during a prior temporary shutdown, and just being burnt out in general, makes for a short that while not painful, is plagued with issues and just isn’t funny. It’s honestly a fascinating microcosm of issues that not only affected the Warner shorts of the time but most short-form cartoon studios during the late 50s and early ’60s.
In the previous volume, Chuck Jones’ early years were given a highlight where his development as an artist was presented. From his attempts to imitate Disney to when his shorts slowly morphed with the sensibilities traditionally associated with Warner Bros. This volume highlights his later evolution where he focused on more modern shorts that were inspired by the animation studio UPA. They highlighted more abstract and limited animation alongside more modern and less slapstick-driven stories. While his most famous one is One Froggy Evening, the ones shown here are also interesting. There is Punch Trunk, one of the first of these types of shorts by Jones that tells the story of a town freaking out when they see an extremely small elephant. It is honestly still a timely story where people are either blatantly dismissive of the fantastical sight or freak out like crazy over it. It captures that sense of societal biases and perceptions that swing aggressively one way or the other and remain relevant at some level. There is also The Mouse on 57th Street where a mouse gets a hangover after eating too much rum cake and mistakes a rare diamond for ice after hearing someone use the vernacular. This one is not bad, but it’s quite short (no pun intended) since it runs only under 6 minutes and does show that Jones had his limitations. He sometimes ended up making shorts that feel a bit half-baked and feel more like showing off distinctive attributes for the sake of it and forgetting to add substance.
With all of this said, this volume is quite great. Even with the focus being on lesser-known shorts and even a few that aren’t particularly good, I do think that it is important to ensure that most of these shorts are accessible. Given that Max has currently delisted many shorts, getting new Blu Rays with shorts that aren’t readily available anywhere else is important. Moving forward, it will also be interesting to see what shorts will get highlighted since some recognizable characters, like Bugs, for example, only have a couple left that have never been released on home media before. Because of this, other characters like Daffy and Tweety, who have plenty of cartoons left, will likely get more focus. Even so, I am still quite excited about future releases and hope that we get as many as possible to ensure that the collection of available and accessible Looney Tunes shorts is as big as it can be. Frankly, in an age where physical media is being neglected in favor of short-sighted rushed-out streaming and digital efforts, it’s nice to have something like this that appeals specifically to me in an old-fashioned way.
