Category
🦄
Art et designTranscription
00:00Hello there, this is Greg Ford and you know a lot of people, including me actually, have
00:07spoken about how Frank Tashlin, who directed this underrated cartoon I've Got Plenty of
00:11Mutton and wound up a big time Hollywood director of CinemaScope comedy epics starring Martin
00:17and Lewis, a lot of people mention how he sometimes brought the vocabulary of live action
00:21filmmaking to cartoons.
00:23And that's true, but that's not the whole story.
00:25He also did a fair amount of stuff that you might tag as pure cartoon.
00:30He started out as a comic strip artist, after all, and a lot of what he did at Warner's
00:34was fairly original and cartoony, and came to influence both later live action films
00:40directed by himself and other people, and Tashlin's stuff influenced later cartoons
00:46by other directors at Warner's, especially Chuck Jones.
00:50And always there's this pervasive aura of sexuality in this cartoon that's really unique
00:55to Tashlin's work.
01:02Now audiences during World War II could really relate to these opening gags.
01:08You know, during the war effort, the war effort was ongoing and there were meat shortages,
01:14meatless Fridays as a matter of fact.
01:16You know, come to think of it, Fritz Freling directed a spider cartoon called Meatless
01:19Fly Day, the spider had to go without flies.
01:23But anyway, people could both identify with this, but still laugh at starvation jokes
01:28like the ones you see here.
01:29Now notice the physique of the wolf.
01:31It's skeletal, of course, and that's the joke.
01:33But you know, at the same time, you'll notice his caricatures being very male.
01:38On this disc we have a Tashlin cartoon of a curvaceous over-shapely pigeon and girl
01:42pigeon and plain Daffy, but here you see elements of male sexuality.
01:47This wasn't one of the very best examples of it, you'll see, but you might say Tashlin
01:51was an equal opportunity exaggerator of secondary sexual characteristics.
01:59Now this pee gag that you see, where the wolf tries to make a pee work as an entire
02:05three-quarters meal, was often reprised by Tashlin.
02:09It's in a Disney featurette with Mickey, Goofy and Donald called Mickey and the Beanstalk,
02:13and it's later in a live-action VistaVision comedy, and the funny thing is the same guy
02:19was responsible for the same gag in this Warner cartoon, and the Disney featurette
02:22which he wrote but wasn't credited for.
02:25And then the Paramount Martin and Lewis comedy called Artists and Models, and it's just
02:28so weird, he goes through these different drawings of the same guy.
02:31You have to be like a detective figuring out who did what when you try to trace the authorship
02:36of gags.
02:37The writer's in general overrated, like he wasn't credited in the Disney thing, and it's
02:40like, you know, it's like Looney Tunes, Special Victims Unit, you have to use forensic evidence.
02:45And by the way, you know, Tashlin's influence on Chuck should already be evident with this
02:50wolf and sheepdog stuff here.
02:52Also, you notice the one star there?
02:54That meant that someone in the house, or in this case the doghouse, was serving his country
02:59at the time.
03:00So, the wolf, of course, thinks he's in the clear, but he doesn't kind of, you know, plot
03:07point the ram.
03:13Ah, yes.
03:15Now, this reminds me, this score is just a treat in itself.
03:19You should, like, not listen to me and just listen to the film, just listen to the score,
03:23you know.
03:24I co-produced a record called The Carl Stalling Project with Hal Wellner, a great record
03:29producer, and we co-produced this thing called The Carl Stalling Project about a decade and
03:33a half ago, and we kept doing lifts from this score, because at this time, you know, Stalling
03:37was just hot, you know, during this period, and the Warner's Orchestra was at its very
03:41hottest, and the, you know, the musical quotations are promiscuous, you know, they go from Mozart
03:46to Grieg to Chopin, I think, and that juxtaposed with, you know, Raymond Scott and Little Dog
03:51Gone and, you know, she was an acrobat's daughter, and you're in the army now, which is combined
03:56with Little Dog Gone, because it's referring to an army dog.
04:02And this, boy, this looks very Coyote-like to me, you know, this, look at it, he's like,
04:07oh, there, she was an acrobat's daughter.
04:10He's previewing, you know, this is like a preview of what Chuck Jones would do later.
04:13Chuck Jones admits that a lot of the stuff that Tashlin did influenced him, particularly,
04:18like Fox and the Crow influenced him on the Roadrunner films, and this did too, obviously.
04:25Now, this, you know, a lot of cartoons, the light and drag scenes, but few display the
04:34kind of loving detail that's visible in this film here, where he's, like, disguising himself
04:38as a female, you know, with applications of rouge and lipstick, and just so delicately,
04:44you know.
04:45But again, it's sexual differentiation, which Tashlin likes, so, I mean, frankly, it looks
04:50awful, you know, I mean, it's a cartoon, he could use cartoon license to make him look
04:55more female, but in fact, he looks like Milton Berle at his worst, you know, I mean, this
04:59is, like, terrible, but that's the joke.
05:02He's still a male wolf underneath.
05:09It's like Mozart there.
05:11Boy, this orchestra is just...
05:15Oh, this is nice.
05:18Talk about sexuality in Tashlin cartoons.
05:21You know, it's so funny, this is an out-of-the-way cartoon, no big stars, but, I mean, it's really
05:26important.
05:27But, you know, this is about as blue as you can get, you know, in a cartoon, you know,
05:34erectile horns.
05:37He's horny, literally, you know, what can I tell you?
05:40Now, notice the French accent.
05:44You can see how, you know, there's an influence on the Chuck Jones wolf and sheepdog cartoons
05:50and the coyote cartoons, but now this is, like, also sort of a preview of what was going
05:55to happen with the with the Pepe Le Pew cartoons.
06:00He'll believe anything.
06:04Now, look at the hopping, it's like a hopping love pursuit.
06:08Oh, there goes Stalling.
06:11He uses a bassoon for him.
06:12Yeah, one is like little flutes, and then this is a bassoon, you know, it's so nice.
06:17So anyway, Tashlin is just a fascinating figure.
06:20Speaking of drag scenes, he made a live-action film with Tom Yule called The Lieutenant Wears
06:24Skirts, and around the same time, Billy Wilder, you know, at the same studio, made a famous
06:31Tom Yule, Marilyn Monroe film called The Seven Year Itch.
06:35The reason I bring this up is it's sort of interesting that there is a parallel, a weird
06:38parallel between, like, the European sophisticate Billy Wilder and the vulgar American Frank
06:44Tashlin.
06:45Because the end of this cartoon seems, I don't think he stole it, I just think it's like
06:49Kindred Spirits or something, I don't know.
06:51The end of this cartoon is awfully like the Wilder film, Some Like It Hot, and I'm not
06:55the only person to notice this.
06:57Warner's cartoon critic Barry Putterman observed that the cartoon is, quote, unfortunately
07:02one of Tashlin's least known and least appreciated.
07:05Okay, okay, look, you dope, look, I'm not a sheep, I'm not a sheep, I'm a wolf!
07:15And the final gag is also philosophically identical, and almost verbally identical,
07:20to the much acclaimed ending of Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot.
07:24You see, it's like, Jack Lemmon takes off his disguise and Joey Brown goes, like, nobody's
07:27perfect, and he goes, I'm a wolf, I'm a wolf, you know, a male wolf, and the ram goes, so
07:32am I!
07:33Ooooooh!