Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies (Buddy era; late 1933-mid 1935)

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Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies (Buddy era; late 1933-mid 1935)

Termite Terrace's first rough day off begins.
Genre: Comedy

Musical

Running Time: 6-8 Minutes
Country: United States
Release Date: September 9, 1933 – September 7, 1935
Distributed by: Leon Schlesinger Productions
Starring: Jack Carr

Jackie Morrow Bernice Hansen Billy Bletcher

Episodes: 47 Shorts

(23 Looney Tunes shorts) (24 Merrie Melodies shorts)

Previous show: Bosko era (1929-mid 1933)
Next show: late 1935-1938 era


Looney Tunes and (its spin-off Merrie Melodies) is an American animated short film theatrical series by Warner Brothers that ran from 1930 until 1969.

After Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising left Warner Bros. to MGM due to financial disputes with producer Leon Schlesinger in 1933, both Harman and Ising carefully took with them all their production crew as well as their star character Bosko and every other character which they're created to MGM, having learnt from Walt Disney's own experience of losing the rights to his first cartoon creation Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to Charles Mintz back during in the cusp of the late-1920s. Consequently, this leaves Leon Schlesinger and the Warner Bros. cartoon studio with no experienced directors and no star character, hence forcing Leon to bring in new, inexperienced directors to replace them such as Tom Palmer and Earl Duvall to replace the absent Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising and to create a new cartoon star named Buddy as a replacement for Bosko, to disastrous results, since most of these new talent and characters brought in ended up contributing to some of the worst cartoons ever produced by the studio.

While most of the Looney Tunes shorts from the classic era have been well received, the same can't be said for these cartoons from the late 1933-1935 era (a.k.a. the Buddy era), which were heavily panned by critics and fans alike. This article will be talking about the shorts from "Buddy's Day Out" up to "The Lady in Red".

Shorts

1933

  • "Buddy's Day Out" (Palmer/Freleng (latter uncredited); September 9; first appearances of Buddy and Cookie)
  • "I've Got to Sing a Torch Song" (Palmer/Freleng (latter uncredited); September 23; one-off)
  • "Buddy's Beer Garden" (Duvall; November 18; with Buddy and Cookie)
  • "Buddy's Show Boat" (Duvall; December 12; with Buddy and Cookie)
  • "Sittin' on a Backyard Fence" (Duvall; December 16; one-off)

1934

  • "Buddy the Gob" (Freleng; January 13; first solo Buddy cartoon; as well as the first non-Harman-Ising Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Friz Freleng)
  • "Pettin' in the Park" (Brown; January 27; one-off)
  • "Honeymoon Hotel" (Duvall; February 17; first Merrie Melodies film in Cinecolor; one off)
  • "Buddy and Towser" (Freleng; February 24; with Buddy)
  • "Buddy's Garage" (Duvall; April 14; with Buddy and Cookie)
  • "Beauty and the Beast" (Freleng; April 14; one-off; produced in Cinecolor)
  • "Those Were Beautiful Days" (Brown; April 26; one-off)
  • "Buddy's Trolley Troubles" (Freleng; May 5; with Buddy and Cookie)
  • "Goin' to Heaven on a Mule" (Freleng; May 19; one-off)
  • "Buddy of the Apes" (Hardaway; May 26; with Buddy)
  • "How Do I Know It's Sunday" (Freleng; June 9; one-off)
  • "Buddy's Bearcats" (King; June 23; with Buddy and Cookie)
  • "Why Do I Dream Those Dreams" (Freleng; June 30; one-off)
  • "Buddy's Circus" (King; August 25; with Buddy)
  • "The Miller's Daughter" (Freleng; September 8; one-off)
  • "Buddy The Detective" (King; September 15; with Buddy and Cookie)
  • "The Girl at the Ironing Board" (Freleng; September 15; one-off; first WB cartoon (in release order) to carry the MPPDA approval seal)
  • "Viva Buddy" (King; September 29; with Buddy and Cookie)
  • "Shake Your Powder Puff" (Freleng; September 29; one-off)
  • "Rhythm in the Bow" (Hardaway; October 20; one-off; Final Merrie Melodies short produced in black-and-white)
  • "Buddy The Woodsman" (King; October 10; with Buddy and Cookie; first WB cartoon (in production order) to carry the MPPDA approval seal)
  • "Those Beautiful Dames" (Freleng; November 10; one-off; First Warner Bros. cartoon produced in 2-strip Technicolor)
  • "Buddy's Adventures" (Hardaway; November 17; with Buddy and Cookie)
  • "Pop Goes Your Heart" (Freleng; December 8; one-off)
  • "Buddy the Dentist" (Hardaway; December 15; with Buddy and Cookie)

1935

  • "Buddy of the Legion" (Hardway; January 12; with Buddy)
  • "Mr. and Mrs. Is the Name" (Freleng; January 19; with Buddy and Cookie; the only color appearances of the two)
  • "Country Boy" (Freleng; February 9; one-off)
  • "Buddy's Theatre" (Hardaway; February 16; with Buddy and Cookie)
  • "I Haven't Got a Hat" (Freleng; March 2; with Beans, Porky Pig, Little Kitty, Oliver Owl and Ham, and Ex; first appearances of all six)
  • "Buddy's Pony Express" (Hardaway; March 9; with Buddy and Cookie)
  • "Along Flirtation Walk" (Freleng; April 6; one-off)
  • "Buddy In Africa" (Hardaway; April 20; with Buddy; final short directed by Ben Hardaway until 1938)
  • "My Green Fedora" (Freleng; May 4; one-off)
  • "Buddy's Lost World" (King; May 18; with Buddy)
  • "Into Your Dance" (Freleng; June 8; one-off with a cameo appearance of Porky Pig)
  • "Buddy's Bug Hunt" (King; June 22; with Buddy; first WB cartoon to feature ACME products)
  • "The Country Mouse" (Freleng; July 13; one-off with cameo appearances of Porky Pig and Beans; oldest WB cartoon to receive a Blue Ribbon reissue)
  • "Buddy Steps Out" (King; July 20; with Buddy and Cookie; final appearance of Cookie in Golden Age of American Animation)
  • "The Merry Old Soul" (Freleng; August 17; one-off)
  • "Buddy the Gee Man" (King; August 24; final appearance of Buddy in Golden Age of American Animation; last Looney Tunes short of this era)
  • "The Lady in Red" (Freleng; September 7; one-off; last Merrie Melodies short of this era)

Why We're Not "Buddies" with This Era

  1. The quality of writing has significantly declined from the Bosko era (1929-mid 1933) and subsequent periods, with gags that are lackluster and unengaging instead of witty and sharp, and songs that serve as nothing more than filler.
    • Executive meddling: Not helping is the fact that originally in the 1930s, Leon Schlesinger insisted that every single Merrie Melodies are obligated to have at least one full chorus of a song from Warner Bros. music library, which also even extends to the Merrie Melodies in the Bosko era (1931-mid 1933) and the late 1935-early 1937 era, which endlessly annoyed the Warners directors, since with this rule, they had no choice but to include at least one song, regardless of whether they serve any purpose to the cartoons' plots or not, and more often or not, the song interrupted the cartoons' momentum and pacing.
      • Because of this rule, almost every Merrie Melodies cartoons of this era often feel the need to have the characters either sing and/or dance to a random musical number every 2 or so minutes that adds nothing to their respective plots.
      • Thankfully by 1937 this obligation was soon abolished following the introduction of Daffy Duck in "Porky's Duck Hunt".
  2. The era is infamous for focusing on the notoriously bland Buddy and Cookie, both of whom were nothing but inferior whitewashed versions of their predecessors, Bosko and Honey.
  3. Numerous bad shorts are scattered throughout this era, such as the majority of Buddy's cartoons (with "Buddy in Africa" being the worst this era has to offer), "Goin' to Heaven on a Mule", "The Merry Old Soul", "The Lady in Red" (which ended the Merrie Melodies label in this era on a sour note) and so on. Most others range from mediocre to forgettable at best.
    • Most of the Merrie Melodies shorts were also painfully dull much like most of the Buddy shorts (especially those directed by Jack King), with "Country Boy" being a notable offender of this; as Friz Freleng somehow did a much poorer job at adapting Beatrix Potter's stories compared to Sony's attempt at the same thing in 2018.
  4. Most of the Merrie Melodies shorts play it safe, even more so than the previous era (thanks to the enforcement of the Hays' Code). Even worse is the characters focusing on silent-era pantomime actions outside of songs with little to no spoken dialogue to balance it out.
    • Also, most of the characters are still non-descript in personality like Buddy himself.
    • Much like Chuck Jones' early Looney Tunes cartoons, many of these cartoons have very poorly-written and unstructured stories which frequently lack humor and try too hard to be like Disney, with their plots being solely created just to have a song number added into it with no rhyme or reason, with "The Merry Old Soul" being some of the worst offenders as such.
    • In defense, those psuedo-Disney shorts were a learning process for Friz Freleng before he ditched the format of Harman-Ising style musicals in favor of parodying gangster pictures (which he did in the next era for shorts, such as "I'm A Big Shot Now" and "He Was Her Man").
    • Overall, many of these early Merrie Melodies cartoons are basically pale knock-offs of Disney's Silly Symphonies cartoons, MGM/Harman-Ising's Happy Harmonies or even Fleischer Studios' Color Classics cartoons, but with none of the charm, cleverness and enjoyment that these musical cartoons had and therefore come off as incredibly boring and tiresome to watch.
  5. The animation quality in the earliest cartoons can be a little off and sloppy now and then.
  6. During those years, Walt Disney had exclusive rights to the more superior three-strip Technicolor color process which he used exclusively for his Silly Symphonies series, hence resulting every other animation studio of the time to settle on more inferior two-color color processes when producing color cartoons such as Cinecolor (which had a limited color palette of red, blue and brown hues) or a downgraded two-hue version of Technicolor (which had a very limited color palette of red and green hues), hence giving a rather weird and unnatural look in these early color cartoons. Between 1934-1935, the earliest color Merrie Melodies used both of these inferior color processes Cinecolor (in 1934) and two-strip Technicolor (in 1935), which consequently gave these cartoons rather dull, ugly, washed-out and unimpressive colors which often do not fit the scenes and/or onscreen characters.
  7. Bland, uninteresting and unimpressive voice acting - though to be fair, the cartoon was made during the days when animators and other studio staff members, rather than actual actors, tended to provide the voices in cartoons.
  8. Some of the early Merrie Melodies shorts directed by Freleng relied heavily on the boy/girl/villain formula ("Beauty and the Beast", "How Do I Know It's Sunday" and "The Girl at the Ironing Board"), but not as much as Harman-Ising or Terrytoons in its early years.
  9. The era did get off to a rough start with Tom Palmer as director for both series. His shorts were lethargically paced and so abysmal that they had to be fixed in order for general viewing. "Buddy's Day Out" and "I've Got To Sing A Torch Song" were prime examples of the studio's terrible efforts. He was fired from the studio and left to work for Burt Gillett on the Rainbow Parade series produced by Van Beuren and distributed by RKO Pictures.
    • Despite Friz Freleng's best attempts at trying to fix the problems present in Tom Palmer's cartoons, however he failed miserably at doing so and therefore ended up doing just as bad of a job (if not worse) than Tom Palmer's original versions, since their final results ended up suffering from very inconsistent animation which is sometimes decent, but mostly mediocre, including the constant use of recycled and looped animation, presumably the result of Freleng trying to bring the cartoons up to length after cutting the bits of Palmer's footage that weren't usable.
  10. "Pettin' in the Park", while a good short, is ridiculously structured and miscredited for two reasons:
    • One: This short was rumored to have been Frank Tashlin's directorial debut.
    • Two: The first half resembles Freleng's bland cartoons, while the second half is ahead of its time (in resemblance to the late 30s Looney Tunes shorts).
  11. Many cartoons in this era have titles which are confusing or misleading, especially in the Merrie Melodies series, which is brought in as the result of the cartoons named after the song the cartoon in question is promoting. Examples:
    • "Buddy's Day Out": Despite the title, the cartoon isn't really about Buddy at all, and focuses far more on his baby brother Elmer (no relation to Elmer Fudd), who is never seen again in Buddy's future cartoons.
    • "Beauty and the Beast": Except for its title and the inclusion of a "beastly" character, the cartoon has absolutely nothing to do with the Beauty and the Beast fairytale, with the plot being more focused on a little toddler girl who gets frightened by a beastly creature when she dreams herself in Fairytale Land.
  12. The title cards of the cartoons are bland, generic, uncreative, and repetitive, as all of them just show the same black title card with the title and very few credits mentioning only the director, musician, and two animators.
  13. This era has absolutely zero impact on the Looney Tunes franchise as a whole as about nearly 99% elements (such as the appearances of Buddy and Beans, with the exception of Porky Pig's debut) are largely ignored in later Looney Tunes revivals. You can watch the Bosko, late-1935 to 1938, late 1940 to mid-1962 shorts and the 1979-2000 shorts, skipping the Buddy era (as well as the 1939-mid 1940, late 1962-1964, DePatie-Freleng, Format Films and Seven-Arts eras), and anything too important would not be missed.

Redeeming Qualities

  1. After this era, director Tex Avery arrived at the studio and changed the overall direction of the Looney Tunes series from being a pale Silly Symphonies wannabe into the zany-wacky slapstick comedy series the series is best known for, hence effectively saving and improving the series.
  2. This era still has some good shorts, especially those made before the Hays Code went into effect, like:
    • "Sittin' On A Backyard Fence"
    • "Buddy's Garage"
    • "Honeymoon Hotel" (which started the Warner Bros. color cartoons on a high note)
    • "Buddy's Beer Garden"
    • "I Haven't Got a Hat" (the era's most popular cartoon, due to it being Porky Pig's debut)
    • "My Green Fedora"
    • "The Country Mouse"
    • "Shake Your Powder Puff"
    • "Pop Goes Your Heart"
    • "Buddy & Towser"
    • "Those Beautiful Dames"
    • "Buddy's Bearcats"
    • "Buddy Steps Out"
    • "Buddy the Detective"
    • "Buddy The Gee Man" (which ended Buddy's career and the Looney Tunes label in this era on an okay note).
    • "Buddy's Theatre".
  3. Without this era, we wouldn't have one of the most memorable characters, Porky Pig.
  4. The animation improved from the Bosko era, thanks to ex-Disney animator, Jack King.
  5. Some of the character designs like (Cookie and Porky Pig) look pretty decent/okay at best.
  6. Even when most of the shorts are terrible, a clever joke or two is spotty at best (like the "And then knight fell..." joke for example.)
  7. After the permanent switch to color at the end of 1934, Freleng's gags became snappier and smart alecky than they were when he first started.
    • Speaking of switch to color, by the end of 1935, Walt Disney's exclusive contract with Technicolor ended, allowing all the other animation studios of the time e.g. MGM, Fleischer Studios, Walter Lantz Productions, etc. to use three-strip Technicolor color process which had all three hues (red, green and blue) intact, hence allowing the Merrie Melodies to have colorful visuals with far more natural and impressive color palettes.
    • Though Schlesinger's obligatory rule of including at least one song in the Merrie Melodies series still persists in the following late 1935-1938 era until at least early-1937, at least that by that time directors Tex Avery, Frank Tashlin and Friz Freleng knew how to cleverly use the songs to create humorous and entertaining cartoons unlike this era, which is clearly notable in later cartoons such as "I Love to Singa" (by Tex Avery), "I'm a Big Shot Now (by Friz Freleng), amongst others.

Reception

The Buddy era (late 1933-mid 1935) unlike the Bosko era as well as the later eras (even 1964-69 era), received an almost intense negative reception from critics, audiences, Looney Tunes fans, and animation buffs alike.

Most of the criticisms targeted at this era include the bland whitewashed-Bosko and Honey-nature of Buddy and Cookie respectively, the sluggish pacing in most shorts (especially in Tom Palmer's shorts), the era's Merrie Melodies cartoons each being loaded with their own plethora of problems (i.e. the poor grasp of the source material in "Country Boy", the annoyingly bland one-off characters (besides Porky Pig), too much dancing), etc.

Shorts with Their Own Pages

Trivia

  • Prior to the release of the HBO Max streaming service, "Buddy's Day Out", "I've Got to Sing a Torch Song", "Buddy's Beer Garden", "Sittin' on a Backyard Fence" (albeit unrestored), "Pettin' in the Park", "Buddy's Circus", and "I Haven't Got a Hat" are the only cartoons in this era that were restored for DVD releases.
    • After the launch of HBO Max, many of the Merrie Melodies shorts from this era were restored for the streaming service. This includes "Beauty and the Beast", "The Girl at the Ironing Board" (with its MPPDA approval seal and original ending cards restored), "Mr. and Mrs. Is the Name" (albeit with the incorrect Jester ending card) (removed), "Country Boy", "My Green Fedora", "Into Your Dance", "The Merry Old Soul", and "The Lady in Red" (with its original titles restored).
    • In addition, MeTV aired restored prints of six Merrie Melodies shorts from this era, being "Honeymoon Hotel", "Those Were Wonderful Days", "Why Do I Dream Those Dreams", "The Miller's Daughter", "Shake Your Powder Puff" and "Pop Goes Your Heart"; with "Those Were Wonderful Days", "Why Do I Dream Those Dreams", "The Miller's Daughter", and "Shake Your Powder Puff" being presented with their original ending cards intact.
    • As of currently, All of the remaining Buddy shorts along with "Goin' to Heaven on a Mule", "Rhythm in the Bow" and "Country Mouse" are the only shorts from this era that have yet to be restored.
  • All 1934 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts are still under copyright since Warner Bros. and United Artists (the latter of which acquired the Associated Artists Productions library in 1958) renewed copyrights for them throughout the early 1960s.
  • The Merrie Melodies series began using the color process in 1934. Two cartoons, "Honeymoon Hotel" and "Beauty and the Beast", were first produced in Cinecolor. The change was made permanent in "Those Beautiful Dames", which was produced in two-strip Technicolor.
  • The negative reception this era's major star character Buddy had for his blandness and boringness is later satirized and mocked in the Animaniacs season 1 finale episode "The Warners 65th Anniversary Special", where not only was Buddy's rough beginning behind the scenes during production of his debut cartoon "Buddy's Day Out" (as well as it's negative executive reaction following it) poked fun of, yet in each of his animated appearances in the show he constantly gets beaten with mallets by the Warner siblings Yakko, Wakko and Dot, signifying Warner Bros.' admitting of Buddy's failure of a character.

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