Word: clampett
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...with "Horton Hatches the Egg," the 1940 parable of an elephant who sits on a bird's egg for 51 weeks until, when the chick hatches, it has four legs and a trunk - an elephant bird. ("Horton" was made into a terrific 10min. cartoon directed by Warners' Bob Clampett. Both books are still in print, still enthralling young readers with their respective abettings or anarchy and fidelity...
...Working mostly with the directors of Warner Bros. cartoons - Clampett, Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Frank Tashlin - Geisel dreamed up a series of 3-5 min. animated comedies that taught soldiers proper behavior by showing them the very improper behavior and attitude of a certain recalcitrant draftee. SNAFU was a cocky doofus who looked like one of the Seven Dwarfs in uniform (say, Grumpy crossed with Dopey) and spoke with Bugs Bunny's voice (courtesy Mel Blanc). His refusal to obey the rules gets him into awful scrapes - he often ends up dead - and threatens to compromise the war effort...
...trophies, of the kind Geisel used for his Schaefer Beer ad, merge to form a swastika. A luscious babe SNAFU meets at a bar is seen noting his indiscretions on a tiny typewriter under the table; another babe's breasts are tape-recorder reels emblazoned with swastikas. "Booby Traps" (Clampett, January 44) has SNAFU cozying up to a lifesize doll; X-ray vision reveals her buttocks and boobs to be round bombs. The message: "If you are a boob, you will be trapped." (Geisel's authorship here is doubted by Cohen, accepted by others. But the cartoon is so funny...
...Haired Hare,? ?Yankee Doodle Daffy,? ?Duck Amuck,? ?Wabbit Twouble,? ?Fast and Furry-ous,? ?Feed the Kitty.? These titles of Warner Bros. cartoon shorts from the 40s and 50s don?t sound like the names of enduring works of cinematic art. But they are, as surely as Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett and Friz Freleng were among the great comedy directors; as surely as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are two of the deftest farceurs to grace the movie medium. Now, on a four-disc DVD set, ?Looney Tunes Golden Collection,? the magnificent menagerie lives again, pristinely restored. Any fan can argue...
...surely as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are two of the deftest farceurs to grace the movie medium. Now, on a four-disc DVD set, Looney Tunes Golden Collection ($64.92), the magnificent menagerie lives again, pristinely restored. Any fan can argue with the choices (Why not more Bob Clampett stuff? Where is Tex Avery!?) but not with the hours of cogent analysis and interviews. They show that what the front office dismissed as program filler and kid stuff was, in reality, the greatest sustained burst of American movie comedy. --By Richard Corliss