Tweetie Pie is a 1947 Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Friz Freleng. It was the first cartoon to pair Tweety and Sylvester, and also the first Warner Bros. short to earn an Oscar for Best Animated Short.[4] It was later re-released as a Blue Ribbon reissue in 1955.
Plot[]
Sylvester (known as Thomas in this cartoon) captures Tweety, whom he finds outside in the snow, getting warm by a cigar. The cat's mistress, an unseen owner, saves the bird from being eaten by the cat, whom she promptly reprimands.
Tweety is brought inside, and the mistress warns Thomas not to bother the bird. Ignoring this command, Thomas initiates a series of failed attempts to get Tweety from his cage, each ending in a noisy crash bringing the lady of the house to whack Thomas with a broom, and then finally, throw him out.
The cat tries to get back into the house through the chimney. Tweety puts wood in the fireplace, pours gasoline on it and lights it. The phoom sends Thomas flying right back up the chimney and into a bucket of frozen water.
However, Thomas gets back in the house via a window in the basement and creates a Rube Goldberg-esque trap to capture Tweety, which of course, backfires and injures him instead. Finally, Thomas tries to capture Tweety by running up to the attic and sawing a hole around Tweety's cage, but he ends up causing the entire inner ceiling to collapse (sans Tweety's cage, which is being held in place by a beam). The faux pas creates such a racket that Thomas is sure the mistress will come downstairs and wallop him, and so, he takes her broom, breaks it in half, and tosses the pieces into the fire. This proves to be a bad move, as he finds himself being walloped on the head repeatedly with a shovel...by Tweety.
Production[]
Development[]
- Bob Clampett was working on a fourth Tweety episode in which Tweety was going to be paired with Friz Freleng's unnamed cat Sylvester. The project was left sitting when Clampett left for reasons unknown. Eddie Selzer wanted the woodpecker from "Peck Up Your Troubles" to be paired with Sylvester again, but when Freleng wanted to replace the woodpecker with Tweety, Selzer objected and Freleng threatened to quit. Eddie apologized to Friz later that evening and later allowed Tweety to be used.[5] This was a wise decision for two reasons:
- Warner Brothers didn't lose a talented director like Friz Freleng.
- Tweetie Pie, the very 1st Tweety/Sylvester cartoon, went on to win Warner Brothers' 1st Academy Award For Best Short Film (1947), with the duo proving to be one of the most endearing of Looney Tunes pairs, alongside other pairs such as Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck and Porky Pig. After this cartoon, Tweety and Sylvester would be permanently paired up until 1964. Even so, Sylvester appeared in many cartoons without Tweety, as Tweety appeared in only 42 cartoons between 1942-64 and Sylvester appeared in 103 from 1945-69, excluding his prototypes. Tweety did appear in cameos without Sylvester in the 1954 cartoon "No Barking".[6]
Gallery[]
Availability[]
Tweetie Pie is available in its Blue Ribbon reissue on these video sets:
- DVD - Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2, Disc Three
- DVD - Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection: Volume 2
- DVD - TCM Academy Award-Winning Classic Cartoons (Barnes & Noble Exclusive)
- DVD - Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Academy Awards Animation Collection
- DVD - Looney Tunes Super Stars' Tweety & Sylvester: Feline Fwenzy
- Blu-Ray/DVD - Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 1
- DVD - Looney Tunes Showcase: Volume 1
- DVD - Tweety Pie and Friends
- VHS - The Best Of Bugs Bunny and Friends
- VHS - Little Tweety And Little Inki Cartoon Festival Featuring "I Taw A Putty Tat"
- VHS - Cartoon Moviestars: Tweety and Sylvester
- Laserdisc - The Golden Age of Looney Tunes Volume 1
- VHS - Looney Tunes The Collectors Edition Volume 15: A Battle of Wits
References[]
- ↑ http://bloglarry.blogspot.com/2006/06/wb-cartoon-credit-weirdness.html
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn27c5lrr7c
- ↑ Ramapith http://ramapithblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/i-taut-i-taw-new-posts-coming.html
- ↑ https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1948
- ↑ https://books.google.com/books?id=1Y83AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=freleng+threatened+to+quit&source=bl&ots=wpwz0FGutA&sig=ER6wHV8rwwvaaDhOINskJGhd08o&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj-6tiKv-TTAhUT0GMKHfXbDLQQ6AEIODAD#v=onepage&q=freleng%20threatened%20to%20quit&f=false The Noble Approach, By Tod Polson
- ↑ Sperling, Millner, and Warner (1998), p. 187-188.
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