Tweetie Pie

Tweetie Pie
Short Information
Series:	Merrie Melodies (Blue Ribbon)
Production No.:	1026
Reel No.:	1534
Blue Ribbon No.:	1374
Starring	Tweety Pie (Freleng's design with yellow feathers) and Thomas, in their very first short together.
Directed by	I. Freleng
Story	Michael Maltese Tedd Pierce
Animation	Gerry Chiniquy Manuel Perez Ken Champin Virgil Ross
Layouts	Hawley Pratt
Backgrounds	Terry Lind
Voice Characterizations	Mel Blanc
Musical Direction	Carl Stalling
MPAA No.:	11104
Honors:	Academy Award Winner of 1947
Preceded by	The Birth of a Notion
Followed by	Rabbit Transit

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. 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.

Notes

• On early TV airings of the cartoon from the 70's or 80's, the original opening soundtrack was heard over the A.A.P and opening titles of the cartoon for some odd reason.
• The Rube-Goldberg esque contraption was previously used in "Trap Happy Porky", although unlike this cartoon where the trap fails in "Trap Happy Porky" the trap was successful (coincidentally both "Trap Happy Porky" and "Tweetie Pie" were written by Tedd Pierce).
• The "kiss the wittow birdie" scenario of Sylvester asked to kiss Tweety, only to eat the bird and get forced to spit it out would be re-used for two more times; "Gift Wrapped" (1952) and "Catty Cornered" (1953).
• In this cartoon, Sylvester is called "Thomas", a reference of Tom Cat from MGM's Tom & Jerry, one of WB's rivals at the time. In 1948 the name was changed to Sylvester (beginning from the cartoon "Scaredy Cat"), presumably to avoid a lawsuit from MGM.
• This is the first cartoon Tweety has feathers and is defined as a canary. Prior to that, Tweety was pink, naked (no feathers) and is defined as a baby bird of an unknown bird species. According to Bob Clampett in the documentary film Bugs Bunny Superstar, Tweety was given feathers to satisfy censors who objected his featherless appearance which was considered "too naked".
• Although not a direct remake, most of the cartoon's concept were derived from The Cagey Canary, a 1941 one-shot Merrie Melodies cartoon planned by Tex Avery and finished by Bob Clampett, also featuring another cat-and-canary pairing with a similar premise (Coincidentally both "Tweetie Pie" and "The Cagey Canary" were written by Michael Maltese).
• Sylvester doesn't speak in this short, the other Tweety shorts where Sylvester is mute are "Bad Ol' Putty Tat", "Putty Tat Trouble" and "Tree Cornered Tweety".
• Although the original titles have not yet been restored for DVD, historians have found black and white copies of the original titles.

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. 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".

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

v - e - d
1940s Life with Feathers • Peck Up Your Troubles 1950s Home, Tweet Home 1960s The Pied Piper of Guadalupe 1970s-present

v - e - d
1940s 1950s 1960s "Hyde and Go Tweet" (1960) 1970s-present