![]() The Eskimo dog from earlier is still running.ġ0. An apology by the theater for the pun is shown.ĩ. Then, at a local pond where many frogs reside, the narrator says, “Here, we have a close-up of a frog croaking.” The frog then takes out a pistol and commits suicide by shooting itself in the head. Back into the United States, a bobcat prepares to pounce on, and eat a cute baby quail, but he can’t bring himself to do it.Ĩ. The narrator then tells about how happy Eskimo dogs are living in Alaska, except for one who wants to go to California.ħ. The polar bear says “I don’t care what you say, I’m cold”.Ħ. In Alaska the narrator tells how a polar bear’s thick coat and layer of fat keeps him warm during the harsh winter climates. The narrator then describes natural rock formations, one of which looks like a mouth with a gold tooth.ĥ. A ranger spots one, and goes all the way to pick it up only to smoke it himself.Ĥ. The narrator tells of how careless people often forget to put out their cigarettes or cigars, which could lead to forest fires. A scoutmaster takes his troops to a washroom at a gas station. As the narrator says, “Hello, deer!”, the deer gets up on its hind legs and says, “Hello big boy!” in a Katherine Hepburn impression.ģ. A man gives a bear a sandwich then the bear pounds the man on the head and says “Listen, stupid! Can’t you read!?” pointing to a “Do not feed the bears” sign.Ģ. He talks about how tourists always feeding the wildlife. He starts with Yosemite National Park in California. (He occasionally supplied a big booming laugh to characters in his cartoons, like the hippo in the audience in "Hamateur Night," 1939.) Other Avery films like this, filled with spot gags, include "Detouring America," "Land of the Midnight Fun," "Screwball Football," "Holiday Highlights," and "Wacky Wildlife.Cross Country Detours is a 1940 Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Tex Avery.Ī narrator talks about the wonders of nature in the USA ġ. In the Grand Canyon "echo" sequence, I believe the tourist is a caricature of Tex Avery himself and that Avery supplies the voice for the character. Also, the cartoon boasts remarkably detailed background paintings of such landmarks as Yosemite Park, Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon and, in one sequence showing beavers at work, Hoover Dam. As a masterpiece of rotoscoped animation (in which the drawings are traced over live-action movements), this sequence should be celebrated, never mind that it's also funny and pretty risqué for the era. animation unit, there was black-and-white live-action footage of a woman executing the movements of a striptease filmed expressly for use in rotoscoping the drawings for this segment. the bobcat having a meltdown or, most famously, the lizard "shedding its skin" by doing a striptease, to the tune of "It Had to Be You." In one of the documentaries I've seen on the Warner Bros. (E.g., the polar bear stuck on a floating slab of ice taking issue with the narrator's insistence on how "warm" the bear is.) The animals are very realistically drawn and animated, even when they behave out of character, e.g. They often involve interaction between the syrupy narrator and the animals being observed, who speak up to counter the narrator's invariably smug assumptions. cartoons, especially the older ones, pre-1947.) The gags tend to be more clever than funny. (The segments involving the dog headed from Alaska to California and leading up to the Redwoods finale all count as one gag.) One of the gag segments involves a frog "croaking" (figure it out) and has been cut from TV prints of this. This cartoon focuses on sights and sounds in America's national parks in the west and up north (Alaska). These cartoons use a narrator who sounds exactly like the kind of narrator such films used (and may indeed have been one of them). Merrie Melodies cartoon, "Cross Country Detours" (1940), is one of a number of Tex Avery-directed animated parodies of the kind of all-encompassing travelogue and documentary short that the studios used to turn out for theaters to show with their movies back in the golden age of Hollywood.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |