Saturday, June 21, 2008

Whatever Happened to Buddy?

Regardless of what you may think of Animaniacs, if you are a Looney Tunes fan you have to admit that their parody of Buddy cartoons was pretty funny. In a mock "65th anniversary" retrospective, we learn that that Yakko, Dot and Wakko got their start as co-stars in Buddy cartoons in the 1930s (we also learn what Buddy has been up to in the years since his retirement from WB cartoons).




Of course, making it all the funnier is knowing there is actually a kernel of truth behind the spoof. When the Warner Bros. studio bigshots saw the first Buddy cartoon (1933's "Buddy's Day Out") they deemed it to be so poor the studio originally refused to release it. This left producer Leon Schlesinger scrambling to have Friz Freleng salvage what he could from this trainwreck. Someone has posted the cartoon to DailyMotion (complete with original titles even!). Saying that it might just be a cure for insomnia isn't too far off the mark.

7 comments:

ramapith said...

Ever wonder why Buddy's look changed so dramatically between his debut and BUDDY'S BEER GARDEN?

Hmm... http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2wf3_dud-leaves-home_fun

Anonymous said...

I used to think that Buddy was made up in that episode.

James E. Daniels said...

That's one thing the people working on these early 90's series did great. Including the studio's history into various cartoons and spoofs.
I can say that both Tiny Toons and Animaniacs helped me along in my quest of learning all that I could about the Looney Tunes cartoons.
Up here in Canada, we never had Nick at Nite or Cartoon Network or any other channels that played the classic shorts (pre 1950s) so whatever information these modern shows gave us was a big help.

ramapith said...

Oh, and might I mention those original titles are DAMN rare? Nick ran this with full titles all of *once*.

Brian Cruz's original title page is missing a little info on the Buddy shorts. BUDDY'S DAY OUT had the one-time-only titles we see here. BEER GARDEN and SHOWBOAT had a different title card with Buddy and Cookie alone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWGu4sTt4Ec
It's awhile since I've seen it, but I think BUDDY THE GOB started the more commonly seen titles with Buddy alone on stage.

Completing these nit-picky facts about a character who usually bores me, at least Nick's version of the full-titles BEER GARDEN used Frank Marsales' version of "Whistle and Blow Your Blues Away" as the opening theme, thus reusing it for the only time in a non-Harman/Ising short.

Thad said...

If the Animaniacs weren't in that, it'd have been excellent.

Anonymous said...

Some fan.
Anyway, I thought this was one of the better episodes of the show and I like what happened to Buddy at the end of this episode.

Martin Juneau said...

I like when they spoof a historical context about Warner Bros. cartoons in these shows. Tiny Toons did that too but with Bosko with a great sense of perfection and professionnalism. That's help me when i start to caring to the classic WB cartoons despite the hardest to have the post-48's cartoons.

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