Nothing much here, and that’s the truth. But I know people are out there who, like me, love obscene Famous Studios shorts like Pleased to Eat You just for the sake of it, and it’s worth posting because it’s buy that “soft” director Myron Waldman. He did gratuitously violent cartoons such as Can You Take It, Teacher’s Pest, and Herman the Cat-toonist, or ones that end with characters dying, like this one, Cad and Caddy, Winner by a Hare, and The Oily Bird when he was on a break from directing soft Hunky & Spunky and Casper pictures. (Actually, see There’s Good Boos Tonight for an exception…)
Some of the animation timing/phrasing is truly bizarre in this cartoon; it’s as though Waldman was trying to emulate some of the tricks in the later Tashlin shorts at Warners, though not very successfully. (Similar phrasing tricks are in Teacher’s Pest.) The cleanup here is pretty poor, an unfortunate problem at Famous Studios during this era. Enjoy ?
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Myron Waldman as director combined with a Larz Bourne story equals sure-fire misguided crappatude — and in this case, misguided, repetative crapatude, with an end gag that Waldman (with Bill Turner and Larry Riley as writers) had used just two months earlier in the Screen Song, “Jingle Jangle Jungle”.
Aside from the animation stiffening up, the loss of writers from the mid-40s and earlier, like Turner, Riley and even Otto Mesmer, and replacement with people like Bourne (still a decade away from his finest — or at least his most original work — on Deputy Dawg and two decades away from his work on Scooby Doo) was another reason Famous’ cartoons took a header into the shallow end of the pool in the early 1950s. No wonder Izzy Sparber was writing Art Davis by 1952 trying to track down Sid Marcus to offer him a job in the story department.
They got Sid Marcus to play a lot of the studio’s dopey characters.
Sid Raymond really was the Pinto Colvig of the East coast. Both had an endearing voice characterization, but neither were very versatile (being the same dopey, goofy voices for every character they voice. Colvig always did his Goofy voice, while Raymond always did his Katnip/Baby Huey voice).
As for the cartoon itself, it’s indeed nothing more than a fun time killer as you basically stated. :)
Colvig could do other voices besides his “Goofy” voice, like Practical Pig and Grumpy.
WOW – I haven’t seen this short since the ’80s!!
This cartoon could have been much better than what it is now – a 6-minute time-killer. Larz Bourne wasn’t the greatest storyman IMHO, but his work at Terrytoons was certainly better. The animation was decent (per usual for an early 50s FAMOUS toon) but what are pigs and porcupines doing in the jungle?!?