TEX AVERY: SCREWBALL CLASSICS, VOLUME 2 (MGM, 1949-54) Warner Archive

Animator, Chuck Jones once reflected that to have met fellow animator, Tex Avery in his youth, even at a glance, he was acutely aware he was in the presence of some rare genius at play. Indeed, Avery, who became legendary for establishing the ‘in-house’ style of Leon Schlesinger’s Merry Melodies at Warner Bros. before migrating over to MGM for an even more ribald and glorious tenure of animated mayhem, was to illustrate a unique and farcical bent on the art of animation. What Avery’s Metro tenure lacked in creating iconic characters like a Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck (Droopy, likely his most enduring creation under Leo’s banner), his outings more than made up for with a bizarre wit, capable of finding the absolute insanity in life, and exaggerating it to the nth degree. Characters in a Tex Avery short are drawn from life, writ on a larger palette for missed opportunities, fraud and folly, but otherwise, finding their home in our hearts as an extension of ourselves and our frustrations with life itself; the hunter, chronically unable to catch anything, except maybe, a cold, the opera singer never to finish his aria as he comes under siege from a con artist with a magical baton, or the sex-starved wolf, unable to exert his passion on the unwilling sexpot, always just a little beyond his reach. Forget political correctness. Yes, let’s. Tex Avery speaks to a level of unhinged and thoroughly progressive joy to be had from celebrating the politically incorrect in all its earthly pitfalls and pursuits. For this, he ought to be justly celebrated and crowned the clown prince of animation, irrefutably, as one of the most perceptive and prolific philosophers of life.

There was nothing in Avery’s early conservative start to suggest he had such wonderfully nutty chaos in mind. And truly, his introduction to the art of animation ought never have allowed him access, much less a bequest of the keys to its kingdom. But it was Avery who first saw the ‘promised land’ in what animation could be, going well beyond the Disney-fied style – stripped of all sentimentality and infused with an economy, acerbity, and causticness that made his cartoons truly delightful and very adult fare. Sex is very much a part of Avery’s milieu, though ironically, not violence. For although Avery allows for more than his fair share of exploding dynamite, gunshots through the head and hands of his protagonists, and, otherwise dismembering of various body parts in one scene, only to be miraculously reassembled in the next, the exercise is not in support of violence as a means for resolving conflict, but rather to illustrate a counterpoint: that violence, even in its crudest form, serves absolutely no purpose, except to plague its chronically resuscitated victims to carry on, hopefully to have learned from their prior mistakes.  Avery’s protagonists speak to humanity’s collective vexation with what was then laughingly coined as ‘the modern world’. That the purveyors of such discontentment frequently hail from the animal kingdom is in keeping with the long-standing tradition of grafting human perception and reactions onto the furry sect. Yet, the animals in a Tex Avery cartoon are ironically more human than most humans, and, all too prone to the pitfalls with which human beings are far too readily acquainted. In short, we can definitely relate to Avery’s frequently frazzled kitty, unable to satisfy his appetite with a fresh canary, or, disgusted by his human counterparts in the bustling big city, desiring nothing more than to escape our mad noise with a trip to the moon. We feel for these little beasts because, at their core, they represent the human condition to a tee. Tex Avery – humanitarian?!?

The 21 shorts corralled together for Warner Archive’s Tex Avery: Screwball Classics Volume 2 - Little Rural Riding Hood, The Cuckoo Clock, Magical Maestro, One Cab’s Family, Cat That Hated People, Doggone Tired, The Flea Circus, Field And Scream, The First Bad Man, Out Foxed, Droopy’s Double Trouble, Three Little Pups, Drag-a-long Droopy, Homesteader Droopy, Dixieland Droopy, Counterfeit Cat, Ventriloquist Cat, House Of Tomorrow, Car Of Tomorrow, Tv Of Tomorrow, Farm Of Tomorrow – are perhaps an even more inspired crop from the kook fringe, and, represent some of the most widely viewed and fondly recalled of Avery’s venerated vintage. For those who are counting, between the two collections, we now have 40 of Avery’s 67 cartoons on Blu-ray. Here’s to hoping, WAC is hard at work remastering the remaining 27 shorts for a third and final volume. All of the shorts in Volume 2 are preceded by a disclaimer, basically to condemn racial/sexual stereotypes of the day before unleashing precisely the reasons why such profiles continue to endure to this day – because at some base level in human reflection, they still fit and resonate with an audience. In Little Rural Riding Hood (1949), something of a repurposing of Red-Hot Riding Hood, made 6 years earlier, we find a countrified wolf forsaking a backwoods babe for a leggy nightclub chanteuse, thwarted in his attempts to woo her by his more aristocratic cousin, himself reduced to cat-calling once he lays eyes on the bumpkin from back home.  In The Cuckoo Clock (1950), a riff on Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven, a fatigued kitty decides to murder the loony bird taking refuge in a time piece to restore his own sanity on the brink of implosion – with, predictably, disastrous results. In Magical Maestro, Avery brings back ‘Spike’, a.k.a., ‘Butch’ the bulldog, this time as Poochini, a tenor harassed by a magician who chronically interrupts his performance by exorcising a gamut of slight-of-hand tricks. One Cab's Family (1952) is an eloquent reminder the ‘generation gap’ will never be bridged as a yellow taxi becomes appalled to discover his young son desires a future as a racing car. From 1948, we get The Cat that Hated People, a puckered puss, soon to discover fleeing earth’s citizenry with a trip to the moon results in even more chaotic behaviors, thinly reminiscent of Bob Clampett's Porky in Wackyland (1938). Doggone Tired (1949) inveigles a naïve hunting dog with a wily rabbit, determined to keep him up all night so he will be ill-prepared for the rabbit hunt the following morning.  And then, there is The Flea Circus (1954), a charming tale of a Pagliacci-styled clown, Francois, desperately in love with a sexy chorine, Fifi, whose heart he wins, and then proceeds to populate the circus with their offspring.

In Field and Scream (1955), a poor hunter is chronically afflicted by bad luck. This poor bugger can’t catch anything!  Meanwhile, in The First Bad Man (also, 1955), we meet the original dishonest caveman from prehistoric Dallas, Texas. Avery’s most enduring – and arguably, endearing creation – Droopy, is honored with six shorts in Vol. 2, beginning with 1949’s Out-Foxed, in which Droopy competes with other dogs for a nice juicy steak by capturing the wily, but ultimately unattainable, Reginald Fox. In 1951’s Droopy's Double Trouble we meet ‘Drippy’ – Droopy’s twin brother, who proceeds to wallop the ever-unsuspecting Spike, simply to adhere to a rule of the house – ‘no strangers allowed’.  In Three Little Pups (1953) Droopy and his silent brothers, Snoopy and Loopy stay two-steps ahead of the city dog catcher. 1954 sees Droopy go west in two shorts – the first, Drag-a-long Droopy as a sheep herder in search of love, and, in Homesteader Droopy, aiming to set up house with his wife and son. Also, from 1954, Dixieland Droopy, the lovable mutt recast as John Irving Pettybone, a dog whose love of Dixieland music lands him in plenty of hot water. Spike makes a welcomed return in two shorts, the first, The Counterfeit Cat (1949), followed by The Ventriloquist Cat (1950). In both, Spike is, again, the unwitting victim of a wily feline – in the first, attempting to steal and eat the canary Spike has been sworn to protect by impersonating another dog, and in the second, with the same kitty projecting its voice onto various creatures and inanimate objects to befuddle Spike, with predictably hilarious results. Volume 2 concludes with four shorts devoted to the House, Car, TV and Farm of Tomorrow (1949, ’51, ’53, ‘54 respectively). These shorts are long on narration, but offer some truly outstanding gags besides.

I have read a lot of reviews of Tex Avery: Screwball Classics Volume 2, claiming the Warner Archive (WAC) has not done its due diligence in ‘restoring’ these shorts to their former glory. In the first place, a devastating fire at George Eastman House in the mid-1970’s destroyed all hope of ever remastering from original camera negatives. WAC has therefore gone the next available route and produced new 4K hi-def masters from surviving first generation masters. The results are nothing short of stunning, with a richly saturated color palette and razor-sharp imagery that will surely not disappoint. Fair enough, there are still many examples of baked-in, age-related damage and minute flicker. Also, true, a general loss of film grain. These shorts look less to have been derived from ‘film-based’ elements. That said, they look light-years better than in the past, and certainly, mark a quantum leap from any previous home video incarnation.  While not ‘perfect’ – they are more than acceptable, and, in most cases, much more than that! The 2.0 DTS mono is nicely resolved with good tonal separation and overall clarity, minus hiss and pop. I think a lot of reviews have misjudged the quality here, and, in Magical Maestro, Avery even had the foresight to make fun of audience’s expectations for ‘perfection’ in their theatrical viewing experience back then, presenting what appears to be an errant hair caught in the camera lens, wiggling at the bottom of the frame until Spike reaches over and plucks it free to alleviate its distraction for the rest of us. Now, that’s funny! Best of all, WAC has included a nearly hour-long documentary on Tex Avery, produced in 1988, that offers immeasurable insight into Avery’s youth and tenure at MGM. Bottom line: you simply cannot call yourself an animation aficionado and not own a copy of both volumes of Avery’s immensely satisfying, escapist and wildly silly shorts. These are a master class. Permit us to worship – and laugh, out loud. Boy, could the world use a good laugh these days! Zany does not begin to describe what’s here! So, indulge and be very glad that you did. Very – very – highly recommended.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

Overall 5+

VIDEO/AUDIO

4

EXTRAS

1