Bacall To Arms (1946) Cartoon Insanity

 

The title of the post is not a joke. Cartoon Insanity will be a series of posts throughout the upcoming future. 

There's this cartoon I've been thinking about for months. The animation is so rubbery and vivid that I need to talk about it.

It's called Bacall to Arms (1946) it's a Looney Tunes short planned by Bob Clampett, but was finished by Art Davis. As you can tell by what might be happening well...

Right away we get our first reference to Metro Goldwyn Mayer, one of the kings of Golden Age animation. What it this?! The lion is screeching while I guess his baby cub is biting onto his tail. What is he doing with his foot? This is definitely something Clampett or either Art Davis would approve.

 

Various other gags appear before the feature film starts in the movie theater. After that is some stellar frame shots of actress Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart.

This was an attempt to reenact To Have and Have Not (1944).

I like the colors scheme in these scenes. It's not the usual typical clean black and white colors we get in the actual real movies.

The best moments are The Wolf's reactions. He's in similar vain to the wolf in Red Hot Riding Hood (1943) directed by Tex Avery. I'm highly sure that Clampett and possibly Davis loved Avery's MGM cartoons. 

Incredible drawings!

 

I would've loved to see a fully length short film of these two characters, maybe even just the art style, that would've been cool and inspiring. 

There's this walk cycle I admire of Bacall with her cigar and there's flames in her heels.

We get to see more funny and janky movements of the wolf's reactions. I'm definitely thinking Rod Scribner did alot of these scenes.

When The Wolf acts more enthusiastic, there's these simple linear gradient backgrounds. 

 

And also a ton of smears.

While I love the comedic energy, the designs and the more toned-down scenes of the live action style characters, the rest of it is not as great or thrilling as I hoped it would be. This may be just a standard cartoon with not much cohesion but it's still got some funny moments, despite the re-used animation from another Looney Tunes short almost a decade prior.

Seriously it feels like the movie theater is packed with 1930s style characters and 1940s characters at the same time.