The short features the debut of Tweety, originally named Orson until his second cartoon, who delivers the line that would become his catchphrase: "I tawt I taw a puddy tat!"[3]
Plot
Two cats, Babbit and Catstello, are looking for food to alleviate their hunger. Babbit gets a ladder when they see a bird (Tweety) on top of a frail tree. Catstello is at first reluctant, but manages to go up the ladder. As Babbit demands his partner to "give me the bird," followed by Catstello breaking the fourth wall and telling the audience, "If the Hays Office would only let me, I'd give him the 'boid,' all right!" (a reference to giving the middle finger), Catstello experiences "heightrophobia" and falls down the ladder after failing to catch Tweety from his nest. Babbit then puts Catstello in the following attempts to catch the bird to only end in vain:
First he tries to launch Babbit in the air with the use of jack-in-the-box springs. When Tweety first encounters Castello, he speaks to the audience in surprise ("I tawt I taw a putty tat!") before violently attacking him, culminating in him blowing the cat up with a stick of dynamite.
Babbit's next plan is to send the demotivated Catstello up the tree with the use of a TNT barrel. However, Catstello careens off course and crashes onto the roof of a farmhouse before hanging upside down on a wire. Tweety then plays "This Little Pitty" with his foot, causing him to fall. He attempts "save" the cat by giving him a rope tied to an anvil, which falls off the roof and crash lands onto Catsello deep into the ground.
Finally, Babbit constructs a makeshift glider for Castello that he can use to swoop down and catch the bird, but Tweety reports this as an air raid, and Catstello is shot down. Catsello's descent jump cuts between him and a shot of a pitchfork, alluding to his potential fate. But Catstello halts midair and safely lands on Babbit.
Tweety walks by acting as an air raid warden and demanding a "total bwackout", and just as Babbit and Catstello are about to catch him, the bird screams at the cats to turn out the lights.
The short is notably the first cartoon to feature the character Tweety, who would later appear in a series of shorts paired with Friz Freleng's Sylvester the Cat.
Tweety was originally referred to as "Orson" during the production of this cartoon, and was depicted as an aggressive baby bird in his first three appearances rather than the timid yellow canary he's better known as. According to Bob Clampett, Tweety's initial design was based on the director's baby pictures,[4] and that his characterization was based on Red Skelton's character "Junior the Mean Widdle Kid."[5]
Tweety's design was previously used for different baby bird in one of Clampett's previous shorts, Wacky Blackout (1942).
The short is also the first to feature the characters Babbit and Catstello, based on the real-life comedic duo Abbott and Costello. Babbit and Catstello would later reappear in three more cartoons without Tweety, those being Tale of Two Mice (1945), Hollywood Canine Canteen (1946) and The Mouse-Merized Cat (1946). These subsequent appearances have the characters portrayed as mice instead, and in one occasion as dogs.
The cartoon contains a notable jab at the movie industry's self-censorship bureau. When Babbit demands Catstello to bring him the bird, Catstello breaks the fourth wall by telling the audience "If the Hays Office would only let me, I'd give him the 'boid,' all right!", which is a not so subtle reference to the middle finger.
The short was reissued as a Blue Ribbon cartoon on July 31, 1948.[6] This cartoon is also currently in the public domain as United Artists did not renew its copyright in 1970.
↑ Beck, Jerry; Friedwald, Will (1989). Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons. Henry Holt and Co. p.135. ISBN0-8050-0894-2.
↑ Beck, Jerry (1991). I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat: Fifty Years of Sylvester and Tweety. New York: Henry Holt and Co. p.35. ISBN0-8050-1644-9.
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