The Lyin' Mouse

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The Lyin' Mouse
Blue Ribbon reissue card.jpg
Blue Ribbon reissue card
Directed by I. Freleng
Story by Tedd Pierce
Produced by Leon Schlesinger
Starring Mel Blanc (Cat and Lion roaring, uncredited)
Billy Bletcher (Lion and Cat humming, uncredited)
Bernice Hansen (Mouse, uncredited)
Edited by Treg Brown (uncredited)
Music by Carl W. Stalling
Animation by Ken Harris
A.C. Gamer (effects, uncredited)
Layouts byGriff Jay (uncredited)
Backgrounds byArt Loomer (uncredited)
Color process Technicolor
Production
company
Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures
The Vitaphone Corporation
Release dates
  • October 16, 1937 (1937-10-16)(original release)
  • December 22, 1945 (1945-12-22)(Blue Ribbon reissue)
Running time
7 minutes
LanguageEnglish

The Lyin' Mouse is a 1937 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Friz Freleng. [1] The short was released on October 16, 1937. [2]

Contents

Plot

A grey mouse is trying to free himself from a trap when a cat arrives. Desperate to avoid getting eaten, the rodent asks if the feline has ever heard the story of The Lion and The Mouse. When the cat angrily replies that he never heard of it, the mouse tells the tale about a ferocious lion in the jungle, who scares all of the animals whenever he goes.

Also in the story is a brown mouse, which has a horn that imitates the lion’s roar, and has some fun with it until the golden big cat catches him in the act. The mouse pleads for his life, and the lion agrees not to eat him after being distracted by bigger catches. But those are actually traps set by the Frank Cluck expedition – the lion manages to avoid the first trap (a fake roasted chicken), but he falls for the second (a tied-up lamb), and soon finds himself in a circus lion taming act, where not only does the tamer put his head inside the felid’s mouth, but the lion also puts his own head in the tamer’s mouth.

After performing, the lion is locked in a cage, in deep sorrow due to his fate. But that night, the brown mouse happens by and chews a lion-shaped hole in the cage, setting the big cat free – and that is where the story ends. The cat is moved and apologetically releases the mouse. Upon release, just before entering his hole, the mouse yells one last word: “Sucker!” To which the cat responds by lunging at the rodent, but he misses and bumps into the wall. As the cartoon ends, the feline shrugs and tells the audience: “Well, can you imagine that?”

Home media

Notes

References

  1. Beck, Jerry; Friedwald, Will (1989). Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons. Henry Holt and Co. p. 63. ISBN   0-8050-0894-2.
  2. Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books. pp. 104–106. ISBN   0-8160-3831-7 . Retrieved June 6, 2020.