One Froggy Evening

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One Froggy Evening is an approximately seven-minute long Technicolor animated short film written by Michael Maltese and directed by Chuck Jones. The short was released on December 31, 1955 as part of Warner Brothers' Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. The film is at IMDb currently ranked as the second best short movie ever.

1 Story
2 Trivia
3 Songs featured
4 External links

[edit] Story

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

A mid-1950s construction worker involved in the demolition of an 1892 building finds a box inside a cornerstone. He opens it to reveal a singing, dancing frog, complete with top hat and cane. The man tries exploiting the frog's talents for money, but as it turns out, it won't perform in front of anyone else. For the rest of the cartoon, the man frantically tries to demonstrate the frog's abilities to the outside world, all to no avail. After his stay in an asylum, we see the haggard man dejectedly hiding the box in a building that's under construction. In the year 2056, the building is demolished by futuristic ray guns, and the box with the frog is discovered yet again, starting the process all over.

The cartoon has no spoken dialog, in fact no vocals at all, except by the frog, otherwise relying on pantomime and other visuals, sound effects, and music: mostly songs from the ragtime and early Tin Pan Alley era, with a dash of Opera showing the frog's versatility; along with one new song written for the cartoon "The Michigan Rag", a parody of pop-rag songs of the era.

[edit] Trivia

The film is included in the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2 DVD box set (Disc 4), along with an Audio commentary, optional music-only audio track (only the instrumental, not the vocal), and a making-of documentary, It Hopped One Night: A Look at "One Froggy Evening".

Some critics and observers regard this cartoon short as the finest ever made. Steven Spielberg, in the PBS Chuck Jones biography Extremes & Inbetweens: A Life In Animation, called One Froggy Evening "the Citizen Kane of animated film".

The frog had no name when the cartoon was made, but Chuck Jones later named him Michigan J. Frog after the original song. The character became the mascot of The WB television network in the 1990s. In a clip shown in the DVD specials for Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Jones states that he started calling the character "Michigan Frog" in the 1970s. During an interview by a writer named Jay Cox, Jones decided to adopt "J" as the Frog's middle initial, after the interviewer's name.

The singer was uncredited and for years his identity was shrouded in some degree of mystery. Various names have been proposed in the past. The Looney Tunes Golden Collection unequivocally credits the vocals to baritone Bill Roberts, a nightclub entertainer in Los Angeles in the 1950s.

The DVD also points out that the names of the buildings in the picture, as shown on the various cornerstones, are names of Warner production people on the cartoon.

On television airings intended for children, the "Free Beer" sign outside the theater is usually edited out. This makes it seem as though the raucous audience was enticed by "Free Admission."

Various commentors have noted that several of the songs performed by the frog were written after he was presumably sealed into the cornerstone, dated 1892.

A production short-cut can be observed in the final scene, in which the futuristic demolition worker finds the frog in the box. The wide shot shows a smooth, concrete background, while the close-up shot is identical to the first scene in the cartoon, with the rubble of bricks seen in the background.

Some sources (including one of the DVD commentators) say that only the one man can actually hear the frog, which raises the question of the man's mental state (to say nothing of the mental state of the audience). However, in one scene near the end, a policeman actually overhears the frog singing, in a public park. By the time the officer finds the apparent source, of course the frog has stopped. When the haggard man points to the frog as the source of the music, the policeman assumes the man is mentally ill.

The story may have been inspired by the real-life tale of Old Rip, a horned toad who apparently survived 31 years sealed in the cornerstone of the courthouse in Eastland, Texas. The cornerstones in both cases had been laid in the 1890s. There are also connections to African myths.

The performing style of the frog is at least in part a tribute to ragtime era greats such as Bert Williams, who was known for sporting a top hat and cane, and performing the type of flamboyant, high-kick dance steps demonstrated by the frog in Hello! Ma Baby.

Chuck Jones would later reprise Michigan J. Frog in a new cartoon entitled Another Froggy Evening (1995).

In 2003 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.