Bad Ol' Putty Tat
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| Bad Ol' Putty Tat
Merrie Melodies / Sylvester and Tweety series |
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|---|---|
| Directed by | Friz Freleng |
| Story by | Tedd Pierce |
| Voices by | Mel Blanc |
| Music by | Carl Stalling |
| Animation by | Virgil Ross Ken Champin Gerry Chiniquy |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures |
| Release date(s) | July 25, 1949 |
| Color process | Technicolor |
| Running time | 7 min, 10 sec (one reel) |
| IMDb profile | |
Bad Ol' Putty Tat is a 1949 animated cartoon released by Warner Bros. starring Tweety Bird and directed by Friz Freleng. Tweety must evade the titular "puddy tat," Sylvester the Cat, who is once again in hot pursuit of Tweety, just so that he can eat him for his own personal snack. It provides an anomaly in the Sylvester & Tweety pairings: In this one, Tweety provides almost all the dialogue, and then mainly to the audience. Tweety's voice is performed by Mel Blanc, who also screams out Sylvester's pain in mid-film. The story was written by Tedd Pierce, who also was assumed to have appeared (albeit in caricature from an earlier Warners cartoon) here.
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[edit] Plot
The film begins with a shot of Tweety's house, at the top of a tall wooden pole, with a sign reading "DO NOT DISTURB." We can assume that this pole is difficult to climb, not only because of its sheer height, but also due to the barbed wire covering it. The camera then is transferred to Sylvester, who has presumably tried to climb despite the barbed wire. He is bemoaning his misfortune in silence and heavily bandaged.
Sylvester then pops his head out of the bush in the garden of the nearby human dwelling and smiling, for he has a fresh plan to obtain Tweety Bird. His plan's nature soon becomes evident, as he begins to vociferously construct a trampoline next to the pole (from which the barbed wire has been removed, except for about the last four or five feet from the top of Tweety's pole). Briefly, the camera shows Tweety still sound asleep, despite the enemy cat's ferocious hammering. Cut back to Sylvester, who gleefully throws his hammer away and hops onto his new-fangled contraption. BVVV-VT ... BVVV-VT ... BVVV-VT ... Sylvester jumps higher and higher every time. Tweety awakes with a start and says his catch phrase, “I tawt I taw a putty tat!” Then, simply to ensure he’s actually dealing with a predator, the little bird walks to his window, but no, he has not been dreaming; Sylvester's face is there, greedy as ever. Tweety: “I did, I DID! I TAW a putty tat!” A terrified Tweety runs to the back of his house, to a glass storage compartment reading "IN CASE OF PUTTY TAT BREAK GLASS." Tweety does so, with the aid of a small wooden hammer exactly the right size for him. He rushes back to his window and sprays Sylvester with water and hits him on the head with first a boxing glove, then another hammer, this one he uses with disproportionate strength to his size. All the while, Tweety scolds his enemy for "fwightening him" and "making his widdle heart quiver!" However, Sylvester is determined not to permit his very hopefully soon-to-be prey to best him; he therefore dons a dive helmet to protect himself from getting sprayed any more. He emphasizes this by sticking his tongue out at Tweety Bird. But Tweety knows more than just those tricks: he slips a lit dynamite stick into Sylvester's helmet. Sylvester gapes in horror, but does nothing else, so the TNT explodes on contact with the ground. "Bad ol' puddy tat!" Tweety scolds one more time.
The screen fades out to then show Sylvester sawing Tweety's pole down. Tweety breaks the fourth wall again and states that the "puddy tat's after me again! He mad at me! I must flee for me widdle life!" This he does by running to the back of his house, where awaits a clothespin and a clothesline; Tweety grabs the clothespin and pushes off hard from his house, and boasts that Sylvester can't catch him now. But his reckless statement is disproved the instant he sees that his clothesline is attached to Sylvester's front tooth, making him have to stop short of the end. Expecting Tweety to ride straight to the fate he had planned for him, Sylvester is stunned when he realizes Tweety is gone. He is even more shocked when he realizes Tweety has lit a match next to a "FRIZ-brand" rocket (an obvious reference to director Friz Freleng). The rocket is attached to the very clothesline Tweety nearly rode right down to Sylvester on, thus threatening to launch the cat into the Earth's middle atmosphere. Dismayed, Sylvester actually spits his jaws and teeth out. His nose falls over his face as a result, and his pride is hurt by his inability to capture his prey.
The next attempt for consumption of Tweety by Sylvester involves painting a female Tweety Bird on one of his front toes using black, blue, red and yellow paint and, to reinforce the misconception he wants to give Tweety, he constructs his own nest and a bonnet exactly the right size for his toe. He pokes his toe through the nest, climbs up through a nearby hollow tree and whistles very femininely. As predicted, Tweety, wearing a blue porter's cap, rushes outside and states that "I tawt I taw a—" (whistles twice). The camera then moves to Sylvester's decoy, which blinks its "eyes" very convincingly. Amazed, Tweety states that "I DID! I taw a—" (whistles again, twice). He flies straight into Sylvester's nest, whereupon the cat claps his other front paw over his own decoy, climbs down and out of his hiding place and prepares to enjoy his meal. However, Tweety has other ideas. He tells the "widdle chickadee not to worry — I'll save you!" But when he pulls at Sylvester's fake female Tweety Bird and discovers a feline claw (belonging to Sylvester, who had forgotten to retract his claws) protruding from its "head", he realizes how negligent he was, in terms of failing to watch for his predator's tricks. But Tweety doesn't hesitate to manoeuvre himself out of the trap he nearly fell right into: he switches his headwear with the decoy's, stating that he thinks his own hat is more aesthetically pleasing on Sylvester's toe. Sylvester then uncovers his nest to bite into the Tweety Bird wearing the blue hat — which happens to be his finger, as the real Tweety flutters upwards and out of harm's way. Sylvester screams in pain, but quickly recovers and, bent on revenge, chases Tweety to a badminton court.
Fearing for his life, Tweety jumps into the can of badminton birds; Sylvester intends to grab him when he's trapped in his hiding place. However, an unnamed man comes jogging along with a badminton racquet in hand for a recreational game and seizes the birdies in the can; Sylvester now decides to take his desperation for a Tweety Bird dinner onto the court itself. He's in luck, for the man (who is rather taller and thinner than his companion) calls "Service," and serves Tweety in for the game. (The two men are thought to be the exact same as the caricatures of Tedd Pierce, the man who wrote this cartoon storyline among others, and Michael Maltese, the longtime writer for Chuck Jones' unit and Pierce's successor in that unit, who appeared in Wackiki Wabbit.) Sylvester stands on the side watching the thin man, waiting for the right moment to knock him out with a big wooden plank from outside. This he does while watching Tweety's torment ("Now how d'you suppose I got me widdle self in such a predicament?"). Finally, after eight rallies by the thin man, Sylvester hits him hard on the head and hits Tweety twice more before simply standing in one spot with his mouth open. But Tweety has more uses for dynamite than just one; he throws another lit stick into Sylvester's open mouth. Sylvester thinks quick, too, though, for he rushes to the water dispenser and drinks directly out of the tap, trying to quell the TNT, but it's all to no avail, as the dynamite goes off — and Sylvester actually ends up in the jug.
Finally, Sylvester goes the whole hog and builds a fresh house for Tweety, with a relatively minor addition, in the form of a hole in the bottom through which he sticks his own head. He places this house onto his head and climbs up Tweety's pole (all barbed wire having been finally removed). But Tweety doesn't trust this apparent lull in hostilities, as he yet again breaks the fourth wall, saying that "something tells me that puddy tat is somewhere a-wound here, close to me, with his sharp claws, and his wong teeth . . ." Frightened, Tweety unwittingly flies into Sylvester's fresh trap, but what he thinks is his own house. Once in Sylvester's mouth, he daringly jeers, “That bad ol’ puddy tat’s never gonna find me in HERE.” Finally satisfied, Sylvester discards his birdhouse, slides down the pole and walks away like a normal cat, on all fours. But he fails to realize the full extent of Tweety's cunning, as the bird actually appears in Sylvester's eye and then in his ear. In the cat's ear, Tweety is dressed up as a train engineer, and says that "I will give this choo-choo twain full speed ahead". And he keeps this promise by pulling a whistle and steering. Confused, Sylvester soon realizes that he can't move as a cat, only as a locomotive. His legs are actually forced to move in clockwork rhythm. Much enjoying the ride, Tweety expresses his thought out loud that Sylvester is going at 90 miles per hour. And then, to emphasize his desire not to be eaten by any cat, Tweety steers Sylvester right into a street called "Dead End Street," whereupon Sylvester runs headfirst into a brick wall. And then, with an almighty off-screen CRASH, Sylvester is then shown peeling out of the wall. Tweety flutters out and berates himself for "wecking da puddy tat." Breaking the (already-shattered, figuratively) fourth wall yet again, Tweety comments: "You know, I lose (said as wooze) more puddy tats dat way." Fade-out.
[edit] Errors
The foremost continuity error in this short film concerns the barbed wire on Tweety's pole. Despite the fact that Tweety is sleeping for the first 70 seconds of the cartoon, all the barbed wire except for that from about 5 feet below the pole was mysteriously removed. Yet, in the opening panning down from Tweety's house down to Sylvester, the barbed wire clearly — and completely — covers the pole. Another error includes the giant hammer (compared to him) Tweety uses to bat Sylvester down when Sylvester bounces up to Tweety's house. And yet another one, where Sylvester uses a lovable female Tweety Bird decoy to capture the "real" male one, where it blinks its "eyes": a real painted decoy can't actually do that.
[edit] Availability
Bad Ol' Putty Tat is available on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Two.
