For Scent-imental Reasons
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| For Scent-imental Reasons
Looney Tunes (Pepe LePew) series |
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 The title card of For Scent-imental Reasons. |
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| Directed by | Charles M. Jones |
| Produced by | Eddie Selzer |
| Story by | Michael Maltese |
| Voices by | Mel Blanc |
| Music by | Carl Stalling |
| Animation by | Ben Washam Ken Harris Phil Monroe Lloyd Vaughan |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures The Vitaphone Corporation |
| Release date(s) | November 12, 1949 (USA) |
| Color process | Technicolor |
| Running time | 7 minutes |
| IMDb profile | |
For Scent-imental Reasons is a 1949 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes short, directed by Chuck Jones, written by Michael Maltese, and starring Pepe LePew. It won the 1949 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons).
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[edit] Plot
The beginning shows a happy man riding his bicycle through Paris, greeting all the people he encounters and singing the happy can-can song(created by Looney Tunes). He arrives at his shop, a perfume store, and unlocks his store's door. After peering into the store, he immediately runs away. He shouts out in a panic and runs up to a musketeer for assistance, yelling unintelligible phrases, presumably in French. The musketeer looks into the shop and it is revealed that Pepe Le Pew, a smelly skunk, is inside the store, smelling the various types of perfumes and singing to himself in French. The musketeer looks horrified and speaks in his French accent about the "terrible odor," which is implied by brownish "fumes" emanating from Pepe Le Pew's tail.
The musketeer runs away and the perfume store owner cries out that he will now be bankrupt, his black female cat (although her name is not revealed in the short, she is identified as Penelope Pussycat, who appears in other Pepe Le Pew shorts) begins to console him by winding around his legs and saying "Le mew, Le Purr." The shop owner picks up Penelope and orders her to remove the skunk from the premises, then throws her into the store. Penelope slides across the floor and bumps into the leg of a table, knocking a bottle of white hair dye over. The hair dye drips down onto Penelope's tail and runs in a straight line down to her head, resulting in a white stripe down her back. Pepe Le Pew immediately sees her and mistakes her for a skunk.
Penelope smells Pepe's odor and tries to run away, but Pepe runs after her, shuts the shop door, and embraces Penelope. Penelope attempts to wiggle free as Pepe tells her things such as, "it is love at first sight," and "we will make beautiful music together." Just before Pepe tries to kiss her, Penelope gets free and runs away. Penelope climbs into the sink in an attempt to wash the stripe off but is unsuccessful. She runs to a window and tries to open it, but it is stuck. She runs away, and Pepe finds her inside a glass cabinet. They mime to each other, Pepe trying to get Penelope to come out, and Penelope refusing, indicating that it is due to his odor. At this point, in the original short, Pepe Le Pew pulls out a gun and holds it up to his head, then walks out of Penelope's line of sight. Then the gun goes off, and Penelope rushes out of the cabinet to Pepe. Pepe says, "I missed, fortunately for you," and begins kissing Penelope Pussycat. Penelope runs away and Pepe chases her, bouncing happily around the room. Pepe Le Pew finds Penelope on the windowsill and says that Penelope is trying to prove her love for her by committing suicide, but that he will save her. Pepe runs over and grabs Penelope but drops her, and they both fall out of the window. Pepe Le Pew falls into a blue paint can and Penelope falls into a barrel of water.
When Pepe climbs out, he is blue but no longer smelly, and he sees the ragged-looking, sneezing wet cat beside him (who no longer has a white stripe down her back) and asks her if she has seen a beautiful young lady skunk. He goes off to find her, and as he calls out, Penelope watches him and her heart begins to beat out of her chest. She runs after him and locks him in the perfume shop again, placing the key in her chest. Not recognizing her, Pepe Le Pew tries to discourage her, then runs away. As Penelope chases after Pepe Le Pew, Pepe tells the audience "You know, it is possible to be too attractive!" and continues to run away as the ending card appears.
[edit] Trivia
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- Although this is not Pepe's first cartoon, this is the first where a cat accidentally gets a white stripe down her back (the first one, "Odor-Able Kitty" had a male cat and the second one, "Scent-imental Over You", had a chihuahua glue on skunk fur), a formula which was then used in all of Pepe's cartoons (with some alterations) from this point on.
- This cartoon was notorious for silencing then-producer Eddie Selzer's claims that Pepe Le Pew wasn't considered a funny cartoon character. When this cartoon was announced as the winner for Best Cartoon Short, Selzer himself came up to accept the award.
[edit] Censorship
- Some television versions, particularly those on ABC's "Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show", cut out the entire sequence where Pepe tries to coax the cat out of a glass case because near the end of the gag, Pepe puts a gun to his head and pretends to commit suicide when the cat mimes that she's rejecting him because of his stench. Also cut on ABC was Pepe saving the cat from jumping, only to have her slip from his hands. Pepe then turns to the camera, salutes, and says, "Vive l'amour! We die together." Only the "We die together" line was cut on ABC.
- Cartoon Network left this cartoon uncut until 2003, when it cut the entire glass case suicide part and a line before Pepe saves the cat where Pepe states that the cat is committing suicide to prove her love for him. By contrast (and ironically enough), the "Vive l'amour! We die together line" and a similar gag in the 1961 Pepe cartoon "A Scent of the Matterhorn" were not edited out when aired on Cartoon Network.
- The British channel ITV edits out all suicide references to the cartoon (the parts cut from both ABC and Cartoon Network).
[edit] Availability
- This cartoon can be seen (uncut and remastered) on the first volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set (disc 3).
- The oft-censored glass case/suicide sequence was used on the Chuck Jones compilation movie "The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner" movie and in Chuck Amuck: The Movie.
