A Bird In A Guilty Cage

A Bird In A Guilty Cage is a 1952 animated short featuring Sylvester and Tweety.

Plot

Sylvester is at a store called Stacy's, where he notices Tweety in the window stand. Going through the package slot, he closes the curtains and climbs up to Tweety's cage, who asks him what he's going to do. After asiding to the audience, "How naive can ya get?", Sylvester replies that they're going to play a game called Sandwich, involving Tweety getting sandwiched in two pieces of bread and nearly eaten ("I don't like dat game!")

Tweety flees, with Sylvester in hot pursuit. The cat is forced to stack mannequins on top of each other to reach the canary, who is hiding in the lighting. Tweety climbs down and puts skates on the mannequin statue, causing Sylvester to crash down some stairs. He returns however, and the chase resumes, leading him to a hat sale, where he begins trying on hats. He finds the one with Tweety on top, and tries to smash him, instead hitting himself. Tweety then hides in a dollhouse, which eventually ends with Sylvester shooting his own finger.

A final sequence involves a gun in a hole gag, where as Sylvester shoves his gun in a hole in the wall, another is aimed at his rear. Predictably, this ends in Sylvester getting his buttocks shot. Tweety then goes through the piping system, with Sylvester going to the other end to catch him. However, Tweety comes out a different hole, and puts a stick of dynamite in. Sylvester swallows it, thinking he has gotten Tweety, but as he strolls out, it explodes, leaving him blackened. He then decides to cross off birds from his diet ("That one sort of upset my stomach!").

This is one of the three Tweety & Sylvester cartoons where Sylvester crosses birds out from his diet list, while the other two are Tweet Zoo and Trip For Tat.

Censorship

• On ABC, the gun-in-one-end-and-out-the-other gag also used in "A Star is Bored" and "Tease for Two" was edited to remove the visual of Sylvester shooting himself in the butt. The sound was left intact, but overlaid on a shot of Tweety getting out of the hole in the wall. Also, the entire sequence where Sylvester uses his hand to chase Tweety through a dollhouse and mistakenly shoots his hand after Tweety guides it through a bucket of yellow paint was cut.[1]
• The CBS version left the gun-in-one-end-and-out-the-other gag intact, but edited the dollhouse sequence to remove the part where Sylvester shoots his own finger. [2]

Trivia

• The gun in a hole gag is reused in the opening titles of Revenge of the Pink Panther. Here, the animated version of Clouseau points his gun into the gap in the 'A' while another comes out of the 'P'. Predictably, it ends with Clouseau getting shot in the face.

External links

• List of cartoons featuring Sylvester