Buddy's Garage

Buddy's Garage is an American animated short film. It is a Looney Tune cartoon, featuring Buddy, the second star of the series, & released on April 14, 1934.^[1] It was the last Warner Bros. short directed by Earl Duvall and only the second in which his name is so spelled (on others, his name is spelt "Duval.") Bernard Brown was musical director of the cartoon.

Summary

We see Buddy happily mending a tire: a litter of kittens are nursed by their mother, fish & ducks swim merrily in a tank of free water, & a responsible car washes itself while Buddy the mechanic squirts oil into all of the necessary sockets. A sleeping dog (presumably Towser) is put to good use, as Our Hero attaches one end of an air hose to the dog's mouth, and the other to a tire, that Towser's snoring fills the limp tire with air; a bee puts a canker in the plan by popping the tire with its stinger & scaring Towser awake with the noise. The dog eats the bee, but spits it back out on account of the stinger. Buddy, meanwhile, plays "By a Waterfall" on a series of files (as if the files were a xylophone), until Cookie appears with Buddy's lunch. The two sweethearts set up to eat: Buddy grinds the skin off of a pineapple, cracks the shells of walnuts with a monkey wrench, and attempts to inflate a small chicken to greater proportions (to the chicken's exploding as thought it were a balloon.) Just then, a large, cigar-smoking character (apparently the same villain from Buddy's Show Boat & Buddy's Beer Garden) drives up to the garage, requesting gasoline for his vehicle. Buddy obliges, and the bruiser steps away to the restroom, where he finds Cookie, whom he decides to kidnap: Buddy dutifully oils his new enemy's engine, but knows that something is amiss when he hears Cookie scream. Rushing inside the garage, Buddy finds the bruiser unfazed by Cookie's blows & demands of release. Challenged at once by Buddy, the bruiser puts down Cookie, only to be attacked from behind by the same with a drill of some sort: the villain chases Cookie, Buddy the villain. At a wall, the villain again takes Cookie, & an indignant Buddy is buried by tires from a shelf that the bruiser intentionally jostles. Freeing himself, Buddy is blasted with ash from the villain's (freshly re-fueled) automobile as it speeds away. Hastening back to the garage, Buddy starts after Cookie & her kidnapper with another vehicle: on the chase, Buddy & his enemy must pass two stopped trucks & freely ignore a "Road Closed" sign; upon crashing into a large box of tools, the bruiser finds his back tires equipped with saws, which compromise the mid-section of a wooden bridge, through which, as a result, Buddy and his vehicle fall, into the water below, where the hook on the wench of Buddy's truck catches a fish, which then is pursued by hungry cats. Briefly losing the trail, Buddy speeds as never before once he catches on to Cookie's kidnapper, and, in the process, destroys a laundry truck, whose contents (ladies' undergarments) his vehicle then wears. Where the villain barely avoids a house, Buddy speeds on through it, taking with him a married couple abed: Cookie screams as Buddy approaches, and Buddy winds his truck's wench over to the car in front of him, cleverly snagging Cookie's shirt on it, & thereby carrying her over to his own vehicle. To the villain, he does the same, but rescues him not, instead lowering him to the back of the truck so much that his rear end is continually bumped by large rocks & yards of fence. Buddy releases the exhaust at Cookie's would-be captor & the two, safely in the vehicle, happily embrace.

Last Warner Bros. cartoon by Earl Duvall

Earl Duvall would not return to direct another Warner Bros. cartoon: after Buddy's Garage and the firing of Duvall, all of the remaining Looney Tunes starring Buddy would be supervised by Jack King, Ben Hardaway, and, less commonly, Friz Freleng. The other cartoons supervised by Duvall (Duval) were the Looney Tunes Buddy's Beer Garden & Buddy's Show Boat and the Merrie Melodies Honeymoon Hotel & Sittin' on a Backyard Fence.

Fisk Tires

When Buddy steps out to help his wayward customer, we clearly see a poster of a sleepy child holding a candle & announcing that it is "Time to Re-tire"; this is a clear reference to the advertising slogan, adopted 1917, of Fisk Tires.^[2]

References

External links

• Buddy's Garage on YouTube (unrestored)