Life with Feathers
| Life with Feathers | |
|---|---|
| Merrie Melodies/Sylvester series | |
 The March 3, 1951 Blue Ribbon reissue title card of Life with Feathers. | |
| Directed by | Friz Freleng |
| Produced by | Edward Selzer |
| Story by | Tedd Pierce |
| Voices by | Mel Blanc |
| Music by | Carl W. Stalling |
| Animation by |
Virgil Ross Ken Champin Manuel Perez Gerry Chiniquy |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures |
| Running time | 8 mins. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Life with Feathers is a 1945 Merrie Melodies cartoon, directed by Friz Freleng and produced and released by Warner Bros. Pictures. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Animated Short Film. This cartoon marks the first appearance of the then-unnamed cat Sylvester.
The title is a play on the longest-running non-musical on Broadway, Life with Father (the title being the only connection between the two works). Warner Bros. would produce a film version in 1947.
Plot
The film centers on a heartbroken lovebird's decision to commit suicide after his marriage goes sour. He recruits a black cat (Sylvester) to eat him, but the suspicious cat thinks the bird is poison and refuses. For the rest of the film, the lovebird attempts to get Sylvester to eat him by persuasion, bribery, and force. The gag of a character wanting to be eaten and the cat refusing to is later repeated in the Hubie and Bertie cartoon Cheese Chasers. But the cartoon ends with the bird showing Sylvester lots of food from a cook book along with a radio (the more he saw the more he gets hungrier and skinnier at a time). The bird manages to convince him to eat him but before that moment, he got a telegram that said that his wife left him and he told Sylvester that he doesn't have to eat him. But before you know it, he changed his mind not to eat him, the bird manages to escape and get back home but when he closed the door, she changed her mind and the bird then wanted to commit suicide again, while looking for the cat on every window.
Censorship
- When the cartoon was shown on Cartoon Network and The WB, the part where the lovebird thinks of different ways to commit suicide after his wife throws him out was cut.
Cast
- Mel Blanc as Sylvester and Lovebird
- Danny Webb as Radio Announcer