Baby Bottleneck
| Baby Bottleneck | |
|---|---|
| Looney Tunes (Daffy Duck/Porky Pig) series | |
| Directed by | Bob Clampett |
| Produced by | Edward Selzer |
| Story by | Warren Foster |
| Voices by |
Mel Blanc (uncredited) Sara Berner (uncredited) |
| Music by | Carl Stalling |
| Animation by |
Rod Scribner Manny Gould Bill Melendez I. Ellis |
| Layouts by | Thomas McKimson |
| Backgrounds by | Dorcy Howard |
| Studio | Warner Bros. Cartoons, Inc. |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures |
| Release date(s) | March 16, 1946 (USA) |
| Color process | Technicolor |
| Running time | 7 minutes |
| Language | English |
Baby Bottleneck is a Warner Bros. Looney Tunes (reissued as a Blue Ribbon) theatrical cartoon short released in 1946 and directed by Bob Clampett and written by Warren Foster.
Plot
There is a baby boom of the post-war United States; an overworked stork (a clear Jimmy Durante reference) gets drunk in the Stork Club. There is an emergency delivery in which inexperienced animals, mostly older animals but including four crows attempting to deliver an elephant, take the babies to their parents. As a result, babies are getting sent to the wrong parents (such as a baby skunk to a goose, a baby kitten to a duck, a baby gorilla to a kangaroo, a baby hippopotamus to a Scottish Terrier, a baby alligator to a pig and a baby cat to a mouse). To clear up the confusion, Porky Pig is brought in to manage the factory, with Daffy Duck as his assistant. The babies are seen going through a conveyor belt (to the tune of Raymond Scott's famous "Powerhouse") and getting sent by various animals, while Daffy mans the phones, making quick references to Bing Crosby, Eddie Cantor and the Dionne Quintuplets.
When a stray egg is found without an address, Porky decides to have Daffy sit on it until it hatches. However, Daffy refuses to sit around on top of an egg and he said, "Sittin' on eggs is out! O-W-T — Out!!". Porky chases Daffy around the factory (complete with an imitation of Porky by Daffy), until they wind up trapped on the conveyor belt. The belt winds up stuffing both of them into one package (with Porky as the legs and Daffy as the top half) and send them off to Africa, where a gorilla is waiting for her arrival. When the gorilla looks at the "baby" she sees Daffy Duck crying, Porky peeks through the diaper, causing the gorilla to cry on the telephone, "Mr. Anthony, I have a problem!!" (a reference to John J. Anthony, who conducted a daily radio advice program at the time called The Goodwill Hour; its stock phrase was "I have a problem, Mr. Anthony").
Edited versions
- On the Turner Entertainment "dubbed" version (except for Cartoon Network's The Bob Clampett Show where cartoons aired uncut), partially removed was the baby alligator delivered to the mother pig, so that the cut did not seem as abrupt as it is when the cartoon is unedited here. Also removed was the scene near the beginning of the cartoon, with the drunken stork at the Stork Club (though that was only removed on Cartoon Network versions of the short that aired outside of The Bob Clampett Show).[1]
- the original version of the pig and alligator scene had a close up shot of the mother pig telling the baby alligator "don't touch that dial",this was removed for being too suggestive. The shot is now considered lost as the release on the Golden Collection never restored it.
Goofs
For a split second, when Daffy is being stuck to Porky near the end of the cartoon, Daffy's eyes were open, even though he is already stunned.