Punch Trunk

Punch Trunk is a 1953 Looney Tunes cartoon written by Mike Maltese and directed by Chuck Jones.^[1] It is a one-shot cartoon (that is, not featuring a regular character from the Looney Tunes series) about a miniature elephant who inadvertently terrorizes a city.

Summary

The short begins with a narrator (voiced by an uncredited Robert C. Bruce) who introduces a 5 inch tall dwarf elephant. Its huge roar causes a dock worker to faint. In the next scene, the elephant is hogging the bird bath in a yard. The owner of the house phones the police about it, but is merely taken to a mental hospital because they believe he's crazy. Next, a woman hanging up the laundry in another yard is handed clothes pins by the elephant. When she notices, she screams in horror and runs inside, taking refuge in a washer. Next, a man exits an optometry clinic with new glasses, but when he sees the tiny elephant, he marches back inside, punches the optometrist, and leaves, because he thought the doctor made him see things that aren't there. Next, in a high rise apartment, a mother is informed by her daughter that an elephant is in her room. The skeptical mother puts her back to bed. Later, the daughter is bringing a piece of cake to the elephant. This time, the mother goes into her room to look in the dollhouse. When the tiny elephant roars at her, the mother faints in shock. Later, a drunk man leaves a bar, and sees the tiny elephant (getting the man's attention by trumpeting). He checks his watch and then simply says: "You're late." As he wanders off, he mutters to himself: "He always used to be pink!" After that, a line of elephants at a circus includes the tiny elephant, which freaks out one of the other elephants. A cat chases a mouse under a tent, only to grab the tiny elephant instead. When it roars, the cat turns into a monkey. Later, at a psychiatrist's office, a woman is talking about her life and when the psychiatrist sees the tiny elephant (who had just drank all the water from his drinking glass), he switches places with the woman. Then, the cartoon cuts to a man is painting a flag pole. A crowd is watching below. The elephant approaches and roars, causing the spectators to join the flag pole painter. After this, various newspaper headlines describe the panic in the city: "Mass hallucination grips city", "Hundreds Claim to Have Seen Tiny Elephant", "I Seen It.", "Picayune Pachyderm Panics Populace", "Noted Scientist to Take to Air to Calm Alarmed Citizenry". The last headline leads into the final set piece: Robert Bruce Cameron, said scientist, says the elephant is just a figment of everyone's imagination. The tiny elephant walks into view, as the moderator is petrified. The moderator says that Cameron's views don't necessarily represent the views of the station, and faints. The tiny elephant roars as the cartoon ends. (The moderator is named "Mr. Pratt", a nod to Warner Bros. layout artist Hawley Pratt, who would go on to create the Pink Panther character for DePatie-Freleng Enterprises).

Legacy

The tiny elephant makes a cameo in 1959's Unnatural History.

The cartoon was edited into Daffy Duck's Quackbusters (here beginning from the bird bath scene and leaving out the scenes in the high-rise apartment, the circus scene, the cat, and the flagpole. Also the newspaper headlines had swapped round so they are shown in this order; "Mass Hallucination Grips City", "Picayune Pachyderm Panics Populace", "Hundreds Claim To Have Seen Tiny Elephant" and "I Seen It". the last headline had been changed from "Noted Scientist to Take to Air to Calm Alarmed Citizenry" to "Tiny Elephant Sightings Continue" so as to tie in with the story) where at the end, Daffy Duck, having read about the mass panic, was interviewed on television and dismissed the elephant sighting as mere nonsense, but was then frightened and humiliated when the elephant walked past his desk (Daffy not noticing until the elephant roared at him).

References

External links

• Punch Trunk at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• Punch Trunk at the Internet Movie Database