The Extras - CELEBRATION and Review! Looney Tunes Collector's Vault Vol. 3

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

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Hello and welcome everyone to our Looney Tunes Collectors Vault, Volume 3 review podcast. And joining me are the two men we have to thank for these wonderful releases, George Feltenstein of the Warner Archive and animation historian Jerry Beck. Hello, gentlemen. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Well, this is an exciting day. As we now have another 50 Looney Tunes cartoons out there in the world on HD that we can enjoy. in a Looney Tunes collection. So what are you hearing so far?

I'm hearing everybody's jumping up and down and happy about the selections and the restorations and the presentations. I haven't really heard any strong or any criticisms at all. I have experienced a lot on our social media platforms

of people being exultant in praise, which is very nice. Yeah. I mean, I think that some people are even saying this, this is one of their favorite releases, I think, so far. So I know I absolutely love the release. I'm kind of in this post-Looning Tunes Marathon where I just hear the music going over and over in my head

because it's just so iconic and so terrific. And as soon as the music starts, smile comes to my face and I absolutely love it. This disc one, when you start off, I think it's very important. I wanted to kind of just go to two things that are very important just in the history of lunatunes. And that's the very first cartoons. So I thought we would start off talking with sinking in the bathtub from 1930, starring Bosco. The first time I've seen it, it looks amazing.

And it's just such a treat to have this on the release. Well, I think one of the things that's important to mention, about that is that we have the good fortune that I know of almost, I can't really think of any of the thousand Looney Tunes, Mary Melody's cartoons, where we don't have the original negative. So no one has gone back to the original negatives on many of these in a very long time. But yes, for sinking in the bathtub, original nitrate negative was in fine shape for something that's almost 100 years old.

And it looks and sounds, especially the sound, you think sound was two and a half years old then. It's really terrific. And it is a little, you know, it holds an important place in history as being the very first Mooney Tune. so and set the stage for everything that was to come and a very big development in the change over decades it's a great cartoon as well it had to be i guess because it was the first one and they wanted to impress you know of course i've seen it many times in the past but never as it looks here it's literally perfect first day of issue you know i'm still amazed well i grew up during a period we all did, where old movies, old cartoons looked a certain way.

And today, I guess we could say what they looked like was six-term, a meter dupes, lines, splices, old movies, the cliche in our mind of what an old movie is. That's how I've ever seen sinking in the bathtub to see it like it was day one, first day of release. September 1930 is pretty miraculous. It's got a lot of things in it. It's got a little bathtub in there that it's pretty crazy. The songs, it uses tiptoe through the tulips in addition to singing in the bathtub.

Very impressive. Harmon and Ising had just come from the Disney studio. They were working on the Alice comedies, the Oswald Rabbit cartoons, and then struck out on their own and immediately found a buyer, which was Leon Sondon. Schlesinger on behalf of Warner Brothers. And everything's there. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, what's gonna come. They don't know what, what's gonna come. They don't know about Bugs Bunny or Bob Clampett or whatever's happening in the future when this cartoon starts. I love looking at the trade ads to the trade saying the beginning of a new, howarious, new theories of, of cartoons and, uh, that talk about truth and advertising, they may not have really known that. It's just hyperbole. But it's, you know, it's the birth, the birth of, you know, of what we love. Jerry, did you just say that they launched kind of like a campaign saying they were going to be a whole series of these? I mean, like, what's the plan?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. They never just did it as a one-off. It was, it was a series. It was, you know, that's the way shorts in general were sold back then. I think, I know George knows more about this than I do, It was a series of shorts, part of the Vitaphone library of what they were doing, the Vitaphone shorts. And they were immediately successful. To Warner Brothers, they were sort of like little music videos. It's like they had to do cartoons because the world was clamoring for animation. Well, small. Take that a step further.

And I think I've mentioned this before, but the thinking behind the Looney Tunes, and then shortly thereafter the merry melodies were to promote the vast song catalogs that Warner Brothers purchased three huge music publishing companies that were run out of New York, Harms, Remick, and Whitmark. They had been around since the turn of the 20th century.

And between the three of them, they held most of the important music copyrights. and most of the popular songs of the preceding three decades. But they bought those music publishers not only to have access to that music, since sound was so important, but they also wanted to promote. This is the primary headline in this discussion. They wanted to promote the new songs written for their new films,

and that's why Sinking in the Bathtub was spoofing, singing in the bathtub, which Winnie Lightner had performed just a little earlier in a live action motion picture. And as Jerry mentioned, also tiptoed through the tulips that was introduced a year

earlier by Nick Lucas. Right. You know, so those were big hit songs and they wanted people to buy sheet music and roles for their player pianos and records on Brunswick,

which was a Warner-owned owned record company. They also own the bowling alley too, but we won't talk about that. Well, that leads me, George, right into the next one, of course, that's the first on here. And that's the first Mary

Melodies, Lady Player Mandolin. But that was what released in the following year in 1931. Why the two different brand names and what was it thinking when they launched that one? And it was different. Well, what I think is they were literally

copying they were, copying what Disney was doing. What Disney was doing was two series. When Disney, you know, premiered Mickey Mouse, everybody just wanted Mickey Mouse. And that's why a lot of characters have that similar look. But Disney being Disney, wanted to not just do Mickey Mouse at infinitum,

he wanted to expand, make new characters, you know, go in new directions. And they came up with the same. silly symphonies. And by the way, it was Carl Stalling's idea. Carl Stalling was Disney's music guy right there in the beginning. He came from Kansas City. Disney imported him out. He was playing music at the local Newman Theater there. And Stalling basically said, well, that seems to be the popular thing with the cartoons, the synchronized sound, the music. Keep in mind that a lot of features didn't even have music in them at that time. They didn't have background scores and

things. So Disney decided, okay, silly symphonies, a series of, you know, unusual things. Even their distributor thought that would be a disaster, no characters, you know, based on music and sound, but it was a big hit, and a lot of great things came out of that. And Harmon and Ising being two of Disney's old crew trying to compete with their old ex-boss, said, let's do the same thing. We've got Bosco, he's our star, he's our Mickey Mouse, he's the star of the Looney Tunes, and the second series that we can go anywhere and do anything, come up with any stuff. And that's what they did.

The interesting thing with the Merry Melodies for at least two or three years, maybe more than that, all the titles on the Merry Melodies are the songs, you know, that they're plugging. That's not true with the Looney Tunes and the Boscos, but the Merry Melodies like Lady Player Mandolin. That's the song title. You know, I love to sing it.

You know, even if the title has nothing to do with the cartoon sometime. Well, in stop-school years, the animators were tasked with, oh, you need to create a cartoon with the song Shuffle Off to Buffalo. Yeah. And it was frilling who came up with the idea of turning it into a baby factory. You know, I mean, like, it was, it was an impetus for creativity. Yeah. And they did that. That really continued for several years until what began with Porky Pig and the development of these first position characters for whom songs were built around.

I don't think I can think of cartoons in the 40s that were based on a song. I think that was probably, it's a question, Jerry, you'd know better than I. I'd have to talk about that for a minute. You're probably right, because the last ones I can think of are late 30s. Right. I mean, they did, speaking of the weather, they did, you know, like 37, 36, 38, they were still doing it, but not thereafter that I can think of. No. They didn't need to when they had Daffy Duck and Porta Pig and then Bugs Bunny,

and, you know, all that came after. And that's also why by 1943, I think that's the year, that was the end of the differential at all between Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies. Yeah, yeah, 42, 43, around that time, because there was a brief moment where the Looney Tunes were kind of, you know, sometimes black and white, sometimes color, but then it went, well, color, especially after Warner Brothers bought the Leon Slessinger Studio in 1944. That was definitely a transition.

You know, it's one of those things I always think about that, that 1944, you know, any kind of transition in Hollywood that happened during the war years is kind of unusual to me. So when people came back from the war, the new normal was in place, whatever it was, you know, from other like famous studios, Paramount taking over Popeye cartoons, things like that. Well, that was a whole different story. Well, George, George, one of the keys about the disc one on this set is that they haven't been available. Well, none of the cartoons on disc one have been part of a Warner Brothers cartoon compilation

either on DVD or Blu-ray. Yeah. Well, why is that for these two, considering how important they are? Well, that's a good question. I mean, you know, we haven't been putting out, honestly, we haven't put out on the collector's choice and the vault collection. We really didn't do too many black and white cartoons. We've been very safe. Not yet.

Yeah, not yet. But we've been very, very careful about that. And, you know, it has to do, George can explain this better than I, but I'm going to tell you that it has to do with sales. And clearly the color cartoons, bugs, bunny, daffy, duck, foghorn, leghorn, you know, all the characters are obviously, you know, more commercial. So we want to make sure we have those characters. We want to get as many of those cartoons out as we can. And these earlier ones, you know, the black and white ones, they're in black and white. They don't feature the stars.

What I would also add to that is that these collections are not aimed at the general public. These cartoons are created for animation enthusiasts, fans. They're appropriate for everyone, but they're specifically geared for the collector, hence named collector's choice, and then collector's vault. And a lot of people were really kind of peaved as to why we changed into another series. because they got, well, had the Golden Collection, I had the Platinum Collection, and the Super Star Series,

and then the collector's choice, you were doing fine, and all of a sudden, collector's vault, the reason we went to collector's vault was to expound upon collector's choice because without having that second disc

of giving Blu-ray premieres within a Warner Brothers cartoon collection, we would be robbing people of the better quality, experience on some of the most famous cartoons produced by the most wonderful animation studio in Hollywood, along with MGM during the TechSavry, Hannah-Barbara period. So, you know, I think that's a, I think that's a really good distinction for those who are watching or listening because we'll get to this too here in a little bit, but that one is just

I mean, of just favorites and classics and everything. And this disc one, it is probably a little bit more, you know, like you said, geared to the collector, the mature collector, and the beauty of it is you are getting these for the first time. I mean, that's part of the beauty of it, things that would just would not normally have shown up in a broader collection. In a collection. Yeah, in a collection.

Some of them have been used when. I'm putting together a classic feature, I usually like to add cartoons and shorts from that specific period so that it recreates what we call Warner Night the movies. And people really appreciate that little bit of extra nostalgia and entertainment. And if there's a tie-in between the cartoon and the feature, it can be where it's a spoof of the feature, like You know, Ages with Dirty Faces, having Thugs with Dirty Mugs, you know. That's kind of an obvious one. But very often what I do is I'll go back into newspapers.com, go to L.A. Times from when a film opened

and see, what was the cartoon in short that opened with this feature? And it's actually genuine in that regard. We don't always have that luxury. And also the cartoon and or short that is... appeared with a film in one city, wasn't how it was going to be in another city. It wasn't a national rollout where you got this, this, and this.

It was very random. But within a collection, that's what we're here to talk about, is the Collectors Vault Volume 3 and what that brings forth. And there are, you know, several cartoons on-disc 1 that haven't seen a home video,

release since the days of VHS. So people have been waiting a long time. VHS has been gone from life we stopped making VHSs around here 25 years ago. So there was a need. And, you know, the more we can bring forth with the kind of attention to detail and quality, that's really, really important. And I also want to address that when we are working on these, that we try to eliminate all film damage and bring forth the best approximation of what you would have seen the day the cartoon was brand new and shown on the screen and probably what we can offer looks even better than that. But we do not take out cell dust and occasionally, animation error where there's like a spot on one frame that was on the cell.

If it wasn't film damage, we leave it accurate to how it was finished. You know, some people would say, well, why didn't they, you know, do that? You know, technology would allow them to do that now. But then we would be disingenuous to what was originally created. This is something that can't be done, thankfully, by AI. You need a person's eye looking at the frame and knowing what needs to be attended to and what needs to stay as it was. I just got a call today not about animation, but about a feature film that we're working on. And there were some steps taken at the time of the production of the film that we could improve upon now with technology, 80, some.

mud years later. And I said, no, don't touch it. It must be the way it was when the film premiered. The only thing I'm a thousand percent in favor of is, especially when we're dealing with Technicolor, we're able to make the images more aligned and sharper than they could in a film lab. And I'm all for that because the filmmakers would have loved that. There was only a limitation to what could be done in the film lab. So paying attention to the quality is very important, both for a picture and sound. And I think that leads right into talking about a few cartoons

that were remastered specifically for the set, were they not, a feather in his hair and horse hair, a couple of Bugs Bunny's that haven't been available, and now they look terrific. And it's really great to see them on this release. That's what this release is all about. That's what we're doing, what we've been doing. In the past, you know, there were limitations, you know, at the studio, you know,

on the different outlets for the cartoons, including home video. You know, we're years later now, we're, as George said, these are aimed at the collectors. As a historian, you know, my personally, and George and I, I think, are on the same page. I just want every freaking cartoon to come out and be available to everybody. We're trying to make that happen. We're trying to do that. We are most certainly on the same page in that regard. But the thing is, George, you'd agree that there were limitations in the past that

prevented some cartoons from coming out. Yes, yes. And I mean, the perfect example of time and change working in the favor of common sense, sense, basically, in my opinion, is what we did with Tom and Jerry last Christmas, bringing together all the cartoons uncensored in chronological order, and that allowed some of the cartoons that had been notoriously banned from view to be presented in a way that resulted in no negative backlash of any kind, just fan admiration and success. I know, by the way, I just want to throw in.

It's not just maybe what I'm going to say is that attitude. It's also occasionally a film where the elements that we use are not in the greatest shape. Right. And that was another preventive, I call it, from it coming out sooner. It took today's technology to get it where we need it to be, you know, and desire, fan desire and our desire. So there's several reasons. Every cartoon is a different story, you know, is why we can't release it yet. But we're still, our goal is to get them all preserved and, you know, restored and available.

That's our goal. Yes. And it always has been. Yes. A couple others I wanted to highlight on disc one. I'm just cherry picking here. There just happened to be things that I just thought were terrific. Was that Tech Savory from 1936, Don't Look Now?

Oh, yeah. It has the Little Devil and Cupid. I'm surprised that hasn't been released before. I thought that was noteworthy to highlight. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hey, are you a fan of the Warner Archive animation releases? Do you want to get the latest updates and news right away?

If you're on Facebook, we have just created a brand new Facebook group called the Warner Archive Animation Fans Group. Now, we celebrate past releases, but really, we created this group because of all of the great releases that have come in this year and are anticipated in the coming years. So there have been a lot of great releases from the Looney Tunes Collectors Vault series. There's the Tom and Jerry releases. there's all of the Hanna-Barbera releases. I mean, there's just a wealth of animation coming from the Warner Archive. So we celebrate all of it. It's a community with other people who enjoy these releases and want to talk about them

and share the latest news, reviews, and updates from the Warner Archive. So if that sounds interesting to you, check out the link here in the podcast show notes, and we hope to see you soon. Well, that's just one of those cartoons. that, you know, there's so many of them from that period that strike a chord with people when they see it. And then because it didn't have Bugs Bunny or Porky Pig in it or this or that, you know, it's just one of those ones that sometimes is bypassed. You know, it's Avery. But it is Avery, yeah. And you've got a unique thing in there with the little devil. A lot of people

have pointed to that cartoon. And I actually have researched this and it's somewhat true. but the later on decades later harvey comics created a character called hot stuff which a little a little devil like this i've always thought that that was a little bit of uh what do they call it uh uh you appropriate yeah i'd have been besides fever creative licensing or something yeah you know but it's the thing is it was uh you know it was seen on tv in the 50s and they thought that would be a great idea. And for that company, it was a great idea. It's probably the most popular tattoo, you know, in the world or something. But that's another thing, though, a slight aside, but it has to do with this. I asked, I had one point worked with the Harvey Entertainment Company,

and I said, why aren't you guys ever doing animation with that character? Why not a hot stuff animated show? And they said, we've tried. We could never sell it in the Bible Belt. You know, There's a whole swath of the country that will never buy an animated show about a little devil. Anyway, my point is that's probably the reason it's just been, it was a one-off. Yeah. Oh, it's noteworthy. That's actually very funny. But completely believable.

Yeah. It's a funny idea, you know. Anyway, I'll leave it. Why didn't Warner just, you know, pursue it? Well, probably the same reasons. a wealth of a wealth of great ideas that these cartoons contain many times the Tasmanian devil so that's true that's true the Tasmanian devil which the head of the studio at that time did not like as a character and that's why there's only five theatricals from those days with the character

people think it became more popular than many of the other characters yeah another one that I chuckled I got a real kick out of was this feather from 1958, the old foghorn and dog, you know, older, reminiscing and there's the younger version of them. I just thought that was funny. Maybe it's because we're all getting older or something, but I really enjoyed it. It's interesting because it reminds me a little bit of the old gray hair. Yeah. In that, in the old gray hair, which was made probably a decade earlier, You have Bugs and Elmer, pass forward. It will now be the year 2000,

and you have old bugs and old Elmer recounting their youth. For them to be thinking about that was really quite creative. So this is taking bochorn, lechorn, and the dog out into the future and reminiscing. It is a very funny cartoon. It's really well done. It's really well done. You know, the voice actor is just fantastic. Well, it's no blank and no blank.

It doesn't really get better than that. Doesn't get better than that. We've talked about it before, but Joe Glow, the Firefly. I mean, that's just a brilliantly done cartoon. Yep. Just beautiful. I really enjoyed a pizza, Tweety Pie. I thought it looked great.

It was very funny. And then I also really enjoyed this. A Star is Hatched from 1938. This hen who wants to be a star. I'm attracted to all of the... It's not just any hen. It's Emily Chicken. Hell yes.

Get that right. How dare you. What's very funny is that there used to be someone who worked here with a very similar name, a real name. Really? Emily Chicken? She wasn't named Emily, but it was very close. and I just knew that this person would not know that there is actually a cartoon character with a very similar name.

That's funny. Well, I'm pretty sure everybody when they do the disc one is going to have their favorites, some that they've been waiting years, decades for, or something that just now with the restoration that they see in a way that they've never seen it before. Yeah. And that's the beauty of this disc. Yep. I'm still amazed. My favorite thing, George thinks that when I come over to his office, which I love,

and to go over the cartoons and see the new restorations when they are first around, first done. And my absolute favorite thing is when I get the final version of the disc set and watch it again in my home on my TV, which is calibrated my way, and is not the biggest, you know, giant HD thing that George has. He has a state of the art. And, you know, I don't. I have what I call normal. And it looks great, especially I watch them either early in the morning or late at night

and I have the lights out. And I just, it's like a movie theater. And I still can't believe how great these cartoons look, meaning the quality. It's, I've really hit a point in the last, I'm going to say 10 years or so with Blu-ray in particular, and these restorations in particular, where I can't even imagine anything better. They literally look like the painted backgrounds, the animation cells, fresh, clean, brand new, made like it was made last night, and here we are watching it for the first time. It's just, it's refreshing.

Because people like me in Georgia, I can't speak fairly for anybody else, but I watched them over and over and over back in our youth, back in the 60s, the 70s, you know, reruns 16 millimeter prints, some of them out of sync, you know, some of them was splicing. And we got... Bad splice. I remember, yeah, some of them, and then we were used to them. We were used to the way that looked.

I got to that point that I'm sure some of our viewers today probably are there of you can tell what the cartoon is just by the, you know, but just by the warners and the color of the shield, you know which cartoon it is already. I can be, I can do that. I can't identify every animator in every scene, but I can tell you what the cartoon is by the opening. That's how many times I've seen these things. And then to see them looking brand new, I have the wonderful thrill of not being able to tell which cartoon it is because I've never seen it look like this. And it's, it's just exciting to me. I literally, imagine, try to imagine what a theater audience in 1947 or 48, seeing one of these

cartoons from that year, it's the first time people have ever seen it. They love Bugs Bunny. Here it comes. It's a brand new one. And I really get more of the feeling of what maybe a fan of that time might have felt in watching the films. These are classics. These are classic films, classic comedies, classic Warner Brothers productions. And I'll say that over and over and over again because you can watch them over and over and over again and enjoy them every single time as if it's the first time you'd seen it. And I know that people, you know, that are out there that are viewers and are fans of these collections, I know you know that. And I know that you have the same feeling about that that I do. That's what's great about them.

That's why there's still people clamoring for them. That's why when they put out a movie, not the current movie that's out now, but when they put out a movie and it's not quite right, you know, it's like Looney Tunes versus the Monstars and that's not really our Looney Tunes. You know, there's a feeling of it, not our characters, you know, that's how much we love them. I do have to say that I think the most thrilling thing for me is, is to see a Warner Brothers classic cartoon in a big theater filled with people. And when the shield comes on and everybody goes, uh, you know, and Jerry, in, in our youth,

when we were going to festivals at the Thalia. Oh, yeah. And it was like a rock concert. Yeah. There was a 50th birthday party, I think, for Porky Pig at the Thalia, and there was a cake. And there were hundreds of people in that theater that didn't have the luxury of being able to watch these at home other than whatever the broadcaster might show in a not particularly flattering way. Each time the shield would come up, people would just scream and laugh. And one of the real high points from my first years working in the business, before I got into the home video industry, I was working in repertory theatrical distribution.

And the company I worked for, we made a deal with Warner Brothers to get theatrical distribution rights to the cartoons. and I put together compilations of new 35 millimeter prints that toured college towns in theaters and we were able to charge the same kind of terms that you'd get for a feature film. And then we would pay Warner Brothers their royalties. And they were saying, we've never made money on these cartoons before.

How are you doing this? And it was because of people like Jerry and our friend Greg Ford and all of us getting together and deciding what would make great packages. You have these people who were probably in their late teens, early 20s from colleges packing these theaters and watching just enough cartoons that didn't get too repetitive. You know, it's usually anywhere between 8 or 10 would make a really solid evening of animation. So now people could do that in their home. They need to bring all their friends over to do it and do it right. But I can tell you that myself, if I put on the big snooze or a rabbit of Seville or Duck Dodgers or any of my particular favorites, you know, there are some like, I will never get tired

of Little Red riding rabbit. Never, never. It will never be possible because I'll always find something else in it to just, Even the routine with them going up and down the stairs, which is in other cartoons as well, I just have such passion and love for the humor and the insanity that was so intelligent of the people who made these cartoons. And that's what these collections are about. I hope that we just get the ability to continue to make them and bring more joy to more people

and spread the gospel of Looney Tunes to new generations and old fans of all ages. Well, George, I think we should probably turn our attention now to Disc 2. Absolutely. And Dis 2 is just loaded probably with a lot more cartoons that the more casual viewer is going to know and love. But you start off Dis 2 with a bang here with this Ballot Box Bunny, You know, Sam and Bugs. I love it. I mean, we're coming into probably election season here, so it's great timing for that.

But it's just so good, and it looks fantastic. The Sam and Bugs cartoons have a special quality to them. And there are so many different ones. But this is one of my very, very favorites. It's just so hysterical. And they managed to get in political, you. humor in a very non-partisan way. It's a non-political political humor.

They're making politics, but not the two sides. Right. You know, it's just a really wonderful thing. Yeah, such a good way. And I think Bugs Bunny Rides again is the other one that kind of shares a thematic sensibility with this cartoon, but this cartoon followed after. but the thing that it cracks me up about Sam is that he really was for his frilling. So, you know, you just.

Much easy to the right gags around. Yeah, it's just great. He could laugh at himself. And I think that was really what was so wonderful. Those are, Freeling has been underrated, in my opinion. I agree. He's an amazing director. He really, when they talk about literally timing, comic timing.

You can do a certain gag in a cartoon, but if it isn't directed, the amount of frames, this sort of thing, it ain't going to work. Feeling Avery was like this, Jones was like this, all the great ones had it, but they all had their own feel for it. You can write, you can comic strip out in the storyboards, you know, a gag with Yosemite Sam chasing bugs. then it's enhanced by Mel Blank, whose great voices for both of these characters. It's enhanced by the animation, by these particular animators in his unit, people like Virgil Ross and others.

It's enhanced by the timing of Freeling on how far this is going to go and that's going to go. And it's that group. It's that whole group that makes those cartoons and the Warner cartoons in general great. It's that particular group. Many times I'm slightly, slightly off here by saying that I really think of that crew from the 40s, 50s into the 60s.

They were like the Beatles. They were those four people. They were those people that made them so great. You know, that's how I feel about it. Let's jump right into a couple other feelings that I wanted to mention. And they kind of have this Hitler theme or whatever. A Hitler theme. Yeah, that's Daffy the Commando.

It's not political now. It's not, yeah, okay. No, these are the cartoons made during the war. And Warner Brothers, not just through the theatrical cartoons, but also for the cartoons, they made specifically for the armed services, the private Sanfu cartoons, the hook cartoons. They did so much for so little. I proudly say this.

I think every studio in town contributed to the war effort. The industry as a whole helped tremendously on the home front, but no other studio did as much as Warner Brothers. And no other cartoon department did as much as the Warner Brothers cartoon department. And we have two years with Daffy Mando and also. hair meets hair, which is just very, they're both very funny. Yeah, they're terrific. I mean, you have a lot of good bugs on this, this, too, here.

You can never have enough bugs. You can never have too much. The case of the missing hair from 1942, this is a Jones. But that's Bugs Bunny and this magician Alabama. Yeah. The, you know, it's Jones also in that cartoon is Jones had this experimental thing going on in 42, 43 with his background artists. If you look at that one, and several others from that year, he was actually told to cut that out. He was like ahead of his time. He was

kind of doing like kind of UPA thinking, a little more abstract, a little more stylized in the, in the graphics in the cartoon. Jones had a certain, you know, early period with the kind of, you know, Disney slower-paced, you know, sniffles kind of things that he was doing. And then he jumped into doing really forward-thinking kind of thing and then kind of settled down. And by 44, 45, 46, he's the beginning of the Jones we know and ripens into that Jones, the one with the great classic cartoons, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53. genius all through the 50s. I couldn't agree with you more.

Let's jump to one of my favorites on this release from 49 Jones one. And that's Mississippi Hair. Oh, George, you talk about that. It's one of my favorites. It's so good. Bugs takes on so many personas in that film. And I think that's a theme that Jones used a lot. of putting bugs in various guises to move this story along.

It's just a very, very funny film. Well, there's some individual standouts, too, that I just wanted to go through. They don't necessarily have thematic here. But this one, Fresh Airdale from 1945, Mother Jones. That's an interesting one. I want to hear your take about it, and then I'll tell you. Well, I mean, Shep is this, you know, at first you think he's like, the perfect dog and then you find out he's

he's actually I don't want to say you've got a dark side or he he's got a conniving side and he's making the cat look bad and I mean I thought this was a really interesting and well done cartoon and I loved it edgy cartoon

yeah what I love about Fresh Airdale is it's a really snide cartoon it has a little I can feel Jones like giggling like you know it just has his and you could feel that in some of his other cartoons especially like you know later duck him up you know

you feel his presence like when you're watching a hitchcock movie you feel hitchcock behind the camera laughing at how he's manipulating the audience yeah when you're watching fresh airdale you definitely get a sense of Jones having fun with his storytelling and his animation. That's one of the reasons I like the cartoon so much. I'm just going to say that Jones did a couple of cartoons that had a little different,

like George was saying, an edgier dark feel. I mean, the other one that comes to mind, and I'm embarrassed to say I've forgotten the title. It's the one with the what, no gravy? You know, remember that one with the big bulldog? You know, that's a similar. Right, of course. Almost a Twilight Zone cartoon. I think it was them trying to do you know, push it, do something different, you know, make it interesting. All the cartoons don't have to end on a happy note. It could be just an unusual, you know. What did you expect in an opera?

A happy ending? You know, like I remember later on when we released before, the Punch Trunk with the Little Mini, you know, elephant. Right. You know, it's like, again, I call them Twilight Zone cartoons. Like, I'm not sure really what he was going for here, but they're interesting. I like that description a lot. I think it's very cool.

Let's see. Another one I wanted to point out was this one with Pete Puma. And that's Rabbit's Kinn. Oh, that's such a favorite. That's a cult cartoon, I call that. I mean, some people may be getting this release just because of that one. I mean, because it's so rare. Yeah, that's a really unusual one, in my opinion,

because it has a little nephew Clyde, you know, and of course has the one-off Stan Freeberg voiced Pete Puma. And I don't know why, but I mean, I confess, I don't know why it's so memorable. I can't quite put my finger on why exactly. I mean, I have my theories. First of all, Jerry, this is Jerry and I as ex-New Yorkers. This is a Channel 5 cartoon.

Yeah. This was in the syndication package, so it ran often. But more importantly, the character of Pete Puma is so off the wall. Yeah. And, you know, the whole, like, you know, two lumps or three, you know, stove lid remover. And they're just their images and, you know, that voice, it was just fantastic. It's definitely one of my favorites.

I have a lot of them, but definitely one of the favorites. Yeah, yeah. I did want to bring up this Peppa Lepew one. I like that character really sent from 1959. Just beautiful to look at. And it's got this, you know, the cat now is actually born with the stripes. So she has that to live with. But I thought that was really fun.

I'm glad that you guys included a Pepe in this release. Well, it's interesting too because, Jerry, you can confirm this, but I don't think Chuck did this one. I think it was Abe Levital, right? Yep. Yeah, Abe Levital. It was his unit. Right.

And Chuck was involved with both the TV commercials unit and the formation of the Bugs Bunny show. And that allowed his group and people in his group to step up to the plate to do. And that happened with Freeling as well. A lot of, you know, Holly Pratt and Jerry Chinequy ended up directing cartoons. And Ken Harris did a Bugs Bunny. These are different people in Chuck's unit while he was off supervising other things. But what's great is it allowed us to get another feel out of these cartoons, you know, out of these characters.

Even though they may look a lot like the work of Chuck's unit and the way Chuck draws them, there is a different feeling to the one. Absolutely. Yeah. But that's why this is, you know, some of the peppy cartoons feel like they're the same cartoon over and over again. Yeah. Very enjoyable.

But there wasn't that much storytelling that could be different. And this cartoon is a little different. I think that's what sets it apart. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I thought now we could also kind of pull into the discussion, the fact that you have some with comment. because I want to bring up my favorite duck, which has a commentary by somebody here today, Jerry.

I listened to it before this, but yeah. Yeah, no, I did listen to it. I said. You don't remember it's probably a few years ago. What caused you to choose that one as one you wanted to do a commentary on, Jerry? My favorite duck. Well, that decision would have been made 20 years ago. You know, that one has the, that's one of the ones with the.

stylized backgrounds. That's Chuck Jones. It's very early to have such stylized backgrounds. I mean, it's just really, really sparse. You know, it's almost color shapes, you know, instead of, you know, the thick forests where they're in in this one, in a lake, is an underwater scene. And the real thing was it has the unusual, break the fourth wall ending, you know, where Daffy talks the audience directly on a white background. Anyways, it's a really unusual. It's a really unusual. unusual ending really, really pivotal at that time of what the Warner Brothers style of humor, you know, that's the reason I probably would have done it back then. It's a favorite. You know, it's a quirky pig and daffy. And I believe it's even a Looney Tunes cartoon. It was kind of the

during that period of going from black and white to color. I don't know why exactly beyond the fact that it had the innovation of the what I call the Breaking the Fourth Wall ending, which is fantastic. actually. I'll just mention that I think some of the other ones that did have commentaries on there, which are fun to listen to. You had some of we've already talked about, case of the missing hair, Fresh Airdale, Hair Meets Hair, Mississippi Hair. I think those are the five. So that's fun that those are on there. And there was a grouping of cartoons on here, George, that I'm kind of labeling like about Hollywood. And I thought that was really fun.

There's some really good ones here. You've got Hollywood Daffy from 1946. Really terrific. I really liked that one. And then you've got stage door cartoon, a storage board, and I'm going to throw in there, maybe it's a little bit less so, but duck soup to nuts because it does have the Warner Brothers contract in there.

I liked all of those because of the, just the way they're, I mean, They're so playful. They did that a lot, and there are others like that. You know, there's Daffy Duck in Hollywood. There's, of course, you ought to be in pictures, which has some live action stuff in there to, you know. It's ironic because the cartoons until the mid-50s were not made here on the lot.

They were made in Hollywood at Termite Terrace. But to the public, they would portray that everything was done on the Warner Bros. There's a lot, which is fine, you know. There were no intentional thematics in this particular release. It was meant to be a Pop-Pourri that would bridge the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, the 60s, different directors, different stars, different themes, lack of stars. But most importantly, things people didn't already have. We don't want to double dip.

And there are many, thankfully, many more. available to us to continue the series, I hope we are able to. It is certainly popular. I have a lot of ideas that I've discussed with Jerry about things we can do in the future. So I'm hoping that that happens. Going back to kind of these like one, two, three, three or four that have the kind of the Hollywood background, do you guys think about that a little bit when you put these together or are you just picking them and then you just find out, oh. That's an unintentional... Yeah, it's just a quinky dink.

Yeah. Yeah, we're not... In the past, way back when, and when we did the platinum collections, there's a disc where we intentionally grouped like all the Tasmanian devil cartoons or all the... And the Golden Collections had thematics as well. Once we got past the first two volumes, I think,

because that was originally planned to be over- a 10-year period. Right. We started in getting involved in themes. First of all, there's no way to please everybody. I always laugh when they say, I'm not buying them until it's a complete collection of all thousand cartoons, you know,

and people don't realize that there's just as much work, even though they're six and a half minutes. Every cartoon is about the picture negative, the sound negative or whatever is your best element. And it is an enormous amount of work to make them look and sound good. And if we were to do a chronological series, the cartoons from the first portion of the 30s are not particularly interesting to most people.

And it would kind of just lay there for a while. That's not the way to handle this from a fiduciary, standpoint from a profitability standpoint. But the goal is to get everything done out, remastered, restored, and available. So how we are doing it, each one of these collections brings to Blu-ray 50 cartoons for a list price of $25. I've said this before, 50 cents a cartoon. It is not overpriced. And it is, I think, good value in terms of the work we put into it and what the consumer ends up being able to put on their shelf that no one can take off their shelf at a whim. It's their property. That's what's important about physical media.

When you buy it, it's your property. And no one can take it away from you. You don't suddenly wake up and say, oh, it's not there anymore. Now, if you're a cleaning lady hit it on you, That's another story. But when you buy cartoons on discs, they're yours. And they're yours to own and enjoy forever and ever and share them with your friends and family. Well, another fun conversation. And again, we never go through all of these because it would just take too long. But we just touched on a few highlights.

And it's, you know, it's an amazing price point you put on these that you make these available for the collection. and we thank you too for all of the work. And when I say we, I'm just representing the listeners and the buyers here, we thank you too because it's a legacy that we now get to enjoy. So thank you so much. And thanks for coming on. It's always fun to get your input and feedback on these. I know you've worked so hard to get to this moment where people can now have them. When people buy the physical media, I just want to just say, you're sorry. You're supporting the cause of restoring the whole library. Because we, George and you, the consumer, supported the physical media in the past that

allowed the company to put these out, to restore the classic cartoons. They now have enough where, yeah, they're popping up on me, TV and other places. But they didn't, you know, we didn't have that before. It's we're the ones. We, I'm talking about the consumer of the physical media. And George as being in charge of the Warner Archive Collection that's really literally bringing these cartoons back to life and making them available and opening people's eyes to how great they are.

Because the experience of watching whether it's a theatrical feature film, short subject animated cartoon. If you're watching it with amazing clarity and quality, it changes organically how you experience the film. And I stress this often. We're talking about classic animated short films that are as important in the history of cinema as classic American feature films.

They just happen to be six and a half minutes and animated. But they are films with creators that created something that needs to last for eternity. I think Little Red Riding Rabbit will always be funny. 200 years from now. And I want it to still exist. Thankfully, what's going on now, even behind the scenes, all the negatives are being looked into the work we do. did photochemically 20 years ago was fine, but now everything is being scanned 4K, for preservation. There are film outs being made. There's all sorts of stuff happening within our preservation

department. For all of our feature films, short subjects, cartoons, everything, this massive amount of preservation going on, I am involved with that, whether it turns into a presentable viewable master that we can then put on a disc. That's a whole other expense and it's a whole other set of people that have to sign off on it. But the preservation is ongoing and people who love these films the way we do need to know that this company has only year after year increased its commitment to film preservation and the funding behind it. That's part of my job and I do that in concert with our head of preservation, our head of mastering. There are so many people involved,

but I have a very loud voice at the table screaming for protection and preservation, and thankfully people are listening. And most importantly, thank you to all the consumers and fans who have supported these releases because the success of a release leads to the next one. Well, it's always exciting to get these new clients,

records vault releases out and to get them in your hands to watch these cartoons for the first time in HD as part of a Looney Tunes collection. Some of them for the first time since VHS or maybe even never. So you just never know on some of these that are very rare and some that have been kind of kept from the public for one reason or another that are now being released on these vault collections. So it's fantastic. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Those of you who have been actively collecting the different volumes. I'm sure you're going to want to get this. I hope you're getting your copy soon, that you're enjoying it just like we did, and that it's going to be a valuable part of your Looney Tunes home collection. And fingers crossed, if we can all support this and we can

get the word out and get more people to buy and purchase that we can get a volume four before too long, or at least announced before too long, I know that both George and Jerry would love. to keep this series going until we get all of them out on HD. And that, of course, is a long time. But little by little, we're getting there. So, well, I hope you enjoyed the podcast. If you haven't yet subscribed, you may want to do that so that you get all of our animation and Looney Tunes podcasts in the future.

Thanks for your support. And until next time, stay slightly obsessed about Looney Tunes. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of the extras podcast, and I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes.