A quick comparison...

Last week I posted a couple of "Tom and Jerry oddities", where directors Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera used perspective trickery to make an object fit into a space that was too small for it, and changed Tom's front paws from feet to hands between scenes, and had trouble determining how many digits he should have.

Maybe they should just have done like Bob Clampett did in Porky's Tire Trouble (Warner Bros., 1939), and made gags out of both oddities.



Porky's large and ungainly hound, Flat Foot Flookey, is introduced emerging from a comically small dog-house, with long shoes on each of his four feet.  Within a single shot, one of his front feet turns into a hand - and his shoe into a glove! - so he can pluck a flea from his hide.  With his task completed, it becomes a foot wearing a shoe again as he proudly displays the flea to the audience.

And, just as proudly, Clampett displays the impossible actions of the characters to the audience, making them sources of deliberate comedy instead of hiding them behind sleight-of-hand trickery.

Maybe Bill and Joe thought that sort of humour was inappropriate for Tom and Jerry...?  (Perhaps another comparison is in order - how much the Tom and Jerry series changed after Tex Avery came over from Warners to MGM.  He didn't directly work on any cartoons in the series, but he did set an example of what could be done with the medium.)

Thanks to Anthony's Animation Talk for posting a video about "Porky's Tire Trouble" - the latest entry in his project to record commentaries for every Warner Bros. cartoon - which reminded me of this scene and how it contrasts with the Tom and Jerry examples in last week's post.

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