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Birdy and the Beast is a 1944 Merrie Melodies short directed by Bob Clampett.

Title[]

The title is a play on the French fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast".

Plot[]

Tweety is sitting in his nest, while a cat watches him. Tweety flies off, and the cat chases after him. Tweety hides in a cloud, but the cat can't fly, so instead he falls to the ground. Tweety remarks, "The poor titty-tat! He fall down and go, BOOM!" and smiles. By chance, the cat falls on a bulldog called Butch, who helps Tweety.

Furious, the cat chases Tweety, but Tweety scares him off. Tweety fools the cat by hiding in Butch's dish. The cat comes in and starts looking at Butch's dish. Butch comes in and pounds the cat to the ground.

Tweety wanders into the Cat's mouth while he is looking for Tweety. Tweety lights the cats tongue on fire by putting a match on it. Tweety escapes, and acts as if he is helping the cat by placing a firehose in his mouth. When he charges the hose (wearing a fireman hat), it turns out to be connected to a gas can, and gasoline goes into the cat's mouth, causing him to explode.

The cat survives, but he's still out to get Tweety. When he arrives at the bottom of a tree, he becomes a nest. Tweety gets into it, but a hen who is laying eggs causes him to get off. When she's finished, she flies off. The cat's mouth is full of eggs. The cat’s attempt to catch Tweety once again fails when he grabs a grenade handed to him by Tweety. He blows up and Tweety says, "You know, I get wid of more putty tats that way!" On the tree trunk, under the heading “Putty Tats”, he makes a mark. Apparently, he has “got wid of” more than 200 putty tats!

Caricatures[]

  • Wally Maher's character Wilbur - "I like him, he's silly!"

Availability[]

Streaming[]

Notes[]

  • Bob Clampett redesigned Tweety slightly in this short, making him look a bit rounder and cuter, with bigger eyes and a larger head in proportion to his body compared to his original debut design from "A Tale of Two Kitties", while still retaining the lack of feathers on his body. This design of Tweety would later be used again in "A Gruesome Twosome".
  • This is the final Merrie Melodies release to credit Leon Schlesinger.
  • This is the only Tweety short animated by Tom McKimson.
  • This is the first Tweety cartoon to star Tweety, as the previous short, "A Tale of Two Kitties", was more centered around the two cats Babbit and Catstello, than Tweety.
    • This is also the only Tweety short to focus on him in particular during the three Bob Clampett shorts, as Clampett's follow-up, "A Gruesome Twosome", only introduces Tweety in the second half after spending the first-half of the short on two other cats.
  • This is the first time Tweety was given his official name, as with his previous short, "A Tale of Two Kitties", he was originally referred to as Orson in model sheets.
  • The cat has been identified elsewhere[4] as Schnooks.
  • In the dubbed version, the 1938-1941 closing theme plays instead for both EU and US dubbed.
    • The restored print on Blu-ray does not have this error.
    • The Russian dub of the restored print uses the dubbed version's soundtrack, hence the 1938-41 end cue at the end title.
  • The end of the sequence with the bulldog has him grumble "This shouldn't even happen to a dog", repeating a line used as the punchline of the earlier Bob Clampett short "Hare Ribbin'" by the Russian Dog.

Gallery[]

References[]

External Links[]

← A Tale of Two Kitties Tweety Cartoons A Gruesome Twosome →




Tweety Cartoons
1942 A Tale of Two Kitties
1944 Birdy and the Beast
1945 A Gruesome Twosome
1947 Tweetie Pie
1948 I Taw a Putty Tat
1949 Bad Ol' Putty Tat
1950 Home, Tweet HomeAll a Bir-r-r-dCanary Row
1951 Putty Tat TroubleRoom and BirdTweety's S.O.S.Tweet Tweet Tweety
1952 Gift WrappedAin't She TweetA Bird in a Guilty Cage
1953 Snow BusinessFowl WeatherTom Tom TomcatA Street Cat Named SylvesterCatty Cornered
1954 Dog PoundedMuzzle ToughSatan's Waitin'
1955 Sandy ClawsTweety's CircusRed Riding HoodwinkedHeir-Conditioned
1956 Tweet and SourTree Cornered TweetyTugboat Granny
1957 Tweet ZooTweety and the BeanstalkBirds AnonymousGreedy for Tweety
1958 A Pizza Tweety-PieA Bird in a Bonnet
1959 Trick or TweetTweet and LovelyTweet Dreams
1960 Hyde and Go TweetTrip for Tat
1961 The Rebel Without ClawsThe Last Hungry Cat
1962 The Jet Cage
1964 Hawaiian Aye Aye
2011 I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat
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