Thugs with Dirty Mugs

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Porky and Teabiscuit	Kristopher Kolumbus Jr.

Airdate:
6 May 1939 Blue Ribbon reissue: 3 June 1944

MPAA Number:	Production Number:
5060	8753

3 May 1967^[1]

Crew

Mel Blanc (uncredited)
Danny Webb (uncredited)
John Deering (uncredited)
Tedd Pierce (uncredited)^[2]

Treg Brown (uncredited)

Thugs with Dirty Mugs is a 1939 Merrie Melodies short directed by Fred Avery.

The title is a play on Warner Bros.' 1938 feature film Angels with Dirty Faces.

Gangster Killer Diller goes on a bank-robbing spree and the police attempt to apprehend him.

The WB airing of this cartoon cut the part where one of the robbers hits a bank teller (who taunts them with "I'm going to tell-ell!") in the back of the head during one of their heists. Also cut was the police chief yelling "Take that, you rat!" and then feeding cheese to an actual rodent.^[4]
According to Canadian animation historian Gene Walz, this short was banned from being released in Winnipeg, Manitoba back in the 1930s for glorifying criminal behavior and showing Killer Diller being punished like a schoolkid (by being shown in prison writing "I've been a naughty boy" several times on a blackboard with a prison-striped dunce cap on his head) rather than an adult, which the censors thought wasn't "sincere." It should be noted that the Hays Code in America had a similar rule about not glorifying criminals or criminal activity in movies, but animated shorts such as this one were mostly exempt from this rule.^[4]

Similar to Tex Avery's later MGM crime/detective-oriented cartoon Who Killed Who?, the ostensible plot is secondary to a fast and furious series of gags. Co-incidentally, both shorts have a similar theme of crime and featuring a police protagonist portrayed by an anthropomorphic dog.
This short marks the first color Warner Bros. cartoon to open with "WARNER BROS." and "Present" in a banner on the original opening titles. Since the original credits were cut for Blue Ribbon reissues, the original opening rings have not been shown since 1944.
This short was re-released in 1944, cutting out the specific production credits. The version on Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3 is the Blue Ribbon version, the first Blue Ribbon to credit Schlesinger to be present on a restored DVD.^[5]
- It is also the earliest Blue Ribbon reissue to be restored.
- In 2004, about forty Tex Avery title cards that were believed lost due to the Blue Ribbon reissues were being sold on eBay, among them being this short.
This cartoon was shown in theaters with Confessions of a Nazi Spy during its original release.