A Cartoonist's Nightmare

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The Lady in Red	Little Dutch Plate

Airdate:
14 September 1935

Series:

Looney Tunes

MPAA Number:	Production Number:
1145	6982

Copyright Renewed:

13 November 1963^[1]

Starring:

Beans

Crew

Voice Characterizations:

Billy Bletcher (uncredited)
Tommy Bond (uncredited)
Jack Carr (uncredited)^[2]

Director:

Jack King

Written By:

Ben Harrison (uncredited)^[3]

Producer:

Leon Schlesinger

Animated By:

Don Williams
Paul Smith
Chuck Jones (uncredited)
Bob Clampett (uncredited)
Robert McKimson (uncredited)
Sandy Walker (uncredited)
Ben Clopton (uncredited)^[4]
Nelson Demorest (uncredited)

Film Editor:

Bernard B. Brown (uncredited)
Treg Brown (uncredited)

Musician:

Bernard Brown
Norman Spencer (uncredited)

A Cartoonist's Nightmare is a 1935 Looney Tunes short directed by Jack King.

Plot[]

It was closing time at an animation studio and all the staff members were calling it a day. Meanwhile, an animator chooses to carry on with his work. In his drawing, he sketched a dungeon scene where Beans the Cat encounters a goblin. Weary for working several hours continuously, the animator decides to take a little snooze. Before ending the session, he draws a steel barricade between the two characters. Suddenly, the goblin comes to life and pulls him into the drawing. The goblin carries the animator away, heading somewhere beyond the picture's scene.

Shocked and terrified, the animator tries in vain to break out of the goblin's grasp. He was then brought into a mystic chamber where stone portraits of various monsters are displayed on the walls. The monsters happened to be the animator's creations as well as those of his colleagues. They too came too life and got out of their illustrations. As revenge for how he and other cartoonists made them get subdued in the end of each film, the monsters gave the animator a pencil and forced him to draw a deep pit in the floor where they tossed him inside. Upon falling in, the animator holds onto a branch, trying to avoid being devoured by the crocodile at the bottom.

Back at the scene still being worked on, Beans still stands behind the barricade, boredly waiting for his artist to comeback. Just then, a woman came to him, offering a lunchbox. Beans was expecting food but was a little surprised to find a saw in the container. Nonetheless, he uses it to cut his way out of the metal fence. Finally freeing himself, he goes around to find his animator.

In no time, Beans found the chamber where his animator is being tormented. To intervene, he hurls a boot at the goblin, luring the monsters away as they try capture him. Beans managed to lose them somehow when he returns to the place to rescue the troubled man. The animator then receives a pencil from Beans and draws a ladder to climb out the pit. When the monsters are coming back, Beans spills lubricant between the room's entrance and the pit. The monsters slide on the lubricant mess and fall into the hole. To vanquish them for good, the animator removes the hole with an eraser. Beans and the animator shook hands for a work well done.

It turns out what the animator went through was merely a dream as he was awaken by the custodian. To his relief, he finds the drawing on his desk unchanged. Not wanting to recall his experience, the animator edits out the goblin and the steel barricade, leaving only Beans in the picture. As a compliment to his little friend, he draws a platter with gelatin on top for Beans to eat.

Caricatures[]

Availability[]

Streaming[]

Notes[]

This is the first solo appearance of Beans, and his first appearance in the Looney Tunes series.
One Punch Otto, the Evil Octopus is from "Mr. and Mrs. Is the Name".
The Evil Beast is from "Beauty and the Beast".
The Mad Doctor is from "Buddy the Detective".
This cartoon was used in the intro and bumpers for Looney Tunes on Nick at Nite.^[5]