Shamrock and Roll is a 1969 Merrie Melodies short directed by Robert McKimson.
Title[]
The title is a portmanteau of "Rock and Roll" and "Shamrock."
Plot[]
Merlin the Magic Mouse wants to travel the world so more people can experience his magic. He calls in Second Banana to choose an area via dart throw and pointing to the globe, but this results in Merlin being poked somewhere. After Merlin picks a place for himself, he and Second Banana travels to Ireland via magic carpet. However, the carpet grips onto a tree and unravels it, making Merlin and Second Banana crash-land into a shamrock patch. They come across the chief leprechaun, named O'Reilly, who tells the two mice to get out of the shamrock patch.
When O'Reilly doesn't believe Merlin can do magic tricks, the magician rodent performs for him. However, O'Reilly isn't amused as he finds out Merlin's magic rabbit trick is a fraud using a hand puppet. O'Reilly wants to use Merlin's pocket watch to make it disappear, but this allows the leprechaun to steal the watch and disappear with it. Realizing the trick, Merlin and Second Banana go after O'Reilly, but they fall off a ledge, and Merlin pulling a large paper airplane out of his hat doesn't help much. Merlin then sets up a leprechaun trap, but O'Reilly uses his magic to replace him with Second Banana while in the sack. Eventually, they spot O'Reilly's tree-house decorated with numerous clocks and watches, and O'Reilly offers to give them all the pocket watches he has.
Merlin and Second Banana fly home to sell the watches for a "small fortune", but the sack suddenly becomes empty. Distracted about the sack being empty, they collide into a clock tower presumed to be Big Ben, wrecking it. O'Reilly returns to teasingly ask for the time of day. The leprechaun flies off laughing, and Merlin says, "Oh... drat!"
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Notes[]
- This is the only Merlin cartoon where he was beaten by his opponent.
- This is also the only cartoon in the series where Merlin does not say his magic words, "Atascadero Escondido!"
- This would be the final appearance of Merlin and Second Banana, due to Warner Bros.-Seven Arts' final shutdown shortly after the short was released to theaters.
- It would also be the second to last Merrie Melodies cartoon. The title of Merrie Melodies, and the WB cartoons as a whole, would end on "Injun Trouble" released months later.
- This is the final classic WB cartoon to credit Norman McCabe as an animator.
- HBO Max's remastered print of the cartoon retains the original MPAA "Rated G" screen (accompanied by music from William Lava that would later become the theme to The Merrie Melodies Show) before the "Abstract W7" Merrie Melodies intro sequence on its theatrical release.
- This cartoon was shipped to the Academy Awards for a possible nomination in 1969, alongside "Injun Trouble", but was shortlisted.
- O'Reilly's design seems to originate from a scrapped leprechaun character named Paddy O., who was pitched to the Seven Arts cartoon studio while Alex Lovy was the director for the studio.[1] Paddy O. was originally intended to debut in a Speedy Gonzales and Daffy Duck cartoon, but when Lovy left the cartoon studio, Robert McKimson reworked Paddy O. into a one-off antagonist character for Merlin due the cartoon studio being closed shortly after the cartoon's release.
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