Fowl Weather

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Fowl Weather

Directed By: I. Freleng Produced By: Eddie Selzer (uncredited) Released: April 4, 1953 Series: Merrie Melodies Story: Warren Foster Animation: Ken Champin Virgil Ross Arthur Davis Manuel Perez Layouts: Hawley Pratt Backgrounds: Irv Wyner Film Editor: Treg Brown (uncredited) Voiced By: Mel Blanc Bea Benaderet (uncredited) Music: Carl Stalling Starring: Sylvester Tweety Granny Hector the Bulldog Preceded By: A Peck o' Trouble Succeeded By: Muscle Tussle Tweety & Sylvester-Fowl Weather (1953)

Fowl Weather is a 1953 Warner Bros. animated short featuring Sylvester and Tweety. This is the first cartoon where Hector the Bulldog is given his name.

Plot

Granny leaves Hector in charge of looking after Tweety while she's away, otherwise she will shoot Hector. Sylvester tries to eat Tweety, first by disguising himself as a scarecrow (complete with ragged clothes and tall stilts), but is chased away by Hector. Nonetheless, now out of his cage, Tweety decides to look around. He decides to greet the farm animals ("Hello, moo-moo cow!"), but after detecting a goat to really be Sylvester in a realistic rubber mask ("Hello, puddy tat!"), Tweety takes cover in a chicken coop.

Sylvester tries several times to get into the coop using a toy soldier, dressing himself poorly as a hen, etc., only to be stopped by the rooster, who beats him soundly. While mimicking one of the baby chicks, Tweety comes across a worm and tells the "piece of spaghetti with eyes" to hide from the other chickens. A last attempt involves Sylvester (still in hen "costume") and the rooster (an ill-tempered, perfectionist rooster and not Foghorn Leghorn, who is a strictly Robert McKimson character) waiting while Sylvester "lays eggs". The rooster decides to use a grenade to make him "hatch" one. At this point, Hector realizes Tweety's absence, and demands to know his whereabouts. Short on time, and fearing Granny will kill him, he paints Sylvester and has him act like Tweety.

Granny returns, and the ruse works. Tweety meanwhile also returns, and notices the change of circumstances. "Ho ho! If he's a birdie, den dat makes me a putty tat!" Tweety claims, and starts acting like a cat.

Censorship

• On ABC, the part where the aggressive rooster orders Sylvester to "hatch" a hand grenade was edited to remove the scene of the rooster getting the hand grenade, putting it under Sylvester, and the grenade exploding.
  • The CBS version cuts the same scene as ABC. Unlike ABC's version, the short scene of Sylvester fleeing the coop to put out the fire on his tail was also edited out, which doesn't result in the plot hole of why Sylvester is fleeing the coop like in ABC's version.
• The Cartoon Network and Boomerang version keeps in the grenade part, but cuts out a brief and violent scene of Hector the Bulldog imagining himself being shot to death by Granny as punishment for not safeguarding Tweety (though an earlier scene where Granny warns Hector and mimics shooting him with her umbrella wasn't edited). As of 2013, the short has been shown uncut on Cartoon Network and Boomerang.

  

  The scene of Hector visualizing himself shot dead by Granny is censored on Cartoon Network and Boomerang in the U.S. prior to 2011. This image here shows that this scene aired uncensored on Cartoon Network and Boomerang outside the U.S..