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The Turn-Tale Wolf is a 1952 Merrie Melodies short directed by Robert McKimson.

Plot[]

The Big Bad Wolf's proper little nephew has learned at school that his uncle was the fiend who blew the Three Little Pigs' houses down and is ashamed that his uncle, flesh of his flesh and blood of his blood, could have committed such a deed. The nephew confronted Big Bad with this information, and he pleaded innocent. He tells a quite different story of how three sadistic little pigs tormented him, an innocent, nature-obsessed kid who was chased home and had his house blown down upon reading of a 50-dollar bounty for a wolf's tail. When the nephew called his story "malarkey," Big Bad managed to convince his nephew that the story is real, as evidenced by his missing tail.

He immediately mentions to the audience that he lost it in a swinging door, revealing that his story is indeed "malarkey."

Availability[]

Streaming[]

Censorship[]

  • When this was shown on the FOX version of Merrie Melodies Starring Bugs Bunny and Friends, the brief shot of the Big Bad Wolf making moonshine in his house, then trying to cover it up when he hears his son angrily entering the house, was cut.
  • The WB's version left in the moonshine scene, but cut the part in which one of the Three Little Pigs chides the Wolf with the line "Ah, go blow yer brains out!" after the Wolf asks them why they're so mean to him.
  • This cartoon saw major editing when aired on NBC for time, tobacco use, and violence. The following scenes were edited:
    • The Big Bad Wolf's nephew's lines "The humiliation of it" and "For shame, Uncle Big Bad" was removed.
    • The part before the Big Bad Wolf begins his story was cut because the Big Bad Wolf had a cigar in his mouth.
    • The Big Bad Wolf's lines "Hello trees" and "Hello fuzzy little caterpillar" (and the caterpillar growling at the Wolf) were deleted.
    • All of the "games" that the Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs play were removed, cutting to the bounty sign right after the Two Little Pigs laugh.
    • The royal throne scene where the Big Bad Wolf is voted king for a day, him sitting down on the "royal throne" (actually a guillotine) and his tail nearly getting cut off was cut.

Despite these edits, NBC left in the moonshine scene that FOX cut and the "Ah, go blow your brains out" line that was cut on The WB.[1][dead link]

Notes[]

  • The three little pigs in the cartoon are the same villainous pigs previously seen in the Bugs Bunny cartoon "The Windblown Hare", also directed by Robert McKimson three years earlier, albeit with different voices.
  • The story is similar in concept to "The Trial of Mr. Wolf" (1941), where both cartoons center on a wolf pleading for innocent by telling an alternate story where the wolf is the protagonist and the victims (Red Riding Hood for "Trial of Mister Wolf" and Three Little Pigs for "Turn-Tale Wolf") are the aggressors.
    • Although, dissimilar to "The Trial of Mr. Wolf", the Wolf in this cartoon was only telling it to his nephew, and wasn't run over by a streetcar (a gag that was later reused in a Bugs Bunny clip-show called "His Hare Raising Tale").
  • Mel Blanc and Treg Brown both recorded the song "King for a Day", but the song is not used in this short.[2]

Gallery[]

References[]

  1. https://archive.org/details/spiderman-11-14-81-title-1
  2. (3 October 2022) Cartoon Voices of the Golden Age, Vol. 2 (in en). BearManor Media, page 88. 

External Links[]



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