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Tweetie Pie is a 1947 Merrie Melodies short directed by Friz Freleng.

Title[]

The title is a play on the term of endearment "sweetie pie," and also a play on Tweety's own name

Plot[]

Thomas captures Tweety, whom he finds outside in the snow, warming himself by a lit cigar. The cat's mistress, whose face is never shown, saves the bird from being eaten by the cat, whom she promptly reprimands.

Tweety is brought inside, and the mistress warns Thomas not to bother the bird. Ignoring this command, Thomas initiates a series of attempts to get Tweety from his cage such as stacking up furniture and tables as a ladder, each ending in a noisy crash thanks to Tweety foiling his plans to eat him, bringing the lady of the house to whack Thomas with a broom every time.

Next, Thomas uses the table fan as a propeller to fly himself upwards Tweety's cage, but Tweety immediately unplugs the fan, causing Thomas to fall down on the floor hard. Afterwards, Tweety then immediately yells for help frequently at the noisiest volume twice, resulting the mistress, who has finally had enough of Thomas ignoring her commands to stop eating Tweety, then throws him out into the cold.

The cat tries to get back into the house through the chimney. Tweety puts wood in the fireplace, pours gasoline on it and lights it. The explosion sends Thomas flying right back up the chimney and into a bucket of frozen water.

However, Thomas gets back in the house via a window in the basement and creates a Rube Goldberg-esque trap to capture Tweety, which of course, backfires and injures him instead. Finally, Thomas tries to capture Tweety by running up to the attic and sawing a hole around Tweety's cage, but he ends up causing the entire inner ceiling to collapse (sans Tweety's cage, which is being held in place by a beam). The faux pas creates such a racket that Thomas is sure the mistress will come downstairs and wallop him, and so, he takes her broom, breaks it in half, and tosses the pieces into the fire. This proves to be a bad move, as he finds himself being walloped on the head repeatedly with a shovel...by Tweety.

Availability[]

Streaming[]

Production[]

  • Bob Clampett was working on a fourth Tweety cartoon in which he was going to be paired with Friz Freleng's then-unnamed cat, Sylvester. The project, which had a storyboard produced under the title "The Fat Rat and the Stupid Cat",[2] was left dormant when Clampett left on 1 May 1945, for reasons unknown. The project was ultimately scrapped.
  • Friz Freleng took a liking to Clampett's canary, however, he would heavily modify the character, decreasing the exaggeration of his feet and a fresh coat of yellow feathers. "Tweetie Pie" would start production in June 1945.[3] According to the documentary Friz on Film, producer Eddie Selzer believed pairing Sylvester and Tweety was not a good decision. This argument allegedly caused Freleng to threaten Eddie that if he knew so much about cartooning, he should take a pencil and do it himself. Eddie apologized to Friz over the phone later that night and allowed him to continue his project as attended.[4] Furthermore, Friz and his unit proved themselves as not only was "Tweetie Pie" a hit with audiences, it was screened at the Academy and won the 1947 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. It also proved that Sylvester and Tweety were some of the most endearing Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies characters.[5][6]

Notes[]

  • This was the first cartoon to pair Tweety and Sylvester.
  • This was the first Warner Bros. short to earn an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film.[6]
  • The Rube-Goldberg-esque contraption was previously used in "Trap Happy Porky", although unlike this cartoon where the trap fails, in "Trap Happy Porky" it was successful. Coincidentally, both "Trap Happy Porky" and "Tweetie Pie" were written by Tedd Pierce.
  • The "kiss the wittow birdie" scenario of Sylvester asked to kiss Tweety, only to eat the bird and get forced to spit it out would be re-used two more times: "Gift Wrapped" (1952) and "Catty Cornered" (1953).
  • In this cartoon, Sylvester is called "Thomas", a play on the term "tomcat" and possibly a nod to Tom Cat from MGM's Tom and Jerry. In 1948, the name was changed to Sylvester, beginning with the cartoon "Scaredy Cat".
  • Although not a direct remake, most of the cartoon's concept was derived from "The Cagey Canary", a 1941 one-shot Merrie Melodies cartoon planned by Tex Avery and finished by Bob Clampett, also featuring another cat-and-canary pairing with a similar premise. Coincidentally, both "Tweetie Pie" and "The Cagey Canary" were written by Michael Maltese.
  • Sylvester does not speak in this short; the other Tweety shorts where Sylvester is mute are "Bad Ol' Putty Tat", "Putty Tat Trouble", and "Tree Cornered Tweety".
  • In the Polish, French and German redubs of this short[7][8][9] Sylvester is named in this short as his actual name "Sylvester" instead of his original given name "Thomas".
  • Harley Quinn and Cassandra Cain watch this cartoon in a scene in the 2020 movie Birds of Prey.
  • The animation of Sylvester running while getting hit with a broom by his owner was later reused in "Gift Wrapped".
  • This is the first time Sylvester has a white-tipped tail, which would become his standard look.
  • On early TV airings of the cartoon from the 1970s or 1980s (including Atlanta TBS affiliate WTBS), the original opening soundtrack was heard over the a.a.p. and opening titles of the cartoon for some reason.[10][11][12]
    • Although the short was re-released into the Blue Ribbon Merrie Melodies program in 1955, the original titles are known to exist in black and white. As Warner Bros. does not restore black-and-white prints, the Blue Ribbon titles were restored instead.
  • This short's Vitaphone release number is 1534.[13]

Music-Cues[]

  • Why Don't You Fall in Love with Me? (by Mabel Wayne)
    • Plays during the opening credits[14]
  • Rock-a-Bye Baby (by Effie I. Canning)

Gallery[]

References[]

  1. ā†‘ https://archive.org/details/catalogofcopyrig3281213li/page/91/mode/1up?view=theater
  2. ā†‘ https://comics.ha.com/itm/animation-art/-sylvester-and-tweety-110-original-storyboard-drawings-for-fat-rat-and-the-stupid-cat/a/997060-1048.s
  3. ā†‘ https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/bob-clampetts-a-gruesome-twosome-1945/
  4. ā†‘ Polson, Tod (2013). The Noble Approach: Maurice Noble and the Zen of Animation Design (in en). Chronicle Books, page 26. ISBN 978-1452127385. 
  5. ā†‘ Sperling, Cass Warner; Millner, Cork; Warner, Jack (1998). Hollywood be Thy Name: The Warner Brothers Story (in en). University Press of Kentucky, page 187-188. ISBN 978-1559585897. 
  6. ā†‘ 6.0 6.1 https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1948
  7. ā†‘ https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6r26mc
  8. ā†‘ https://drive.google.com/open?id=1qq9moBSHzbjHEQ7gaXuF7VCKgYE-q7wC
  9. ā†‘ http://chomikuj.pl/Nieznam123/Zwariowane+Melodie/Z*c5*82ota+Kolekcja/Z*c5*82ota+Kolekcja+2/Dysk+3+-+Tweety+i+Sylwester+-+Najlepsze+z+Najlepszych*2c+cz*c4*99*c5*9b*c4*87+1/09+-+*c5*81akomy+k*c4*85sek+(1946),6254399967.avi(video)
  10. ā†‘ http://bloglarry.blogspot.com/2006/06/wb-cartoon-credit-weirdness.html
  11. ā†‘ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn27c5lrr7c
  12. ā†‘ https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/missing-footage-as-well-as-remembering-things-that-never-existed
  13. ā†‘ https://books.google.com/books/about/Vitaphone_Films.html?id=mmtZAAAAMAAJ
  14. ā†‘ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmSJwyiMQg0
  15. ā†‘ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039923/soundtrack/
ā† Kitty Kornered Sylvester Cartoons Crowing Pains ā†’
ā† A Gruesome Twosome Tweety Cartoons I Taw a Putty Tat ā†’
Sylvester Cartoons
1945 Life with Feathers ā€¢ Peck Up Your Troubles
1946 Kitty Kornered
1947 Tweetie Pie ā€¢ Crowing Pains ā€¢ Doggone Cats ā€¢ Catch as Cats Can
1948 Back Alley Oproar ā€¢ I Taw a Putty Tat ā€¢ Hop, Look and Listen ā€¢ Kit for Cat ā€¢ Scaredy Cat
1949 Mouse Mazurka ā€¢ Bad Ol' Putty Tat ā€¢ Hippety Hopper
1950 Home, Tweet Home ā€¢ The Scarlet Pumpernickel ā€¢ All a Bir-r-r-d ā€¢ Canary Row ā€¢ Stooge for a Mouse ā€¢ Pop 'Im Pop!
1951 Canned Feud ā€¢ Putty Tat Trouble ā€¢ Room and Bird ā€¢ Tweety's S.O.S. ā€¢ Tweet Tweet Tweety
1952 Who's Kitten Who? ā€¢ Gift Wrapped ā€¢ Little Red Rodent Hood ā€¢ Ain't She Tweet ā€¢ Hoppy Go Lucky ā€¢ A Bird in a Guilty Cage ā€¢ Tree for Two
1953 Snow Business ā€¢ A Mouse Divided ā€¢ Fowl Weather ā€¢ Tom Tom Tomcat ā€¢ A Street Cat Named Sylvester ā€¢ Catty Cornered ā€¢ Cats A-weigh!
1954 Dog Pounded ā€¢ Bell Hoppy ā€¢ Dr. Jerkyl's Hide ā€¢ Claws for Alarm ā€¢ Muzzle Tough ā€¢ Satan's Waitin' ā€¢ By Word of Mouse
1955 Lighthouse Mouse ā€¢ Sandy Claws ā€¢ Tweety's Circus ā€¢ Jumpin' Jupiter ā€¢ A Kiddies Kitty ā€¢ Speedy Gonzales ā€¢ Red Riding Hoodwinked ā€¢ Heir-Conditioned ā€¢ Pappy's Puppy
1956 Too Hop to Handle ā€¢ Tweet and Sour ā€¢ Tree Cornered Tweety ā€¢ The Unexpected Pest ā€¢ Tugboat Granny ā€¢ The Slap-Hoppy Mouse ā€¢ Yankee Dood It
1957 Tweet Zoo ā€¢ Tweety and the Beanstalk ā€¢ Birds Anonymous ā€¢ Greedy for Tweety ā€¢ Mouse-Taken Identity ā€¢ Gonzales' Tamales
1958 A Pizza Tweety-Pie ā€¢ A Bird in a Bonnet
1959 Trick or Tweet ā€¢ Tweet and Lovely ā€¢ Cat's Paw ā€¢ Here Today, Gone Tamale ā€¢ Tweet Dreams
1960 West of the Pesos ā€¢ Goldimouse and the Three Cats ā€¢ Hyde and Go Tweet ā€¢ Mouse and Garden ā€¢ Trip for Tat
1961 Cannery Woe ā€¢ Hoppy Daze ā€¢ Birds of a Father ā€¢ D' Fightin' Ones ā€¢ The Rebel Without Claws ā€¢ The Pied Piper of Guadalupe ā€¢ The Last Hungry Cat
1962 Fish and Slips ā€¢ Mexican Boarders ā€¢ The Jet Cage
1963 Mexican Cat Dance ā€¢ Chili Weather ā€¢ Claws in the Lease
1964 A Message to Gracias ā€¢ Freudy Cat ā€¢ Nuts and Volts ā€¢ Hawaiian Aye Aye ā€¢ Road to Andalay
1965 It's Nice to Have a Mouse Around the House ā€¢ Cats and Bruises ā€¢ The Wild Chase
1966 A Taste of Catnip
1980 The Yolks on You
1995 Carrotblanca
1997 Father of the Bird
2011 I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat


Tweety Cartoons
1942 A Tale of Two Kitties
1944 Birdy and the Beast
1945 A Gruesome Twosome
1947 Tweetie Pie
1948 I Taw a Putty Tat
1949 Bad Ol' Putty Tat
1950 Home, Tweet Home ā€¢ All a Bir-r-r-d ā€¢ Canary Row
1951 Putty Tat Trouble ā€¢ Room and Bird ā€¢ Tweety's S.O.S. ā€¢ Tweet Tweet Tweety
1952 Gift Wrapped ā€¢ Ain't She Tweet ā€¢ A Bird in a Guilty Cage
1953 Snow Business ā€¢ Fowl Weather ā€¢ Tom Tom Tomcat ā€¢ A Street Cat Named Sylvester ā€¢ Catty Cornered
1954 Dog Pounded ā€¢ Muzzle Tough ā€¢ Satan's Waitin'
1955 Sandy Claws ā€¢ Tweety's Circus ā€¢ Red Riding Hoodwinked ā€¢ Heir-Conditioned
1956 Tweet and Sour ā€¢ Tree Cornered Tweety ā€¢ Tugboat Granny
1957 Tweet Zoo ā€¢ Tweety and the Beanstalk ā€¢ Birds Anonymous ā€¢ Greedy for Tweety
1958 A Pizza Tweety-Pie ā€¢ A Bird in a Bonnet
1959 Trick or Tweet ā€¢ Tweet and Lovely ā€¢ Tweet Dreams
1960 Hyde and Go Tweet ā€¢ Trip for Tat
1961 The Rebel Without Claws ā€¢ The Last Hungry Cat
1962 The Jet Cage
1964 Hawaiian Aye Aye
2011 I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat
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