Jungle Jitters

Jungle Jitters
Merrie Melodies series
Title card
Directed by I. Freleng
Produced by Leon Schlesinger
Story by George Manuell
Voices by Mel Blanc
Tedd Pierce
Music by Carl Stalling
Animation by Phil Monroe
Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures
The Vitaphone Corporation
Release date(s) February 19, 1938 (USA)
Color process Technicolor
Running time 8 min (one reel)
Language English

Jungle Jitters is a 1938 Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Friz Freleng.

Plot

A scene from the film.

In an African jungle, the natives are going about their day, with the jungle elements being intertwined with modern-day elements; for example, the people dancing around a tent when it turns into a makeshift merry-go-round, to the tune of The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down which has since become the longtime Looney Tunes theme song.

A traveling dog-like salesman named Manny (a parody of Al Pearce's character Elmer Blurt) comes by to offer them the latest in "assorted useful, useless, utensils". The natives capture him, throw him into a pot of boiling water, and ransack his goods. They proceed to familiarize themselves with vacuum cleaners, batteries, light bulbs, etc.

When the salesman is introduced to the village queen (depicted as a chicken-like white woman, possibly to avoid any problems with the Hays code over the issue of miscegenation), she takes a liking to him, imagining Manny the salesman as Clark Gable and Robert Taylor. The salesman finds himself with the choice between a forced marriage with the homely queen, or the boiling pot of water. He chooses the pot, and in a closing shot as he sinks into the broth, hopes "they all get indigestion."

Availability

  • Jungle Jitters fell into the public domain in 1966, and is available on many public domain home video collections.

See also

Notes

  • Because of the racial stereotypes used against black people throughout the short, it prompted United Artists to withhold it from syndication within the United States in 1968. As such, the short was placed it into the so-called Censored Eleven, a group of eleven Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes shorts withheld from television distribution in the United States since 1968 due to heavy stereotyping of black people.[1]
  • The short was also referenced in the Looney Tunes short, The Ducksters (1950), but is not related to what Daffy Duck was talking about because he mentioned a gorilla and the original short did not feature a gorilla.

References

  1. ↑ The Straight Dope.


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