Louvre Come Back to Me!
Louvre Come Back to Me! is a 1962 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Chuck Jones.[1] The short was released on August 18, 1962, and stars Pepé Le Pew in his last cartoon of the "classic" Warner Bros. animation age.[2]
| Louvre Come Back to Me! | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Chuck Jones Maurice Noble |
| Produced by | David H. DePatie John W. Burton |
| Story by | John Dunn |
| Starring | Mel Blanc Julie Bennett |
| Music by | Milt Franklyn |
| Animation by | Bob Bransford Ken Harris Tom Ray Richard Thompson |
| Backgrounds by | Phillip DeGuard Tom O'Loughlin |
| Color process | Technicolor |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
Release date | August 18, 1962 (USA) |
Running time | 6:28 |
| Language | English |
Plot
In Paris, Pepé is strolling and causing a disturbance with his fumes. At one point Penelope Pussycat is walking with a ginger cat and Pepé's stink causes the ginger cat to faint and Penelope to spring in the air, her back making contact with a fresh white-painted flagpole before she falls right into Pepé's arms. As Pepé introduces himself, Penelope scurries away.
Pepé chases Penelope into the Louvre, with the ginger cat following. Pepé's stench ruins a couple of sculptures (correcting one into the Venus de Milo) as well as thwarting the ginger cat's ambush attempt (who Pepé mistakes for a sculpture due to him turning white; the cat's teeth, whiskers, tail and nose fall off, which he sweeps up before fleeing) and he terrifies Penelope in the sculpture gallery, even as he paints a picture of her ("Don't move, darling. I want to remember you just as you are."), she scurries away again and Pepé "accidentally" paints the dust cloud she left onto his picture ("Aw, shucks... You moved!").
The ginger cat pumps himself with air in an attempt to hold his breath as well as look strong and muscular while he confronts Pepé. Pepé plays along the confrontation as a duel, miming a miss and a defeat. The ginger cat in the meantime slowly suffocates and finally the air he fights very hard to hold in is forced out, launching himself into the Hall d'Armour. Pepé wonders where everyone has gone to and after remarking that "War is fine, but love is better", he immediately picks up on where Penelope went.
Pepé finds Penelope hiding in the Air Conditioning machine below the Louvre and traps her in it with himself. Pepé's fumes spread through the Louvre spoiling various works of art (the limp watches of Salvador Dalí's The Persistence of Memory turn erect and break, the heads of the couple on Grant Wood's American Gothic retreat into their bodies in the manner of turtles, the person overseeing the workers on Jean-François Millet's The Gleaners shoots a starting pistol causing the workers to dash off like sprinters, and the color on Edgar Degas's Two Dancers falls off turning it into a paint-by-numbers picture), the cartoon ending with the fumes causing the Mona Lisa to talk ("I can tell you chaps one thing. It's not always easy to hold this smile.").
Crew
- Co-Director & Layouts: Maurice Noble
- Story: John Dunn
- Animation: Richard Thompson, Bob Bransford, Tom Ray & Ken Harris
- Backgrounds: Tom O'Loughlin & Philip DeGuard
- Film Editor: Treg Brown
- Voice Characterizations: Mel Blanc & Julie Bennett
- Music: Milt Franklyn
- Produced by David H. DePatie & John W. Burton
- Directed by Chuck Jones
Availability
References
- Beck, Jerry; Friedwald, Will (1989). Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons. Henry Holt and Co. p. 338. ISBN 0-8050-0894-2.
- Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books. p. 117. ISBN 0-8160-3831-7. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
