''Buddy's Bearcats'' is a 1934
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (WBEI), commonly known as Warner Bros. (WB), is an American filmed entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California and the main namesake subsidiary of Warner Bro ...
''
Looney Tunes
''Looney Tunes'' is an American media franchise produced and distributed by Warner Bros. The franchise began as a series of animated short films that originally ran from 1930 to 1969, alongside its spin-off series ''Merrie Melodies'', during t ...
'' cartoon, directed by
Jack King.
The short was released on June 23, 1934, and stars
Buddy, the second star of the series.
Summary
We come to a sign that announces "
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball sport played between two team sport, teams of nine players each, taking turns batting (baseball), batting and Fielding (baseball), fielding. The game occurs over the course of several Pitch ...
to-day: Buddy's Bearcats vs. Battling Bruisers". Below, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fans rush into the ballpark; patrons buy tickets and walk through a turnstile. One particularly large man is called back to the ticket window after purchasing his admission and is measured by the operator of the window: "Two seats!" the ticket salesman declares. The man happily obliges and purchases a second ticket for himself! Two tall, bearded gentlemen (in
top hat
A top hat (also called a high hat, or, informally, a topper) is a tall, flat-crowned hat traditionally associated with formal wear in Western dress codes, meaning white tie, morning dress, or frock coat. Traditionally made of black silk or ...
s, no less), one holding the shoulders of the other in front, compress themselves, and sneak, with impunity, under the turnstile and the nose of the ticket salesman.
A young man with light, curly hair observes the park from outside through a crack in the fence and says: "It's Buddy!" We then see Our Hero, grandly bearing the attire of his team and cheerfully playing and tossing a ball around his shoulders and chest. Two other men watch through holes in the fence: as a gag, one's hole in the fence is so much higher than the other's, making viewing difficult, unless one simply reaches up and pulls down the high hole, thereby lowering it and raising the other's hole, to the inconvenience of the other.
A
dog
The dog (''Canis familiaris'' or ''Canis lupus familiaris'') is a domesticated descendant of the gray wolf. Also called the domestic dog, it was selectively bred from a population of wolves during the Late Pleistocene by hunter-gatherers. ...
sits beneath the same curly-haired man from before, and another fellow uses the canine's tail as a crank that curves the dog's midsection upwards, allowing the young man a far better view of the field (or simply a chance to leap over the fence). An apparently
Scotch couple inflates a set of
bagpipes
Bagpipes are a woodwind instrument using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. The Great Highland bagpipes are well known, but people have played bagpipes for centuries throughout large parts of Europe, N ...
, then ties them, as a
hot air balloon
A hot air balloon is a lighter-than-air aircraft consisting of a bag, called an envelope, which contains heated air. Suspended beneath is a gondola or wicker basket (in some long-distance or high-altitude balloons, a capsule), which carri ...
, to a drum, which serves as a platform, that the couple might float in the air and leap over the fence as well. The fans sway about in the stands, and an unusually blond
Cookie
A cookie is a sweet biscuit with high sugar and fat content. Cookie dough is softer than that used for other types of biscuit, and they are cooked longer at lower temperatures. The dough typically contains flour, sugar, egg, and some type of ...
greets Buddy and vice versa.
Buddy uses a baseball to play a set of bats as though they were a
xylophone
The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African ...
, then catches the ball in his back pocket. A food vendor named Willie King sings about his
hot dogs
A hot dog is a grilled, steamed, or boiled sausage served in the slit of a partially sliced bun. The term ''hot dog'' can also refer to the sausage itself. The sausage used is a wiener ( Vienna sausage) or a frankfurter ( Frankfurter Würs ...
; a whimsical drink vendor walks the stands and sends a
soda pop
A soft drink (see § Terminology for other names) is a class of non-alcoholic drink, usually (but not necessarily) carbonated, and typically including added sweetener. Flavors used to be natural, but now can also be artificial. The sweet ...
over to a young patron by means of a little propeller. A very musical announcer introduces us to the Battling Bruisers, the team on his right; and on his left, "the greatest team the world has ever seen: Buddy and his Bearcats." The game begins, narrated by a parody of
Joe E. Brown on a radio station KFWB (''not to be confused with
KFWB
KFWB (980 AM) is a commercial radio station in Los Angeles, California. KFWB is owned by Lotus Communications, and airs a classic regional Mexican music radio format. The station has a colorful history, being the radio voice of Warner Bros. ...
in
Los Angeles
Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...
''), who swallows a foul ball thrown in his direction by Buddy. Meanwhile, Buddy rubs his hands with dirt; a Bruiser squirts oil under his arms and throws a pitch to Buddy, who then hits the ball and runs (and skates) to second base for a double. The fans are very pleased.
In the next scene, Buddy plans to wind the ball up like a toy to trick the batter, then throws the tricky ball to the Bruiser, who can not seem to hit it and instead injures the catcher by accident; he slams down his bat, blows air (through a bug spray apparatus) at the ball that it falls (as would a dying fly), and simply picks it up, tosses it into the air, and hits it. An outfielder immediately catches the ball in deep left with a mechanical glove. Afterward, the radio announcer yells in front of the microphone, and the camera zooms up inside his mouth at the same time. Meanwhile, in the top half of the ninth, the score, as we see in the next scene, stands at forty-nine to forty-seven. The people want Buddy! But Our Hero, behind the scenes, is all too nervous to emerge and play; alone, he genuflects, and appears, for a moment, to pray. Cookie approaches him inside the bullpen and tells him of the great clamor for him from the spectators: Buddy is bashfully convinced. Buddy gladly takes the bat from another player (who looks like a taller, balder version of Buddy), hits a ball thrown by a maniacally laughing, mustachioed Bruiser, and runs about the diamond, cheered on by Cookie, who stands at the base. The game is won, and the two sweethearts, embracing, are buried in a deluge of the hats of happy fans.
Soundtrack
Some of the soundtracks used in this short were used from the Warner Bros film ''
Smarty'', which is released a month prior to the short.
Hot dog vendor
Willie King, the concession stand owner, played by
Billy Bletcher
William Bletcher (September 24, 1894 – January 5, 1979) was an American actor. He was known for voice roles for various classic animated characters, most notably Pete in Walt Disney's ''Mickey Mouse'' short films and the Big Bad Wolf in Di ...
, sings an original song by
Norman Spencer, the musical director of the short. In the history of Warner Bros. cartoons, Willie King was, in fact, a concession stand owner who operated his business outside
Leon Schlesinger
Leonardo Schlesinger ( ; May 20, 1884 – December 25, 1949) was an American film producer who founded Leon Schlesinger Productions, which later became the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio, during the Golden Age of American animation
The gold ...
's studio.
Cookie in this short
This is the first of but a few Buddy shorts in which Buddy's sweetheart Cookie has blond, braided hair. This would seem to be characteristic only of those Buddy cartoons supervised by
Jack King, though not all of them.
References
External links
Buddy's Bearcats on Dailymotion (Unrestored)*
{{Jack King
1934 films
1930s American animated films
1930s sports films
American baseball films
Films scored by Norman Spencer (composer)
Films directed by Jack King
Buddy (Looney Tunes) films
Looney Tunes shorts
American animated black-and-white films
1934 animated short films