Overlooked Classics: Cool Cat (1967)

 

It is no secret how Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons are all time classics. They are some of the funniest, smartest, energetic and all around best cartoons (or even films of any kind) ever made. The characters, the humor, the quotes and the stories have all affected our lives and definitely our culture. That  is why it is so surprising how many Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons and characters  have been forgotten or overlooked by the majority of people.

Probably one of the most overlooked Looney Tunes characters is Cool Cat. I am not going to say Cool Cat is as amazing of a character as Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny or Porky Pig, because he isn't, and his weaker cartoons really pale in compression to the ones made during the golden age of Looney Tunes. However his best cartoons are quite good and really deserve another look by Looney Tunes fans.

The original Warner Brothers animation studio closed in 1963. After 33 years of making Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons for movie theaters, it look as if these characters would never see a theater screen again (though like many short films made for theaters, they were enjoying success on TV at this time). However the very next year Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies were revived by the DePaite-Freling studio (who were making Pink Panther cartoons at this time). The Freling of Depatie-Freling was Friz Freling, who had worked for the Warner Brother animation studio since the beginning first as an animator and then as a director. Most of DePatie-Frelings Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies centered around the characters Daffy Duck, Speedy Gonzales, The Roadrunner, and Wile E. Coyote. Shockingly Bugs Bunny never appeared in any of these new shorts. The budgets for these cartoons were severely cut and limited animation is used rather than the full animation that was used earlier during the golden age of Looney Tunes. These cartoons were very successful and in 1967 Jack Warner decided to have his own animation department take over Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies again. Bill Hendricks (who had directed some live action documentary shorts for Warners Brothers) would become the new producer of the two series. Since the cartoons would still be made for the same low budget DePatie-Freling cartoons had been, it also seemed natural to hire some one from Hanna-Barbera to take over the job of directing cartoons. This job went to Alex Lovy, who was the current story director for Hanna-Barbera's TV shows.

Alex Lovy would direct more Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales cartoons, but he was also hired to create some new characters. His characters would include Merlin the Magic Mouse (a mouse who had real magic powers and sounded a lot like W.C. Fields), his sidekick Second Banana, Cool Cat (a hip beatnik Tiger perfectly in tune with the 1960's) and Colonel Rimfire (who would always hunt Cool Cat). Merlin the Magic Mouse and Second Banana would be voiced by Daws Butler while Cool Cat and Colonel Rimfire were voiced by Larry Storch.

My favorite Cool Cat cartoon was his first simply titled Cool Cat. In this film Colonel Rimfire, traveling in his a mechanical elephant named Ellie, "Tawt he taw a puttytat" (a tiger type puttytat) and goes hunting for Cool Cat. Colonel Rimfire loses Ellie and Cool Cat thinks she is a poor elephant in need of help, so Cool Cat tries to tech Ellie how to live in the wild. Everything Cool Cat does to help Ellie however ends up saving himself from Colonel Rimfire.

The animators on this film are Ted Bonnicken, Laverne Harding, Volus Jones and Ed Solomon. Of these animators Ted Bonnicken was the only one to work for Warner Brothers before the studio originally closed in 1963, as he was animator for Robert McKimsons unit in the 1950's and 90's.

Cool Cat remains a very entertaing cartoon, the humor is quite good, for how limited the animation is the cartoon is still quite pleasant to look at, the voice acting is excellent, the story is a lot of fun, and the new characters are quite good. This is definitely a cartoon Looney Tunes fans should check out.

So bye for now and remember, stay cool you hear.

-Michael J. Ruhland

Resources Used
Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons by Leonard Maltin