Baby Bottleneck (1946)

. . . of waking up helpless, strapped down on a conveyor belt, as automation runs amok, taking all kinds of perverse liberties with their body, according to the most recent poll. We probably have Warner Bros. largely to thank for this sorry state of affairs, primarily because of our exposure to Daffy Duck becoming a pig in Porky's blanket at the climax of BABY BOTTLENECK. The diaper welding Daffy's top to Porky's butt obviously is the archetypal meme that served as a possibly Satanic springboard to BABY BOTTLENECK. Though Charlie Chaplin had hinted at what could happen when an Assembly Line Goes Wrong in his live-action feature film, MODERN TIMES, even America's original Chuckie Doll would not risk going as far into the coming Horrors of Genetic Modification, Inter-Species Transplants, and Bad Science in general as Warner allowed its animators to forge ahead with BABY BOTTLENECK. Clearly this animated short had an immediate effect on America's Film Censors, as they were shaking too hard in their jackboots to write out the redo that BABY BOTTLENECK surely merits.

The year 1946 marks the first full year, I believe, of "The Baby Boomers."Anyway, corny humor and a cop-out beginning (using past footage of other cartoons) has us looking at a newspaper headline reading " Unprecedented Demand For Babies Leads to Overworked Stork." We then go to the famous nightclub, "The Stork Club" (where else) where the drunk Jimmy Durante-stork is crying the blues that he does all the work and gets no credit. Then they show some stock footage in demonstrating how the stork has been making mistakes with wrong deliveries.That weak segment gives away to better things when Porky Pig is appointed to handle the stork's problems and Daffy Duck assigned as his assistant....but not that much better. The assembly line babies included some good material but Daffy doesn't look like Daffy and isn't anywhere as funny as he was in later cartoons. This has the appearance of a 1930s 'toon. It looked primitive and lacked the smart humor of the 1950s stuff.

Usually I never would have suspected that a cartoon would portray the baby boom that occurred after WWII, but "Baby Bottleneck" does just that. It portrays Daffy and Porky working in a baby-producing factory and trying to avoid the glitches that have sent certain infants to the wrong parents. Then, an unidentified egg sends everything haywire.Aside from looking at the new things going on in the world, I get the feeling that this cartoon may have inspired Fonzie. You see, when Porky picks up the egg, he tells Daffy "Sit on it." In later years, that would become the Fonz's catch phrase.Oh well, maybe I'm the only person who sees that. The overarching point is, this is a classic cartoon.

Another Clampett powerhouse! Fast, funny, frenetic, and nightmarish. Porky and Daffy run a factory that delivers babies to their expecting parents. The highlight is Scribner's animation of Porky trying to get Daffy to sit on an unhatched egg. These scenes are presented without backgrounds, just color cards. As Jones would prove later with "Duck Amuck," Clampett shows that the only important thing is the character's personalities; that they don't need any arbitrary props or even backgrounds. In the beginning of the cartoon, Daffy argues with some irate parents over the phone. Clampett, writer Warren Foster, and animator Rod Scribner manage to make Daffy, alone with just a phone, hilarious.