Booby Hatched (1944)

Frank Tashlin was wrapping up his 2nd stint at Schlesinger's in 1944 (supposedly). He had directed a string of mini-masterpieces during this time frame, including this one.A mother duck hatches her eggs, except one. Robespierre, partially hatched, is in search of a warm spot to hatch, but encounters peril along the way.A little known fact, in between his two stints at Schlesinger's, Tashlin worked on storyboards for Peter And The Wolf when he was at the Disney studio. This would have been done around 1940 and the film was released in 1946. There are some striking similarities in the staging of the snowstorm scenes. Some historians have stated that Tashlin utilized some of the ideas he conceived for Disney in his 1940's WB cartoons. Like Tashlin's other short released in late 1944 THE STUPID CUPID, I got the feeling that this film has some long lost footage, based on a conspicuous jump cut. While it hasn't been really discussed as much as THE STUPID CUPID, I wonder if Tashlin's eventual departure had something to do with the poor edits or if the Hay's Office objected to the adult gags that were prevalent in Tashlin's cartoons from this time frame.Warren Foster reworked this premise for McKimson a few years later as THE SHELL SHOCKED EGG (1948), which was more dialog driven. Both are excellent shorts.

. . . knows that 90% of animators are Asian, because that continent is the Ancestral Homeland of Cartoons as much as Africa is the Fatherland of NBA basketball. Yet, most of the artists associated with BOOBY HATCHED sport European-sounding monikers, because Rich People Party Congressional Storm Troopers were sent to kidnap every Japanese man, woman, and child at the outset of World War Two, and truck them to desert Ethnic Cleansing Gulags, which turned out to be Death Camps for many. None of these folks faced a shred of evidence that they had done anything wrong. All of them remained locked up for years without a smidgen of "Due Process." Upon release, none of the surviving detainees got their homes, businesses, or money back. "How could this happen in America?" ask my Millenial classmates. How could White strangers be allowed to occupy the Prime Digs built with the sweat off your brow, and passing down the stolen property through the generations into the 21st Century? Three words: Military-Style Assault Rifles. Not one of these political prisoners being herded like sheep to slaughter had so much as a semi-automatic AR-15. That's why five million Americans ALREADY have stocked up on their Bushmasters, and why 100 million more will do so under President Trump. When THE PURGE happens in Real Life, the descendants of the scabs who BOOBY HATCHED the Japanese animators' jobs and homes may be among the first to go.

"Booby Hatched" is a very silly Warner Bros. cartoon directed by Frank Tashlin. It's basically about an overprotective mother duck and one of her unhatched little offspring who somehow manages to separate himself from his siblings and get himself lost. No need for me to reveal more than that.Here are, in my opinion, the funniest moments from "Booby Hatched". As the mother duck prepares to rest her boiling hot fanny on her chilly blue eggs, they all suddenly hatch, with all the little ducklings shouting, "Don't do it! We'll come out." The one unhatched duckling (voiced by Mel Blanc) is hilarious as he makes his first appearance, saying, "Hey, where is everybody? Who turned off the heat?" and later, "I've just gotta find someone to sit on me, someone with a nice, warm DISPOSITION." As the poor little duckling trudges through a violent blizzard, the musical accompaniment suddenly stops and the snow suddenly freezes in midair as he comments, "This is the saddest part of the picture, folks." To conclude, how dare I write about a Warner Bros. cartoon without mentioning the genius of composer/orchestrator Carl W. Stalling. At the opening of "Booby Hatched", depicting an excruciatingly chilly day on the farm, we hear "Old MacDonald" cleverly written in a minor key! The mother duck checks on her icy blue eggs to the accompaniment of "Am I Blue?" And "A Cup of Coffee, a Sandwich, and You" accompanies the wolf attempting to cook the unhatched duckling in a large pot.

This is an incredibly funny cartoon, but a minor character steals the show. There is a hibernating bear who has two lines and the second is one of the funniest bits in the whole short. Other things to watch for are the roll call of the baby ducks' names after they hatch and Robspierre's closing line at the very end. Well worth looking for. Recommended.