The Gay Anties is a 1947 Merrie Melodies short directed by Friz Freleng.
Title[]
The title is a play on "the gay nineties," the decade in which this short is set.
Plot[]
A colony of ants surreptitiously invade a young couple's park picnic in the 1890s and contrive to steal their food. The ants, frustrated three times in their efforts to make off with a sandwich due to the man eating their handmade sandwich each time, seeks revenge by spreading mustard on the back of the girlfriend's hand and trick the boyfriend into biting it, resulting the girl to dump him by slapping him away into the lake.
Meanwhile, a female ant sings an overly melodramatic song, "Time Waits for No One" in a high-pitched voice, which gets the other ants to run for cover.
Notes[]
- This cartoon bears several similarities to that of "The Dover Boys" directed by Chuck Jones five years prior despite both cartoons having completely different plots, since both cartoons are set in the 1890s and are some of the earliest examples of limited animation combined with extensive use of stylized and exaggerated animation and movements in the 1940s, even the Toonheads episode "Ant's Life" explores this. [2]
- According to the What's Cooking Doc section in the July 1945 issue of Warner Club News, June Coke created some dances for this short.[3]
Goofs[]
- The human characters have visible four fingers from far, although when their hands are shown in close-up when they have the normal five fingers.
Caricatures[]
Availability[]
(1993) LaserDisc
The Golden Age of Looney Tunes Volume 4, Side 3
The Golden Age of Looney Tunes Volume 4, Side 3
Streaming[]
Gallery[]
Title card (restored)
Title card (A.A.P. print, with 2006-2014 Boomerang USA bug)
Title card (1995 Turner "dubbed version" print, with 2004-2014 Boomerang Europe bug)
Screenshot from a scene from the cartoon (with 1992-2004 Cartoon Network USA bug)
Cropped screenshot of 2020 restoration
References[]
External Links[]
- Big Cartoon Database article