Feather Bluster

Feather Bluster
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Airdate:	10 May 1958
Series:	Merrie Melodies
MPAA Number:	18676
Production Number:	1476
Vitaphone Number:	2791
Copyright Renewed:	22 April 1985
Starring:	Foghorn Leghorn Barnyard Dawg
Crew
Voice Characterizations:	Mel Blanc
Director:	Robert McKimson
Written By:	Tedd Pierce
Producer:	John W. Burton (uncredited)
Animated By:	Ted Bonnicksen Tom Ray George Grandpré Warren Batchelder
Layout Artist:	Robert Gribbroek
Background Artist:	Bill Butler
Film Editor:	Treg Brown
Musician:	Milt Franklyn Carl Stalling

Feather Bluster is a 1958 Merrie Melodies short directed by Robert McKimson.

Title

The title is a play on a "feather duster."

Plot

An elderly Foghorn Leghorn and Barnyard Dawg are exchanging old stories during a game of checkers. Their grandsons outside overhear their talk and imitate their old actions. Foghorn chastises his grandson, but the latter points out that he and his grandson take after them. The flashbacks between Foghorn and Dawg use footage from the following cartoons:

• "Henhouse Henery" (1949): The scene where Dawg runs into the fence that Foghorn painted to make it look like an open gate, and when Foghorn runs into a mill to create a baseball bat to use against Dawg. Only a new bit of animation is made showing Foghorn coming out of the workshop apparently unscathed telling the audience "That, I say, that dawg keeps a-pitchin' 'em and I keep a-duckin' 'em!", but proves himself wrong when after briefly going back in, he falls over in a daze after coming back out.
• "The High and the Flighty" (1956): The scene where Foghorn gives Dawg a rigged spring bone.
• "All Fowled Up" (1955): The scene where Foghorn tries to blow a stick of dynamite through a tube at Dawg, but it backfires.
• "Henhouse Henery" (1949): The final reused clip in the cartoon, is once again from here, in which Foghorn scares Dawg out of his dog house and proceeds to paint his tongue green. They share laughs revisiting all these memories, till Dawg questions if the kids were listening in on them, Foghorn says there's no way they could've heard their talk as he looks out the window to check on them, being greeted by watching his grandson painting Dawg's grandson's tongue green.

Availability

(1982) VHS
The Looney Tunes Video Show, Volume 6

(1990) VHS
Foghorn Leghorn

(1996) VHS
Special Bumper Collection (Vol. 4)

(1996) VHS
Foghorn Leghorn

Streaming

Boomerang App (2018 -)

iTunes ( - ) (restored)

Notes

• The short is a clip show; the majority of the footage is reused from earlier shorts featuring Foghorn Leghorn and Barnyard Dawg.
• On Cartoon Network or Boomerang, the short plays in PAL audio.
• A puppy basset hound resembling Barnyard Dawg's grandson from this cartoon would later reappear in Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas as carolers alongside Henery Hawk, Egghead Jr. and Priscilla Pig.
• MeTV aired a previously unreleased restored print of the cartoon on "Toon In with Me". This restoration was later made available on iTunes Video.

Gallery

Lobby card

Feather Bluster (1958) - 2021 restoration - Intro and Outro + 30-seconds clip

TV Title Cards

The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show