Chimp & Zee

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Airdate:
12 October 1968

Series:

Merrie Melodies

MPAA Number:
21923

Copyright Renewed:

14 May 1996

Crew

Cropped screenshot of 2020 restoration

Chimp & Zee is a 1968 Merrie Melodies short directed by Alex Lovy.

Title[]

While the title is a play on the animal "chimpanzee", it also describes the monkey and Lonzo, the jungle boy.

Plot[]

A hunter travels through the jungle looking to capture a rare blue-tailed simian. Soon he meets a boy named Lonzo and his monkey. Realizing that Lonzo's pet monkey is the blue-tailed simian he's been hunting for, he chases Lonzo and his monkey all around the jungle using several tricks to try and catch them:

First, the hunter grabs the monkey, but Lonzo uses a bow and plunger to tie him to a large boulder, then Lonzo pushes it off a cliff along with the hunter.
The hunter chases them. Lonzo and his monkey get to a lake while the monkey asks an alligator to take care of the hunter. The alligator tries to eat the hunter, but he escapes it.
The hunter hangs a large rock above the ground with rope, and places a banana underneath it, hoping to crush the monkey. The monkey grabs the banana and the hunter uses a magnifying glass to burn the rope holding up the rock up, it falls down, but when but when the hunter looks under it, he finds not the monkey, but an elephant, who beats him up for crushing him.
Next, the hunter tries to shoot them with a blow dart, but he misses and ends up shooting himself in the rear twice.
Lonzo and his monkey hides in a log; the hunter sticks his hand into the log and another hand comes out to punch him, he tries it again and the same thing happens, once more he sticks his hand inside, and when the other hand comes out he bites it, only to realize that it's his own hand. He tries once more to pull Lonzo and monkey out from the other side, but all he pulls out is the elephant from before, who beats him up once more.
Lonzo and monkey climb up a tree. The hunter uses a firework to get up to catch them, but it fires him straight up to the sky, where he blows up.
The hunter disguises himself as a female blue-tailed simian and lure him in so the hunter can trap him, but his call gets the attention of a dozen or so male blue-tailed simians who, thinking he is a mate, chase him out of the jungle.

Lonzo and his monkey swing away on a vine, laughing at the hunter.

Availability[]

Streaming[]

Goofs[]

The HBO Max restoration plasters the ending title with "A VITAPHONE RELEASE", replacing the original "A VITAGRAPH RELEASE".

Notes[]

This was the last cartoon Alex Lovy directed for Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. He left and returned to Hanna-Barbera as an animator for shows like Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines and Scooby Doo Where Are You!
Lonzo and his monkey went on to cameo in The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries episode "El Dia de los Pussygatos".
The title card of this cartoon for The Merrie Melodies Show incorrectly colors the monkey's tail as brown.
This is the first Warner Bros.-Seven Arts cartoon to feature Mel Blanc doing voices outside of a Daffy Duck vs. Speedy Gonzales cartoon (the series had ended months prior with "See Ya Later Gladiator"). Here, Mel voices the hunter (using the same voice he would use for Wile E. Coyote) and also provides all the monkeys' vocal effects.
The boy and the chimp were planned to star in their own series of shorts, albeit redesigned.^[1] A pitch cel for the series named the unnamed jungle boy as Lonzo, depicted the jungle as a ruined city overrun by trees, and would depict the elephant in the cartoon as Lonzo's secondary pet. The closure of Warner Bros.-Seven Arts cartoon studio prevented this from coming into fruition.