Mouse Wreckers

Scouting out a new home, Hubie calls over Bertie, who begins to gaze into it before Hubie slaps Bertie to make him realize that before they can move in, the cat, Claude Cat, who has an award for Best Mouser - 1948 along with other then-recent mouser awards, must be removed first. Realizing that the task will not be easy, Hubie comes up with several ways to chase Claude out, all of which are designed to drive him crazy, having Bertie do each of the tricks.

First, Hubie lowers Bertie down the chimney on a fishing line. At the bottom of the chimney, Bertie grabs a piece of wood, smacks Claude in the head with it, and is then quickly yanked back up the chimney. When Claude just goes back to sleep, unable to figure out what happens, Bertie is lowered again, pumping air into Claude Cat. When Bertie is yanked back up the chimney and the pump is released, Claude flies all over the living room, hitting all of the walls and ceiling before landing hard on the pillow on which he had been resting. Claude takes the bottle of catnip he had hidden in an overhead lamp and tosses it out the window.

With the logs removed from the fireplace, Hubie lowers Bertie and a dog (resembling Hector the Bulldog) in a doghouse down the chimney. While the dog is sleeping, Bertie pulls out the dog's lower lip such that it snaps back on him, but not before Bertie is pulled back up the chimney. Seeing only Claude, an enraged bulldog viciously beats up Claude before returning to the doghouse, with the doghouse then yanked up the chimney. Completely nerve-wracked as a result of the beating, Claude then runs to the bathroom to take a dose of nerve tonic. While Claude is in the bathroom, Bertie then inserts a lit firecracker into Claude's pillow, which blows up not after he returns to it. Claude nervously gulps down the remainder of the nerve tonic. Next, Bertie returns down the chimney and runs a piece of string throughout the house, out of it into a water catch drain, down a ladder, and then back into the house, with the other end of the string attached to a rock on top of the chimney. Once Bertie ties the end of the string to Claude's tail, Hubie tosses the rock down the other side of the chimney, which sends Claude flying throughout the house, out of it and back into it, and eventually slamming him into a trash can lid.

Claude reads Psychology of Dreams by Sigmund Fried for advice on dealing with what he thinks are bad dreams. When Claude falls asleep, Bertie places earmuffs over his ears, while Hubie and Bertie work on nailing everything that would be in front of Claude that was on the floor in the living room to the ceiling, and painting the ceiling like the floor and vice versa. When Claude wakes up, he sees this and thinks he is on the ceiling, when he is really on the floor. He jumps up to what he thinks is the floor, which is really the ceiling. Claude is surprised when he grabs a bottle of nerve tonic, only to open it and see it "rise" to the floor. Claude then becomes confused when he enters into the kitchen, where everything is still right-side up. Further driving Claude mad is when he looks out one window where an illusion is given to make Claude think he is upside down, and then looks out another to make him think he is sideways, and then out a third to make him believe that the house is under water. Finally broken, Claude runs, screaming in horror, out the house into a nearby tree, where he hides. Having accomplished their mission, Hubie and Bertie return down the fireplace, and roast cheese over an open fire.

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Censorship[]

The version shown in CBS' The Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Show in the 1970s and 1980s severely shortened the part where Hubie and Bertie tie Claude's tail to a boulder, push the boulder off the chimney, and send Claude careening through the house, going out a window, up a ladder, down a rain gutter, through a kitchen table filled with dishes, and back in the living room, slamming into a trash can lid. The edited-on-CBS version goes from Hubie pushing the boulder and Claude flying out the window to Claude magically back in the house and getting slammed into the trash can lid. The CBS version also cut the very end where Hubie and Bertie roast cheese over the fire to cover up the fact that the short had a missing ending.
ABC's version shown in The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show leaves in the parts that CBS cut, but edited some other scenes they found too violent and inappropriate for children:
- The beginning where Bertie wallops Claude in the head with a piece of firewood; prior to 1994, this scene was uncut
- Hubie and Bertie siccing Hector on Claude had the actual fight shortened
- Hubie and Bertie planting a stick of dynamite under Claude's pillow, Claude getting caught in the explosion, and Claude running to the bathroom to chug some nerve tonic
The version shown in both the FOX and syndicated version of Merrie Melodies: Starring Bugs Bunny & Friends only shortened the fight between Claude and the bulldog.
The last scene, where Hubie and Bertie toast cheese in the fireplace after successfully scaring Claude out of the house, has an overlap of end music and dialogue followed by an abrupt black-out. This occurs on all known prints, theatrical, television, and home media, prompting the possibility that a scene was edited before it was released to theaters.^[2] According to Greg Ford on the commentary on Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2, there was another ending where Claude came back down the chimney, landed in the fireplace, got set on fire and "shot out of the chimney."

Goofs[]

When Claude was wiggling his mouth, his hand was yellow instead of white.

Notes[]

This is the first appearance of the redesigned Claude Cat.
Mel Blanc voices Bertie and an uncredited Stan Freberg voices Hubie.
"Mouse Wreckers" was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for 1949, but lost to "The Little Orphan", a Tom and Jerry cartoon.^[3]
The cartoon was loosely remade twice as "Gopher Broke" in 1958, and later as the Tom and Jerry cartoon "The Year of the Mouse" in 1965.
Vitaphone release number: 1690^[4]

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References[]

[1] ttps://archive.org/details/catalogofcopyrig3291213libr/page/97/mode/1up?view=theater

[Cut_Scenes-2] ttp://www.intanibase.com/gac/looneytunes/censored-m.aspx

[3] ttps://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1949

[4] ttps://books.google.com/books/about/Vitaphone_Films.html?id=mmtZAAAAMAAJ

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Mouse Wreckers

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