There Auto Be a Law

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Airdate:	Runtime:
6 June 1953	6 min. 54 sec.

Series:

Looney Tunes

MPAA Number:	Production Number:
15622	1247

Copyright Renewed:

15 January 1980

Crew

Producer:

Eddie Selzer (uncredited)

Animated By:

Phil DeLara
Charles McKimson
Herman Cohen
Rod Scribner
Keith Darling (uncredited)

Layout Artist:

Robert Givens

Background Artist:

Richard H. Thomas

Film Editor:

Treg Brown (uncredited)

Musician:

Carl Stalling

There Auto Be a Law is a 1953 Looney Tunes short directed by Robert McKimson.

Title[]

The title is a pun on "there ought to be a law."

Plot[]

In a discussion of automobiles and their advancements throughout the last few decades, a meek, short man with a mustache and glasses appears in many of the sketches:

A pan across many motorists stuck on the road, some of which are beating each other up or yelling at one another, because a woman in the first car is too busy putting on lipstick to drive.
A man treating his car like a horse, whipping it to make it go faster.
A bridge that has half the toll, but that's because it's only half finished, resulting in cars falling off the broken end of the bridge and into the water.
The meek man parking his car in a lot and getting it back in a paper-thin condition.
The meek man measuring his car before putting it in a friend's garage, but accidentally hit the car on a tree branch.
The meek man looking both ways before crossing a rural road but still getting hit by a fast-speed car.
The meek man allowing a stranded motorist to siphon some of his gas, only to swallow the gasoline and begin sputtering down the road like a car.
The meek man being towed by a fellow motorist but the car frame getting ripped off when the other driver leaves in a hurry.
The meek man repeatedly stopping at a hamburger stand on a freeway, asking for directions off the freeway. The hamburger stand man eventually realizes he doesn't know the way off the overpass and had to open the stand to keep from starving to death. The meek man does the same, only his stand sells mustard and pickles to accompany the burgers.

Availability[]

Streaming[]

Censorship[]

On The WB, the part with the man siphoning gasoline and acting like a car after swallowing too much of it was cut, similar to how "Lumber Jerks" was edited and for the same reason.
- Cartoon Network and Boomerang, which edited out gasoline swallowing scenes in "Show Biz Bugs" (until 2011, which has now aired uncut) and "Curtain Razor", allowed the gasoline siphoning scenes from this short and "Lumber Jerks" to play uncut.

Goofs[]

The WB shield shield irises in rather than zooming in on the 2020 restored print. This error is only present on the print on HBO Max in Latin America and Brazil, the version that airs on MeTV, and on the Looney Tunes Collector's Choice: Volume 3 print.

Notes[]

The man who treats his car like a horse by whipping it to go faster resembles and sounds like Yosemite Sam.
The masked man driving the hot rod is a caricature of Ken Harris.
"PIERCE VAN CO." can be shown on a vehicle stuck behind the woman applying makeup, a reference to writer Tedd Pierce.
This short was used in the special Bugs Bunny's Lunar Tunes.
MeTV aired a previously unreleased restored print of this cartoon on Toon In with Me.
This is the last Warner Bros. cartoon released before the studio closed down on 16 June 1953. However, the cartoons would also be released during the shutdown of the studio before it reopened on 4 January 1954.