I Got Plenty of Mutton is a 1944 Looney Tunes short directed by Frank Tashlin.
Title[]
The title is a play on the song "I Got Plenty o' Nuttin'", written by George Gershwin for the show Porgy and Bess; "mutton" referring to sheep meat.
Plot[]
A wolf, deprived of meat by war rationing and starving from the mice in his cave eating his meager scraps, sees an article in the newspaper about a sheepdog leaving his flock to join the army and thinks it will be easy pickings. However, if he had read the rest of the article first, he would have known that the flock is now guarded by the ram "Killer Diller," a formidable foe. When the straightforward approach doesn't work, the wolf dresses as an attractive lady sheep, which immediately lures the amorous ram. The hapless wolf's attempt to club the ram, however, fails when he whacks an overhanging branch instead. He escapes, to another tree that conveniently has a safe hanging in it; it drops on the ram, but he emerges unscathed. Next is an anti-aircraft gun, but the ram hauls the disguised wolf inside. The panicked wolf runs for hours, finally tearing off his disguise in desperation; "Okay, okay, look you dope look. I'm not a sheep. I'm not a sheep. I'm a wolf. I'm a wolf!" "So what? So am I!", then the ram howls like a wolf, and the chase continues.
Caricatures[]
- Dorothy Lamour - the wolf dressed as a sheep is wearing a sarong, which became associated with her.
- Charles Boyer
Availability[]
The Golden Age of Looney Tunes, Vol. 3, Side 6: Tashlin/Clampett
Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 4, Disc Two (with optional audio commentary by Greg Ford)
Porky Pig
Streaming[]
Notes[]
- As mentioned in the DVD commentary for this short, this cartoon contains numerous gags and running plot points that would later appear in three Chuck Jones series: the wolf being reduced to eating scraps due to WWII food rationing would be seen in the Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons, where some shorts begin with Wile E. Coyote being so desperately hungry that he cooks tin cans and molds chicken out of mud before setting his sights on Road Runner; the major conflict between the wolf and Killer Diller the ram (predator vs. protector of prey) is similar to the Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog cartoons; and the Wolf dressing as a female and being chased down by Killer Diller, who initially imitates Charles Boyer, is more-or-less the premise of the Pepé Le Pew cartoons.
- The wolf reappears in "Booby Hatched", which was also directed by Frank Tashlin later that year.
- This is one of the few 1944 non-Bugs Bunny cartoons in the Looney Tunes series not to receive a Blue Ribbon reissue.
- Porky Pig and Daffy Duck do not appear in this cartoon, but their faces still appear in the opening target sequences.
- From this short onward, all cartoons from the unit of Frank Tashlin, which originally belonged to Bob Clampett and later Norman McCabe, will be in color.
- When Clampett was in this unit, he directed two color cartoons, "Goofy Groceries" and "Farm Frolics". Meanwhile, due to budget constraints, McCabe did not direct a single color cartoon from 1941-1943, and McCabe was already drafted into the army before the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio's conversion to full-on color cartoon production in 1944, therefore effectively preventing McCabe from directing any color cartoons during his tenure at the studio.
Gallery[]
_-_News.jpg "I Got Plenty of Mutton (1944) - News.jpg (278 KB)")
_-_Field.jpg "I Got Plenty of Mutton (1944) - Field.jpg (267 KB)")
References[]