I Taw a Putty Tat

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Template:Infobox Shorts wTabs I Taw a Puddy Tat is a 1948 Merrie Melodies short directed by Friz Freleng and starring Tweety and Sylvester.

Title

The bird's inability to enunciate certain letters (presumably due to having a beak instead of lips) is the reason for the pronunciation of his famous catch-phrase that forms part of this cartoon's title (as in "I Saw a Pussy Cat"). This is the first film whose title included Tweety's speech-impaired term for a cat. The "standard" spelling was eventually changed from "putty tat" to "puddy tat".

Plot

Sylvester awaits the arrival of a new canary, after the previous house bird has mysteriously disappeared (one of several such disappearances, according to stencils the cat keeps on a wall hidden by a curtain, confirmed by his "hiccup" of some yellow feathers). Upon the arrival of the bird, Sylvester pretends to play nice in order to abuse and eventually make a meal of the pretending-to-be-naive canary.

Tweety physically subdues the threatening cat by smoking him up, hitting him on the foot with a mallet, feeding him some alum and using his uvula as a punching bag.

Sylvester imitates a Scandinavian-sounding maid, who feigns complaining about having to "clean out de bird cage." He reaches into the covered cage and grabs what he thinks is the bird. The canary whistles at him. The confused cat opens his fist to find a small bomb, which promptly explodes, covering the cat in "blackface" makeup. His voice pattern then changes to something sounding like "Rochester", and he says, "Uh-oh, back to the kitchen, ah smell somethin' burnin'!" just before passing out.

Tweety, inside the cat's mouth, yells down its gullet. The answer comes back, "There's nobody here but us mice!"

Tweety has managed to trap Sylvester inside the birdcage, and has introduced a "wittle puddy dog". Their deadly battle occurs under the wrap the bird has thrown over the cage.

The lady of the house calls the pet shop again, this time ordering a new cat, while Tweety lounges in Sylvester's old bed. Overhearing the woman telling the pet shop that the cat will have a nice home here, Tweety reveals the silhouette of a cat now stencilled on the wall, and says, "Her don't know me vewy well, do her?"

Availability

• (1992) VHS - Bugs Bunny: Superstar
• (1986) VHS - Little Tweety
• (1986) VHS - Little Inki Cartoon Festival
• (1988) VHS - Tweety and Sylvester
• (1993) LaserDisc - The Golden Age of Looney Tunes, Volume 4, Side 4
• (2006) DVD - Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 4, Disc 1 (Bugs Bunny: Superstar print)
• (2007) DVD - Romance on the High Seas (USA 1995 Turner print; censored)
• (2012) DVD - Bugs Bunny: Superstar (Warner Archive print)

Censorship

• The scene where Sylvester poses as a Swedish maid so he can get Tweety, only to grab a stick of dynamite and end up in blackface and sounding like Rochester from The Jack Benny Show is always cut when aired on TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, and the former WB network.

Notes

• This cartoon is a color remake of a 1943 black and white short film titled Puss n' Booty which was directed by Frank Tashlin and written by Warren Foster. In this previous version, a generic cat and canary team called Rudolph and Petey were used but the plot along with some gags and story elements were re-used. Puss N' Booty was notable as it was the final black and white cartoon ever released by WB.
• After winning the Academy Award for Animated Short Film in 1947 for Tweetie Pie, a film which combined for the first time two of the studio's latest animated stars, Tweety Bird and Sylvester, there was a demand for more short films using the characters. Freleng himself said he could not imagine Tweety working with any other partners than Sylvester (in contrast, Sylvester still had his fair share of cartoons without Tweety).
• This was Freleng's second film teaming the characters and was released less than a year after Tweetie Pie. It is noticeable that while this cartoon was directed by Friz Freleng, the Tweety we see in it is by far closer to the aggressive little bird used in his first few cartoons directed by Bob Clampett than the more subdued and naïve character he would become a few years later as the series progressed. This is also the first cartoon in the Sylvester and Tweety series where Sylvester has a speaking role (in the first entry Tweetie Pie Sylvester doesn't speak).
• This and Tweetie Pie were the only two Tweety and Sylvester pairings whose copyrights were sold to Associated Artists Productions. This is the only Tweety/Sylvester pairing in Cinecolor as well. The cartoon opens with a "PRINT BY TECHNICOLOR", which means it was reissued in 3-hue Technicolor.
• Though this cartoon was re-released into the Blue Ribbon program, the original titles are known to exist.
• Bea Benaderet provided the voice of the housemistress but she did not get credit as with most voice actors at the studio, Mel Blanc being the exception. Amongst the musical quotations in the Carl Stalling film score (with or without lyrics accompanying them) are extracts from "Singin' in the Bathtub", "She Was an Acrobat's Daughter" and "Ain't We Got Fun".
• The Cartoon Festivals prints are damaged a.a.p. print where the a.a.p. logo plays first, then the 1947-49 Blue Ribbon Color Rings from Inki and the Lion open, also notice the light blue borders, with the 1939-40 version of Merrily We Roll Along plays over instead of the 1941-45 version before the print finally changes to another print that says "I Taw a Putty Tat". This is a MGM/UA print and probably was hacked off by United Artists in the 1980s.
  • This MGM/UA print airs in Cartoon Network and Boomerang Latin America and Tooncast, alternately with the 1995 Turner dubbed version print of the cartoon, and like the 1995 dubbed version print of the cartoon airing on all three channels, this print airs censored on all three channels to remove a blackface gag.
  • The Cartoon Moviestars VHS release uses an a.a.p. print (minus the a.a.p. opening) which preserves the original opening and closing titles, and has red borders in the credit sequences.

Gallery

Original Titles From A Thad K. Film Print.

Lobby Card

Tweety developing his little muscles at the expense of Sylvester's uvula

Version used on Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 4 (interlaced video)

Version used on the Warner Archive release of Bugs Bunny: Superstar (progressive scan)