Lights Fantastic

← Previous	Next →
Nutty News	Hobby Horse-Laffs

Airdate:
23 May 1942

MPAA Number:	Vitaphone Number:
7478	443

6 minutes, 28 seconds

11 December 1969^[1]

Crew

Lights Fantastic is a 1942 Merrie Melodies short directed by I. Freleng.

The title is a play on the phrase "Trip the Light Fantastic."

This article/section is a stub. You can help Looney Tunes Wiki by expanding it.

New York City and its various bright lights all come to life.

Two scenes were excised from airings on Cartoon Network and Boomerang USA due to ethnic stereotyping and brief sexual imagery:

The scene featuring Chinese people frantically reading Chinese print on a movie marquee and speaking in Chinese very fast is cut. The previous scene, showing people boarding a rickshaw tour bus, was also edited, but instead of being cut, it was cropped so the Chinese rickshaw drivers are barely shown; this edit was also done when the cartoon short aired on TNT. However, the scene with the Dr. I.C. Spots eye test where the announcer says, "If you can read this, you are Chinese," followed by a shot of Chinese lettering wasn't cut.
During the end scene with the Egyptian cigarette ad, the last frame of the billboard where it shows a cheesecake picture of a redheaded woman posing in a green swimsuit is cut. While it may seem like an innocuous cut done due to time constraints, frame-precise pausing reveals that the woman's green swimsuit is translucent enough to reveal her naked body. Cartoon Network actually aired this scene uncut, though the scenes featuring Chinese stereotypes were still edited, on a late-night showing of The Acme Hour. The edited version was often shown on daytime and evening versions of compilation shows like Bugs and Daffy, The Looney Tunes Show, and ToonHeads.^[2]

Yahoodi Cafe refers to Jerry Colonna's line "Who's Yehudi?"
Similar in concept to "Billboard Frolics" from 1935, which was also directed by Friz Freleng.
The Turner "dubbed version" replaces the original 1941-1955 MM ending music cue with the 1938-1941 MM ending music cue (applies to both USA and EU prints).
This is the final short to be written by Dave Monahan until 1947, as he was drafted into the Armed Forces before its release (which explains why Monahan was credited as a "Sergeant" in this short). After the war in 1947, Monahan would briefly return to the studio where he wrote for only four of Arthur Davis' cartoons: "Mexican Joyride", "Catch as Cats Can", "Nothing but the Tooth" and "The Rattled Rooster".
The scene involving the tomato can-can dancers was re-used animation from Bob Clampett's "Goofy Groceries" produced the previous year.
Two gags from this cartoon were later recycled by Freleng in other cartoons. The "Eat at Joe's" gag was reused in "Holiday for Shoestrings", while the Egyptian billboard gag was reused in "A Hare Grows in Manhattan".
Stock footage of the city lights from this cartoon were re-used in the Bugs Bunny cartoon "Rebel Rabbit" seven years later, in the scene when Bugs re-wires Times Square.
This is the first Merrie Melodies cartoon to have the 1942-47 fonts of "WARNER BROS." and "Present".