Of Thee I Sting

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Bacall to Arms	Walky Talky Hawky

Blue Ribbon
Original Title

Airdate:
17 August 1946 Blue Ribbon reissue: 12 January 1952

Series:

Looney Tunes

MPAA Number:	Production Number:	Vitaphone Number:
10717	LT-3-16 1260 (reissue)	1488

Copyright Renewed:

4 September 1973^[1]

Crew

Producer:

Eddie Selzer (uncredited)

Animated By:

Virgil Ross
Gerry Chiniquy
Manuel Perez
Ken Champin

Layout Artist:

Hawley Pratt

Background Artist:

Terry Lind

Film Editor:

Treg Brown (uncredited)

Musician:

Carl Stalling

Of Thee I Sting is a 1946 Looney Tunes short directed by Friz Freleng.

Title[]

The title is a pun on the Broadway musical Of Thee I Sing.

Plot[]

In Target for Tonight-style, a narrator describes a mosquito attack upon a man in his cabin who has safeguarded his porch against insect invasion.

Availability[]

Streaming[]

Notes[]

Much of the animation of this cartoon was recycled from the Private Snafu short "Target Snafu". Some reused animation was also changed, the former as it was no longer relevant in a post-war world, and the latter likely for time:
- A scene where a group of mosquitoes performs a Nazi salute after finding the last missing piece of a map was changed to them doing an American salute instead.
- The scene where a mosquito sergeant knocks over a row of mosquito soldiers was altered to have him inspect one of the soldiers instead.
Although this is a post-war short, it is done in the style of wartime newsreels. By this time, most Warner Bros. cartoons had reduced their references to the war to minor elements.
The names of the planes in the attack are: Gravel Gertie (a Dick Tracy villain), Bugs Bunny, Sweet Sioux (with a pin-up girl who looks like the red-headed singer from Tex Avery's "Red Hot Riding Hood"), and Mrs. Kalabash (a mysterious character often referred to by Jimmy Durante).
This was the earliest re-released short in the Looney Tunes series to keep its ending music. Both American and European Turner dubbed versions replace the 1946-55 ending rendition of "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" with the 1941-55 ending rendition of "Merrily We Roll Along". As the restored print uses the soundtrack of the Turner print, the error in the ending music persists.
A 16mm black and white print of the cartoon with the original titles was sold on eBay in 2022.^[2]
- In the original titles, the WB shield stays in place when the Looney Tunes logo appears.
The name of the field that the mosquito soldiers head towards is "Anopheles Field", a reference to a common genus of mosquito.
The scene showing the mosquitoes coming out of empty soup cans, taking flight, and diving down would be reused in Freleng's 1953 short, Ant Pasted, but with flying ants instead.

Gallery[]

References[]

[1] ttps://archive.org/details/catalogofc19733271213libr/page/110/mode/1up?view=theater

[2] ttps://web.archive.org/web/20220130230102/https://www.ebay.com/itm/255359684065

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