The Maltese Canary is the ninth episode of The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries. It first aired 25 November 1995 on Kids' WB!
Title[]
The title is play on the 1941 film The Maltese Falcon.
Plot[]
Granny goes to San Francisco, California, to take over for a detective who’s leaving a job While there, Tweety is mistaken to be the valuable "Maltese Canary" by two shady characters, one of whom keeps changing her name.
The shady characters' boss, a guy who is fat, attempts to get inside but his weight pushes him back, leaving Granny trapped with the shady characters.
Tweety flies out the window and Granny sends Sylvester to go look for him. He does and brings him back to Granny. The fat guy and the two shady characters are arrested right after Granny finds the real "Maltese Canary" which was located behind some books. The detective comes back and Granny leaves with Sylvester, Tweety, and Hector.
Notes[]
- The episode is a parody of the 1941 film The Maltese Falcon, even featuring Humphrey Bogart's character Sam Spade, the original protagonist of the film, along with parodies of the other members of the film's cast.
- "Miss Jones" is a parody of Mary Astor's character Brigid O'Shaughnessy. Like Brigid, Miss Jones is implied to have had a romantic relationship with Sam Spade before and is still using an alias when speaking with Granny, this time calling herself by "Miss Smith" and "Miss Jingleheimer Schmidt" instead of Ruth Wonderly.
- Joel Ferret is a parody of Peter Lorre's character Joel Cairo, but unlike in the film, Ferret is not a direct subordinate of the main villain.
- The episode's main villain is a parody of Sydney Greenstreet's character Gutman, the original villain from the film, but is instead called Doughguy.
- Doughguy is ticklish when poked in the belly, a reference to the Pillsbury Doughboy.
- Doughguy would go on to receive a "future counterpart" in the Duck Dodgers episode "Good Duck Hunting" called Skunderbelly. Like the Doughguy, he was also a parody of Greenstreet's character and was also voiced by Bob Joles.
- Yosemite Sam makes a cameo as his pirate persona from the Looney Tunes shorts "Buccaneer Bunny", "Mutiny on the Bunny", and "Captain Hareblower". In the episode, this ancestral Sam is depicted as the historical figure who stole the original Maltese Canary statue which was then thrown away by his cat who was the identical ancestor of Sylvester.
- The store that sold Maltese Canaries was named Mike Maltese's Canaries. This was a reference to Michael Maltese, writer of the original series of Looney Tunes, for, more notably, Chuck Jones' shorts.
- The Dog in charge of the Fog Factory is simply called Fog Dog in the credits and was voiced by Jeff Bennett.
- This episode along with Something Fishy Around Here and The Cat Who Knew Too Much are featured as bonus cartoons on the King Tweety DVD.[2]
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