Life with Feathers
Lobby card for Life with Feathers.
Directed byI. Freleng
Story byTedd Pierce[1]
Produced byEdward Selzer (unc.)
Starring
Edited byTreg Brown (unc.)
Music byCarl W. Stalling
Milt Franklyn (unc.)
Animation by
Layouts by
Backgrounds byPaul Julian (unc.)
Distributed by
Release date
  • March 24, 1945 (1945-03-24)
Running time
7:41
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Life with Feathers is a 1945 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies animated short film directed by Friz Freleng.[4] The short was released on March 24, 1945, and is the first cartoon to feature Sylvester the Cat, who is unnamed in this short.[5]

The title is a play on the longest-running non-musical play on Broadway, Life with Father (the title being the only connection between the two works). Warner Bros. would produce a film version in 1947.

Plot

A lovebird decides to commit suicide after his wife Sweetypuss kicks him out of their birdcage. He concludes he should be eaten by a cat, and places himself near a cat looking for something to eat. The cat speeds towards the blindfolded lovebird, screeches to a halt, and ponders. Since the lovebird didn't move, the cat suspects he is poisonous and refuses to eat him, even after the bird hides in his milk bowl.

The lovebird mails an envelope and receives a mallet to hit the cat with so he can fly into his mouth. The cat smokes a pipe to stop the lovebird from forcing himself to be eaten, and traps him in a bottle. As the cat serves himself some cat food, one of the lovebird's feathers falls into the cat's bowl. After noticing that he ate the feather, and the lovebird escaped the bottle, the cat believes he has been poisoned. The lovebird feeds him an antidote and places himself on the spoon alongside it; the cat rejects the bird's actions and shuts him out of the house's windows. The lovebird comes down the chimney dressed as Santa Claus, to the cat's delight. Claiming he has a surprise for the cat, he tells him to open his mouth, and thrusts himself into it. The cat holds a sign reading "Don't Tell Me--- I Know", spits out the lovebird, and wears a face mask to stop his moves.

The lovebird makes the cat listen to a radio commercial describing various delicious food while showing pictures of them from a cookbook. The cat eventually becomes so visibly famished that he is finally ready to give in. Just as the lovebird is about to be eaten, he gets a telegram saying that his wife is moving out, so he tells the cat he no longer needs to eat him. However, the cat refuses as he "hasn't changed his mind" and pursues the lovebird, who quickly escapes and heads back to his birdcage. When he gets home, he finds out Sweetypuss has also changed her mind and decided to stay, and he frantically looks for the cat, wanting to be eaten again.

Cast

Home media

Notes

  • Life with Feathers featured the first appearance of Sylvester. Sylvester would appear in 102 more shorts in the Golden Age.
  • Life with Feathers was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
  • This cartoon was re-released into the Blue Ribbon Merrie Melodies program on March 3, 1951. Like most reissued Merrie Melodies at the time, the original closing bullet titles were kept.
  • This was the last cartoon to use the 1941–1945 opening rendition of Merrily We Roll Along and the last non-Bugs Bunny cartoon to have "WARNER BROS. PICTURES INC." and "Present" fade in after the WB shield zooms in. As such, the opening themes would be shortened, but the ending rendition still remained unchanged for another ten years.
  • In 1951, Chuck Jones reused a similar concept for Hubie & Bertie's final cartoon Cheese Chasers.
  • In the American and European Turner "dubbed versions" (and presumably other TV prints), Sylvester has black fur (similar to his current appearance). The restored version on Blu-ray Disc/DVD shows that Sylvester originally had a lighter bluish-black fur.
  • The scene where Sylvester is rummaging through trash cans for food is reused in Kit For Cat, and Tweety's S.O.S. A similar but reanimated scene is also featured in Catch as Cats Can.

References

  1. ↑ Beck, Jerry (1991). I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat: Fifty Years of Sylvester and Tweety. New York: Henry Holt and Co. p. 87. ISBN 978-0-8050-1644-4.
  2. ↑ Ohmart, Ben (2012). Mel Blanc: The Man of a Thousand Voices. BearManor Media. p. 411. ISBN 978-1-5939-3788-1.
  3. ↑ "Moonlighting Animation Artists in Comics: OWEN FITZGERALD -". cartoonresearch.com. January 31, 2018. Retrieved December 27, 2020.
  4. ↑ Beck, Jerry; Friedwald, Will (1989). Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons. New York: Henry Holt and Co. p. 159. ISBN 978-0-8050-0894-4.
  5. ↑ Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. New York: Checkmark Books. pp. 140–142. ISBN 978-0-8160-3831-2. Retrieved June 6, 2020.
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