The Screwy Truant
Directed byTex Avery
Story byHeck Allen
Produced byFred Quimby (uncredited)
StarringWally Maher (Screwy Squirrel, uncredited)
Pinto Colvig (Meathead, Screwy laughing, uncredited)
Patrick McGeehan (Wolf, uncredited)[1]
Billy Bletcher (laughing sounds, uncredited)
William Hanna (screaming sounds, uncredited)
Music byScott Bradley
Animation byPreston Blair
Ed Love
Ray Abrams
Layouts byClaude Smith (uncredited)
Color processTechnicolor
Production
company
Distributed byMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date
  • January 13, 1945 (1945-01-13)
[2]
Running time
7 minutes
LanguageEnglish

The Screwy Truant is a 1945 Screwy Squirrel cartoon directed by Tex Avery and released by MGM.[3]

Summary

The cartoon centers around an adolescent version of Screwy Squirrel, who skips school to go fishing, which causes truant officer Meathead Dog (here seen with a different color palette but otherwise the same) to go around attempting to arrest Screwy, with various failures. At the end, Meathead finally catches Screwy and demands to know why he is not in school. Screwy tells him the reason is because he has measles, much to the horror of Meathead, who has now contracted measles from him.

Cameo

Tex Avery's versions of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf (from Swing Shift Cinderella) make a cameo appearance. In the middle of the cartoon, the two characters interrupt one of Screwy's antics with "Wolfie" chasing Little Red Riding Hood across the screen, only for Screwy to interrupt that action by showing the wolf the title of the cartoon and informing him that he is in the wrong "picture". Swing Shift Cinderella would not premiere until seven months after the release of The Screwy Truant,[4] so it could be inferred that its script was still being written at the time and Avery wanted to provide theater audiences with a "teaser" for that upcoming short.

References

  1. ""Hello All You Happy Tax Payers": Tex Avery's Voice Stock Company |". cartoonresearch.com. Retrieved 2020-02-12.
  2. "W-543 The Screwy Truant (7 min.)...Jan. 13 [1945], partial index, Harrison's Reports (New York City), February 17, 1945, page C. Retrieved via Internet Archive (San Francisco, California), January 27, 2023.
  3. Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books. pp. 134–135. ISBN 0-8160-3831-7.
  4. "W-634 Swing Shift Cinderella—Cartoon...Aug. 25" [1945], partial index, Harrison's Reports, August 18, 1945, page C. Retrieved via Internet Archive, January 27, 2023.


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